We are in our series of the Four
R's of the Gospel, Rune, Redemption, Repentance, and
Regeneration.
We're preaching that the Gospel must be preached
in its purity and proper order, and that
the law must be preached before grace.
Well, Sam Jones, the great evangelist, used to
say that repentance was quitting your meanness.
We should take his advice.
You see, friends, somewhere along the way in
America, some big preachers held a committee meeting,
and they decided to omit repentance from the
Gospel.
This caught on like wildfire, and soon few
in the pulpits of our land preached the
need for repentance in relation to salvation.
They just got out the razor and cut
the words of Christ out, which clearly state,
Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
And that statement became prophecy in modern day
America, as hell has been filled with millions
of church members who saw no need of
repenting of their sins.
They just swallowed the modern Gospel and accepted
Jesus as their personal Savior, and then they
died and fell into hell and fulfilled that
statement of our Lord.
Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
And perish they did.
What we've done today in your day and
mine is gotten out our pocket knives and
have both carved out of our Bible the
word repentance and thrown it away in the
trash bin, and then we took that same
pocket knife and whittled out for ourselves a
little bitty God that's our size or smaller,
one we can live with, one we can
be comfortable with, one that won't have any
demands on us, one we can take for
salvation and be left alone for living right.
For we want to go to heaven, but
we still want to hug our sins, so
we murdered the doctrine of repentance and buried
it, and we've looked the other way, hoping
no one has seen us commit this high
crime against our Bibles and the God of
our Bibles.
Listen, friends, when it became popular to omit
repentance from our vocabulary, it gave us a
popular Gospel which has been swallowed hook, line,
and sinker, and we're sunk.
Jesus is a risen Lord who sits on
a heavenly throne.
Jesus Christ is not in the grave, friends.
He is risen, and He sits at the
right hand of the Father, and He earned
that right by way of a bloody cross.
And if we want Him, we will have
to take Him there on that throne and
bow to His throne rights.
He is a risen Lord.
God made Him Lord.
You don't make Him Lord, friends.
He's already Lord.
Your job is to bow to Him, to
throw down your shotgun of rebellion, and submit
to the claims of Christ as found in
the Gospels.
But we don't like that kind of preaching
today because it offends people.
We don't want to give up our filthy
sins because we love them, but we don't
want to go to hell, so we just
change the message of the cross a little
bit to suit us a little better so
we can say with the Jews, we will
not have this man rule over us.
When we preach a watered-down Gospel, it
may be easier to swallow, but the day
that the American church said goodbye to the
doctrine of repentance has become one of our
darkest days in the history of our land.
For not one to offend man, we have
offended a holy God who hates sin, who
must punish sin, and who demands all who
come to Him bow to Him and submit
to His rule.
Listen, friends.
The undiluted Gospel is a stumbling block to
the natural man and an offense to the
Jew and the Greek.
It's high time in this country of America
we get back to preaching the true Gospel,
and that includes a demand for repentance, not
a diluted one.
We don't see many getting saved today because
the bleating of the goats in our assemblies
drowns out the shuffling of the sheep.
The modern Gospel has damned its millions, and
it's high time to get back to the
original before it's too late.
The modern Gospel kept me a lost church
member for decades, and I fear it's done
the same for many of our church members
today.
You can't have Christ and hub your sins.
You must repent of your sins.
Repentance is a fact of the Gospel.
The demand for repentance is clearly stated by
John the Baptist, our Lord Jesus Christ, and
the Apostle Paul.
If you want to take out your knife
and cut all three of them out of
your Bible, then go ahead, but you won't
have much of a New Testament left.
But for many, the fragments of any Gospel
is easier to live with than the entire
Gospel of our Bibles, because there are many
today in our churches who just won't let
their profession interfere with their daily living.
John the Baptist said to bring forth fruits
worthy of repentance.
If you have truly repented, it will reflect
itself in your conduct.
We don't see many poor repentance sinners today
begging for mercy, wondering if God would save
a wretch like them.
No, sir.
But we do have many smiling individuals walk
the aisles of our churches during invitation time,
and they are happy to join the church,
happy to accept Jesus.
But they get very unhappy if you bring
up the fact that God demands repentance from
a sinner if that person is to be
saved.
There is no Lamb of God, no sacrifice
of sin, no Calvary for the man who
will stay in his sins.
The axe must be laid to the root
of the tree, and every tree that bringeth
not forth good fruit is cut down and
cast into the fire.
You may say now, preacher, that's the way
John the Baptist preached, but it's not the
Gospel for our day.
You need to give the people a touchy
-feely Gospel today, one they can live with.
Do you mean that my Lord would shut
out the rich young ruler for one defect
and let him go to hell?
And in our day, Jesus would lower his
terms so you can get in without turning
from anything that stands between you and a
holy God?
Someone else has lowered the terms of the
Gospel in our day, and it wasn't Jesus
Christ, friends.
Somewhere back yonder, some Bible scholars put a
moratorium on the need to preach repentance in
the Gospel offer, but we need to dust
off the doctrine of repentance and bring it
back right now.
The Gospel is a call for wicked men
to throw down their arms and cease their
willful violation of God's holy law and submit
their lives to the rule and reign of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Yes, I said, Lord, Jesus is Lord.
If He's not your Lord, then He's not
your Savior, friend.
You can fight that, buck that, and reject
that, but God Almighty will not accept any
rebel into heaven.
He commands all men everywhere to repent.
Your ignorance will not excuse you.
And in the times of this ignorance, God
winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere
to repent.
The Scriptures nowhere separate repentance and faith.
Just because some Bible teachers have adopted a
philosophy that puts repentance in another dispensation just
for the Jews, and today the Gentiles need
only to receive Jesus as their Savior, repentance
is not necessary today to be saved.
They tell us, well, I believed that for
years, and for years I remained a lost
church member until I repented of my sins
and was converted.
Jesus came to save His people from their
sins.
I think the famous Bible expositor, Dr. Harry
Ironside, was right when he said the following
words.
Shallow preaching that does not grapple with the
terrible fact of man's sinfulness and guilt.
Preaching that does not call on men everywhere
to repent.
That kind of preaching results in shallow conversions.
And so, we have myriads of glib-tongued
professors today who give no evidence of regeneration
whatsoever.
They go about praying about being saved by
grace, but they manifest no grace in their
lives.
Well, old Harry Ironside knew better, and he
knew the gospel was a command to repent.
But there are those in our churches today
who want to be saved from the consequence
of their sin, but not from the love
of it.
The gospel does not make light of sin.
Rather, it reveals to us the terrible sword
of God's justice when He smote His beloved
Son in order to deliver us both from
the penalty and slavery of sin.
Calvary stands as a spectacle to all ages
of God's hatred of sin.
The great British preacher, Charles Spurgeon.
Spurgeon had a training college for preachers and
this was his instruction to them in regard
to the need for repentance.
Listen to how he warned his students.
If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares
that he knows the Lord's will, but does
not mean to attend to it, you are
not to pamper his presumption, but it is
your duty to assure him that he is
not saved.
Do you imagine that the gospel is magnified
or God-glorified by going to the worldlings
and telling them that they may be saved
at this moment by simply accepting Christ as
their Savior while they are wedded to their
idols and their hearts are still in love
with sin?
If I do so, I tell them a
lie, pervert the gospel, insult Christ, and turn
the grace of God into lasciviousness.
Well, old Spurgeon was right, friends.
And that, friends, is what we've done from
our pulpits and seminary classrooms in your day
and mine.
We've lied to folks about what the gospel
is.
We have perverted the gospel, insulted Christ, and
many have turned the grace of God into
lasciviousness by their rebellion to the command to
repent.
It is safe to say that the gospel
is a proclamation of a full and free
salvation to every repentant sinner through the work
of the Son of God on the cross
of Calvary.
Notice I emphasized every repentant sinner.
No repentance, no salvation.
Listen to Luke chapter 15 and verse 7.
I say unto you that likewise joy shall
be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth
more than over ninety and nine just persons
which need no repentance.
Notice Jesus says they will be joy in
heaven when a sinner repents.
Jesus said, I came not to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance.
And we cannot offer peace, friends, and rest
to those rebels who are not ready to
meet the conditions laid down by the Prince
of Peace, the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is Lord.
But many today don't like that.
And they will follow Bible teachers who say,
well, that's not for us today.
Many ignore what God clearly says in His
Word on the doctrine of repentance in regard
to salvation.
We rather stick ourselves with a theological hypodermic
needle so we can go out and sin
some more and still be able to sleep
at night.
Yet the fact remains that the God of
the Bible still demands that men surrender to
the Lordship of Jesus Christ in every single
area of their lives.
We need men today to call other men
to repentance.
But today in our churches, we have the
most lawless bunch of church members who ignore
repentance and the need for holy living.
Even if the Bible does say without holiness,
no one will see the Lord.
People fight against that kind of preaching.
That kind of preaching upsets too many people.
And you mustn't upset people, they say.
But the need of our friends in this
sad chapter in the history of America is
a desperate cry and need for a John
the Baptist to come along and cry out
about this God-dishonoring, Christ-rejection, law-breaking
generation of men and women who are falling
into hell, still kicking up their heels against
the law of God and the claims of
Christ.
To be saved means to be converted to
the rule of God and Jesus Christ where
one's heart is freely given to God, sitting
on the throne.
You can't sit on the throne of your
life and rule there and still claim to
be a follower of Jesus Christ.
No, sir.
You'd better bend the knee, friend, to the
Lordship of Jesus Christ in your life.
Men must be made captives of Christ to
be made free.
Man is made to be governed.
And any salvation that doesn't submit to the
claims of Christ as Lord is not the
salvation of the cross.
The claims of Christ's Lordship will slay you
and self will be dethroned and another will
be enthroned, the Lord Jesus Christ.
God will not share His kingdom with another.
God will have no rebels in His kingdom.
There will be none there who live by
self-rule, who live in rebellion against the
will and authority of God.
Few today want to be under any authority
other than their own.
The big issue of the hour of your
day and mine is who is boss, God
or me?
Lawless church members drag the gospel beneath their
feet and say with their lips they want
Christ as Savior, but with their daily living
they refuse to be subject to Him as
Lord.
Many in our churches today have a profession
that has not interfered with their daily living
and it's a sham because they have refused
to repent of their sins and pursue a
life of holiness unto God.
They live for self.
Self is on the throne of their lives,
but two cannot walk together unless they be
agreed.
Listen friends, hear me loud and clear that
God's term of salvation for man is this,
repentance towards God and faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Acts 20, 21 clearly states, testifying both to
the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance
towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Nobody is ever saved apart from that.
Christ is Lord and Savior, plain and simple.
God made Him Lord.
Your duty is to bow to Him, sinner,
submit to Him, throw down your shotgun of
rebellion and come under His rule.
He is the Lord of all mankind.
He dictates the terms of salvation and that
is repentance and faith.
Christ is sitting on a throne and He
sits there in virtue of His shed blood
and if you want a vital union with
the Lord Jesus Christ, you cannot, you must
not ignore the Lordship of Christ for He
is sitting on a throne and He must
have the throne rights to your life.
We've cheapened the gospel in your day and
mine and have cheated many out of real
salvation by feeding them a partial substitute for
the only substitute for sin, the Lord Jesus
Christ.
I repeat, a man cannot be saved unless
he surrenders to Jesus Christ as its Lord
and Savior.
Until we start preaching the truth about Jesus
Christ and His claims on His followers, we
deceive many and do injustice to the gospel
of the Son of God.
There is a cross in the life of
a follower of a crucified Savior.
We've got to get back, friends, to preaching
the gospel in its purity and proper order.
Why don't we see many people crying out
for mercy today?
Why don't we see many saying, Oh God,
is there mercy for such a wicked sinner
as me?
No, sir.
You see themselves as sinners because we preachers
have told them that there was no need
for repentance to come to Christ.
So they walk a church aisle with a
smile on their face and chew their gum
and make a mental assent to some facts
about the death of Christ.
And we pat them on the backs and
we call them Christians and we welcome them
into our assemblies.
Heaven help us.
And there is no change within them.
They hang on to their sins and hang
on to a hope of seven, help of
heaven, which is nothing more than a hole
in the wall.
You see, friends, a real Christian hates sin
and loves righteousness.
He loves the Lord and wants to obey
him.
He has a new nature implanted within.
Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he
is a new creature.
Old things are passed away.
Behold, all things are become new.
Listen, friends, if you don't remember anything else
I said today, remember this.
You cannot get saved by accepting Jesus as
your Savior.
Unless you surrender him as your absolute Lord
and ruler in your life.
And if he doesn't rule you completely, it
is because you have never, ever surrendered to
his Lordship through repentance and faith.
This is the dividing line between the new
gospel, which omits repentance, and the old gospel,
which falls from the lips of Christ himself.
Unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
The saddest thing I see in our churches
today is multitudes who have a confession.
They've made a profession, but they do not
possess Christ.
Christ does not possess them.
They are not in a living union with
the risen Lord.
They are not living holy lives unto God,
but they live unto themselves where they still
sit on the throne of their lives.
And that, friends, is not salvation.
You can claim Jesus all day long as
Savior, but unless others can see a mark
of his rule in your life, you are
sitting upon a false foundation.
But if you are a subject of grace,
you have allowed the Holy Ghost to break
your wicked heart to make you bow to
the King, to make you bow to King
Jesus, and you delight to do the will
of the Father.
Jesus says, if you love me, you will
keep my commands.
We must preach the gospel in its purity
and in its proper order.
Sinners must be brought to Mount Sinai before
they are led to Mount Zion.
We must preach the four R's of the
gospel, which are rune, redemption, repentance, and regeneration.
And that is where we will pick up
next time with the doctrine of regeneration.
Until then.