Today I am going to address the subject of repentance. I am going to start by reading from Acts Chapter 2.

Acts Chapter two recounts the Apostle Peters Pentecost sermon to the crowds who crucified Jesus. Peter said to the crowds: Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? Peter replied, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far offfor all whom the Lord our God will call. Now, Peter calls the crowds to repent. So, what is repentance? Many people in our day and age have an inaccurate idea of the nature of repentance. They see it as, simply, a feeling of remorse for the sins that we have committed. This is an inaccurate perception of true repentance. The Greek word for repentance in Acts was Matanoeo. This word indicates turning around or changing direction. This picture language was common in the Greek. For instance, when Paul writes that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, he uses the word hamartalaus, an archery term which means to miss the target. In the same way, the Greek word Matanoeo uses a turning around image to call us to obedience. From this we can infer that true repentance may start with remorse, but most go further than that. We have to turn away from sin, or we will have achieved nothing. Ill try and use an example to illustrate this point. Imagine, if you will, that you are driving a car down a road, and you come to a one-way street. The sign indicates that you ought to turn right. You turn left. That was a wrong decision. Now you are driving straight into oncoming traffic. Thats a problem. You need a solution. The solution is clearly not simple remorse. It does you no good to say to yourself, I am very sorry that Im about to crash head on into that car. The solution is to turn your car around and travel on the path that is laid out before you! Ephesians 2:10 teaches us that We are Gods workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance that we might walk in them. As we travel through life, we will reach many metaphorical one-way streets. We will have an option to turn left, and we will have an option to turn right. If we follow the signs that God has given us in his word, we will be saved from disaster. But if we go directly against the will of God, if we make the wrong turn, then we are faced with impending ruin unless we truly repent; unless we turn away from our sins and travel down the path that God has, as Ephesians tells us, prepared beforehand that we might walk in it. So, now we have established what true repentance is. In order to solidify the nature of true repentance in our minds, we will look at an example of true repentance from Scripture. After that, we will look at an example of false repentance. The example of true repentance that we are going to examine today is King David. David was the Biblical recipient of the Davidic Covenant. His descendants would reign forever. He, to use the modern term, had it all. But David was a sinner, just like you or I. He committed adultery with another mans wife. Then, in order to cover his crimes, he arranged to have her husband killed in a battle. Then the LORD sent the prophet Nathan to David. This encounter is documented in 2 Samuel Chapter 12. It reads:
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The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him. David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this must die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity. Then Nathan said to David, You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your masters house to you, and your masters wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. 9 Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own. This is what the LORD says: Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. 12 You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.
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Then David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD.

After this encounter David truly repented. He wrote Psalm 51. Psalm 51 definitely communicates remorse. But it goes further than that. David does not just feel sorry about sin. He yearns to turn around, to change direction. He realizes that he made the wrong turn and that disaster is at hand. Psalm 51: 10-17 reads: Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you. 14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. 15 Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise.
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You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 My sacrifice, O God, is[b] a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. He humbled himself before the LORD and turned away from his sins. Psalm 51 shows us that his joy in serving God was renewed. He yearned to teach others righteousness! We can all benefit from his example. Now we will examine an example of false repentance. The example of false repentance that we will examine is that of Judas Iscariot. Judas betrayed Christ himself into the hands of the Romans. Even today, we refer to a treacherous person as a regular Judas. Judas sinned. He took the wrong turn. However, Judas repentance never went past remorse. He was definitely aware of his sin; and he felt remorse concerning it. Matthew 27:1-5 reads:
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Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people made their plans how to have Jesus executed. 2 So they bound him, led him away and handed him over to Pilate the governor. When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. 4 I have sinned, he said, for I have betrayed innocent blood. What is that to us? they replied. Thats your responsibility.
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So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

So did Judas truly repent? Certainly not! He simply allowed himself to be overcome with grief, and eventually killed himself. He ended his life in sin. He never turned away from his sins; instead he tried to blot them out by ending his own life. What ought Judas to have done? The same thing that David did. He ought to have turned around. He ought to have shunned sin and lived a life of righteousness. But he didnt. He came to the turn. He read the sign. He ignored it. He realized that he had made the wrong decision. But he missed the next step. He never slammed on his brakes and turned back onto the path that God laid out before him in his Holy Word. Rather, he kept right on going until it was too late to turn back. Today, chances are, we will come to a lot of one way streets. And, count upon it, we will make one or two wrongs turns. And when we do, lets remember that the true repentance that God calls for does not simply involve regret. It involves turning around. It involves a full 180 degree reversal of direction. Lets remember that. And if we do, count on it that God will bless us. As David says A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Lets pray.

[PRAYER] step down and Stephen will do the rest of the hymns.