>> All right everybody, we are going to be starting our -- >> So as a final call, those of you guys who are in the back, hanging out by the doors, please go ahead and start making your way to the seats. And again, those of you guys who are just, you know, getting your final drink and all that kind of stuff, let's go ahead and make our way over to our seats.

Thank you everybody. >> Good afternoon, church family. We will now begin our second session. If you would join me in a word of prayer as we start. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this retreat. Thank you that we are able to spend time together as a church, to connect with each other and to connect with you, Lord.

At this retreat and onward, may we strive to build up your church and love with eager hearts to fellowship with one another and spur each other on toward love and good deeds. Above all, let us seek you first, your kingdom and your righteousness, that our greatest desire would be to know and treasure Christ and to make him known.

May the praises that we sing now be a blessing to you, that our hearts would be encouraged to sing together the great truths about the gospel and that you may be glorified. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Let us all rise as we sing these praises. Wonderful, merciful savior.

>> Wonderful, merciful savior. Precious redeemer and friend. Who would have thought that a lamb could rescue the souls of men. Oh, you rescue the souls of men. Counselor, counselor, comforter, king. Spirit we long to embrace. You are from home when our lives fall. Endlessly blessed. Oh, we endlessly blessed.

You are the one. You are the one that we praise. You are the one we adore. You give the healing and grace. Our hearts always hunger. Oh, our hearts always hunger. >> Lift your voice. >> We're in our weakness. You find us. We're falling before your grace. Oh, we're falling before your grace.

You are the one that we praise. You are the one we adore. You give the healing and grace. Our hearts always hunger. Oh, our hearts always hunger. You are the one. You are the one that we praise. You are the one we adore. You give the healing and grace.

Our hearts always hunger. Oh, our hearts always hunger. Oh, our hearts always hunger. >> We won't fear. We won't fear the battle. We won't fear the battle. We won't walk the path. We won't walk by the side. You will go before us. You will lead the way. We have found a refuge only you can save.

Sing with joy. Sing with joy now. Our God is for us. The Father's love is a strong and mighty fortress. Raise your voice now. No love is greater. You can stand against us if our God is for us. Even when I stumble, even when I fall, even when I turn back, still your love is sure.

You will not abandon. You will not forsake. You will cheer me on. We're never ending. Sing with joy. Sing with joy now. Our God is for us. The Father's love is a strong and mighty fortress. Raise your voice now. No love is greater. You can stand against us if our God is for us.

Neither hide nor death. Neither hide nor death can separate us. Hell and death will not defeat us. He who gave his son to free us holds me in his love. Neither hide nor death can separate us. Hell and death will not defeat us. He who gave his son to free us holds me in his love.

Sing with joy now. Our God is for us. The Father's love is a strong and mighty fortress. Raise your voice now. No love is greater. You can stand against us if our God is for us. Sing with joy now. Our God is for us. The Father's love is a strong and mighty fortress.

Raise your voice now. No love is greater. You can stand against us if our God is for us. We were ruined. We were ruined in our sin. We were built to love and die. When your love reached out with soaring hands and beckoned us to come, you sought out the wanderers, made the prodigals come home.

The lavish feasts, you welcomed us, for you made us your own. You have loved. You have loved us like you love your son. We are heirs with Christ bought by his blood. Oh, how great the love that we've been shown. We're your children now. You made us your own.

We are strangers to the world, but no strangers to our friend. We draw near you now with confidence, for all our fears are gone. And when Christ our King returns, we'll be saints we've known. And forever we will be amazed that you made us your own. You have loved.

You have loved us like you love your son. We are heirs with Christ bought by his blood. Oh, how great the love that we've been shown. We're your children now. You made us your own. You have loved. You have loved us like you love your son. We are heirs with Christ bought by his blood.

Oh, how great the love that we've been shown. We're your children now. We're your children. We're your children now. One more time. We're your children now. You made us your own. Amen. You may be seated. Well, welcome. You came back. This is good. Well, it's good to see you.

Now, this is the hard session of the entire retreat because it's after lunch. All right? And I understand how that is, sugar levels and the whole thing. So, I'm going to do my very best, stopping short of standing on my head in the corner and spitting nickels. I'm going to do my very best to keep you awake and keep you going and focused on what's happening here.

Well, we want to turn to the issue of repentance. All right? Now, why is this so important? Why is this so important? because when you read books, secular books as well as many Christian books, this is a strangely, again, neglected topic when it comes to conflict reconciliation. And yet, reconciliation is critical here, but you can't get there without going through the territory of repentance.

You can't do that. It's impossible. There are no roads around this. There's no way to fly over it. You have to go straight through the process of repentance. And as I'm talking about this this afternoon, I want you to really focus on you, not the person you may have a conflict with.

I want you to focus on you. What are we talking about in reference to you? Now, one way I can probably illustrate this is by sharing with you a really quick story about how I got involved in biblical counseling. You've got to understand, I did not get involved in this willfully.

God dragged me into it kicking and screaming. Okay? He did. I went to seminary and graduated from seminary. I loved everything that I received in seminary, especially the biblical languages. I just ate those up and I got to a point where I loved Hebrew so much. I was a...

When I was a young boy, I was dyslexic. If you took a look at my third grade homework, I wrote everything perfectly backwards. And if you held it up to a mirror, you could read it. All right? And I think that's one of the reasons why I loved Hebrew.

It was natural for me to read that direction. All right? Just natural for me. And I just loved it. So I ended up teaching Hebrew. I added Hebrew lexicons and everything for publication. And I just loved doing those kind of things. So I graduated from seminary. And one of the things that I really wanted to do, my whole focus through seminary was to learn how to preach well.

All right? And I still think to this day, I'm a whole lot better preacher than I am a counselor. I have to really work at counseling. Okay? It takes a lot of work, a lot of effort. So I graduated from seminary, and there's probably no one on the planet more dangerous than a person straight out of seminary.

All right? Because they believe that they have the entire world figured out. They got everything together theologically. They've got it all nailed down. And I was one of those people. And I went on staff of a church, and eventually with the goal of actually planning a daughter church off of that particular church.

That was the goal. So I was all excited about it. But the senior pastor of the church required everybody on staff, secretaries, all staff, everybody on staff, to get biblical counseling training. Now, you understand, I just spent four years in college and four years in seminary. The last thing I wanted to do was go back into a classroom.

I really had a bad attitude about it. "Oh, my goodness, I have to do this." A good deal of my undergraduate work and even a lot of my seminary work was in the area of psychology. And especially in the seminary work was in the area of Christian psychology. That was the focus of the whole thing.

So in order to be on staff of this particular church, I had to jump through that hoop. And I had a real bad attitude. Made matters worse, this class I had to take was a three-hour drive away. It started at 9 o'clock in the morning, went all day long, and ended at 10 o'clock at night.

And it went on for 12 weeks, every Monday for 12 weeks. All right? So, you think your classes are long. My goodness, 12 weeks of intensive work. And I went, I remember the first day driving there on the freeway, grumbling, complaining, sinning all over the freeway. Okay? "Why am I doing this?

I don't understand why I'm doing this. I'm going to jump through this hoop and get through this type of thing." So I went, the class started at 9 o'clock. I sat in the very back, hunched down like this on my Bible notebook, hoping nobody will see me, and just going to endure the next 12 weeks.

Went through the class until about noontime, broke for lunch. After lunch, we were assigned to sit in on actual counseling. Myself, another pastor was assigned to sit in on a counseling that a good friend of mine, Dr. Bill Gooden, at that time, I didn't know Bill, but later on he became a really good friend of mine.

Bill really loved the Lord, and he was the counselor. And so I sat at one end of the desk, this other pastor sat at the other end of the desk, and Bill was at one end. He said, "You know, I've got people coming in that drove out of state, from out of state, to come and receive counseling here.

I don't even know why they're coming." He says, "But let's pray about it." So we prayed. Eventually, that couple showed up, and they came in, and this was an elderly couple, probably in their late 70s, early 80s. He was really well-dressed, three-piece suit on, tie, cuff links, the whole shoot and match.

She had a beautiful dress on, but I noticed none of them, neither of them looked us in the eye. They just acknowledged our existence. Bill had told us, "Now, you guys are in training. We don't want you to say anything. Just observe, unless I call on you." I was more than willing to do that.

All right? So I'm going to sit there and be a little fly on the wall. I could be a really good fly. So I'm going to sit there and just kind of observe what happens here. So Bill had prayer with them. After prayer, he said, "I understand you've driven from out of state.

You've come a long ways. Obviously, what's going on in your life is really, really important. Tell me why you are here." And there was this long silence. Very soon, the husband spoke up and he said, "I have a company that I own. I have about 600 people that work for me.

I have been the chairman of the board of our church for the last three decades. And this past week, I was arrested in a public park for flashing people." Now, they tell you in counseling, you're not supposed to look shocked at anything. But I'm sure that I look something like, "What is an almost 80-year-old guy doing in a public park in the middle of winter flashing people?" Did not make any sense to me whatsoever.

And I thought to myself at that particular point, "Hmm, this ought to be interesting. I want to see how Bill deals with this thing." And this elderly man went on to explain the fact that in their community, he and his wife and their family had been at the pinnacle of respect in their community.

And when all of this came to light, they went from the pinnacle of respect to being rejects overnight. Appeared on the front page of the paper, brought his name through the mud, brought his church's name through the mud, brought his company's name through the mud. All of this was just everything overnight.

Boom, instantly gone. His wife was devastated. She had no idea that this was something that her husband was participating in. No idea. So I'm sitting there thinking, "Hmm, this ought to be interesting." So I'm thinking to myself, "Okay, John, you just graduated from seminary. After all, you know everything.

How would you deal with this guy? Where would you go in Scripture to address this problem?" And the first thing that came to my mind was David dancing naked before God. I knew that that was not going to help things. It was going to make matters worse. Can't use that passage.

I started thumbing in the back of my English Bible for the word "flashing" just in case I had missed it. It's not there. So it's easy to conclude, "Wow, you know, the Bible really doesn't deal with this issue. We're going to have to reach out to other sources in order to address this particular issue." And then I saw Bill Good open his Bible and begin addressing that man's heart, much in a similar way that I talked about in our first session.

What are the central, commanding, dominating cravings that are idolatrous in your heart, and at the same time minister hope to that devastated wife? And it dawned on me at this particular time, "Wow, seminary taught me how to dispense the Bible, but it didn't teach me how to minister the Bible.

It taught me how to deliver truth, but didn't teach me how to minister where people are really hurting. Didn't teach me that. I had no clue. I had no clue. I could parse verbs and participles in the Hebrew and Greek language with the best of them, but that didn't mean I knew how to minister the Bible.

It didn't mean I knew that at all. I went home that night, three-hour drive home. I had to repent and ask God to forgive me. I thought I had everything figured out. I didn't have everything figured out. I got home and my wife had just gone to bed, and I woke her up.

She was kind of half asleep. And she rubbed her eyes and looked at me and squinted a little bit. And I knelt next to the bed and I said, "Sweetheart, I'm a lousy husband. I'm a lousy father. I'm a lousy pastor. Will you ever forgive me?" And she looked at me and she goes, "I don't know what this class is doing, but I like it." That was a turning point in my ministry.

True story. All of a sudden now, addressing serious problems strictly from a biblical point of view now become paradigm, a very important paradigm in my life. It became critical for my ministry. That was almost 45 years ago, right? Long time ago. And since then, I have never regretted for one nanosecond the direction that God took me in.

Never regretted it. I've seen God take the most horrible circumstances and turn them around for good with people who are murderers, with people who are sex abusers, with people who have serious, serious struggles with depression, with people who are fearful and plagued by what the world would call panic attacks, people that are overwhelmed with anxiety, people who have problems in their interpersonal relationships.

And I've seen God take them just simply and carefully ministering, not dispensing, ministering the Word of God to where people are coming from. This is where the change really takes place. Well, we want to talk about the issue of repentance. That's really critical at this point. So if you have your notes in front of you, there's a little comment that we make there, "Resolution of conflict involves a careful understanding and practice of repentance.

Repentance of sin is proved genuine when it's followed by a thorough repentance. Repentance involves a change of mind that is so complete that it leads to a change of life." God is clear. He does not desire mere peace. He desires complete and full reconciliation. When there's a conflict, there's an interpersonal conflict, this is what God desires.

The word repent basically means to turn or to change. And it's best illustrated by the picture of someone who is walking one way, does an about face and heads the opposite direction. When I was in the military, that's what we used to call it, to do an about face, go the opposite direction.

Repentance is a necessary component of genuine conversion. Luke chapter 3 verse 3, 2 Corinthians 7, 10, "Unsaved people must turn from sin, which is the status self-rule that they've lived in as their own Lord and Master." Romans chapter 10 verse 9, 1 John 3, 4. But repentance also remains continually necessary after conversion.

We see this in the life of David in Psalm 51. You can see this in Jesus' teaching in Luke 17 verses 3 through 4. "Saved persons must turn from sins, which are the specific symptoms of a lingering disease called the flesh." Now all true repentance has reference to a turning from the state or occurrence of a sin and turning to God for forgiveness and renewal.

Scripture often alludes to a false repentance that does not actually bring forgiveness. So we've got to understand some elements, some effects and examples of repentance in order to practice it ourselves and to help others do so as well. So let's talk about this for a moment. Let's talk about some of the elements of true repentance.

And the first thing that's really key here is that of comprehending. We must understand the truth relevant to our sin and our Savior before we can repent. The Greek word most often translated repentance is the term metanoeo, which denotes a change of mind. In fact, it's a compound word which actually means meta, which means after, and mind or noeo, which means mind, that would be the verbal form, or nous, which means mind, that would be the noun form of it.

So it means afterthought or hence change of mind about a particular attitude, a deed, or behavior, or words, or circumstances, real change in conflict reconciliation has to go through repentance. Now, the way that the word is used, if you just take a look at the etymology of the word, you're not going to get the full sense of it.

You've got to trace through the New Testament the way in which metanoeo is used. And when you trace it through, you find out that it means more than just a change of mind. Every time it's used, it's used within the context where there is a change of mind that is so complete that it leads to an entire change of life.

In other words, it's fundamental to changing everything within us. It is fundamental. It's way more than just saying, "Oh God, I'm sorry about this." Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say we're supposed to say we're sorry. It doesn't say that. What do you mean by that when you say you're sorry?

You just want to get rid of your guilt? The question is, what did you do that was wrong? And what do you need to do in order to make it right? And who do you need to make it right with? All sin involves a breaking of a relationship, first and foremost with God, but then secondly with the people around us, because sin always brings alienated relationships.

It always yields the fruit of alienated relationships, first with God, then with others. So if I'm truly repentant, I see what I've done, I comprehend it to be an awful sin that is really an attack upon the God that I say that I love and the God that I say that I serve, first and foremost, and then I have to understand how my sin has affected others around me.

How has it affected my wife? How has it affected my husband? How has it affected my children? How has it affected the people that I work with? How has it affected my friends at church? How has it affected all of my relationship? Because there is an effect there, even though at first you may not even perceive it.

Sin, there is always that lingering effect that's always going to be there. So the question is, how has it affected those relationships? I can't really deal with that interpersonal relationship until I see my own sin, I comprehend that it has been first a rebellion against God, and then it has affected my relationship with others.

I've got to see the vertical impact as well as the horizontal impact of my sin. I've got to see that. If there's going to be real change in interpersonal relationships, you've got to be able to see that on your personal level. You've got to be able to comprehend that.

What did you do or think or want that was wrong? What's guiding your desires? What is it that you're craving in the depths of your heart, as we talked about in our first session? What seems to dominate or rule your thoughts at that particular time? That's where you need to repent.

So you have to comprehend this. What is the idea that's here? There's a second element here. The second element has to do with confession. Now the twofold nature of inward confession is revealed in the meaning of the Greek word homo legao. It means to say the same thing. That's what it means, to say the same thing.

Homo means same, legao means to speak or to say, hence homo legao, to say the same thing. So when I confess my sin, listen to this, I say the same thing about it that God says. I acknowledge that that is a sin. The attitude that I have, the desire that I have, the craving that I have, the actions I have, the verbal way that I respond to other people, that's sinful.

Even the very disposition of my heart is sinful. It's like a husband and wife that gets into an argument in their morning before he leaves for work. She's upset, he's upset, he storms out the door, slams the door, jumps in the car, wheels the car around spinning real estate all over the place, jumps on the road, off onto the freeway weaving in and out of cars, thinking to himself, "I hope the children make her day miserable." What is that?

That's malice. That is malice. She's standing there in the kitchen, she's thinking to herself, "I hope he has a rotten day." "Everything goes wrong at work." Malice. What is that? A general wishing of ill will towards someone else. General wishing of ill will towards someone else. I remember when I was in high school, I sat next to a girl, no matter how hard I studied for that particular subject, she always got a better grade than I did.

I remember sitting there thinking, "Oh God, if you just let her flunk one exam." That's malice. That's just malice. That's wicked. That's just wicked maliceness. You wish bad on somebody else. That comes out of the heart, and it comes from what you want. You think that there is something there that's going to bring you happiness that you're receiving or you're not receiving, or that you're not receiving, and sometimes it's something that you wish we were receiving that would bring us happiness and we don't receive it.

And that causes maliceness, because you see that other person as an obstacle to getting what you really want. So you've got to be willing to say, "No, no, no, you know what? That is sin." You have to acknowledge to God the fact of your sin and agree with God about the nature of your sin.

That's really key. Let's go to an Old Testament passage real quickly. Let's go to Proverbs 28, verse 13. You're familiar with this passage, I'm sure. But I will frequently use a passage like this in counseling. "He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion." Proverbs 28, 13.

"He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper," God says. I will make sure that if you decide to hide your sin and not to confess it before me, I'm going to make sure your life will not prosper. But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. Wow, that's significant.

In fact, early on, let's go back to Psalm chapter 32. Look at this Psalm of David, Psalm 32. This is a masculine. That means it was a regular teaching song in the temple area. Regular teaching song in the temple area. This is what was regularly taught over and over and over again.

Psalm 32 says, "How blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed is the man whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silent about my sin," verse 3, "my body wasted away through my groanings all day long, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me.

My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer." Let me stop there just for a moment. You know, over the past 40 years, I've worked with a lot of people who struggle with depression. I'm absolutely convinced 60% of them, if not 70%, 60% of people who struggle with depression are really at the very core struggling with guilt.

Everybody that's struggling with guilt here. And notice how he describes himself. He says, "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer." That's describing somebody severely depressed because of guilt.

Nobody taught them how to deal with guilt. Verse 5, "I acknowledged my sin to you," there's the confession, "and my iniquity I did not hide," or actually that word "hide" is the word "cover" in Hebrew. "My iniquity I did not cover. I said I would confess my transgression to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin." Now, listen, I hope you're adding this up.

He's basically saying in verse 5, "What I uncover and become naked before God, God covers," verse 1, "with His forgiveness." See that? "What I uncover," in verse 5, "and become naked about before God, God covers with His forgiveness," verse 1. Look at verse 1 again. "How blessed is He whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." Now, by the way, we're going to come back to that when we talk about forgiveness because that becomes a really key verse.

All right? That becomes a really key verse for us. But right now, I just want you to see that when we decide to uncover ourselves before God, when we decide to confess our sins before God, when we become naked before Him, "Lord, here I am with all of my iniquity, with all of my sin, I'm revealing it all to You," then God covers with His forgiveness.

Wow. That's significant. So the idea is that we've got to be able to comprehend both vertically and horizontally how our sin has had its impact on our relationship to God and then how our sin has had an impact upon our relationship with others. We've got to be willing to confess our sins and repentance is, or I should say, confession is proved genuine through repentance.

So we need to follow it through. Now, let's go to 2 Corinthians chapter 7. 2 Corinthians chapter 7. Because there is a fake repentance. There is a fake sorrow. And in 2 Corinthians chapter 7 and verse 10, Paul contrasts worldly sorrow with godly sorrow. Worldly sorrow with godly sorrow.

And he starts with godly sorrow. He says, "For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance," here you are, "without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death." The sorrow of the world produces death. Now, godly repentance has a, or godly sorrow has a repentance without regret.

What does that mean? That means that when you turn away from your sin, you don't regret leaving it. What it means? When you turn away from your sin, you don't regret leaving it. Remember the story of Lot, Lot's wife? God had commanded Lot and his wife to leave Sodom and Gomorrah because they had become an LGBTQIA community.

That's the reason why he commanded them to leave. Get out of there. That place is headed for destruction. And by the way, when you leave, don't even look back. So they left. And even though Lot's wife, her body had left Sodom and Gomorrah, externally her actions said that she had left that, her heart was still back there.

How do you know? She's looking longingly over her shoulder back at her hometown, where that's where all of her friends were. That's where she raised her family. That's what she's known for most of her life. She's looking over her shoulder, regretting having to leave there. God turns her to a pillar of salt.

Why? Because her body had left, her body was doing the right thing, but her heart was still there. It still regretted leaving. Genuine repentance leaves no regret. It leaves no regret. When you leave your sin, you're happy that you're leaving your sin. That's how you know you're genuinely repentant.

I'm so happy to have this behind me. I don't want to go back to it ever again. Lord, help me. People leave and they say, "Oh yeah, I'm repentant." But their heart is still back in their sin. Too many times as a counselor I've had to deal with men who have cheated on their wives or wives who have cheated on their husbands.

They left their lovers. They're going to try to make their marriage work, but you can tell their heart's still back there. You can tell their heart's still back. They're not repentant. And by the way, first opportunity they think they can get away with it, they'll be back in that sin.

First opportunity, they'll be back in that sin. That's not genuine repentance. That's not godly sorrow. Godly sorrow leaves no regret. I don't regret leaving. I'm happy I left. Worldly sorrow, on the other hand, it's like Esau. Esau sold his birthright for porridge. Gave up his birthright, which was the Abrahamic covenant in essence.

He knew it. He understood it. But he gave it up for a momentary desire to eat food. He gave it all up for that particular purpose. And then he expresses sorrow over it later on. Not sorrow in the sense that he really wanted the Abrahamic covenant, he really wanted his birthright.

Not because he wanted to do the right thing. He was stuck. There's a worldly sorrow that's there. Judas evidenced worldly sorrow, right? Judas betrays Jesus, and then what happens to Judas? After he betrays, he's smitten in conscience over the fact that he has betrayed an innocent man so much so that he goes back to the temple, takes the 30 pieces of silver, throws them back in the temple, and he has a chance at that particular point to genuinely repent before God.

He could do that, but he doesn't. He goes out and commits suicide. That's worldly sorrow. That's not godly sorrow. Plenty examples in Scripture of worldly sorrow, but godly sorrow leaves no regrets, none whatsoever. It leads to salvation. It shows a true Christian, but the sorrow of this world produces all kinds of death.

If you're confessing your sins, you're calling that particular sin what God calls it. You're saying the same thing that God says about that sin. You're saying, "That attitude in my life, those actions, those words in my life are sinful and I know they are. I'm going to call it a sin.

And because it's repugnant to you, God, it's repugnant to me, and I'm leaving that behind. I'm confessing that." And then notice this, not only does repentance involve this comprehending and involves a confession, but it also involves a choosing. It always includes a willful resolve not to repeat the sin again.

A willful resolve not to repeat that sin again. You're not going to cover it up, as Proverbs 28, 13 says. You're asking for forgiveness, but you're not going to be like the person who says, "Well, you know what? I know that God will forgive me, but I'm going to go ahead and do it anyhow." Have you ever heard somebody say that?

You know, God's a big enough God. He can forgive me. It's not about the bigness of God. And by the way, the bigger you make Him, the bigger He can deal with you in judgment. I know God's going to forgive me, but I'm going to go through with the divorce anyhow.

It's like a man who robs a bank, gets caught, says he's sorry, but refuses to return the money. That is not repentance. Several years ago, probably many of you know the story of Bill Clinton, former president of the United States. I think he's a perfect example of this kind of wrong view of repentance and forgiveness and his actions with Monica Lewinsky, the affair that he has with her.

He goes on national television saying to everybody in America, "I'm sorry for what I was caught with," and at the exact same time where the president was saying he's sorry, his lawyers were trying to prove that he was innocent of what he was saying that he was sorry for.

That's the way a lot of people are. Lots of Christians are that way. They say they're sorry, but they're trying to convince everybody else that they're innocent of what they're saying they're sorry for. That's not repentance. There never was repentance. No, if you're going to repent, there's got to be a choice.

Take your Bible, let's go over to 2 Peter 2, verse 22. Great illustration that Peter gives us here. Look at this closely. 2 Peter 2, verse 22. Peter says, "It happened to them, according to the true proverb, a dog returns to its vomit and a sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire." Think about that for a moment.

Why does a dog, it's really gross, sorry about this, but why does a dog go back and eat its vomit? Why does a dog do that? Why does a pig wallow in the mire? You can take a pig, wash a pig, perfume a pig, put a big red bow around that pig, you let that pig go, guess what?

It's going to find the nearest mud puddle, hop right back in. Why does a dog eat its vomit? Why does a pig keep going back to the mud? Answer is, Peter says, it's the nature of a dog to eat vomit. It's the nature of a pig to wallow in the mud.

Now, follow me here. I don't want to lose you. What he's basically saying is this, in true repentance, real genuine repentance, it changes our nature. You see? We're no longer dogs. We're no longer pigs. We no longer eat vomit. We no longer jump back into the mud. It changes us fundamentally.

When I'm truly repentant, I am changed on a fundamental level. There's nothing left in me that's not changed. I willfully, gladly, willingly, excitedly, with zeal, want to leave my sin. I want to leave it behind. I don't want to ever go back to it. There has to be this choosing that I will not go back to this sin ever again.

There has to be that choosing. There has got to be a devout resolution. Now, that doesn't mean that a person can't sin in the future. Not saying that. But if they do, they'll be grieved over their sin, even if they do it again. Because as far as their will is concerned, they have decided they will never return to that sin anymore.

They're not going to go back to it. I'm not going to go back and say those mean things anymore. I'm not going to cultivate an attitude of bitterness and resentment and hatred towards that other person. I'm not going to be angry with them and cultivate a heart of anger towards them and allow that to flavor everything I do and see in that person's life.

I'm not going to do that. I realize that that's sinfulness, and I'm going to get away from that sinfulness. I'm not going back there. All right. Now that's the easy part of repentance. You ready for the hard part? Fasten your seatbelts and put your crash helmets on. You ready?

Let's go to the hard part, which has to do with the effects of repentance. How do we know that I've really repented of this idol in my heart, this idol that's guided me, that's directed me? How do I know that that's changed? Although repentance itself is an inward turning that takes place in a heart and in mind, it inevitably leads to change in other areas of a person's life.

If it's not accompanied or followed by such effects when they are appropriate, it's not real repentance, but a false one that fails to bring forgiveness. Let me highlight three things that are key that are a part of the effects of true repentance. Just a biblical theological summary of what it should be in terms of the effects.

The first one is this. There has to be a desire for restitution. There has to be a desire for restitution. The word means literally to set things right, to set things right. When I participate in restitution, I'm trying to set things right that were made wrong by my sin.

We need to fulfill any obligations we have to the party that we have offended. That's really significant to see. You can trace this through several different places in the Old and New Testament, but let's go back to a couple of them real quickly. Let's go to Exodus 22 and verse 1.

Notice what Moses writes here. "If man steals an ox or sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he should pay five oxen for the ox, four sheep for the sheep." What is this? This is restitution. That's restitution. Anything you've broken, stolen, taken, destroyed, used, that's restitution. When you take somebody else's wife that's not yours or husband and uses it for your own, uses them for your own personal, greedy, covetous, sexual desire, you're using someone else, restitution needs to be made.

Needs to be made. It's not true repentance unless there's restitution. Let's jump to the New Testament and look at this in Luke chapter 19 and verse…well, we don't have time to go through the whole thing, but you know this story. It's the conversion of Zacchaeus. And in verse 8, Luke chapter 19 and verse 8, Zacchaeus is truly saved.

Verse 8 says, "Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, 'Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.'" Notice what Jesus says about him. He says, "Today salvation has come to this house because he too is a son of Abraham.

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." It showed the genuineness of Zacchaeus' heart to do that. Zacchaeus was a tax collector, and back in ancient times, tax collectors would collect tax from Rome, and they had the right by law to collect additional taxes to support themselves.

It's just that most tax collectors took way beyond what they needed, and so tax collectors were filthy rich and had the power of Rome behind them, and they would bilk people out of money way beyond the normal taxes. And that's why the Jews hated him. Most of the people who were tax collectors were Jews, but they were Jews taking advantage of other Jews.

And so they were taking money, but to show Zacchaeus and the fact that he was genuinely converted and his heart was right before Christ, he says, "Half of everything I'll give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I'll give them back 400% what I took from them." That's a change of heart.

That's restitution. Back several years ago while I was pastoring back in Ohio, we had planted our church and it was growing, everything was going really, really well. There were a couple of young men in our church who were pretty sharp young men. They were entrepreneurial type, and they had this idea to start a business, and they went around to all the older men in the church and said, "Hey, what do you think about this?

We want to start this business. We want to get your input. Do you think this is a good idea?" And all the older men in the church who were businessmen thought, "Hey, this is a great idea. Yeah, looks like you got it all figured out. Go for it." The only problem is, and this is always true with young men, they had no money.

Lots of great ideas, no money. There was a widow in the church a couple of years before her husband had died, left her with a little bit of money. So these two young men went to the widow and said, "Listen, if you're willing to loan us six figures, we're going to launch this and we will pay you back with interest after we get this business launched." She was a really sweet gal.

She thought about it for a while and then she went and said, "Okay, I'm willing to loan you the money." She didn't have a real lot, but she loaned these two young men this money and they started their business and it started with gangbusters. They were making money hand over fist.

It was crazy money. But eight months after they started their business, the American economy crashed. They lost everything, including everything that they had earned. Nobody saw it coming. The older men in the church didn't see it coming. Nobody saw it coming. Lost it all. These two young men were crushed.

They went back to the lady in our church and they said to her, "We're so sorry. We had no idea this was going to happen to the economy. We've lost all the money. We don't have any money to pay you back. Will you forgive us?" She was a very sweet gal and she needed that money.

And she said, "Well, yeah, I'm willing to forgive you." The young men said, "We're so thankful. Thank you so much for forgiving us." And they're ready to walk away from this until their meddlesome pastor got involved. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up the train. No, no, no, no. I want to ask you guys, listen.

Does your word mean anything? "Well, yeah, pastor. I mean..." No, no, no. Does your word mean anything? What did you promise her? That we would pay her back? With what? With interest? So are you going to do that? "Well, we had no idea." No, I'm not asking you about what happened.

You promised her that. Does your word mean anything? I don't care if you have to get a job flipping hamburgers. I don't care. You need to pay her back. You need to make restitution for this. They had young families. You know what? They did. Took them five years. They paid her back with interest.

Now, those young men, their word is as good as gold. As good as gold. But they were ready to walk away from this. You say you're repentant? You say, then you make restitution. Genuine repentance means you're willing to make things right that your sin and your wrong, your promises that you were willing to break, made wrong.

That's restitution. Fasten your seatbelts, put your crash armaments on, number two. Real repentance also involves reconciliation. It also involves reconciliation. That's what we're talking about here in conflict reconciliation, right? When your sin has resulted in a broken relationship with another person, true repentance will cause you to do whatever you can to transform that conflict into a peaceful and edifying friendship.

It's not where you resolve the issue, the conflict, and then you walk away from it and never speak to that person ever again. No, no, no, no. That happens way too much in churches. That's why we're not for conflict resolution. We're for conflict reconciliation. When parents are dealing with a brother or sister or two brothers or two sisters, and they have a fight over a toy or whatever the case may be, parents will often step into that and say, "Now, stop that, stop that.

You go to your room and you go to your room. Before you go, you need to ask your brother or your sister for forgiveness." And then we do a terrible thing. We send them to their respective room. No, you shouldn't. Never should do that. You need to stick them in the smallest room in your house, closet if you will, and teach them to play together happily.

Really? Yes. God is after reconciliation, not mere resolving of a conflict. God is after reconciliation. That means putting that relationship back to where it was better than it was before. That's reconciliation. It's about bringing parties in conflict together because that is the very fabric of the unity of the body of Christ, not just in your church but around the world.

That's the very fabric. So the first thing is restitution. The second thing is reconciliation. And the third thing, tighten your seatbelt, is regret. The third thing is regret. You say, "Wait a minute. I thought you said in 2 Corinthians 7.10 that there is no regret." Yeah, you're right. There is no regret in leaving your sin, but there is regret in having done the sin in the first place.

Follow me? There's no regret in leaving your sin, but there is regret in having done the sin in the first place. True repentance may not always be accompanied by emotions, especially those that are visible to others, but in many cases a feeling of sorrow corroborates other evidences and points to a real change in thinking.

This becomes critical because if a person is truly repentant over their sin, they are crushed because of how wicked their sin is before a holy God. Let's go back to James 4. We started there at the beginning. Remember when we talked about the issue of the heart earlier in James 4 verses 1 through 3, we talked about that.

But then he goes back to repentance here and he says in verse 6, James 4.6, "But he gives a greater grace, therefore," it says, "God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble." The reason why people don't regret sinning is because of pride. That's the reason why they don't regret sinning, because of pride.

Verse 7 says, "Submit therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you because pride is at the very core of one of the tools that Satan uses in our life. Draw near to God," verse 8 says, "and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and your hearts, you double-minded." Notice how heart is equated with double-mindedness.

Then he says, here we go, here's true repentance, "Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourself in the presence of the Lord and he will exalt you. When is the last time," listen to this, "you wept over your sin?" Has that ever happened?

When was the last time you were so crushed, you wept over your sin? You mourned over it, even though you knew you were forgiven, even though you trusted the forgiveness of Christ? You regretted having done it in the first place. There's not going to be true reconciliation among believers until we are grieved over the sin that caused the conflict in the first place.

We have to regret whatever caused that conflict in the first place, regret whatever it is in our heart that caused it. That has to be there. Remember, a dog returns to its vomit, a sow returns to the mud. By the way, there in 2 Peter 2:22, he's actually quoting Proverbs 26:11 about the dog.

So we don't keep entertaining thoughts. In 1 Peter 1:13, Peter gives us a good exhortation. He says, "Gird your mind for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." That should be there. That doesn't mean that we're overtaken by our sinful sorrow.

That doesn't mean that we have to go to our room, curl up in a fetal position, and weep and weep for days and days and days. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about allowing sorrow and overwhelming, terrible emotions rule us. I'm not talking about that. Then you're not focusing on Christ's forgiveness.

But I'm talking about being genuinely grieved in your heart over having done the sin to begin with. That's what we're talking about. Two really good examples about this in Scripture. For one, you've got David in Psalm 51 where he talks about "against thee and thee only have I sinned and done what is evil." You're like, "I don't think that's a really good English translation of that because the Hebrew terminology for the word "against" can also be translated "before." I think that would actually be a better translation, "before thee and thee only," because David knows that he had sinned against Bathsheba, he knew against…he had sinned against her husband Uriah.

He knew that, not just against God, but before that he thought that this was a secret sin. He thought before God and God only he had sinned until Nathan the prophet brought it into public view. But it does serve to illustrate the fact that all of our sin is really a sin against God.

And then in 2 Corinthians chapter 7 verses 9 through 11, we looked at verse 10, he says, "I now rejoice not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance, for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God." So there was a genuine sorrow over what had been done according to the will of God.

Now, you understand at this particular point that if there's going to be genuine reconciliation, then you have to go through the territory of genuine repentance. You have to go through that. If you don't, and this is why very seldom, very seldom do Christians ever really truly reconcile. They kind of bring some kind of false peace between people, but they don't really reconcile because there is no willingness to set aside the pride at this particular point to genuinely repent and as a result of that just humble themselves before God and another person and seek to rebuild that relationship to where it was better than ever before, where it is completely and fully reconciled.

Now listen, at this particular point, I told you in this session, you had to put on your crash helmets and fasten your seat belts. I want you to bring your crash helmets and seat belts back to our next session along with a flak vest. All right? Are you ready?

Because our next session, which will be tomorrow, you're going to need every one of them in spades. Let's pray. Gracious Father, we thank You for Your goodness and Your grace towards us. Even while we were yet sinners, You died for us. You humbled us. And Father, we should be grieved over the relationships that we have ruined in our lives because of our own pride, our own unwillingness to genuinely repent.

I pray, Father, that You'll take us through the land of genuine repentance in order to get at reconciliation. This we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Let us all rise as we sing our closing praise. Now to see the dawn of the darkest day, Christ on the rooter calling. Trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, trampling, And torn His tomb Dead our race to lack Finished the victory cry This the power This the power of the cross Christ became Sent for us Took the blame For the wrath We stand forgiven at the cross O to see O to see my name Written in the wounds For through Your suffering I am free Death is crushed to death Life is mine to live Won through Your selfless love This the power Of the cross Son of God Slain for us What a life What a cost We stand forgiven at the cross This the power This the power of the cross Son of God Slain for us What a life What a cost We stand forgiven at the cross Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we want to take this moment as we sing that song to thank You, God, that You have brought us to repentance through Your mercy and grace and kindness. It leads us, Father God, to trust You with our entire lives. For we know, Lord, in the future there will come a time when You will cause every single man to submit themselves to You, but You will leave them in their hardened state.

So Lord, help us, having seen Your grace, to fully entrust ourselves to You, relinquishing all things. And, Lord, sometimes we feel the hardness of our flesh and our hearts resisting, resisting feeling as bad as we are, justifying ourselves and not willing to either acknowledge what You have said, to come to points of humility, but we pray, Lord, that Your Spirit would guide us to that end, for we know that God, truly the greatest, most blessed place to be is under Your grace.

Lord, we thank You, God, today it's in Christ and we pray, amen. Please take a seat. So at this time, what we're going to do is take what's called like a necessities break, aka PP break. Just we're going to try to start our Q&A session shortly after. So just bare necessities, if you guys need to go and do a run, please go ahead and do that.

But in about five minutes or so, we're going to start pulling people together and start the Q&A, which also means, A, you have a moment to submit more questions. I'm going to put my phone numbers on the Facebook group. We'll put it up on the screen as well. And then we'll meet back here.

I'm sorry, real fast, Jason, did you have an announcement? No, you're okay? All right. Everyone, we'll see everybody back in about five minutes.