Repentance Is Necessary

"Repentance Is Necessary" - Matthew 4:17 From that time Jesus took up the message that John had preached: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." It was an additional call for moral renewal in preparation for His kingdom. The kingdom was close in the sense that the King was present. The kingdom demanded repentance in order to begin to be a new creature; behold, they are made new (all) (2 Corinthians 5:17). John carried it as a human chosen to announce the Christ, but the Redeemer arrived, with a love unknown on earth. Immanuel arrived, God with us.

I. John speaks of repentance preparing the way for the Lord.

A. Like repentance (regret, remorse).

1. The one who repents changes his mind.

2. Repentance is a spontaneous act (natural, simply), which must arise from the legitimate understanding of one's own mistakes.

3. When you fall again, you must repent and confess your sins (James 5:16) "and pray for one another."

4. (Luke 5:32) The Pharisees considered themselves righteous.

5. They had no deep sense of sin or need.

6. Therefore, they could not benefit from the ministry of the Great Physician.

7. These tax collectors and sinners realized that they were sinners and that they needed to be saved from their sins.

8. People like them had come to Christ.

9. But they were not willing to confess their sin or acknowledge their guilt and thus come to repentance; The point is to recognize (it is the action and effect of acknowledging) that one must repent to start over in one's life for one's good.

10. Sinners to repentance (32).

11. (Acts 2:38) "They were pricked (sorrowed, grieved) in their hearts: what shall we do?"

12. Peter's answer was that they should repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for forgiveness of sin.

13. One repents so that they forgive everything that would lead us to hell.

14. First, they were to repent, acknowledging their guilt and siding with God against themselves.

15. Then they were to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

16. (Acts 17:30-31) Having exposed the folly of idolatry, Paul goes on to declare that, for many centuries, "God has passed over the times of the ignorance of the Gentiles."

17. But now that the revelation of the gospel has come, He commands all men everywhere to repent, that is, to "turn around."

18. This message is urgent and because God has established a day in which He will judge the world justly (to give to each one what belongs to him, the consequences of actions), by the Lord Jesus, that man whom He appointed.

19. When Christ returns to earth to strike down His enemies and inaugurate His Millennial Reign.

20. (2 Corinthians 7:9-10) Paul rejoiced not because the Corinthians had been grieved, but because their temporal sorrow had led them to repentance.

21. In other words, their grief led them to a different way of looking at things, resulting in a change of life.

22. Repentance, Hodge says, "is not merely a change of purpose, but includes a change of heart that leads to turning from sin with sorrow and hatred against this sin, to draw near to God."

23. The pain of the Corinthians was according to God's will; it was the kind of pain God likes to see.

24. Because their pain and repentance were of a rebuking nature that had been administered to them by the Apostle Paul.

25. (10) This verse contrasts godly sorrow with the sorrow of the world.

26. Sadness according to God denotes (expresses, means) that sorrow that enters someone's life after having committed a sin and that leads him to repentance.

27. He realizes that God is speaking to him and sides with God against himself and his sin.

28. When Paul says that godly sorrow produces repentance to salvation, he describes deliverance from every kind of sin, bondage, or affliction in someone's life.

29. (Luke 12:2-3) The day would come when his true reality would be revealed.

30. All that they had concealed was to be discovered, and all that they had done in darkness (how hidden you make it!) will be brought to light.

31. Just as inevitable as the unfacing of hypocrisy is the time of truth.

32. (1 John 1:9) We are to confess the sins that we do not come out of them.

33. God is faithful to forgive. Amen