THINKING AGAIN Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. —Acts 3:19 Peter had preached to the crowd in the temple: Jesus Christ crucified, risen, ascended; Jesus Christ coming again; Jesus Christ the great Deliverer; the baptizer with the Holy Spirit; Jesus Christ who alone can refresh us and give us new life and health and vigor and strength. He had expounded all that, but still he had not finished, and we have not finished. God forbid that we should finish without looking at this subject that is left here for us to consider. Far too often we stop at the wrong point, we do not go all the way, but here it is. In the light of all this, said Peter, “Repent ye therefore …” Here is the focus of the whole sermon, and this is the point that pierces. This is an essential and a vital part of the preaching of the Gospel, and the first thing we must realize is that this message, this Gospel, is not something theoretical and academic. It is not just one of a number of views of life that you can take up and read about or listen to lectures or sermons concerning it and still remain in the position of a spectator. One can have an intellectual interest in various subjects—“Very good, very intriguing, very enjoyable.” But this is not like that; this is the most practical thing in the world. This is something that concerns life and living. This is a life and death matter. This emphasis was present, in exactly the same way, in the sermon Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, and it characterizes the whole of the New Testament teaching. It is a note of urgency: “Repent ye therefore …” Peter was urgent and insistent. He was not entertaining these people. He was not just out to deliver an address. He was not a kind of orator. Not at all! This man had been a fisherman, but suddenly he had been called and commissioned. He had been sent to do something, and he was alive. He was alert. He was insistent and urgent. He said, “Repent.” He pressed his message upon his listeners, and thereby he showed them that it was not just of general or theoretical interest. It is the most urgent and practical thing in the world. So he pleaded with the people. The apostle Peter preached like this because he was concerned about those people in Jerusalem, and he was anxious to produce a change in them. He had a great feeling of compassion for them. He told them, as we have already seen, that he knew that they, and their rulers, had acted in “ignorance.” He saw the condition they were in, and he was troubled about them. For their own souls’ sake he tried to make them see what he had to tell them, and he pleaded with them to listen and to do something about it. That was his whole object and purpose in preaching, and that is still the business of the Gospel; it is still the primary function and purpose of preaching. It is an evil day in the history of the church when men read essays from pulpits or when they are more interested in the form than in the content, in the externalities rather than in the living principle. Far too much attention is still being paid to things that are comparatively irrelevant. Peter stood up here, and he preached. He did not spend hours in a study polishing his phrases, thinking of clever illustrations; such a thing is repugnant to the New Testament Gospel. Here was a man who was alive and wanted other people to be alive. Here was a man who felt the burden of souls, and so he brought his whole great statement of the Gospel to this focus, to this point of application. And that should be the aim of all preaching. So now I want to put this point to you, and I want to put it first of all as a question. You have heard this Gospel—has it done anything to you? Has it had any effect at all upon you? “Ah,” you say, “I enjoy listening to preaching.” I am not asking you that. I am asking you, has your listening to the preaching affected you? Has it produced any change in you? That is what it is designed to do, and I do not hesitate to say that unless we can say that we are what we are because of this Gospel, we are not only not Christians, but we have never really heard the Gospel. We have listened, but we have not heard. There is a distinction between seeing and perceiving, and there is exactly the same difference between listening and really hearing. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matt. 11:15). That is it. Have we heard like that? Has this come to us in such a way that it has led to a result? So what is the intended result? What does this Gospel call upon us to do? And the answer is put here quite simply: First, “repent.” Obviously, to the apostle Peter this was a very important matter, and in his sermon on the day of Pentecost he said exactly the same thing. There he was, in the midst of his sermon, when suddenly we are told that those in the crowd were pricked in their hearts and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” And Peter’s answer was this: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:37–38). And here again, on the second occasion when he preached, Peter said, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted [turn] …” And he ended the sermon by making the same point, because it is so important: “Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.” Repent! Lloyd-Jones, D. M. (2000). Authentic Christianity (1st U.S. ed., Vol. 1, pp. 291–293). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 16:55:42 +0000
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