This morning I invite you to turn with me again to the Book of Job. To the Book of Job. This morning because of the interconnectedness of the subject, we're actually going to be looking at Job 40 verses 1 through 5 and Job 42 verses 1 through 6. This is dealing with Job's response to the Lord's inquisition of him. As God is interrogating Job in chapter 38, 39, and in part of 40 and 41, we see here Job's response, and we find Job's response in two places. And the reason we're looking at them is because we're gonna see Job's repentance this morning. Job's repentance. We see it in part in chapter 40 verses 1 through 5, but we see it in its consummation in chapter 42 verses 1 through 6. And so we're going to be looking at both of those portions this morning. If you recall, as we began to look at chapters 38 through 42, I gave you a brief outline, and I said we would look at those things under these two headings of, first of all, God reveals to Job his majestic glory, and then God restores to Job beyond his former glory. And so we saw that God reveals to Job his majestic glory out of a whirlwind. We saw this in chapter 38. And by way of two discourses, Job receives two discourses from God. In the first discourse, God reveals his glory to Job by reminding Job of his sovereign creation of the inhabitants, of his sovereign control over the inanimate, and his sovereign care of the animate, meaning the animal world. Now, in the second discourse, which we will not look at this morning, God continues to address Job using two magnificent creatures, Behemoth and Leviathan. Now, these creatures put on display in a marvelous fashion the glory of God. And we'll look at those at some other time. This morning, we come to Job's response. Job serves for us as a model of godly and biblical repentance. Throughout biblical history, we see men who have had the words of godly repentance, but do not have the works of godly repentance. Take, for example, Pharaoh. He said to Moses and Aaron, after the plague of locusts came upon him. Now, therefore, he says, I have sinned against God or the Lord and your God and against you. Now, therefore, please forgive my sin only this once and make supplication to the Lord your God that he would only remove this death from me. And so he has the words of repentance here. He says words of, even talking about, I've sinned against you and I've sinned against God. So he doesn't just say I've sinned against you, Moses and Aaron, I've also sinned against God. And those that we would say are the words of repentance. But these fell short of repentance because he continued his captivity of the Israelites. We see in 1 Samuel 15 verses 24 through 25, we see King Saul. King Saul was another man who uttered the words of repentance, but had not the works of repentance. He said in verse 24 and 25 of chapter 1 Samuel 15, he says, I have sinned. I have indeed transgressed the command of the Lord and your words. because I feared the people and listened to their voice. Now, therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may worship the Lord." So again, he has in here the words of repentance, not just against Samuel, but also against God. But this was not repentance because he continued to pursue David and to take his life. Probably the most prominent example of someone who said the words of repentance but repented not was that man, Judas, the one who betrayed our Lord. In Matthew 27, three through four, after Judas came to realize what he had done, it says, then when Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that he had been condemned, He felt remorse, and so there is the affection of his heart of, there's a sorrow that attends to his, what we call repentance. So we have those things of someone's mind being changed, as we see here, someone's thoughts are involved in what we saw in Pharaoh and the other. And now we have here even the emotion of repentance of someone saying here they feel remorse. He says, in return, the 30 pieces of silver, he's even making recompense here to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. And we would see that and say, of course he's repentant. But he wasn't, because he went away and he hanged himself. That's not repentance. That's not true biblical repentance right there. Something that approximates repentance. It looks like it, it mimics it, it has the words of repentance, it may even have some of the emotions of repentance, but it falls short of being true biblical repentance. In this London Baptist, or in 1689 London Baptist Confession, paragraph three, we have a definition of repentance. It says this is under the heading of repentance unto saving faith. It says, this saving repentance is an evangelical grace whereby a person being by the Holy Spirit made, listen to this, made sensible of the manifold evils of his sin does by faith in Christ humble himself for it with godly sorrow, detestation of it, and self-abhorrency, praying for pardon and strength of grace with a purpose and endeavor by supplies of the spirit to walk before God unto all well-pleasing in all things." And that means of obedience right there. And so this definition involves three aspects of our humanity. It involves our mind. He says here that, in that definition, he says that we are made sensible. So the mind is engaged in repentance. We also have the affections. We see here that the idea of godly sorrow. So the affections are involved in repentance. and of the will, and says he endeavors, he endeavors after obedience, and so there's the mind, the affections, and the will are involved in, we're talking here, by the way, about repentance unto saving faith. However, it doesn't change even when we're a believer. Those same realities are there when we are believers. We don't just repent once, and then that's it. If we are believers, we are repenting repenters. Because we still have remaining corruption. We still are fallen. And so we remain those who walk in repentance. We believe, right? Do we just believe once and no longer believe? No. The same way we came into Christ by faith and repentance is the same way we continue in Christ. in faith and repentance as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's another shorter definition of repentance given by Jim Eliff. He says, repentance is a change of mind regarding sin and God. Listen to that, regarding what? Sin and God. and inward turning from sin to God, which is known by its fruit, obedience. Obedience. And so from the life of Job, we see this picture of repentance. As Job is faced with the onslaught of the interrogation of Almighty God. he comes to a realization of his own sinful condition. Now I'm gonna read again, because I'm gonna be touching on both portions to really fill out what we hear here, we see here of this picture of godly repentance in the life of Job. I'm gonna read chapter 40, verses one through five. chapter 42 verses 1 through 6. So chapter 40 verses 1 through 5, let's begin there. Then the Lord said to Job, God is challenging Job here, will the fault finder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it. Then Job answered the Lord and said, behold, I am insignificant. What can I reply to you? I lay my hand on my mouth. Once I have spoken, and I will not answer. Even twice, and I will add nothing more. Chapter 42, verses one through six. Then Job answered the Lord and said, I know that you can do all things. and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know. Hear now, hear now, and I will speak. I will ask you and you instruct me. I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore, I retract and I repent in dust and ashes. We're gonna look this morning and we're gonna draw out four aspects of Job's repentance we find in these two passages here. Now, in order to have biblical, godly repentance, One of the first things that we must have is we must have what's called clarity, clarity, spiritual clarity, or godly perspective. And we find this in the book of Job, beginning in chapter 42, verse five. He says, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. God had asked Job, as I conveyed to you last time, about 77 questions. And now Job is responding to these things. He has been shown the glory of God in all of its majesty. And now Job is declaring now, in light of this, he says, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Now, does this mean that Job had literally seen the Lord in a physical way. No, this doesn't mean that God had shown himself to Job in a physical way. Job is saying that he now has a greater understanding of God than he did before. He now experientially knows of the greatness of God. He understands God's power in a way that he did not know before. He understands God's sovereignty in a way that eclipses his previous understanding. He is saying that I don't just know about God, I know God experientially. I know him now experientially. I haven't just heard about God, he said I see God. I see God. In his book entitled Knowing God, J.I. Packers writes this about a distinction between knowing about God and knowing God. He says here, we need frankly to face ourselves at this point. We are perhaps orthodox evangelicals. We can state the gospel clearly. We can smell unsound doctrine a mile away. If asked how one may know God, we can at once produce the right formula that we come to know God through Jesus Christ the Lord in virtue of his cross and mediation on the basis of his word of promise by the power of the Holy Spirit via a personal exercise of faith. Yet the gaiety, goodness, unfetteredness of spirit, which are the marks of those who have known God, are rare among us, rarer perhaps than they are in other Christian circles where, by comparison, evangelical truth is less clearly and fully known. He's just saying there that there are some people who have less light than we have, and yet they are living in the light of that creed that they have. He's saying here, hereto it would seem that the last may prove to be first and the first last. A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about him. Again, he's making there a distinction about knowing about God and knowing God. He goes on to say, I am sure that many of us have never really grasped this. We find in ourselves a deep interest in theology, which is, of course, a most fascinating and intriguing subject in the 17th century, it was a very gentleman's hobby. We read books of theological exposition and apologetics, we dip into Christian history, and study the Christian creed. We learn to find our way around in the scriptures. Others appreciate our interest in these things. And we find ourselves asked to give our opinion in public on this or that Christian question, to lead study groups, to give papers, to write articles, and generally to accept responsibility, informal if not formal, for acting as teachers and arbiters of orthodoxy in our own Christian circle. Our friends tell us how much they value our contribution, and this spurs us to further explorations of God's truth so that we may be equal to the demands made upon us. All very fine, yet interest in theology and knowledge about God and the capacity to think clearly and talk well on Christian themes is not at all the same thing. as knowing God. Finally, he says, we may know as much about God as Calvin knew. Indeed, if we study his works diligently, sooner or later we shall. And yet all the time, unlike Calvin, may I say, we may know God hardly at all. How convicting is that? To know God, but not to know God. This is the essence of saving faith, by the way. That we may know God. And this is eternal life. That you may know him. Not just about him, but know him. And this is where Job is coming to. Now Job knows God in a way that, in a more profound way. He's gaining clarity here. Now the idea of spiritual clarity being a part of repentance is found in the parable of the prodigal son. Consider the parable of the prodigal son. He went away. He had taken his father's wealth, his inheritance. He went away, lived riotously. What does it say about him in Luke chapter 15? It says, but when he came to his senses, what did he gain? He gained what? Spiritual clarity, a godly perspective. Now what brought about Job's clarity? Well, what brought about Job's clarity was when he saw God. And so when he did this, he gained a proper perspective on God. Look in chapter 42, verse two of Job. Remember beforehand, Job was questioning what God was doing. He was bringing into question what God was doing. Now in chapter 42, verse two, he says, as Job answers God, he says, I know that you can do all things. and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted." He sees God differently now. Now he sees God in all of his sovereignty and all of his glory and power and might in a way that he did not see it before. Now he sees things clearly. And now he's proclaiming with his lips the reality of what he now at one point was not saying about God. At one point he was bringing accusations against God. Now he's declaring the sovereignty of God and all of its glory and beauty and that no one can thwart the hand of God. He's speaking truthfully about God. One writer said this, the more we see God as glorious and holy, the more we will see sin as something to weep over. He says repentance is less about feeling bad over our behavior and more about feeling awe and delight towards God. The more glimpses we have of the glory of God, the more we mourn for scorning that glory." So he gained a proper perspective on God. When God showed him his glory, he saw God for all that he was, he understood this, it brought him to a place where now he sees God clearly. But it also gave him a proper perspective on himself. Before we can have a proper perspective on who we are, we must have a proper perspective on God. And then once we have a proper perspective on God, then we can see clearly. This is what's wrong with the evangelical world today. Most of Christianity starts with man as the center and the object of the worship service, even. And when you start there, you don't have a proper perspective of God. And then we then lose a proper perspective on ourselves. And so what comes about from that is we end up with an entertainment type of worship. Entertainment floods into the worship service. Instead of focusing our attention on this great God that Elihu speaks of in chapter 38, man is exalted. The songs don't speak of this glorious God, it speaks about now just how this glorious God can come to our and meet our needs. But we're not exalting God in those situations. We're not worshiping God. In one sense, man is being worshiped because man now is the center and the focus of those situations. But when we start with God, this is what Job did. Job now sees God. He can not only hear about God, now he sees God. And when he sees God, his perspective about himself even changes. Remember, Job was all about vindicating himself. Now look at chapter 40, verse 4. Job thought much of himself. He says, behold, I am insignificant. What can I reply to thee? I lay my hand on my mouth. He says, I'm insignificant. In the ESV it says, I am a small account. And the King James Version says, I am vile. I am vile. That language doesn't fit well into modern Christianity. The health, wealth, and prosperity gospel has no room for this right here. The self-esteem movement in the Christian church has no place for the words of Job. They may as well remove those words of Job from their Bibles because there's no place in their theology for these things here. I'm insignificant. But brothers and sisters, before we came to Christ, we have to come to this place of, I have to see myself as insignificant. There's these these movements in our society today. And we're talking about people calling people kings and queens. Kings and queens don't need help, do they? They don't need aid. They don't need someone coming alongside of them and helping them to come to a place of repentance. No, paupers do. The poor, Jesus even said, the poor need Jesus, not the righteous, not the wealthy. The poor in spirit need Jesus. But when we don't see God in all of his glory in this way, what happens to us is man is exalted. And what we begin to do is we begin to minimize our sin. But it wasn't that bad. It was an error. It was a mistake. We begin to excuse our sin, or we blame shift. It's not my fault. It's because, God, you made me this way. We heard that, right? We hear this now, right? You made me this way. That's blame shifting. God does not tempt anyone to sin, does he? We know that clearly from the scripture. So when someone says, you made me this way, that's blame shifting. That's not taking account for your own sin. But when we start with man as the object of worship, yes, we can blame shift, and we can excuse our sins, and we can minimize our sin. And when this is happening, we hide our sin. We don't want to come face to face with our sin, or we deny our sin. and we don't see our sin for what it is. And so the first reality or the first thing we see in Job's repentance is we see clarity. Job has clarity, which is what he was lacking beforehand. We also see humility in Job's repentance. Again, in Job 40, verse four, he says, behold, I am insignificant. What can I reply to thee? I lay my hand on my mouth." And if you turn over to Job 42.4, he says here, here now, and I will speak. I will ask you, and you instruct me. Now remember what Job was doing or saying beforehand. This is a far cry from what Job was saying before him. Remember back in chapter 13, verse 23 through 24, it says, or chapter 13, verse 18 through 19, it says, behold now, I have prepared my case. This is Job speaking. I know that I will be vindicated. Who will contend with me? For then I will be silent and die. In Job 23, 1 through 4, Job, again, in contrast to what he now says about where he is, he says, even today my complaint is rebellion. His hand is heavy despite my groaning. Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come to his seat. I would present my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. And in Job 31 verse 35, it says, oh, that I had one to hear me. Behold, here is my signature. Let the Almighty answer me and the indictment which my adversary has written. You see, now Job, instead of saying, I'm going to argue my case, or I'm going to now speak and plead my case before God, now what Job is saying is, I will ask you and you instruct me. You instruct me. When there's true biblical repentance, we're not trying to instruct those who bring the word of God before us. We're silent. We're receiving that word now. We understand this. If you've ever been in this position before, someone brings the word of God to you, and at first you buck against that word, you find it hard, you're struggling with it, and then after a period of time, God softens your heart, you gain clarity, and now instead of speaking and making arguments and excusing yourself, then you begin to say, yeah, you instruct me now. That's different. That's uniquely different. This is a uniquely different Job than what we saw before. Job now wants to be instructed by God. He says, now God, you instruct me. He's using God's words back, by the way, back in chapter 38, where God kind of, in tongue-in-cheek, in a sense, we would say, he says, I will answer you and you instruct me. Now Job is saying the same thing. He's using God's word. No, God, I will answer you and you instruct me, because I need to hear from you, God. And this is where Job is. Job needs to hear from God. And the only way that this happens is if he humbles himself before God, and Job now is humbled before God. Humility and repentance are always hand in hand. In James chapter four, verses 8 through 10, James writes, he says, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. These are words of repentance here. Be miserable, and mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. And he says this in verse 10, humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and he will exalt you. If there is to be true repentance, there must be humility that accompanies it. For there is no repentance without humility. And so we see that Job shows clarity humility, but he also shows contrition. Contrition. Contrition is sorrow. Job has sorrow over his sin. We see this in chapter 42, verse 6. He says here, therefore I retract and I repent in dust and ashes. The word here for retract here is not what we think it is. It's more of the word, a word, it's more of the idea of Job despising himself, and that's how it's translated, by the way, in the ESV. It says, therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. And the King James Version says, therefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. And so we can see here that Job has sorrow over his sin. He says, I abhor myself. There's sorrow over what he's done. If you go back to the definition of repentance, it says, with regard to the person who is repentant, that he humbles himself for it with godly sorrow, detestation of it. and self-abhorrency. Self-abhorrency here. Job has contrition, he's contrite. This is what the psalmist speaks of in Psalm 51 is, what should mark our repentance, he says, for you do not delight in sacrifice. Otherwise, by the way, this is David as he's making his confession about his sin, He says, for you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it. For you are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise. And so this godly sorrow should accompany our repentance. Now let me say this to you before we move on. Sorrow by itself is not repentance. We saw this, and we saw this in the examples I gave you beforehand. Judas went away with great sorrow when he had betrayed his Lord. But remember, his sorrow aborted in nothing but sorrow. It did not issue into godly repentance. that led to godly activity. No, Judas went away and he hanged himself. That's not godly sorrow. Emotion alone is not sorrow. Having a rent heart over your sin is not always true repentance. Sometimes people are sorry or have sorrow over the consequences of their sin. Sometimes people do feel bad about what they've done. And yet they repeat it over and over again. That's not godly sorrow. See, in the scriptures, we know that godly sorrow has something that it issues into. In 2 Corinthians 7 verse 9 through 10, the Apostle Paul says, I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance. So he makes a distinction there. Not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance. For you were made sorrowful according to the will of God so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. Now he clearly makes a distinction in verse 10. For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation. But the sorrow of the world produces death. Jim Elliff in his pamphlet on repentance entitled The Unrepenting Repenter. He said this, he says, you may experience the emotion of repentance without the effect of it. Here is a kind of amnesia. You see the awful specter of sin in the mirror and flinch out of horror, yet immediately forget what kind of person you saw. It is true. Repentance includes sincere emotion, an affection for God and a disaffection for sin. Torrents of sorrow may flood the repenter's heart, and properly so, but there is such a thing as a temporary emotion in the mere semblance of repentance. This emotion has very weak legs, and cannot carry the behavior in the long walk of obedience. You hear that? It cannot carry the behavior in the long walk of obedience. See, that's what he's saying, because in repentance, it's not just, boom, you're done. He said there's a long walk of obedience. Keep that in mind. the long walk of obedience, but that worldly sorrow cannot carry that long walk, that repentance in that long walk. It must be godly sorrow. He goes on to said, your sorrow may even be prolonged, yet if it does not arrive at repentance, it is of the world, and it is a living death, and maybe more sobering. absolutely sobering. He says here, it may be more. Finally, we see Job just stopped there in his humility, and the sorrow it then issues in Job confessing his sin. We see this in verse 4 through 5 of chapter 40 and in chapter 3 of chapter 42. We see this in verse 4 through 5 in chapter 40. He says here, Behold, I am insignificant. What can I reply to you? I lay my hand on my mouth. Once I have spoken, and I will not answer, even twice, and I will add nothing more. 3 of chapter 42, who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know. What is Job doing here? He's confessing his sin. What kind of sins has Job been committing against God? Sins of the tongue. He's been committing sins of the tongue. He's been speaking that about God, which was not right. He's been accusing God. He's been speaking to God. Listen, let me just stop for a second. I heard someone the other day say that they were angry with God. That's not okay. That's a sin of the tongue. Do not say that. That's not okay. The world tells us it's okay to say you're angry with God. That's not okay. Would you allow your children to say to you, I'm angry with you? You wouldn't, would you? Why? That's disrespectful, isn't it? Why do we think it's okay for us to say, God, I'm angry with you? It's not okay. That's not okay. That's not a right relationship. And so Job has been marked by speaking against God. arrogantly speaking against God, justifying himself rather than justifying God. So his has been sins of the tongue. Now notice this, as Job lays out for us what his sins are. Notice this reality here that Job speaks specifically about his sin. He didn't just say, oh God, I'm sorry about what happened. You remember God, you remember what happened, you know all things, I'm sorry about what happened. No, Job specifically lays out to God and says to him, here is how I have sinned against you. There is specificity in true repentance. You need to specify what your sins are when you are truly repentant. We can't repent in generalities. He says, I have sinned against you, God, with my lips. Jemeleff says this, you may repent so generally that you never repent of any specific sin at all. The man who repents in too great a generality is likely covering his sins. If there are no particular changes, there is no repenting. Sin has many heads, like the mythological hydra. It cannot be dealt with in general, but its heads must be cut off one by one. Now, Job needs to repent of several things. The use of his tongue, the pride, at the very least. And when we have sinned against God and we've sinned against others, we must specify those sins. We must say, I have sinned against you in this way, in this way, in this way. It's not okay just to say, I'm sorry. We already know that, right, because of the way you acted. But we don't just say, I'm sorry. We specifically go to the person and ask them about the things and the ways that we have, and speak to them about the ways we have sinned against them, very specifically. I've spoken, I've lied against you. I've slandered your name. I raise my voice, whatever the case may be. And remember, there are a whole host of things. And usually when there's sin involved, there's usually not just one sin that we have to deal with. This is why we need clarity. When we have clarity, we can see our sin clearly, and we can see all of our sins clearly. We understand how this is. We see people go on in the media who've committed some great failure, moral failure, and they make some general apology. And we're all put off by that, aren't we? But at times, we're not put off by our own generalities when we're repenting. When we're with our spouses, we don't name those sins specifically. how I have sinned against you. Name them. Take, for example, sexual immorality. Sexual immorality is usually, I would say, always accompanied by what? Deception and lying, coveting, adultery, Theft, potentially. There are a whole host of sins that are involved in sexual immorality. A whole host of them that we need to come to realize and we need clarity so we can see those sins because we need to repent of all of those sins. Like he said, it's like a multi-headed hydra. Has a lot of heads. And all of those heads need to be cut off. It may not be with one fell swoop of that sword, but over the course of time, all those heads need to be removed. Because some of those are the root causes of those things. For example, in immorality, there's always pride involved. Pride. Some young lady says to a young man, you look nice, or gives him a compliment or something. There's pride in that. There's always pride involved in those things. Finally, we have that confession of sin. Under confession of sin, we see that confession is not to be alone. It is to be mixed with true repentance. In Proverbs 28, 13, Solomon says this. He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper. but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. So there is to be not only confessing of our sin, but also forsaking of it. There should be forsaking of it. I must not simply confess, listen to this, this is what he says in his pamphlet here, confession from the teeth out is no confession. That's not true confession. It must be known by its fruit, obedience. Obedience. And not just one week or two weeks, but over the course of time. And not that a person won't ever fall, but it's to be over the long haul of that person's life. That's what true repentance looks like. And Job, Job here, a godly man, he needed repentance. Job, a godly man, however, shows us that true picture of repentance, a marvelous picture of godly, biblical repentance. May we all repent like Job, amen? Let us pray. Father, thank you for this time. Thank you for your word that is true. We thank you for the example of Job and his repentance. When he came face to face with you as you questioned him, over and over again, he did not argue back with you, Lord. He received and he humbled himself under your mighty hand. And he received instruction, turned from his sin, named his sin for what it was. As we see in the latter part of his life, he walked in that repentance. And we thank you for his example for us. May we all repent like Job. May we all have that heart of repentance like Job, who not only confessed his sin, but he also forsook his sin and embraces God in all of his glory and splendor. And we pray this in Christ's name and for his sake, amen.