CHAPTER 10 REPENTANCE

The Real Worship of God
Personal Instruction
The Pure and the Impure
The Inner Conflict
Returning to God – Repentance

The Real Worship of God
(Repentance is to stop thinking, speaking and acting against the Laws of God and to obey them instead.)
(Barnabas and Paul)
ACTS 14:15-17
“We have come to bring you the Good News that you are invited to turn from the worship of these foolish things (the crowds wanted to offer sacrifices to the apostles) and to pray instead to the living God who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. In bygone days he permitted the nations to go their own ways, but he never left himself without a witness; there were always his reminders – the kind things he did such as sending you rain and good crops and giving you food and gladness.”

Personal Instruction
ACTS 2:38-39
And Peter replied, “Each one of you must turn from sin, return to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; then you also shall receive this gift, the Holy Spirit. For Christ promised him to each one of you who has been called by the Lord our God, and to your children and even to those in distant lands!”

The Pure and the Impure
(Paul)
TITUS 1:15-16
A person who is pure of heart sees goodness and purity in everything; but a person whose own heart is evil and untrusting finds evil in everything, for his dirty mind and rebellious heart color all he sees and hears. Such persons claim they know God, but from seeing the way they act, one knows they don’t. They are rotten and disobedient, worthless so far as doing anything good is concerned.

The Inner Conflict
(Paul)
ROMANS 7: 15-25
I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can’t. I do what I don’t want to – what I hate. I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience proves that I agree with these laws I am breaking. But I can’t help myself, because I’m no longer doing it. It is sin inside me that is stronger than I am that makes me do these evil things.
I know I am rotten (corrupt) through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn I can’t make myself do right. I want to but I can’t. When I want to do good, I don’t; and when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. Now if I am doing what I don’t want to, it is plain where the trouble is: sin still has me in its evil grasp.
It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love to do God’s will so far as my new nature is concerned; but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind I want to be God’s willing servant but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin.
So you see how it is: my new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I’m in! Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature? Thank God! It has been done by Jesus Christ our Lord. He has set me free.

Returning to God – Repentance
JAMES 4:1-10
What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Isn’t it because there is a whole army of evil desires within you? You want what you don’t have so you kill to get it. You long for what others have, and can’t afford it, so you start a fight to take it away from them. And yet the reason you don’t have what you want is that you don’t ask God for it. And even when you do ask you don’t get it because your whole aim is wrong – you want only what will give you pleasure.
You are like an unfaithful wife who loves her husband’s enemies. Don’t you realize that making friends with God’s enemies – the evil pleasures of this world – makes you an enemy of God? I say it again, that if your aim is to enjoy the evil pleasure of the godless world, you cannot also be a friend of God. Or what do you think the Scripture means when it says that the Holy Spirit, whom God has placed within us, watches over us with tender jealousy (protection)? But he gives us more and more strength to stand against all such evil longings. As the Scripture says, God gives strength to the humble, but sets himself against the proud and haughty, (the arrogant and overbearing).
So give yourselves humbly (with deep respect) to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. And when you draw close to God, God will draw close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and let your hearts be filled with God alone to make them pure and true to him. Let there be tears for the wrong things you have done. Let there be sorrow and sincere grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Then when you feel your worthlessness before the Lord, he will lift you up, encourage and help you.