Last Sunday night we began looking at two of the key words of the Christian life. Those words are repentance and conversion. We normally think of them in relation to an unsaved person, but we have found in the Word of God that they equally apply to the Christian. Repentance is a change of mind. Conversion is a change of direction. Repentance means to have another mind about something. We see that illustrated for us in the parable of the prodigal son.
His first mindset was to get away from his father and to have in his possession everything that belonged to him and to waste it then and having a lot of fun. But then it says after he had lost all of that, including his friends and his money, when he found himself at the bottom feeding pigs, which was a job no Jewish boy ever wanted, when he found himself in that position, it says he came to himself and he said, I'm going back to my father. What happened to him? He had a change of mind.
And now instead of wanting to run from his father and go his own way, he wanted to give up his way and go back home to his father. That's repentance. It's a change of mind. And then it's also conversion is rather a change of direction. The word simply means to turn. We see it illustrated for us physically when the Lord Jesus Christ was in the crowd moving to heal the daughter of Jairus.
And as he was pressing his way forward to get to that appointment, someone in the crowd touched the hem of his garment and it says he turned around and said, who touched me? You remember that. When it says he turned, it literally says he converted. It means to turn around, a change of direction. Repentance and conversion are companion truths, but the one precedes the other. Repentance precedes conversion.
Before I turn around and go in the right direction, I have to realize I'm going in the wrong direction and change my mind about it. So repentance precedes conversion. Perhaps we can illustrate that by thinking of a driver who is going through a city trying to find his way to a particular destination. He's been there once before, perhaps. Something seems familiar to him. Most men in a situation like that say, well, if we just go a little further, I'm sure I'll recognize something. Right?
And the wife says, let's pull over to the gas station and ask. No, if we just go a little further, I know I'll recognize something and we'll get there. And it's not long before the neck turns the head of the home and you pull into a gas station and you find out that you're going in the wrong direction. What do you do? Well, hopefully you repent and you convert. You change your mind about what's going on, what you're doing, and you turn around and go in the right direction.
Well, that's an illustration of it. Personally, I believe that the greatest need in the twentieth century Western church among genuine believers is repentance and conversion. Not as a one-time act, but rather as a way of life. I believe that God wants us to continually have the attitude of repentance so that we are converted. That involves having a will that is broken. Indeed, a heart that is broken.
So that I am constantly open to my Lord and I am willing to turn as soon as He shows me that my thinking is wrong. This was the need, wasn't it, in the church at Laodicea? Their attitude was, we are rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing. Jesus wrote in that letter in Revelation chapter 3, you don't know that you are poor, you are miserable, you are blind, and you are naked. He says you're thinking wrong.
And then dropped down a few lines there, and He says to them, be zealous therefore and repent. What was our Lord trying to get the church at Laodicea to do? To think right about itself and to turn around. I believe we need that as a church, folks. I'm burdened about it. Growing in numbers is not the same thing as a revival. There are some churches today that are growing but are not teaching the truth. The growing is not coming from the Spirit of God. I trust that is not true.
Here, of course, I believe that God is blessing and we're seeing growth. But we must not equate necessarily numbers with genuine revival. I hunger in my heart to see that. I hunger for genuine revival. I believe that that is the only thing that is going to spare our nation from a catastrophic judgment of God. I am personally convinced of that.
I am not a prophet in the foretelling sense, but I believe that if we see the year 2000 as a free nation, it will be because between now and then we have seen something of revival in this country. If we do not, then I believe that not only our children but many of us sitting here tonight will see a change take place in this land, which we would dread. When we talk about revival, we can't talk about them out there. We must talk about ourselves. Because you see, unsaved people don't need revival.
They need life. They need to be born again. But we who have been born of God may need revival. I can't speak for everybody here because maybe there are some here who do not need this, but I believe that there are many of us who tonight want to open our hearts for a fresh working of God's Spirit so that we might repent and convert. Why should we do that? What should motivate us to deep repentance and genuine conversion?
I'm going to suggest just five or six reasons why I believe that this should be a concern for every Christian. These are not profound. I am simply stirring up your mind by way of remembrance regarding some important motives for repentance and conversion. To begin, I'd like for us to turn to the book of James 5, verse 19. He concludes his little epistle by saying, My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth, and one turns him back or one converts him, let him know that he is not a man.
Let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error—and there's the same word, the straying, the wandering of his way—will save his soul, that is, the soul of the wanderer, from death and will cover a multitude of sins. I see a couple of motives there in those two verses for my concern as a believer about repentance and conversion. First of all, he is talking to Christians.
One motive for maintaining a continual attitude of repentance and conversion is that it delivers me from the danger of discipline. That's what death here talks about. He's not talking about hell. He's not saying he'll save his soul from hell, but he's talking about death in terms of spiritual discipline from God. It can include physical death. That's what had happened to the Corinthians.
The apostle writes, and he says, because some of you have so disgracefully observed the Lord's Supper, your agape feast, there are some of you who sleep, he says. He doesn't mean asleep in church. It's a metaphor for death. He is suggesting there—in fact, he is declaring there—that there were some of them who had died at the hand of God being disciplined because of their persistent sin, their unwillingness to repent and be converted about the way they observed the Lord's table.
We had better never think lightly of God's discipline. Let us always realize that God disciplines us in love, never in hate, and never in anger at us. But God does discipline sometimes very firmly. Not all of God's discipline is because of sin. There is instructional chastisement. In other words, God is just teaching us, training us. But there is such a thing as discipline because of disobedience. And that's what James has in mind here.
If I want to spare myself from that kind of chastisement, then I need to maintain an attitude of repentance and conversion in my life so that the minute I become aware that I have strayed, I have gone out of the path God wants me to be in, I change my mind and I turn around and go back. And I don't waste time doing it. It is a dangerous thing for any of us to play with deliberate, persistent sin. Dangerous. When he talks about death here, I am reminded of what John says.
Verse 16, he says, If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life to those who commit sin not leading to death. There is a sin leading to death. I do not say that he should make requests for this. These are strange words, aren't they? What does he mean? What is the sin unto death? Well, first let me say it is not the same thing as the unpardonable sin, as it is called.
Technically speaking, the unpardonable sin was a sin that could be committed in the day of Christ. It was the sin of particularly those Pharisees who saw who he was but deliberately turned from that knowledge as the Spirit of God brought that truth home to them. And what Jesus was saying to them, there is no pardon for that kind of sin. To reject me leaves one without any alternative but damnation.
And by way of application, of course, we could say the same thing today about anyone who turns from the Savior. There is no pardon outside of that. But what John is talking about here is not the same thing as the unpardonable sin. John is talking about the sin of a Christian, a brother. The sin unto death seems to be not one particular sin like murder or adultery or something like that, but it is rather a persistent, deliberate way of living.
It is a course which a Christian determines he is going to walk in no matter what God thinks. And when a Christian deliberately, persistently continues in that way, that is the sin unto death. And at some point, the scripture would seem to indicate that person goes beyond the possibility of repentance and his discipline will be short in coming. That is why John says when you see a person who has done that, who has sinned unto death, do not pray for him because he has gone too far.
He now will have to suffer the discipline of God. Coming back to James 5, we repeat this motive for maintaining an attitude of repentance and conversion. It delivers me from the danger of discipline, the hand of God. A second reason I see in verse 20 is that it removes the possibility of disgrace. He says, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the air of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. If the person is not converted, then the opposite is true.
The multitude of sins will remain exposed for people to see. And that brings disgrace. Disgrace to the person, disgrace to his family, disgrace to his church, and disgrace to his Lord. If I want to remove the possibility of disgrace, I will maintain the attitude of repentance and conversion so that that multitude of sins that has accumulated in my time of disobedience can be completely concealed, and that's what the word means here.
It means to be covered entirely so that nothing can be seen of it. And why would that be true? Because it would be placed under the blood of Christ. Dear friend, if tonight you are playing with sin and you are deliberately pushing ahead, you refuse to repent, that is, change your mind, you refuse to turn around and go the other direction, I must warn you of the possibility of God's discipline and the possibility of disgrace to your life.
I'll guarantee you David wished that he could have turned around. Finally he did, but still today we read in God's Word about the disgrace that that sin with Bathsheba brought to his life. He bears that as a scar. You know the Lord can forgive us of our sins, but God doesn't remove the scars that may be left behind. I have a dear friend who fell into deep sin, and God brought a dear brother who loved him to help him. My friend repented and was converted.
He went back home to his wife and he made things right with her, with his children, with the church that he pastored. Yet today, though the sins are forgiven, he bears the heartache of those few months of foolishness. All the disgrace that comes with sin and the possibility of it ruining our testimonies and our lives. If I would be delivered from that possibility, then I must repent and be converted.
Let's turn back to David's experience for a moment as he records it for us in Psalm 32 and see a third motive for maintaining an attitude of repentance and conversion. It spares the consequences of guilt when I quickly repent and am converted. David did not quickly repent. He tried to hide his sin, as all of us have done, some time or another. He begins Psalm 32 by saying, How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!
How happy, how blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and whose spirit there is no deceit. Oh, did David know about deceit? And then he recounts his experience with the guilt that he bore during those months when I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night thy hand, that is God's conviction, was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. These are the consequences of sin.
Some of you tonight know what I am talking about because you sit there. You are bearing a load of guilt because up to this point you have refused to acknowledge your sin before God and to turn from it. If you would be spared the consequences of guilt, that wasting away physically, that pressure in the heart, if you would have your vitality of life and your joy restored to you, there is only one way to do it, and that is to deal honestly with your sin by repenting and converting, turning around.
I tell you that before God. That is a motive, isn't it? I think so. In Psalm 66 we have another motive for maintaining an attitude of repentance and conversion. In Psalm 66 verse 18 the psalmist says, If I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear. That can be probably better said, if I had regarded wickedness in my heart, the Lord would not have heard, but certainly God has heard. In other words, he is saying I have not regarded iniquity in my heart. What is he saying here?
He is saying if you and I cherish sin in our hearts, it shuts off our prayer lives. So if I want to reinstate the power of prayer in my life, I need to have the attitude of repentance and conversion. This word regard is an interesting word that is a Hebrew root word that means simply to see and it has all kinds of meanings to it. Over in Psalm 138 verse 6 it is a word that is used of God where it says, For though the Lord is exalted, yet he regards the lowly.
In other words, it means God sees the humble and has mercy on them. And I believe that is the definition that we should bring back here to Psalm 66. What it is saying here is that I see iniquity in my heart and instead of dealing with it in judgment, I have mercy on it and I protect it. I do not repent of it. I do not turn around from it. And the consequence of that is that God does not hear me as I pray.
If you would have your prayer life reinstated so that it is filled with meaning and power, then it may be that you need tonight to face up honestly to some sin in your life and repent and be converted. Then in Luke chapter 22 we come to a fifth one, a fifth motive for repentance and conversion. Here we come to that verse we looked at last week dealing with Peter.
Verse 31, Jesus addresses him using his name Simon and he says, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. The motive that I see here is that if I would have an effective ministry restored, then I must have an attitude of repentance and conversion.
I guarantee you that Peter would never have preached a sermon on Pentecost if he had not repented and had been converted. When he stood beside the fire warming himself as our Lord was being judged, his mindset was, I don't know the man. And then when that rooster crowed, Jesus turned and looked at him and in that instant the conviction of God pierced his heart.
Peter changed his mind about what he had been saying and the attitude that he had and he ran out and wept bitterly, not in remorse, that superficial emotional response like Judas had, but in deep repentance he changed his mind and was converted. And you recall last week that we mentioned that when Jesus had been raised from the dead, the angel said, now you go and tell his disciples, and whom? And Peter. A special word for Peter because he needed encouragement.
Jesus wanted Peter to know that he had been received again, that what he had done was not being held against him. Why? Because he had repented and was converted. That gave him an effective ministry and he began to lead the band of disciples then. Have you found your ministry in your Sunday school class or in your Bible study? Have you found your witness at work or in your neighborhood dried up and fruitless?
To restore an effective ministry, what you may need to do tonight is to repent and be converted. That's a motive for doing it. And then one final one that I want to look at is in 2 Corinthians 5. The apostle says, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. What is he talking about here?
Well first of all let's make it clear that the judgment seat of Christ is a judgment where only Christians will be. Those who are outside of Christ will be judged later in a separate judgment. This judgment is only for Christians. It is not a judgment to determine if the Christian is going to get to heaven or not, of course, because that's already settled. But it is a judgment of the works of the Christian to determine his reward.
This judgment seat is like that judgment seat where the judge of a contest back in the Olympics would sit and the ones who would win the race would come forward and bun their brow, would be placed that wreath made out of olive branches. That's the picture here. And the apostle is saying that we have a judgment seat to come before and our Lord is going to stand there and he says we must all appear. That word means we must all appear as we really are. Not as we would like to be.
Not as others think we are. But we must all appear as we truly are before the judgment seat of Christ that we may be recompensed for the deeds done in the body according to what he has done, whether it be good or bad. This does not mean that our sins are going to be dragged before the judgment seat of Christ. That's not what he has in mind here.
But do you realize that if we waste our lives by disobedience, by bad deeds as it were, when we come to the judgment seat of Christ and our lives are examined, that there will be great gaps in our lives when we have lived in sin and we've wasted our opportunities and we have no reward for that? Some people say that perhaps God is going to show us at that time what we might have been able to accomplish had we been walking faithfully with him. And in that sense we shall suffer loss.
I'm not sure all that's involved here, but I do know this. It is a very serious thing to consider. And if I would be rescued from the possibility of loss and shame at the judgment seat of Christ, then I had better maintain in this world right now an attitude of repentance and conversion so that I don't get away from my Lord. You know folks, if we will see this developed in our lives, we're going to have continuous revival in our church. I am not concerned about the numbers.
I am concerned about the spiritual heartbeat of our church. Will God take care of how broad the ministry gets? We just want it to be deep and real. There were some of us who gathered for prayer last Wednesday night here in our prayer meeting at seven o'clock and I was so glad. And we began to pray through some of the strongholds that we believe Satan may have in some lives in our church right now. Oh, how deceitful sin is and how easily we excuse it in ourselves.
We overlook it as being some little white lie or something that's not so serious when in fact it is robbing us of joy and spiritual fruit. It is sapping our spiritual vitality and it's affecting the ministry of our church. It is so important that each of us examine his own life before God and have the attitude of repentance and conversion. Having said that, let me come back to where I began with this matter of revival.
I want to close tonight just by reading to you one statement from a book that I found in my library I thought somebody had stolen. I finally found where I put it. It's entitled When the Fire Fell. I wish it were still in print, printed almost 40 years ago. But what it does is record some of the great revivals of the last 200 years and what happened. It talks about David Brainerd. It talks about Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards.
And here in the early part of the book it mentions the revival that took place in the United States about 120 years ago, probably the last great awakening this country has had between the years 1857 and 1859. And perhaps the leading personality during that time was a man by the name of Charles Finney. Some of you have heard of him. Charles Finney was a lawyer in the state of New York. It is said that there were many people who prayed for Finney's conversion.
And he was converted in a most powerful, dramatic way. At the same time of his conversion, he experienced a remarkable infilling of God's Spirit. In his own words, he talks about what he sensed as though it were liquid waves of love that just seemed to sweep over his soul. And he says finally he had to pray and say, Lord, I can't take any more. Stop it. Most immediately God began to use the life of Finney in a remarkable fashion.
Many of us have heard of Utica, New York, because of the riot that took place there a few years ago. Do you remember that? The prison? Here's the record of what is said about some of Finney's ministry. Sometimes the Spirit of God seemed to hover in a very remarkable manner over the community where many souls were being convicted and saved. In speaking of his revival meetings at Utica, New York, Mr. Finney says, our meetings were crowded every night and the work went on powerfully.
The place became filled with the manifest influence of the Holy Spirit. A sheriff was converted who boarded at the largest hotel in the place. Mr. Finney said, that hotel became a center of spiritual influence and many were converted there. The stages as they passed through stopped at the hotel.
And so powerful was the impression in the community that I heard of several cases of persons that just stopped for a meal or to spend the night being powerfully convicted and converted before they left town. Indeed, both in this place and in Rome, New York, it was a common remark that nobody could be in the town or pass through it without being aware of the presence of God. That a divine influence seemed to pervade the place and the whole atmosphere to be instinct with the divine life.
It was during the revival at Utica, New York that the Spirit of God fell upon the workers of a large factory in a very extraordinary manner. And I'll close with just this illustration. Mr. Finney had conducted a meeting at the schoolhouse near the factory. A number of the employees that attended the meeting were deeply impressed. The next morning, Mr. Finney went to visit the factory where his brother-in-law was the superintendent.
In his autobiography, he tells of the remarkable scene that followed. Here's a quote from Finney himself. The next morning after breakfast, I went into the factory to look around it. As I went through, I observed there was a good deal of agitation among those who were busy at their looms and their mules and other implements of work.
On passing through one of the apartments where a great number of young women were attending to their weaving, I observed a couple of them eyeing me and speaking very earnestly to each other. And I could see that they were a good deal agitated, although they both laughed. I went slowly toward them. They saw me coming and were evidently much excited. One of them was trying to mend a broken thread and I observed that her hands trembled so that she could not mend it.
I approached slowly, looking on each side of the machinery as I passed, but observed that this girl grew more and more agitated and could not proceed with her work. When I came within eight or ten feet of her, I looked solemnly at her. She observed it and was quite overcome and sunk down and burst into tears. The impression caught almost like powder, and in a few moments nearly all the room, all in the room, were in tears. The feeling spread throughout the factory.
Mr. W., the owner of the establishment, was present and seeing the state of things, he said to the superintendent, Stop the mill and let the people attend to religion, for it is more important that our souls should be saved than that this factory run. The gate immediately shut down, the factory stopped, and where should we assemble? The superintendent suggested a large room and we could assemble there. We did so. At a more powerful meeting I scarcely ever attended. It went on with great power.
The building was large and had many people in it, from the garret to the cellar. The revival went through the mill with astonishing power, and in the course of a few days nearly all in the mill were hopefully converted. He goes on to tell about other experiences. When was the last time you heard about somebody stopping in a motel in Roosevelt, Minnesota, and being overwhelmed by the presence of God and convicted of sin and saved?
When was the last time you heard about a factory shutting down so that the Spirit of God could work? I want to tell you that's what Detroit needs. That's what the factories here need. That's what corporation offices need. It is the mighty moving of God's Spirit. We can look out there and say it needs to be out there, but dear people, if it's going to be out there, it begins right here with you and me.
It begins with our honestly seeing ourselves and maybe the petty excuses and the poor reasons that we give for our failures and our disobedience. It begins with repentance about that and conversion. I recognize that tonight I'm talking to the heart of our church, perhaps the people who are walking closest with God, but may I say to you that it begins with us.
If we are ever going to see anything approaching what happened 120 years ago, again in this land, and I repeat if we don't, I believe judgment is certain. If we are ever going to see anything that approaches this again, it begins with you and me getting right with God, stopping the masquerade, ceasing the charades, and being honest with God and transparent with one another. May the Spirit of God do that work in our lives. Let's bow our heads together.
O Lord God, as we read about what you have done in the past, as we see through the eye of the historian the mighty sweeping of your Spirit, in days that were known for wickedness like our own, in days in which true religion was little lived, in those days you did a mighty work. O Lord, we need that work again today, in our country, in our city, in our church. I pray, my God, that you will raise up another Charles Finney for this generation.
I pray that you would raise up another Jonathan Edwards, another Charles Wesley, another Moody, another Wilbur Chapman. Lord God, unless you raise up from amongst us men and women who mean business for you, surely our nation is headed for judgment and we are headed for shame. I pray that even here in this auditorium tonight you will kindle a deep desire in many hearts for a fresh moving of your Spirit. I pray that it would sweep through our church like fire through gunpowder.
May it create an explosion of godly living, of deep caring and love for each other. May it result in the salvation of many, but God, begin the work in us, in me. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.