Month: May 2026

Text: 2 Peter 3:9

• Intro:
  • This verse says that God is willing that all should come to repentance. 
  • You have heard the word repentance before and you may know something about it. 
  • But the question is How to Repent. 
  • What good is it if you can win a theological debate about what repentance means if you still need to repent? 
  • It is the doing of repentance and not the knowledge of repentance that God is interested in.
• So, here’s how to repent:
• First, there must be an honest recognition of what you are doing wrong – Rev 2:21-22, Rev 9:20-21 etc –
  • There was something specific that each was doing and that they needed to stop doing –
  • You may recognize something wrong in your life but you may not be honest, at all, about how much you need to turn away from it –
  • Often the thing you need to quit is connected to other things in your life –
  • Honest recognition finds all of these components so that you can deal with them all –
  • A fellow who lusts after women must also honestly recognize the sins in his thought life, the sins he commits with his eyes and the sins he commits in his flesh in order to fully repent –
  • You cannot leave any part of the examination of your life undone when it comes to repentance –
  • You must be as thorough as an IRS agent looking for a dime.
• Second, there must be an honest recognition that what you are doing wrong is sin – Lk 5:32 –
  • The thing you are doing wrong is not just a bad habit or a problem or a flaw in your character –
  • It is sin –
  • And the sins you are committing are the direct result of what you are –
  • You are a sinner –
  • Few preachers are willing to deal with the subject of sin and sinners anymore 
  • They want to take people who are sin sick, fluff them up with some “feel-good” preaching, accept them just the way they are by telling them that God loves them just the way they are and then bring them in and make them part of the family of God with the leprosy of sin all over them –
  • You kill the rest of the flock doing that –
  • A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump –
  • You will see what that means in time –
  • Listen, you must deal with SIN –
  • Call it what it is, just the way the Bible does, and deal with it.
• Third, you must confess to God the sin that you are committing – 1 Jn 1:9 –
  • Confessing your sins to the Lord is simply a matter of acknowledging before God that you agree with Him and his judgment against you –
  • It is an admission of your guilt –
  • It is a confession that you have a particular sin in your life that you are going to get out of your life –
  • It is not part of the prayer you pray before a meal like “and, Lord, forgive us of our sins.”
• Fourth, there must be a sincere desire to get this sin or these sins out of your life – 2 Cor 7:9-10 –
  • This desire to get rid of the sin is often accompanied by sorrow –
  • But don’t think that sorrow alone is repentance –
  • Many a sinner has cried in remorse over something stupid only to go right back to it another day –
  • The godly sorrow accompanying repentance is a sorrow that yields a resolve to do whatever is necessary by the grace of God and by the presence of Jesus in you to rid your life of that sin.
• Fifth, there must be a willful turning away from the sin – 1 Thess 1:9 –
  • Too many people confess to God that what they are doing is sin and they even struggle with trying to quit it to a certain degree –
  • But in reality they sit around waiting for God to deliver them from their sin while they continue to do it day in and day out –
  • Smokers are some of the worst about this that I have seen –
  • They keep on smoking while they wait for the Lord to deliver them –
  • Put the stupid cigarettes down, fool –
  • You are not going to get deliverance if you haven’t already gotten deliverance –
  • You need to take everything out of your life that contributes to this sin – Acts 19:18-20.
• Sixth, there must be reliance upon the Lord to help you stop this sin – 1 Thess 1:9 –
  • See how the Thessalonians did it –
  • They turned to God when they turned from their idolatry –
  • You cannot do this on your own –
  • You must yield to the righteousness of Jesus in you so that he can strengthen you against this sin –
  • Rom 6:12-13 –
  • He was tempted in all points like as we are yet without sin –
  • Since he didn’t commit them when he was here, he can help you keep from committing them now that he is living his life in you.
• Conclusion:
  • Now this is how to repent –
  • And we might add that it helps immensely to become content with such things as ye have –
  • That is you want to get to the place where you are content without the sin in your life –
  • Paul said he learned how to be content.

“Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me” (Ezekiel 3: 17).

“If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou has attained.” (1 Timothy 4:6).

We are living in days in which the faith is being assaulted and the attacks against it are much more subtle than in any other period of time in history.

The agnostic thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not pretend to defend “the faith of their fathers,” they openly opposed the Christian faith.

The agnostics, Descartes and Kant, presented themselves as they were. The pantheistic Spinoza never claimed that Christianity was his faith.

But today the scene is completely changed. Inside the churches, the so-called theologians, as their great leaders, are manipulating ecclesiastical politics and are imposing their ideas on them, making this twentieth century Protestantism a scandalous ecclesiasticism, a cover made of pieces of different philosophies and religions of the world, a thing that made an atheistic Swedish professor of philosophy to ask with rudeness, “Are these theologians atheists disguised as bishops and clergymen?”

It is a real scandal for the so-called Christian theologians to speak in such a way that an atheist could ask, “Excuse me, are you really atheistic?”

That is the picture of the church over all the world.

Today atheistic and agnostic theologians, by using the Christian tradition of the church, are able to present themselves around the world as great Christians.

By the grace of God, He placed all over the world little groups of watchmen who are giving warnings from God, and who are exposing themselves to the devilish hate and to the fiery darts of the wicked.

The old devil is using all his means to intercept their action. As it always happens, the fight starts with persecution, with threats, growing into excommunications of all those who take a clear stand and warn the people about the perils to which they are exposed. Actually, these methods work for good by helping to establish with more firmness the watchmen of God in more towers than were in existence before. So the devil changes his aspect into the shape of an angel of light, and he presents saintly Christian doctrines, such as prayer and sanctification, trying to enslave distracted Christians in order to reach his goal of overcoming the Christian testimony.

As Sanballat, he uses the dangerous weapon of ridicule by calling attention to the fact that we are a little group, and that we are building on sand our wall of defense of the faith, and that our wall will fall down under the first impact of a fox. Unnumbered foxes have precipitated themselves over our fortress only to discover that our wall is built upon a Rock.

Some evangelistic campaigns are used as a means of hostility to those who preach ” … the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3). Many revivals are used to try to mix our people with the enemy, intending to deceive the simple members of our churches who love the lost and pray for them.

However, the mass evangelism of our day gathers together Christians with idolatrous Mary worshippers and rationalists who deny the divinity of the Lord. Then when someone makes a decision, they want us to send the decision card of this newly converted one to churches that deny the faith we preach.

See – 2 Corinthians 6:14-17

The Apostle Paul wrote the church Corinth, “Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.” (2 Corinthians 3:2-3)

The lives of Christians are about the only Bible which the world will read today, when what we has more weight than what we say and when deeds speak more loudly than words.

Dr. S. D. Gordon speaks of four great tests Character.

First, the home test: how a man treats those with whom he lives.

Second, the business test: how a man conducts himself towards his customers and employees.

Third, the social test: how a man acts towards those who do not enjoy the same social advantages as himself.

Fourth, the success test: how a man behaves himself when favoring circumstances bring him wealth, power, position, and honor.

It is told of a great artist that he was wandering in the mountains of Switzerland, when some officials met him and demanded his passport. “I do not have it with me,” he replied, “but my name is Dore.”

“Prove it, if you are,” said the officers, knowing who Dore was, but not believing that this was he. Taking a piece of paper, the artist hastily sketched a group of peasants who were standing near and did it with such grace and skill that the officers exclaimed: “Enough, you are Dore.”

The world cares little for mere profession. But the man who successfully passes the four-fold test laid down by Dr. Gordon, shows without a doubt that he is genuine.

• Intro:
  • If we can disclose your typical responses to sin, we may be able to shed enough light on it to help us break some of the bad habits weu have.  We’re going to look at what you do when you sin:
• You Hide Yourself – Gen 3:6-10 –
  •  “he that covereth his sins shall not prosper,” [Prov 28:13] –
  • you’ll hide when you first commit certain sins and then you’ll hide and pretend that you didn’t.
• You Excuse Yourself – Gen 3:11-13 –
  • you’ll admit that you did something but you will blame someone else or something else for it –
  • people commonly excuse their sins by saying things like:
    • I didn’t know [God’s ready for that one Rom 1:18-21]
    • I can’t help it
    • Everyone else is doing it
    • God won’t deliver me from it [so it’s his fault]
    • I didn’t mean to
• You Justify Yourself – Job 32:1-2; 35:2 –
  • you reason that you are justified in doing what you’ve done –
  • you’ll say things like:
    • There’s nothing wrong with me or with what I’m doing
    • Who are you to tell me that what I’m doing is wrong
    • You think I’m bad; you ought to see what he’s doing
• You Deceive Yourself – 1 Jn 1:8 –
  • you’ll admit to yourself that there’s no use fighting this sin; you’re just going to have to live with it –
  • or you’ll go like the rest of modern Christianity and think, “God loves me and doesn’t mind what I’m doing –
  • some will even go totally doctrinal and think, “I’m already righteous and I’m already forgiven so there’s no need to do anything about this sin because it is already done at Calvary.”
• You Sacrifice for Yourself – Ps 4:4-5 –
  • it’s kind of like penance, the habit we got into in Catholicism, confession on Saturday, Eucharist on Sunday, and business as usual on Monday –
  • sacrifices don’t make you righteous –
  • you are righteous and then you offer sacrifices –
  • look at Jesus; compare Abel and Cain [Heb 11:4; 1 Jn 3:12] –
  • compare Saul [1 Sam 15:22-23] and David [Ps 51:17-19] –
  • look at Christians [Heb 13:15-16; 1 Pet 2:5] –
  • so for you to do some sort of “make-up” deed for Christ to relieve your conscience until you commit that sin again is not working –
  • Heb 10:10-14 is all that God will accept –
  • he doesn’t want your sacrifice so that you can feel righteous; he wants your obedience.
• Conclusion:
  • You Need to Confess and Forsake Them – Prov 28:13 –
    • to confess your sins is to admit HONESTLY before the Lord that you sinned and then you are, by God’s blood, grace, fear and love, to forsake your sin. 

Quit those merry-go-round habits you do and respond God’s way!

Text: Heb 12:1-3

• Intro:
  • Paul told us to rejoice evermore [1 Thes 5:16].
  • We have some reasons to rejoice. We should rejoice in the cross. 
  • When Jesus went to the cross there was joy set before him. 
  • There is a great cloud of witnesses from Heb 11 who are there to encourage us. 
  • They suffered for what they believed.  
  • Jesus suffered and so shall we. 
  • We must endure suffering in our race.  
  • Because of the cross:
• Jesus now rejoices – Heb 12:2 – “the joy that was set before him.” 
  • The cross represents the depth of his suffering that is followed by the height of his glory [1 Pet 1:11]. 
  • In Phil 2:8 he humbled himself to the death of the cross and now enjoys a name that is above every name [Phil 2:9-10]. 
  • He’s sitting at the right hand of God; his work is done. 
  • Through his death, burial and resurrection he led captivity captive [Eph 4:8-10]. 
  • Through the same, he’ll destroy the devil [Heb 2:14; Col 2:14-15]. 
  • Through the same, he’ll restore Israel [Acts 1:6]. 
  • Through the same, nature will be restored [Rom 8:19-23]. 
  • Through the same, he will deliver up the kingdom to God [1 Cor 15:24-28]. 
  • You talk about joy.  We should rejoice in all that God has done through Jesus and will do through him because of the cross. 
  • If it weren’t for the cross none of this would be possible.
• Heaven can rejoice – Lk 15:7, 10 –
  • There wasn’t much rejoicing going on the day that Jesus died. 
  • You must know that the angels were ready at any moment to intervene [Matt 26:53]. 
  • As soon as the devil left Jesus alone in the wilderness after his temptation, the angels came and ministered unto him [Matt 4:11]. 
  • When the devil and his angels fight in the Tribulation, Michael and his angels will fight and prevail against them [Rev 12:7-9]. 
  • But all they could do at the crucifixion is watch. 
  • There was a reason.  Jesus had to finish his work [Jn 19:30]. 
  • And once he rose, the rejoicing began. 
  • Now every time a sinner gets saved, there is rejoicing in heaven in the presence of the angels [Lk 15:7, 10]. 
  • That’s why the soul winners crown [1 Thess 2:19] is called the crown of rejoicing. 
  • If it weren’t for the cross there would be none of this joy.
• We can finish with joy – Heb 12:1-3 –
  • The Lord set the example for us. 
  • We are encouraged by the cross to lay aside every weight and the sin that besets us and run with patience. 
  • When we finish, we are promised that we can enter the joy of the Lord [Matt 25:21, 23] if we suffer with him now [Rom 8:17].  
  • And the depths of our suffering are not comparable to the glory that follows [Rom 8:18]. 
  • Paul endured much suffering but never grew weary or fainted [Heb 12:3] because he knew he could finish his course with joy [Acts 20:24]. 
  • And finish he did [2 Tim 4:7]. 
  • Likewise, we are encouraged to finish our course with joy. 
  • If it weren’t for the cross we wouldn’t have this example and this assurance.
• Conclusion:
  • The cross was a gruesome way for Jesus to die. 
  • But in that cross, there is rejoicing because of the subsequent exaltation of Jesus Christ, the reconciliation of man to God, and the endurance of suffering that is followed by glory. 
  • The cross is an encouragement to us to tell others about Jesus and to endure our race without fainting till we finish.