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The Hope of Repentance in Following Christ – Highlight Episode 352 · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Today, friends, we're talking about the dangers of spiritual lukewarmness.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: That term has become so common to us as believers.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: We hear it, we use it, sermons are taught on it, we accuse people of being it.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: But I'm challenged today, honestly, to look at the log in my eye, because I've come to realize, when it comes to this, that's not something I typically do with myself like to re-examine my heart, challenge myself again and say where do I stand in this regard?
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Really just looking and saying have I drifted, have I strayed from a passion for the Lord?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Because I think you know it talks in Scripture about comparing ourselves with ourselves, and I think that's oftentimes a danger.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: It's setting up a standard and then comparing ourselves to that standard and saying, well, everyone around me look at them, they do this and that or don't do this and that, I'm cool.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: So I think a good place to start is what is lukewarmness?
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: What is that thing that we all really are called biblically to flee from?
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: And we'll discuss it, obviously in accordance with the words of Jesus.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: I love that you started with like let's explore definition.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I think we should go right to Revelation to figure out what it says, because I think often when we hear lukewarmness we think immediately it can only mean like we need to have an exuberant amount of zeal, we need to be on fire.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: But Jesus' concern in Revelation 3 isn't necessarily about your temperature.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: It's about where you put your trust.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Read the text.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: I'm prefacing.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: It's like the introduction, a pastoral introduction.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: That's the pastor in you.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: These Christians weren't necessarily cold and hot in faith.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Their problem, according to Luther, is that they were self-satisfied and believed they can be self-sufficient.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: In other words, they built their hope on their own actions rather than on the actions of Christ.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: And I think one of the big things about Revelation is like often we think any verse in there is immediately this doom and gloom text.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: But Revelation 1.1 tells us that the entire book, isa, quote revelation of Jesus Christ, which means no matter where you are in the book of Revelation, what you know for sure is that the core message is this is a gospel, centeredcentered, hopeful message, not one of fear.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: And if you're ever reading Revelation and you lose sight of that, you've lost sight of verse 1, revelation of Jesus Christ.
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I liken it to milk.
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: You like your milk either hot and stimulating, or cold and refreshing.
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: But lukewarm milk with yellow lumps in it is going to make you sick.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Sour milk.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Seriously, I got it.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: And so, if you liken it to marriage, I've never, ever, become lukewarm about my wife.
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: I've always been hot for her and it's never gone.
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: And that's what we should be like.
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: If I fell asleep reading a love letter from her not that she sends them I'll have to tell her to send one.
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: That would be an insult to her, and that's why, when we read the Word, we've got to realize that's a love letter to us.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: So, mark, I'd love for you to touch on the sweetness of repentance to the believer, because there is something in us.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: It's almost like the term good works.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: There's something in us, there's a reaction term good works, there's something in us, there's a reaction.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: We hear repentance and negative things come to mind because we associate that with sin, but speak about the hope of repentance and being zealous for it.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: It's kind of a grotesque thought, but it's turning from the sins that we love to the God that we are called to love.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Leonard Ravenhill said.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: So when you are repenting, it's not so much that I am turning from my sin, that becomes the work.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: That becomes the work when I'm just turning from my sin.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: The object of repentance is Christ.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: So when I turn towards Christ, with God's help, I naturally, supernaturally, am turning from my sin.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: So when we hear you shall not lust, right, don't lie, don't steal, and you begin to beat yourself up because you're saying how do I stop these things?
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: The sirens are so loud inside my life.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: I get pushed up against the rocks and I get demolished by the waves, wave after wave after wave.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: So what we need to recognize is that there is a sweeter voice than the voice of the world saying, hey, just take a quick peek.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: And you say, nope, I'm not going to do it.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: Right, not one peek, even I'm not going to do it.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: But it's more than that.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: It's a turning to Him.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: And as I turn to Him, I am turning my back on not just lust, not just lying, but stealing, covetousness, dishonoring my parents.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: When my eyes are on the Lord, I leave behind the tumultuousness of my sin.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: This is what is so beautiful about repentance If I'm just turning from one vice, I'm going to turn to another vice.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: Unless my back is on him, all vices are left behind.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Wow, I love that.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: And I think, to kind of summarize, because your question is like how do we embrace it?
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: And, first and foremost, I think often when we talk about repentance, we act as though that's the thing that we do when we become Christian.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: But what you're alluding to is Luther's quote when he says when our Lord and master, jesus Christ, said repent, he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance, and the reason why he meant that is because he recognized that there are all these little shadowy spaces in our heart.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: And then, ultimately, you know, we are justified through the blood of Christ, but then there's this work of sanctification.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: We are justified through the blood of Christ, but then there's this work of sanctification, and the work of sanctification is us becoming more and more like our Savior Jesus.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: And so why run to repentance?
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Because, man, when the Lord convicts you, ultimately what's happening in that moment is you're discovering an area of your heart in which is not Christ-like, and repentance leads you to a greater Christ-likeness.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: And what more do we want than to be like the ones we adore?
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: And who should we adore more than our Lord and Savior?
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Amen?
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: The whole thought is your zeal is provoked very many If you get with zealous Christians.
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: That's one thing I find about our academy.
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: I think how is it that people's lives have changed?
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: They come here and for two to three days they go witnessing and they say my life has changed.
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: And I think how did that happen?
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: And it comes back again and again.
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: I got with people of like mind and that's what stirred the fire and I know, if you can, I could yawn in the studio today and get you guys yawning If I did a good yawn and same with laughter If we started laughing.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Everyone joins in what are we laughing at, and so certain things are contagious and zeal is contagious.
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: It's like a fire.
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: So if you get along among zealous Christians, you'll find a stirred fire within your heart.
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: Even today, listening to what we're talking about can set a fire going in your heart, yeah, your heart.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Even today, listening to what we're talking about can set a fire going in your heart.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, amen.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Here's a definition I wrote of zeal.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Zeal is a burning passion to glorify God.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: It's fueled by the knowledge of His Word, empowered by His Spirit and manifested through wholehearted obedience that is motivated by a genuine love for the Lord and others, and often, I think, for the Lord and others.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: And often, I think, we get caught up in the thinking that zeal has to be always this, just like, ah, loud and intense, and I love this definition by Ralph Cudworth.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: He said let us take heed.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: We do not sometimes call that zeal for God and his gospel, which is nothing else but our own tempestuous and stormy passion.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: True zeal is a sweet, heavenly and gentle flame, so that's good.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: The body, true zeal, is a loving thing and makes us always active to edification and not to destruction, so that's good.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Ray, I'd love you to just to speak a word of encouragement to those listening right now that are saying you know, I am lukewarm, I am convicted, this is where I'm at.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Where do they begin to get out of that?
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: Well, zeal is the acceleration that comes from a high octane fuel of gratitude.
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: If you lack gratitude, you'll lack zeal, and gratitude for me comes solely from the cross.
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: It's from seeing what I deserve to what I actually got.
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: It's understanding, grace, god's mercy, the judge looking down and having pity on the criminal and extending mercy towards them, and so that's what continually feeds my zeal.
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: It gets rid of my fears, it gets my head turned from sin.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: Just look into that cross, the cross before me, the world behind me.
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: So that's the key.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Amen, mark, I'd love you to give a word too.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: Encourage people.
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: God has designed us to go through this life with other people, and if you do not welcome somebody to speak freely inside your life, you're probably lukewarm.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: If you have not had somebody correct you in the last couple weeks, you're probably lukewarm.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Why are you in a position where you don't allow people to speak inside your life?
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: Right, who was it that said be killing sin or sin will be killing you?
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: That's just the mentality that sin is knocking at the door, and it doesn't come necessarily in the picture of an adulterous woman who is wanting to do her thing.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: It comes with just a word that shouldn't have been spoken, a glance that just stayed a little too long.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: A tiny splinter, a tiny splinter, and if you don't nab that thing quickly, it's going to nab you slowly.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: Before you realize it, you are so far down in the ocean that you have no idea how to get back.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Wow, so good, Mark.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: You know, I think ultimately the greatest danger of spiritual lukewarmness is that Christ does not receive our all, and that should grieve us.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: You know, Scripture talks about walking in a manner worthy of the Lord, walking in a manner worthy of the gospel, and that language there gives the imagery of a scale where the object on one side is equal to what you put on the other side.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: The object is the calling, the object is the Lord, and then our lives and how we live should balance that out.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: That he gets what he's worthy of the fullness of our lives.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Why we are not our own.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: We were bought with a price.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Therefore, right we're to glorify God, he died for all that.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Those who live should live no longer for themselves but for him, who died for them and rose again.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: He paid the highest price ever paid for anything ever purchased in the history of the universe to make us his and man.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: That's tragic that he doesn't receive our all.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in to this week's highlights from the Living Waters podcast.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Friends, we value your time, so we've created a bite-sized version of our podcast for listeners who want to get equipped, without the jokes and fellowship.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Be sure to check out the full episode every Thursday where we dive deeper into the topic.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Until then, you can watch the full podcast episode available now on livingwaterstv.