Scott Brown's sermon on 'Of Repentance Unto Life and Salvation' explores the pivotal role of grace in repentance for Christians. He emphasizes that grace, not works or penance, is central to overcoming sin. The sermon revisits historical events like the Protestant Reformation, highlighting Martin Luther's opposition to indulgences sold by the Roman Catholic Church, which confused penance with true repentance. Brown asserts that Christians face two main challenges: an inherent sin nature and the prevalence of temptation. Despite these, the covenant of grace, a core theological concept, offers renewal through continual repentance. The sermon stresses that God's mercy is abundant and accessible, contrasting with the misinterpretation and misuse of penance. It concludes by urging believers to embrace a life of ongoing repentance, supported by God's unending grace and mercy.

Tonight we speak about one of the most critical things that has ever been given as a gift to man. And it solves man's greatest problem, and that is his propensity to sin. And particularly this chapter here in our confession on repentance or this paragraph rather speaks of How this works in the life of a Christian? Christians who find themselves? Falling and There's one there's one single word in this paragraph that tells all, and it's this word right here.

It's the word grace. And this matter of grace and repentance has always been very important to the Church of Jesus Christ. The sense of the grace that's found in true repentance was actually lost for a period of time preceding the Protestant Reformation. So if you go back to the year 1517, Europe was under the control of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Pope Leo X, Leo X was an elegant and indolent wastrel who ended up you know ruling the vast treasures of wealth of Europe through the Holy Roman church.

But Pope Leo needed money. He wanted to build a gigantic cathedral to replace the one that was decrepit. He wanted to build a mega church, a massive building, something that would be worthy of the glory that he so longed to display in every part of his life. And so in order to build this mega building, he needed some mega resources. And at the same time, Albert of Brandenburg wanted the bishopric of Manz and the control of the funds from the Roman Church all throughout Germany.

If you became a bishop and controlled the bishopric, you were basically controlling a cash flow. This is why people wanted offices in the Roman Church, because they received the cash flow from the people. They were on commission. And so Albert Brandenburg wanted to buy the bishopric of Manz so that he could control that cash flow. So he borrowed money from a German bank to buy it.

And he paid the pope from the bank. And he made a deal with the pope that if he bought that bishopric for such a large sum that the pope would give him the freedom to grant indulgences for eight years and receive an even greater cash flow from the indulgences. And The indulgence would release souls from purgatory for different periods of time. You give a little bit of money, you release souls from purgatory for a little bit of time. You give a lot of money, you release souls from purgatory for a long period of time, and maybe lots of souls.

So indulgences were sold by this man in order to finance this big building that Pope Leo X wanted to build and also to provide Albert of Brandenburg wealth that he had always dreamed of. So he made Albert of Brandenburg made a deal with the Pope that he would split the profits of the indulgences 50-50. So it was a good deal for both. The Roman Church would get half the money and Albert of Brandenburg would get the other half of the money and he could pay off his loan to this German bank and the Pope would get rich at the same time. And so Brandenburg needed a salesman to sell the indulgences, and he found his man.

You've heard his name before. He chose a master communicator. He chose a remarkable individual who had the ability to win hearts and make people feel a certain way when he spoke. He knew all the triggers of the human heart. His name, of course, was Johannes Tetzel.

And so he was also on commission as well, and he set about raising money for his boss by selling indulgences to get people out of purgatory. And you know, the statement that he used in order to sell his product was this, as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory Springs. And they raised a lot of money. Fortunately or unfortunately, the road trip, their tour ended up in Wittenberg. And in Wittenberg, there happened to be a 32-year-old man living there.

He was a monk, and his name was Martin Luther. And Martin Luther understood how contrary this was to everything that he'd read in scripture, but even more than that he'd been studying the Latin Vulgate, and he noticed that the Latin translation of the Bible actually had an error in it. And the word penance, due penance, existed in Latin where the word should have been repentance. And so, Johannes Tetzel was able to sell his indulgences right off the Latin Vulgate because penance was necessary and if you paid enough penance you could get enough years maybe to get several people out of purgatory for a while. And so this really, you know, proclaimed the heart of the error of the Roman Church.

It exacted penance from his people, from their people, not repentance. And Getting those two things confused can cause a great disaster in your life as it has for many if you if you if you if you confuse penance and reap and repentance repentance You'll you'll always be lost and you'll never know who you really are. And so this was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. This young 32 year old monk, Augustinian monk, wrote up 95 different thoughts about this and he took his piece of paper and he put it on a door in Wittenberg. He had no idea what was going to happen.

He had no grasp that this would absolutely shake the entire structure of the Roman church and really cause the true salvation of many. As people began to recognize that it wasn't penance, but it was repentance that was necessary. And that really brings us to this chapter of our confession here, chapter 15, the second paragraph. And the question is, how does a believer receive forgiveness because this this paragraph has to do with people who are already believers you see that right there it's it's it's about believers believers who are sinning and falling So I think right at the beginning we need to recognize that this paragraph is about believers and how believers deal with their sin. And so, I'll just read it.

Whereas there is none that does good and does not sin and the best of men may through the power and deceitfulness of their corruption dwelling in them, with the prevalence of temptation, fall into great sins and provocations. God has, in the covenant of grace, mercifully provided, that believers so sinning and falling be renewed through repentance unto salvation." Now this paragraph is directed to Christians, and so this is why they're speaking of the best of men, acknowledging that there is none that does good, but there are men who have turned their hearts toward what is good, and that's the principle that's here. And there are two problems that these Christians must live with, And the first problem is that of a sin nature. This is the first problem. And the first problem is the deceitfulness of their corruption dwelling in them.

The problem with Christians is that they still have remaining sin because of their sin nature. It's the deceitfulness of sin. And Jeremiah spoke of this in Jeremiah 17 where he said, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I the Lord search the heart.

I test the mind even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. We have this problem called original sin. We turn back to chapter 6 which we've we covered recently on the fall of man. We learned that it was our first parents that fell from their original righteousness and that the guilt of sin was imputed, and this imputation of sin corrupted man's nature. And so we pass on a sinful nature to all of our offspring.

We give them the poison pill as parents and it is quote-unquote conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation. And The confession goes on and says that we are conceived in sin and are by nature Children of wrath and they also they can the this chapter also says that we are wholly inclined to do evil This is the problem of our sin nature, and we cannot escape it. And that chapter states that the corruption of nature during this life does remain in those who are regenerated. In other words, even though you're pardoned, even though you're justified by grace alone, yet sin remains. And so there's always an inclination of sin in the true Christian.

And that's what he's speaking of here. This is the first, this is the first problem, is the sin nature. And then the second problem is the prevalence of temptation. So there are temptations in the world. In this world we will be tempted.

There will be things coming to us that will tempt us. And I was thinking over the last few days of an old southern gospel hymn called, Tempted and Tried. Probably none of you have ever heard that. Oh, there are only a couple that have heard of it. Tempted and tried, we are oft made to wonder why it should be thus all the day long while there are others living about us never molested though in the wrong in other words there are people that just live they live in their sins and they don't care and then there are people who who experience their sins and they do care and it is it molests them in the sense that it disturbs them.

And so the hymn goes on, farther along we'll know all about it. Farther along we'll understand why. Cheer up, my brother. Live in the sunshine. We'll understand it all by and by.

Well the confession answers the question why it's right here it's the prevalence of temptation you have to we have two problems one is our sin nature and the other is the temptation that surrounds us and there are external opportunities that will constantly come at us head on. They will meet our sin nature and these opportunities will attempt to exalt themselves so that you'll feed your bodily appetites and fall. And the problem with temptation is that it's a daily thing and it can be a very strong thing. I was reading a book by Russell Moore called, Tempted and Tried. And he makes this statement, and I think it's very helpful to understand why we find ourselves in temptation.

Temptation is so strong in our lives precisely because it's not about us. It's about rebellion against Jesus Christ. It's about rebellion against his work in a person's life. And so temptations are strong not because it's about you, but because there's a cosmic war going on. And you are just a pawn in his little war.

And so it is strong. There's a spiritual war being waged and the devil, the devil's death wish is to drag as many souls into his little poison pool so that you die there and he, and your body is dragged into hell for all eternity. And we're targeted because we have a new name. We have the name of Jesus Christ on our back and that makes us a target of the devil. And as we're becoming like the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ's enemy is our enemy.

And so when you're being conformed to Jesus Christ, you've set yourself against all the powers and principalities of nature. And so there are temptations that are going to meet your sin nature. And the deceptions of Satan are so critical to remember these temptations are so subtle often and so insidious. One of the things that we know about Satan's temptations is that the devil never reveals to you what will come of you if you fall. He leads you from one sham pleasure to another and he conceals the endpoints doesn't reveal to you where this is going.

This is one of the great dangers of our entire entertainment industry. They don't tell you where this is going. The demonic powers make sure also, not only do they want to conceal from you where this is all going and the final death grip that it will lock you into the loss of relationships the loss of hope the loss of money the loss of everything this is concealed But the demonic powers also seem to make sure that your sin will be covered up at least for a while. That you'll be able to do it long enough until you're in a hopeless death grip. You move along the line and you keep doing it and you're not caught and you do it again and you're not caught and you do it again and you're not caught and after a while you think you'll never get caught and then finally when it's too late you're trapped and there are no good solutions and there are no good answers at all.

Because that's what sin does to you. And the devil wants to make it very clear to you that you can get away with this. And that's the great lie. Because no one ever gets away with it. At all.

Even though they think they are. And so these this prevalence of temptation you know can lead to this you know to this fall, this downward, this fall into, you know, into great sins. There's this cascading process that is engaged in the heart of the person who has had temptation meet his sin nature and then begins to fall. Now the Lord Jesus Christ was tempted like we were. And we have the Lord Jesus Christ's temptation to help us to understand how we have to think about our own temptations.

Here's one thing about Jesus' temptations. Jesus would rather starve than eat the bread of the devil. Jesus would rather do nothing rather than to become famous and float his way down, you know, giving awe to everyone in the crowd below. He would rather have God's way. He, like Moses, would rather push aside the passing pleasures of sin so that he could have the beauty of the gospel.

He would rather have the sufferings of Christ. And so what happens in this temptation when coupled with our sin nature is that we're also tempted not to hear the voice of God, and it's like we put these noise-canceling headphones on, and God is speaking to us, and our conscience is yelling at us, and we put them on, and we don't want to hear it, and we want to keep on going, And the problem is we go so far that it's too late, and there's hell in its jaws waiting for us. So this is the the prevalence of great sins and provocations, provocations. Great sins and provocations, provocations. Little things that provoke sin, little images, little words to songs, little thoughts, little things that crop up and you just feed them and they grow.

Everything that is nourished grows, everything. Every provocation grows one way or another. And so these two So these two problems, the sin nature and temptation, are the issues that this paragraph brings up. And, you know, Solomon has a general statement that explains just how broad and comprehensive this is in Ecclesiastes 7 verse 20. For there is not a just man on earth Who does good and does not sin?

Two things a just man and Sin You will always find in every just man, as he says here, one that does good. One that does good. One that does good has sin in him. That's the reality of the Christian experience. David spoke of how the whole human family is affected in Psalm 143 verse 2.

Do not enter into judgment with your servant for in your sight no one living is righteous. Solomon said it in Proverbs 20 verse 9, who can say I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin? You know what that means? You will never be able to repent enough. You will never be able to repent enough.

You will never be able to get to the bottom of your need for repentance. It isn't going to happen. Because our sin nature is deeper than our own sense of sin. Now thankfully it's deep enough to have a sense of sin. And God uses our conscience to help us to deal with sin.

But in every just man there is sin and there is no one living who is righteous and there is no one who can say I have made my heart clean I am pure from my sin which is why the Apostle John said in first John he said if you say you have no sin you are a liar and the truth is not in you so there is remaining sin that we have to deal with as Christians. Don't, you know, don't don't over-exalt anyone in the Church of Jesus Christ. Do not, do not make a celebrity out of anyone because they're not celebrities. They have sin and there is not, there is no one living who is righteous. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And so we are beset with sin in our nature and we are exposed to daily temptations. So that's the first part of this. Then how do we, how do we deal with this problem? And that's where we get to this next section and that is which begins right here God has in the covenant of grace mercifully provided that believers so sinning and Falling be renewed through repentance unto salvation. So there is a covenant of grace.

It's not a covenant of works. It's not a covenant of penance. It's a covenant of grace. And the covenant of grace is this, it's that God saves sinners by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. And that this covenant of grace is administrated in various eras of redemptive history in God's covenant first through to Adam and then Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and then Christ himself as through Jesus Christ he makes his covenant with the Gentiles.

Now God always say Gentiles, but as God desired to have his gospel to spread throughout the whole world, this covenant was seemingly broadened. The Heidelberg Catechism says it like this, God Himself first revealed it in paradise, the covenant of grace, and afterwards it was proclaimed by the Holy Patriarchs and prophets and foreshadowed by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law and then finally fulfilled in his well-beloved son." So the covenant of grace was pictured in the types of the Old Covenant, in the ceremonial law. All the sacrifices, you know, the types of the Old Testament all point to Jesus Christ's covenant of grace. And the Bible really has one theme, and that is that God is rescuing a bride. He saves sinners.

He takes a sinful bride and he makes her his own. And he cleanses her. And she doesn't deserve it at all. And this is the one story of the Bible. That there is one means of salvation, and that is it's by grace alone.

No one in the Old Testament era was saved by works. Anyone who's ever been saved has been saved by the faith of Abraham. Now, there's this covenant of grace that needs to be acknowledged. Now, there's a word here that we should recognize, and that is this word, mercifully. Mercifully provided.

Oh boy, there you go. It's grace, and it is mercifully provided. It's a gift of God. It has nothing to do with penance. It's a grace that is provided, not a grace that you purchase with money or by any work at all.

This is the doctrine of God's mercy as he extends his mercy toward sinners. And Exodus 34 speaks of God's mercy. Exodus 34 verse six. And the Lord passed before him, Moses, and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, Merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. Now, in Exodus 34, in these two verses, there are six elements of God's mercy that are listed.

You know, God is a God of mercy. You know even around the throne of God there is a rainbow and the rainbow of course is an emblem of the mercy of God. Mercy of God in judgment. And so I read in Revelation 4, 4, and he who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance, and there was a rainbow around the throne in appearance like an emerald. Why is there an emerald-like rainbow around the throne of God?

Because he's a God of mercy. In fact, God is actually, he's actually characterized in scripture more by mercy than by judgment. You've probably seen, noticed this, there's so much mercy in the scriptures. Micah 7 verse 17 and 18 and 19 speak of it, who is a god like you? In other words, there isn't anyone like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage He does not retain anger forever Because why why?

Because he delights in mercy He delights in mercy Isn't that amazing? Aren't you thankful that he delights in? Mercy What if he didn't delight in it? In his heart of love he extends mercy because he loves mercy. He loves it when we receive it and he loves it when we deliver it to others.

He delights in it. Do you want to delight the Lord? He delights in mercy. Mercy toward the one who's offended you. And then he says in verse 19, and he will again have compassion on us and will subdue our iniquities.

You will cast all of our sins into the depths of the sea." He delights in mercy so much that it says that he subdues our iniquities, obviously through the blood of Jesus Christ, and he casts our sins into the bottom of the ocean. This is just one of the illustrations of how merciful God is. He puts it in the bottom of the ocean, he forgets about it, and he puts your sins as far as the East is from the West. How far is that children? It's as far as you can get.

You know children like to say, I love you this much. Well I love you Googleplex this much. I love you from here to the moon. No, I love you from here to the Gileastar. I, you know, because there's this idea that there's always something greater.

And there is. It's infinite. It's infinite grace. He casts your sins into the depths of the sea. How about that?

And the mercy of God is free Paul tells the Romans that we are justified freely by his grace not by penance Not by paying anything You can't pay for mercy. You don't need any indulgences. Mercy, mercy is new every morning. So says Jeremiah. Psalm 5 verse 6 says that the mercy of God is infinite.

He says, but as for me I come into the house, into thy house in the multitude of your mercy. In Psalm 69 verse 16, David says, Hear me, O Lord, for your loving kindness is good. Turn me, turn to me according to the multitude of your tender mercies. David says in Psalm 103 verse 7, but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him. His mercy endures forever.

If you open up Psalm 136, the phrase, his mercy endures forever, appears 26 times because his mercy is infinite it can't be bought and of course the Bible warns us of the abuse of the mercy of God when we would think oh we'll just let sin abound so that grace will abound that's the corrupt heart there now there is a there's another statement that really explains this. It's Benjamin Keach's Catechism on this question of repentance. What is repentance unto life? Repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby the sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, does with grief and hatred of his sin turn from it unto God with a full purpose of an endeavor after new obedience." So, grief and hatred over his sin. The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is the non-Christian likes his sin and the Christian hates it.

He wants to get away from it. He might fall into it, but he won't like it when he does. And that marks the difference. The Lord Jesus Christ has provided so much mercy for his saints and it says here that they are renewed through repentance not penance David said in Psalm 130 If you Lord should mark our iniquities Who could stand? And the Lord Jesus Christ we learn he gives us great help He comes and he grants us his grace and like he said to to Peter he said Simon Simon indeed Satan has asked for you that he may sift you as wheat but I have prayed for you that your faith should not fail and when you have returned to me strengthen your brethren." The Lord The Lord blessed Peter with his prayers.

And so there's this renewal that takes place as a result of this salvation. And what we learn is that God renews through repentance. Like John said, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And so the Lord grants great grace. He restores believers who fall into sin, and he does it by his covenant of grace.

And so we learn here, you know, that the true Christian is marked by a sin nature interfacing with sin who hates his sin and confesses it and renounces it and he turns to God and he turns to God throughout his whole life long. So a person is not saved by repenting once, but by continuing to repent throughout our lives. That's why Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn. Not blessed are those who mourned. It's not one mourning.

It's not one throw of the penitent switch. Repentance is an ongoing thing. And when Jesus said blessed are those who mourn he was talking about people who continually see sin surface in their lives and they continue to mourn over their sin and they turn to him as their only Hope and they find those times of refreshing And so we want to make sure that we don't allow the devil to deprive us of the times of refreshing through penance or through neglecting the sin that we actually have. But God has called true Christians to continually repent. Now here we are, we're in a church together and we have all kinds of people here.

And in one sense for those who are true Christians there's really only one kind among us. And those are the people who have original sin in the deceitfulness of their corruption, and they face the prevalence of temptation. That's the kind of Christian we have here in this room right now. And so we should pray for one another. And we should be patient with one another.

And we should have grace toward one another and recognize that God will be faithful to his children to deliver them from sin. He's going to use us all together to do that and we shouldn't think for a minute that there are some super Christians out there. This paragraph completely destroys the idea of a super Christian. It's gone. It's blown up.

Because there's really only one kind of Christian. It's a sinner saved by grace, who's being sanctified, and who's continually being brought near to the Lord through repentance. I pray God really makes us repentant people. There's nothing more obnoxious than an unrepentant proud people. People who just think they just got it so together.

There's hardly anything more harmful to a family of people than to have somebody who's just so stuck up about their self-righteousness. Or who thinks somebody else is just so righteous as well. And here the Lord reveals to us what who we really are and what we really have. Grace. Grace alone.

Amen.