PREACHING
By
Shelby G. Floyd
Some
preacher has said, “If I should die while in the pulpit, may I die preaching
repentance and if I should die outside of the pulpit, may I die practicing
repentance.” What do we need in our world today any more than the preaching and
the practicing of repentance? Sin makes the preaching of repentance necessary
and since sin is universal in its nature, the preaching and practice of
repentance must likewise be universal. Scripture says, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans
THE IMPORTANCE OF PREACHING REPENTANCE
I
want to emphasize in the first place the importance of preaching repentance. In
what we style “preaching,” there must be one all-engrossing topic in every
address, and if you will observe the preaching of John the Baptist, Jesus
Christ, the twelve apostles and the seventy that were sent out, on almost every
occasion and in almost every instance the burden of their proclamations were
that men ought to repent. Noah was a preacher of righteousness. It seems likely
that he may have preached for about 120 years before the flood, but he was not
very successful in bringing that antediluvian world to repentance, because it
seems that the only people that listened to him were his family. Eight souls
were saved by water (1 Peter
Repentance is the most difficult thing to
get people to do, because it involves man’s stubborn pride and man’s stubborn will. I believe it’s, relatively easy, to get
people to believe. You present the adequate evidence that upholds the testimony
of Jesus and the inspired apostles, you present that fairly and most people who
are honest and sensible will believe the facts. Also, it is not too difficult
to get people to be baptized, if you can get them to believe and repent. If a
person will genuinely believe and then genuinely repent, it’s not hard to get
people to be baptized. The difficulty is in getting people to repent. John the
Baptist preached repentance to Herod, but did Herod repent? No, he did not. He
continued in his evil ways. Jesus failed to bring people to repentance and He
was the Son of God, the greatest preacher that ever lived. He went up and spent
a lot of time around the
Matthew 11:20-24
Then he began to denounce the cities where
most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. "Woe
to you, Chorazin! Woe to you,
Jesus
couldn’t get these people who lived around the Galilean Lake to repent and He
pronounced His woe upon them. So we shouldn’t be discouraged, we shouldn’t give
up all hope when we do our very best and we preach, urge, and proclaim that men
ought to repent. To bring men to repentance is difficult, but it is necessary and
the great preachers in times past and the ones today that are worth their salt
will go right on preaching repentance even when men do not repent.
I will point out to you how they did
that. How did John the Baptist preach
repentance? “In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of
When Jesus started His earthly ministry,
the first thing he said was, “Repent: for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew
WHAT
REPENTANCE IS NOT!
What does it mean to repent? I feel we use that term and often we don’t even know what is meant by the term “repent.” First, I shall point out to you in a negative sense what repentance is not. I believe that you will be able to get a better grasp of what it is if you can see what it is not.
Not Sorrow
Is repentance sorrow? Repentance involves sorrow, but there can be sorrow without repentance. All genuine repentance involves sorrow, but not all sorrow involves genuine repentance. We’ve all seen people respond to the gospel message, shedding tears, confessing sin and then never see them again for several months. I question the genuineness, the sincerity of any repentance although it involves sorrow, regret, remorse, and tears, when there is not a change in a person’s life. All genuine repentance involves sorrow, but not all sorrow involves repentance. So I am pointing out to you what repentance is not. It’s not just sorrow. If that’s all it is, it doesn’t amount to anything, because there can be sorrow without genuine repentance.
Do you remember when Herod had a birthday party? You need to be careful when you have birthday parties. You might do something that you shouldn’t do. Herod had a birthday party and the daughter of Herodius came in and danced before him and he made a rash promise. He liked what he saw so much he said, “I’ll give you up to half the kingdom.” She went and did what is ordinarily a good thing for a daughter to do; she went and consulted with her mother. Daughters and mothers ought to be close, but when you’ve got as sorry an excuse for a mother as Salome had in Herodius, she would have been better off if she had confided in someone else. She went to her mother and her mother said, “I hate that preacher John the Baptist.” She was just like Ahab in the Old Testament in what he said, “I like to hear the false prophets; they tell me what I want to hear. I hate that Micaiah because he never prophesies any good for me. He only tells me things that I don’t want to hear. I hate him” (1 Kings 22:8). That’s basically the way Herodius was. She said, “Go tell him you want the head of John the Baptist on a plate.” She did so and the Bible says in Mark 6:20 that “Herod was exceedingly sorrowful.” Not just sorrowful, but the comparative adjective here shows how much he was sorry, “exceedingly sorrowful.” And even though he was exceedingly sorrowful, his exceeding sorrow did not move him to repent, because he went right ahead and beheaded John the Baptist and did what was wrong. So, a person can be exceedingly sorrowful, full of remorse and regret, and not repent. Every inmate down at the jail or in some of the prisons is usually a person that is very sorry. You talk to them and ask them if they are sorry and they’ll say they are very sorry, but how many times do we hear these people after they are released go right out and do the same thing that put them there in the first place. Yes, they’re very sorry, sorry they got caught, sorry they’re suffering for their crimes, sorry for a hundred million different things, but not sorry that they have offended God and the laws of man and the laws of morality, the laws of kindness and a hundred million other laws. Yes, you can be very sorry and yet not repent. And Herod Antipas is the finest example of a person who can be sorry and not repent.
Not
Sorrow and Confession
In the next place, a person can even have sorrow and make a confession and not repent. In every genuine case of repentance, there will be sorrow and a confession, but not every example of sorrow and confession involves repentance. Judas Iscariot was one of the twelve and we should not be alarmed and we should not be discouraged if in every congregation there are one or more people who act like Judas. After all, Jesus the Son of God selected these men and one of them was a Judas, so we shouldn’t be greatly surprised today if in every congregation there is a Judas. Judas had the same privileges, opportunities, and advantages that all the other apostles had. Jesus didn’t make any difference between them. He treated Judas the same way He treated all of them and that is honest, forthright, openly, and fair. But Judas had a devil inside of him and he sold the Lord out for some measly money:
Matthew 27:3-4
When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that
Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver
coins to the chief priests and the elders. "I have sinned," he said,
"for I have betrayed innocent blood." "What is that to us?"
they replied. "That's your responsibility."
NIV
I’ve
always had a little bit of trouble with that verse in the old translation. I
used to think that meant that when Judas saw that he himself was condemned he
repented, but now I take the position that when Judas saw that Christ was
condemned and that He was actually going to be put to death, he repented of
what he had done. And the Bible says that he brought his blood money and he
cast it down in the temple treasury and he said, “Take this money back, I don’t
want it. I have betrayed innocent blood.” You couldn’t find a better confession
than that anywhere. He was sorry. The Bible says he repented and he made a
confession, “I have betrayed innocent blood.” And they said they didn’t want
the money. They were sinners, too, those unscrupulous Pharisees and Sadducees.
They had bargained and given the money to betray Jesus and when he gives it
back they say they can’t put it in the treasury; its blood money, so they took
it out and bought a graveyard for the poor people and criminals. The Field of
Blood was called
Not
Godly Sorrow
In the next place, is repentance godly sorrow? In the strictest sense, even godly sorrow is not repentance. Paul said, “Godly sorrow works repentance not to be repented of” (2 Corinthians 7:8-11). So repentance is not godly sorrow. Godly sorrow produces repentance. It’s the difference between cause and affect. What is repentance? We haven’t identified it yet, but I can tell you that godly sorrow produces it. Therefore, in the two previous examples that I have given, sorrow is involved in repentance, but not all sorrow involves repentance. The sorrow of the world works death, but godly sorrow produces repentance, so even godly sorrow is not repentance. It is what produces repentance. It is the cause and repentance is the effect.
Not Reformation of Life
Is repentance reformation of life? In Matthew 3:7-8, John the Baptist said to those people that came out to him, “Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance.” Is that repentance? No. Just as godly sorrow is the cause of repentance, reformation of life is the result of repentance, the fruit of repentance is a change of life. So with genuine repentance there will be a change of life, a reformation of life. The fruit will bear out that a person has genuinely repented. But it is not repentance. It is the effect of repentance.
Not Restitution For Wrong
Is
repentance restitution? The Philippians’ jailer in Acts 16 beat Paul and Silas,
cast them into the inner prison and put their hands and feet fast in the
stocks. At
We’ve pointed out what repentance is not. You can have sorrow and not have repentance. You can have sorrow and confession and not have repentance. You can have Godly sorrow and that’s necessary, but that’s not repentance. You can have reformation of life and you should have if you repented, but that’s not repentance. That’s what follows it. You can have restitution in your life for sin and that follows repentance, but it’s not repentance itself.
WHAT IS
REPENTANCE?
Well,
what is repentance? Let me give you an example in a story that Jesus related, “A certain man had two Sons and he said to
the first son, ‘Son, go work in my vineyard today,’ and his son said, “I will
not” (Matthew 12:41). Someone was telling me this week of a Dad that loved
his children, but a few years ago his wife didn’t want to be with him any
longer and she divorced him and took up with other men, but she got the two
boys. This Dad hardly ever sees his children. He loves them and wants to be
with them, but he doesn’t get an opportunity very much and recently he had
those two boys with him and, as I was told, he was working around his house and
he told one of the boys to go get him something and he said, “I will not. I
don’t have to do what you tell me to do.” And as I hear he’s a pretty
good-sized boy, but the father disciplined him. Later he wrote him a letter
that if he didn’t want to respect him as his dad then, he really didn’t care
whether he was with him or not. That would hurt you to have to do that, but the
point I’m trying to make here is that all of us who have been fathers at some
time or another have had children that have told us in one way or another that
they weren’t going to do what we asked them to do. I still subscribe to the old
policy that when a child is young and you tell them to do something and they
start saying why, simply reply, “Because I said so.” I think that’s a good
place to start. If you don’t respect your dad just because he said so when
you’re young, you won’t respect him when you’re older if he gives you a hundred
reasons why you ought to do something. Of course, as a child gets older you’ve
got to explain to them why they should do this and that. But this father had
two sons and he said to the first, “Go work in my vineyard today” and the young
man said, “I will not.” But the Bible says that later on he went and did what
his father told him to do. He went to his other son and said, “Son, go work in
my vineyard today” and he said, “I will.” But he didn’t do it. The Bible says
he repented himself and did it not. Again, this demonstrates that your parents
can ask you to do something and you’ll say you’ll do it, but never do it. What
good is that answer, “Yes, I’ll do it” and then not do it? It’s a lie. So in
this case, the boy that was stubborn and said he wouldn’t, but later repented
and did was a better boy that the boy that said he would and did not. So
parents when you look at your children, what you really have to look at are the
results. Jesus asked them, “Which one of these repented? Which one of these did
the will of his father?” Well, they were smart people, and said, “The first of
course, he’s the one that did the will of his father.” And then Jesus in
Matthew 12 said, “Out of your own mouth you have condemned yourselves. You
claim to be religious and I come out here preaching and you say “I will, I
will,” yet you do not. I tell you the publicans and the harlots are going to go
into the
Regret
and Repent
Now let’s look at another way in which we can find out what it means to really repent. Look at the text that was read to us. The King James translation is unfortunate here in that it confuses two Greek words and translates them by the same term. Those two words are “metamelami” and “metaneo.” Metamelami means regret, sorrow, and remorse. And I make a proposition here, and challenge anybody to show me any different, never in any of the communications of Jesus, the twelve, or anybody else who went out preaching the gospel did they command people to repent using metamelami. It’s never found in any of the gospel commands contingent upon forgiveness of sins. It’s never found. Men are not commanded to repent metamelami. But when men are commanded to repent and be baptized, repent and be converted, repent and be forgiven, it’s always, metaneo. Now we have in the Bible these two words used in the same context so we can see the difference (2 Corinthians 7:8-12). I will give you the background here. Paul wrote a very hard letter to the Corinthian church, which is the 1 Corinthian letter. It was a stinging rebuke for all of theirs sins and evil that they were doing as a church. Now he has received word back from one of his messengers as to how they have received the first letter. Notice what he says here when he gets down and writes the second letter to them, “Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not repent,” which is the King James translation. The NIV translation is “I do not regret it.” Regret is right. It’s metamelami. Paul wrote the Corinthians a letter, 1 Corinthians, and when he got word back he found out they were full of sorrow. He doesn’t tell us what kind of sorrow it is, but I think we find out a little bit later. He says, “Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it.” What he’s really saying is if I had it to do over again, I would write the same letter to you again. It made you sorry and, he says, “I don’t regret it,” though I did regret it. Have you ever done something that you had to do and right after you did it, it really hurt you? You regretted that you had to do it. But later on when you saw the good results of what you had done, you changed your mind and said you no longer regretted it. You regretted it at first, but now you don’t regret it. Well, that’s exactly what Paul is saying here. “I wrote you a letter, it was a hard letter, it made you full of sorrow, and when I heard how that sorrow changed your life from the bad to the good, from the worse to the better, then I changed my mind and I don’t regret what I have done.” He says, “I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while, yet now I am happy, not because you were sorry.” Nobody is happy when they see people full of sorrow, full of tears, full of remorse. He said, “I’m not happy because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance.” And here the word is metaneo. He’s happy not that they were made sorry, but that their sorrow led them to repentance and we’re trying to find out what repentance is. “For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us.” Then in verse 10 Paul declares, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” See what this Godly sorrow has produced in you—what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done?
I pointed out to you that you can have sorrow and you can have regret. Judas repented in the sense of metamelami—regret, remorse. But Judas did not repent metaneo. What does it mean? In repentance, metaneo, there will be regret, remorse, sorrow, but in a person’s life that doesn’t repent there may be sorrow, remorse and regret. What’s the difference? Here’s the basic difference—if your sorrow, if your regret, if your remorse is not strong enough that it goes right down into your innermost being and causes you to be sorry that you have offended God, that you have broken His will, that you have made Him unhappy, that you’re not living up to your potential as a human being made in the image of God, then that kind of sorrow will not cause you to change your life and, therefore, you haven’t repented. Judas was full of repentance. And Esau was full of repentance. The book of Hebrews says “Esau found no place for repentance, though he sought it bitterly with tears.” He couldn’t find a place for his father to change his mind. That’s what it’s talking about there. His father had already pronounced the blessing upon his brother. He wanted him to change his mind. His father couldn’t change his mind and he sought it with tears, but it didn’t do any good. So repentance, in a nutshell, is a change of the mind. Faith is the beginning point, but unless our faith becomes strong enough to fill us with godly sorrow, regret and remorse, and unless that regret, remorse and sorrow is strong enough that it changes man’s stubborn willpower and then in turn changes his life, a person hasn’t repented. “Godly sorrow works repentance, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world works death.”
What is repentance? A person is going in
the wrong direction saying, “I will not,” like the older son and then he
repents, he turns around 180 degrees and goes back in a different direction. A
person is living an evil life and they say, “I repent,” and they turn around
and start living a different life. A person is living a sinful life and they
say, “I repent,” and they start living a life of righteousness. We can apply
this to the members of the church, too. It’s not just alien sinners. What was
the problem with the seven churches of
*Shelby
G. Floyd delivered this sermon