Brothers and fathers, sisters and mothers in the faith, I greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. What a blessing it is to be here among you congregations. I bring greetings from Grace Covenant Church, the elders, deacons, and members there that greet you. By God's grace and God's grace alone, our lampstand is still burning brightly, and we're pleased to hear that the lampstands among you all are still burning brightly as well. May they continue to burn brightly until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We're gonna invite you to turn in your Bible Acts chapter 20, and I'm gonna read in your hearing, verses 17 through 21. Acts chapter 20, verses 17 through 21. And while you're turning there, let me just say thank you to the organizers of the conference. It is a deep privilege and honor to be able to come and speak. Thank you to my brothers who've gone before me. Fellow heralds of grace, knights of the pulpit, thank you for all of your expositions. I love Christ just a little bit more because of your labor in his vineyards, so thank you for that. I also wanna say, since Pastor Riddle said that throughout the years this conference title has been changed unofficially, I'm going to officially, unofficially change it again. Because what I wanna say is this is not just the Keech Conference, this is a Lollapalooza of preaching, that's what this is. And frankly, when I die, what I want is a Lollapalooza of preaching. No finger foods and photos, just law and gospel for six hours. That's what I learned. Next year we'll change it back to that. Let's give our attention now to the reading of God's word, Acts chapter 20, verses 17 through 21. Listen carefully. This is the word of the living God. Now from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. And when they came to him, he said to them, you yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews, how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in public and from house to house testifying both to Jews and the Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus far the reading of God's word, the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our Lord stands forever. And we are grateful for it, are we not? I want you to bow your heads with me as we ask the Lord for help in the ministry of the word this afternoon. Oh risen and reigning Lord Jesus Christ, We come before you this afternoon and we pray that you would send dispatches from the eschaton and help us to hear the melodious sonnets of angels singing of your glory and of that new heavens and that new earth where pain and sin and death have been eradicated and are no more. And as we heard earlier, there is no repenting for there is no sin to repent of, but we will only and always have before us a triune God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ We pray that even now in this now time, that you would send dispatches from that eschatological state, that they might break into this time through our worship, and that we might be edified and you might be glorified. We pray that you would help us to see the face of Jesus. We pray that you would help your servant to paint a picture of him from the word of God with the framework of the confession, that your people might be edified and you would be glorified. We ask these things in Christ's name. Paragraph five in chapter 15 has been assigned to me, and so I'd like to draw that to your attention at this time. It's a very simple paragraph, and here's what it says. It says, such is the provision which God has made through Christ in the covenant of grace for the preservation of believers and the salvation, that although there is no sin so small, but it deserves damnation, yet there is no sin so great, that it shall bring damnation on them that repent, which makes the constant preaching of repentance necessary. Philip Henry, the father of the famous Matthew Henry, has a famous quote wherein he says, and Philip Henry was a preacher, if I were to die in the pulpit, I would desire to die preaching repentance. If I were to die outside of the pulpit, I would desire to die practicing repentance. And so it is that repentance, dear people of God, is part and parcel of the message of salvation. It is, as it were, one of the two sides of the coin of the message of salvation, repentance and faith. And as I look at chapter 15 of our confession, what I see is that in chapters 1 through 4, I imagine a bunch of guys in a garage looking under the hood of an extremely powerful muscle car. And they're looking at the engine. And the engine is the internal workings of how this muscle car gets out on the road and burns rubber. And the hood is open, and they are looking at this engine, you see. And in paragraphs one through four, that's what we're doing. We're looking at the mechanics of what repentance is, how it works, what it does, what you do in receiving it, what the Spirit of God does in applying it. We're looking at the mechanics, but when we get to chapter, or paragraph five, What happens is a man closes the hood, and instead of stepping back and looking at that muscle car and saying, oh, how beautiful the paint job is, oh, how majestic it must be in real life, he says, get in, boys, we're gonna take this thing for a ride. And so it is in paragraph five, what we see is that this doctrine of repentance is not meant to be in an enclosed glass case in the foyer of our churches to be gazed at. This doctrine of repentance is meant to be heralded. It is meant by the minister of God who have had men lay hands on him and duly ordain him for the service of the preached word to herald it and to be, as it were, a searching light of interrogation in the proclamation of the word of God so that the spirit can work and apply repentance in his people and the Lord glories to do so. So what I wanna do this afternoon is very simple. I wanna ask a question. the constant preaching of repentance necessary? And I'm going to give you four answers, and I'm going to do that with the framework of paragraph five by working from the last phrase all the way to the first phrase. So the last phrase, this makes the constant preaching of repentance necessary. That is my homiletical idea, my big idea. And now I want to ask, why is it that it reasons this afternoon. Here's the first reason why repentance, the constant preaching of repentance, is necessary. So that we might ever and always know what repentance is. It's kind of sad, isn't it, that we have to say that? It's kind of sad, isn't it, that it seems as if much in the evangelical world doesn't know what repentance is? It's kind of sad, isn't it, that it seems as if some are still on milk when they should be on meat, and yet we know from the scriptures that even in the first century that was a problem. The author to the Hebrews tells us, some of you by now should be eating T-bones, but you're still on formula. So it is, the constant preaching of repentance is necessary so that the people of God always have put before them the entree Repentance, as we already heard, I'm not going to cover all the ground, is a mourning over sin, it is a remorse for sin, it is a turning away from sin, and it has fruits that show the work of repentance. John the Baptist said it, Jesus said it, Paul said it, bear fruit in keeping with what? Repentance. And we must say this, we must say this because there are so many perversions of what repentance is. As a pastor, I have been on the phone. As a pastor, I have been in people's houses. As a pastor, literally, I have been chasing people who have tried to tell me that all repentance is, Pastor Josh, is that I feel bad and I feel bad for my sin. Crack another beer. Listen, alcoholic, it's more than feeling bad for sin. You must bear fruit in keeping with repentance. You see, repentance has legs. Repentance has feet. And that change of mind that works in the inner soul and the inner self of your soul works itself out in your feet and your hands and your eyes and your ears and your lips. Repentance bears fruit. always joined with faith. And there have been criticisms of chapter 15 in our confession, and we've already heard some of the reasons why. Of course, this is something of a modification, an editing of the Westminster Parallel and the Westminster Confession of Faith. We're following the Savoy. But some of the criticisms of chapter 15 have been that the chapter doesn't seem to give a clear and crisp definition of repentance. paragraph, giving the clear, concise, and cogent definition of repentance, and then unpacking it in a deductive way. But at the same time, in paragraph three, as we heard from our brother, there is something of a clear definition. But another criticism is that the chapter seems to divorce repentance from faith. And I just want to say, in defense of our confession, that it seems to me the framers of our confession were following the pattern of scripture, particularly the exposition or manifestation of preaching in the book of Acts, and taking note particularly in how the apostles preached the message of salvation. If you look at the book of Acts, this is what you will find. Sometimes, as we saw in Acts chapter 20, the apostle Paul says, I preach the message of repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So we have both elements, do we not? Repentance and faith. But sometimes in the book of Acts, the apostles use this literary device called synecdoche. And synecdoche is very simply a literary device where a part is put for the whole. And sometimes, if you are reading the Book of Acts, you will find that sometimes it's not faith and repentance, but just repentance that is stated. You must repent in order to be saved. And sometimes it is not repentance that is stated, but it is faith that is stated. You must believe with no mention of repentance. But you see, when Luke is putting that together, he intends, by the literary use of synecdoche, that you understand that when repentance is used solely, repentance is put for both repentance and faith, and when faith is put solely, it is put for both faith and repentance. Well, I think that that is what the assumption was of the framers of the confession. Obviously, they believed that faith and repentance went together. In fact, faith and repentance always go together. Repentance does not, nor can it save by itself, because faith is the sole instrument of salvation. And yet, as Luther said, though salvation is by faith alone, it is a faith that never is alone. It is always accompanied by repentance. Repentance and faith go together. Boys and girls, there are two words in the Bible. You know what those two words are? Those two words are law and gospel. And law says, do this and you shall live. And the gospel says, Christ has done it for you. And you see, boys and girls, if you think of those two words, then you will always know what salvation is because salvation is nothing more than the responses to those two things. Salvation said, when we hear the word law, do this and you shall live, my attitude toward that is one of repentance. I can't do that and live. I do not have the positive righteousness that is necessary to stand on the day of judgment by myself. What's more, I have all kinds of sins, sin that I was born in and sin that I committed on top of that. So I can't be perfect and live. I need to look outside of myself. Well, the repentance is the response to the law, and then faith is my response to the gospel. Because the gospel says, Christ has done it for you, and as that instrument of faith reaches out and grabs it and says, yes, this is mine through Christ's sacrifice. So law and gospel, repentance and faith, these are the message of salvation. And I always think of Professor John Murray's illustrations. was one to coin a phrase quite aptly. He would always say, repentance and faith are twin sisters. Repentance and faith are twin sisters. But he also went on to say, repentance is the tear in the eye of faith, and faith is the gleam in the wet eye of repentance. The tear of repentance glitters in the eye of faith. You see, these two things go together as a believing repentance and a repenting faith. The two always go hand in hand. So why is the constant preaching of repentance necessary? Number one, so that we might ever and always know what repentance is. And let me just remind you, especially as we are the day before the market day of the soul, that as you begin to meditate upon going into your houses of worship, to sit under the preached word and confess the word and to sing the word and to pray the word, I want you to remember that so much of what we do in corporate worship is not learning new things. As if we were empty truth receptacles and all that's being done in the ministry of the words are just putting information in there No, so much of what we do in our worship is remembering what we already know We're remembering what God has saved us from we're remembering Jesus Christ crucified And by the help of God's Spirit, through the preaching of the word, our affections are being stirred up to new repentance and greater faith. So, we not only need to be reminded of what repentance is, but secondly, a second reason why the constant preaching of repentance is necessary, is that having understood what repentance is, we might distinguish it from counterfeit. He is crafty. Oh, the wiles and the schemes of Satan. You know, the KJV, it just preaches so much more eloquently than that. The wiles and the schemes of Satan. And one of the wiles and the schemes of Satan is that for every fruit of the Spirit, for every element of the Ordo Salut is, oh, Satan, he's got a counterpart and a counterfeit. And he's got a counterfeit for faith, and he's got a counterfeit for sorrow. It's worldly sorrow, a godly sorrow, but he's also got a counterfeit for repentance. And we hear it all the time. I've already made mention of it. I'm sorry, but I'm unwilling to repent. I'm sorry, but I'm unwilling to change. Unfortunately, in my line of work, I deal with a lot of liars. Lots of liars. It helps me understand the Psalms a little bit more when I read David saying, Lord, I'm surrounded by liars. Not all my congregation, don't get me wrong, but. Unfortunately, I had to excommunicate some people and there have been conversations that even now are fresh in my mind that I've had with people that I went into those conversations early on thinking that they were sheep only to find out through the exercise of the keys that they were goats. And there was a man who, for almost 20 years, no, more than 20 years, preached the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was found out to be a fake. He left his family, committed adultery, and he had the audacity to come and tell us and his family, I'm sorry, but I'm unwilling to repent. And I said, friend, that word means nothing. That word means nothing. There is no generic sorry. Sorry has feet, sorry has hands. Repent and bear fruit in keeping with repentance. You see, the Bible knows nothing of ambiguous sorries. The Bible tells us that repentance leads to restitution where necessary. The Bible tells us that repentance comes to the person that they have offended, and it sticks its bony finger, not in their eyes or in their face, but in their own chest and says, I am the man. I am the man. Forgive me of my shortcoming. I am the man. Forgive me of my harsh words. I am the man. Forgive me of my sin. But it's counterfeit repentance, you see, that says, in this counterfeit repentance that is more unhappy about the consequences of sin than the fact that we have offended a thrice holy God. That is the worldly sorrow contrasted with godly sorrow. Godly sorrow we are broken. Godly sorrow we are brought to our knees. Godly sorrow pulls tears out of our eyes. But worldly sorrow is always looking for the angle. It's always looking for the angle. What can I say to this person to get what I want? What are other examples of counterfeit repentance? Well, when we try to free ourselves from guilt without atonement, and I see this in the world of secular clinical psychology, where these supposed guides are not, let me just make a caveat, okay? I don't want us to die of a thousand qualifications, okay? There is a place through common grace for secular psychologists, but that's not in the place of the church, okay? So I made that caveat, okay? I'm thankful for psychologists that are trying to give natural law, common sense, common grace to people whose hearts are not regenerate. I get that, that's their job. But in the church, we're about something different, are we not? And I want to say, make psychology great again. That's what I want to say. You know what psychology means, though. The study of the soul. That's my job. I'm a pastor. That's what we do. Care of the soul. In the world of secular clinical psychology, What they try to do is they try to get rid of guilt without supernatural help. They do it through blame-shifting. Oh, my friend, it's not your fault. You were deprived of blankets by your parents as a child. So all your problems just flow out of the dereliction of duty of your parents. It's not your fault. Or redefining sin. They're good at that. In fact, if they can use the word sin, If I hear from another evangelical church, after a pastor has fallen into adultery, that he's taking a break because of a moral failure, I'm gonna punch myself in the face. Just say sin, okay? Yes, it's a moral failure, but call it what it is. It needs a title like a Puritan, the sinfulness of sin. Call it what it is. But redefining sin, well, you know, sin, it's a, Sin is an imposition of man's conception of God onto other men. Don't abhor yourself. Don't hate yourself because of your sin. Isn't that the opposite of whatever our confession says? Self-abhorrence. Self-abhorrence. What's unhealthy to loathe yourself? Erase this artificial construct and be who you are. Let me tell you, friend, the worst thing you could tell But the prevailing presupposition in my preaching is that they're regenerate. So they can be who they are. But if I tell them I'm regenerate to be who they are, that is telling them to go straight to hell. They're not very gracious to do that, is it? I love what old John, Rabbi Duncan says. He says, I defy man or angel to free themselves from guilt without any atonement, and to free themselves from depravity without regeneration. Psychologists think it's asinine to simply tell people to repent. They think it's naive and sophomoric. But what are our assumptions of repentance? Well, I've already said it. What they don't understand is that we assume certain things when we call people to repent. We assume that the elect will hear us. We assume that the redeemed of the Lord will respond. We believe what Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2.19, but God's firm foundation stands bearing this seal, the Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. Minister of God, fellow herald of grace, fellow knight of the pulpit, listen to me. When you step into the pulpit, you are not engaging in behavior modification. You are engaging, my friend, you are engaging in the supernatural work of calling the elect to be who they are. You don't make them anything. You call them to be everything that God has called them to be and lay out before them the graces necessary to be those things before him. You are simply proclaiming. You are a herald. And that's why Paul says, oh, the foolishness of preaching. That we are, still 2,000 years later, standing for people and holding a monologue. And we're having a monologue because we believe that Jesus Christ speaks from heaven through His arrows. Do you believe that? Do you believe when you come in the sanctuary of God with the people of God, when we're assembled together, that when the preacher stands up and opens the Word of God and exposes it and declares it and presses it upon your conscience, that Jesus' voice is there? Do you believe that? That's why the second Helvetic Confession says, the preached Word of God, what? is the Word of God. Evangelicals break out in rashes when they hear that, right? What are you talking about? You can preach what God is, the Word of God. The third reason why the constant preaching of repentance is necessary is so that we might know how to properly use the law to cultivate repentance. Now, where I'm getting this is that line in the Confession, paragraph 5, where it says, There is no sin so small, but it deserves damnation. I thought a lot about that, and I think what's going on here is that we see that, and I want you to follow me here, there is a place for the first use of the law in the sanctification of the Christian. Now, when you first hear that, it may sound weird, Okay, why do we even speak of the place of the first use of the law when affirming the Christian? Well, Paul tells us that the law was our tutor or guardian. I like the word tutor. The law was our tutor to lead us to Christ. And once we've come to Christ, now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. We are no longer held captive under a tutor. And I would say yes and amen with Paul. We are no longer under the power of the law. We are no longer under the condemnation of the law. But friends, I gotta tell you, though we are in Christ, we're pretty good at forgetting Christ, aren't we? We're pretty good at straying from Christ. I think Pastor Rice mentioned that hymn, prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. I'm prone to that. You're prone to that. And so sometimes what we need is we need to be shaken out of our lethargy. We need to be shaken out of our apathy. we need to be shaken out of our presumption of grace. Oh, how we sometimes presume upon the grace of God. Oh, how sometimes we presume upon the mercy of God that's meant to lead us to repentance. So just because we're Christians doesn't mean that our sin doesn't deserve damnation. It's not as if God said, now you're saved and I have swept all the wrath and judgment of God under the rug. No, my friend, that locomotive of wrath hit somebody. That wrath, that unmitigated wrath, it hits somebody. Some people say, there's no such thing as a free lunch. There's no such thing as a free salvation. It's free for you, but somebody paid for it. Jesus Christ paid for it. And so we do need to think of condemnation. We need to think of what our sins deserve. If we're not making use, diligent use of the means of grace, if we're not stoking the fires of affection for Christ, to be lulled into lethargy, to be lulled into presumption, and to be lulled into license. And God uses the first use of the law to drive out this lethargy, presumption, and license. And I wanna give you one way to kind of test this in your life, okay? One manifestation of our lethargy and our license to sin is when we tell ourselves, either audibly or mentally, As we're working through a temptation, grappling through a temptation, well, everybody sins, right? Everybody sins. What is the declaration, everybody sins, but a recognition of remaining sin in the body? What is the declaration, everybody sins, but a recognition that we have not attained glory yet? but it is a perversion of the gospel of grace to blame our license to sin on the reality that everybody sins. What is the phrase, everybody sins? For some of us, it becomes a sofa of slothfulness. Well, everybody sins. There was a man, it was the night before his wedding. It was a Christian man, gonna marry a Christian woman, a good stock. And as they were wrapping up their practice for the ceremony, the minister was about to leave, but he heard this young man talking with the groomsmen, and the groomsmen, wicked men, were saying, let's go to a strip club. And he saw this man's wheels turning in his head, and he thought, well, you know, everybody sins. Christ will forgive me, right? And that minister whipped around as soon as he could, as quick as he could, and he wrote right up to him and said, young man, I will not perform your ceremony if you will treat the grace of God with such contempt. God's grace is not cheap. It was bought at a price. for us to say to ourselves as we're wrestling with sin, well, everybody sins. Let me just slide, let me grease the skins for me to fall further and further into sin is really saying more about us than it is about anything else. You see, the fact that everybody sins should not be a sofa of sloth. But once again, Rabbi Duncan, with his quaint sayings, he says that the reality that everybody sins is not a sofa of sloth, but it is Is that how you think about remaining sin? And sometimes what we need, beloved, is we need to be scared with the wrath of God. Not because we are actually under the wrath of God, but be reminded what the sin that we're engaging in deserves. There's a man, I got a call one afternoon, and it was a wife, she was frantic, part of our church, and she told me, Pastor Josh, My husband's cheating on me. I need you to go get him. I need you to go after him. I'm like, I don't know. He's not listening to me. I gave him a call. And sure enough, he was at his mistress's house. And I said, get in my office right now. He came. I said, well, this is going well. And he showed up. I'm like, Lord, give me words. So I said a few niceties. If you do not repent of your adultery, you're going to hell. Was that true? Absolutely, it's true. Adulterers will not enter the kingdom of heaven. And so, I wanted to put the fear of God in him. And by God's grace, it did. By God's grace, he repented. By God's grace, he got his wife in that office, and before all of us, he put his phone on speaker, he called his mistress, and called them off. First use of the law. Although there is no sin that cannot damn us, be careful not to fall into the gospel of felonies. Fourthly, last reason. But I'm sorry, I gotta say one more thing. I'm sorry, I gotta say one more thing. Come over. Let me tell you why you need the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to help you and not psychobabble and secular thought. Remember when I said that what the psychologists try to do is they try to artificially get rid of guilt. They try to artificially get rid of guilt. And I kind of think of it this way, if a psychologist or anybody, you know, slopping down secular thoughts on how to rid your conscience of guilt and shame, Sitting in the office with their client and they're saying well, you know, it's not your fault blame shifting Well, it's not your fault and redefine Sydney because after all we live in an age of preference. Do we not I? Mean, how do I know what a woman is? I'm not a biologist So we live in an age of preference where people can say I'm a woman. I am a goat. I'm a zebra, whatever. I So as they peddle that mush and dribble to the people, they take what they think to be the guilt and shame of these people, and they go out the back door, and they throw it in the landfill. And there it is in the landfill, and they think it's gone. Let me tell you about landfills. For those of you that are not from Virginia Beach, we have a landfill. Well, at least it used to be a landfill. It's now called Mount Trashmore Park. And what it is at Mount Trashmore Park is that the city officials thought it was a wise idea to take a landfill and to put a bunch of dirt over it and make it a mound and make it into a park. And it's pretty cool, I would go running there, but I remember on one of the hottest days of the summer a few years back, I was running, and the oddest thing happened. The oddest thing happened. You see, in the infrastructure of this big mound that is basically trashed with dirt on top of it, they had to make a venting system. And so they put these pipes in the ground, and on hot days, it smells like a dump. That smell of the trash and the refuge comes through those pipes and it emits into the air. And I was running one day and I almost ran into somebody because all of a sudden I saw this flock of seagulls dive bombing Mt. Trashmore. Because they thought it was a trash heap. You know what that means? The world can artificially get rid of your guilt, but all they do is put it in a landfill. And just as the seagulls were able to find the trash, you know who else finds the trash of your guilt and your condemnation? Satan the accuser and he goes and he finds it and he says who do you think you are to call yourself a Christian you are a miserable sinner and I've got evidence right here because you don't have atonement to cover it and you don't have a generation to get rid of it all you have is the world's wisdom I found your trash evidence a through Z you're going Christ takes your guilt and shame, and he gets slaughtered for it, and he obliterates it. It's gone. So now, when Satan comes to me, and he says, who do you think you are, calling yourself a Christian? You did this, and you did that, and you did that. You know what I say? I say, you're right. Your story is true, but that's not the whole story. And I say, you know what? Why don't you go get some evidence? Go see if you can find some. And guess what? He goes to a landfill, but there's nothing there. because Christ has taken it for me. He has taken all my guilt, he has taken all my shame upon himself, and the unmitigated wrath of God has crushed him like a locomotive, the very wrath and condemnation that I deserve. And not only that, but Christ not only empties the landfills, but he gives me the new heavens and the new earth, an earth where there are no landfills, and so my guilt Certainly, we can use it in its third use, we already heard about that, but now we need to see how we need to use the gospel to cultivate repentance. And I'm thinking of that phrase in paragraph five, yet, this is a concessive clause, although, we saw in the first part, and now yet, yet there is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them that repent. You see, our problem, friends, is not that God will not forgive his children through Christ. That's not our problem. Our problem is that we do not believe in this forgiveness, and thus we do not forgive ourselves. You can't forgive yourselves unless you believe that Christ has forgiven you. And you can't believe that Christ has forgiven you unless you believe the gospel. You see, the gospel is reasonable. The Gospel is reasonable. It seems outlandish. It seems too good to be true, because it is too good to be true. But wonder of wonder is God sends His Son to stand in the stead of sinners so that God can be the just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus Christ. God being the justice and justifier doesn't mean, as I said before, that He sweeps our sins under the rug. No, He slaughters Christ, and yet He is able to be just because He takes care of sin and justifies sinners by taking care of sin. The gospel is reasonable, but what happens is that through sin we become unreasonable. Have you ever thought unreasonably when you're caught in sin? I have. I am unreasonable when I am in sin. That's why Asaph in Psalm 73 says, I was like a beast before you. I was like a beast before you. And if I would have said these things, these things of unbelief, these things of distrust, I would betray the generation of your youth. Then I came into the sanctuary of God. And I saw therein, surely, surely you are with me. Your hand takes me by the hand, and you guide me into glory. And this is why Isaiah, talking about this reasonable gospel, It says in Isaiah 118, come now, let us reason together. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool. Beloved, listen to me. of your repentance. But it rests on the provision of Christ in the covenant of grace. And that's what we see in the first phrase in paragraph five, such is the provision which God has made through Christ in the covenant of grace for the preservation of believers unto salvation. Seems like an odd comment in the context of this chapter, doesn't it? The constant preaching of repentance is necessary to remind us that the power of our repentance doesn't save us, yes. As important and even necessary as our repentance is in the life of the child of God, it is not the foundation of our standing in Christ. The foundation is God's provision in the covenant of grace, His Son Jesus Christ. In other words, this last phrase, the first phrase in paragraph five, it reminds us of the raw sovereignty of God. The raw sovereign grace of God in salvation. And the best way I can put it to you is this, listen to me, and I am not undervaluing repentance, but I wanna preach a gospel that just like Paul's opponents, some thought would be scandalous. You will never repent of all your sins. Do you know that? You know you'll never repent of all your sins. Do you know that you will not perfectly repent of all your sins? Well then, where does that leave us? Are unrepentant sins and imperfectly repented sins left uncovered by the blood of Christ? Oh, what provision in the covenant of grace. No, my friend, they are covered. Why? Because in the covenant of grace, Christ stands in your stead. And this doesn't mean that he repents in your stead because he has no sins of which to repent. But it means that he stands in your stead precisely because he doesn't have any sins to repent of. And because He has no sins of repent of, because He stood under the law and kept it perfectly, personally, and perpetually, then we can take His righteousness. It becomes imputed to us, and our condemnation gets imputed to Him. Christ is our salvation. And now we need only what? Repent and look to Him. Does this free grace gospel produce lawlessness? No way, no way. As Rabbi Duncan says, oh, for such a look at Christ as will scatter sin. I don't fight my sin primarily by heeding sin. I do heed sin. I fight my sin primarily by getting a glimpse of Jesus Christ in the world. That's right. His majesty, his glory, his grandeur, his grace, his compassion, his kindness, his gentleness. Be a sinner. That's what gets me. God so loved the woman that He gave His Son to die for our sins that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Dear friend, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ today. And if you've already turned to Him, turn back to Him again, and again, and again, and again. Return, O Shulot, to the lover of your soul, and let him comfort you in the grace of the covenant of grace. We thank You, Father, that He was perfect, that we need not be perfect. We thank You, Father, that we can look to a perfect Savior who stood in our stead, and I pray that that would fuel every fiber of repentance in each and every one of us. Strengthen us individually, Father. Strengthen us in our families, Father. Strengthen us in our churches, Father. May our lampstands and Hampton Roads and yea, verily, in this nation, in this world, burn brightly until the coming of Jesus Christ, that when he comes, we would be workmen.