Parkview Training Podcast

Hey, Parkview, grace to you and peace from God our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ. My name is Wade. I'm the pastor for college students here at Parkview, and we are continuing our series on the definition of a whole disciple. And let's remember what we've learned so far. A forgiven child of God who is taking the next step to learn Jesus, love Jesus and live Jesus. That is what a whole disciple is. And we are now in the second dimension of a whole disciple: love Jesus. And the second trait of loving Jesus is this someone who repents with a humble heart. That's what a whole disciple does, someone who repents with a humble heart. So here's the main point I want us to take away: because Jesus reveals to us the God of abundant mercy, we can grow as whole disciples who love Jesus by repenting with humble hearts. Because Jesus reveals to us the God of abundant mercy, we can grow as whole disciples who love Jesus by repenting with humble hearts. So where should we go in the Bible to inform and learn about this specific trait of a whole disciple? There are many passages in scripture that talk about the necessity of us as God's people to have ongoing repentance as a practice in our life. I think of when Jesus comes in Mark 1, he says, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel. At the very core of Christ and his message to the world is this repentance, a turning away from sin and a turning to Christ. But one passage in particular, I think highlights the nature and necessity of repentance. And its Psalm 51, maybe you are well informed about this psalm, but this psalm is the one that David sings to the Lord in confession after Nathan, the prophet confronts David about his sin with bash Sheba.
And so there are a handful of things that we learn from David's personal experience as he repents, as he confesses his sin to the Lord that disciple and informs us on how we ought to approach God in repentance. So a few themes to point out in this Psalm. First, David recognizes his sin as primarily against the Lord himself. Verse four, David says, against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Sin is an offensive slap in the face to our holy Creator and Lord. He has shown us the way we ought to live through his word, through his law, his instruction to us. And yet we have rebelled and turned away. We have not conformed our lives to what God has expressed to us in his word. I once heard it said that it is not so much the badness of sin that is our problem, but the greatness of the one who we sin against.
David knows this. And so we should also recognize that our sin, despite the consequences and harm it does horizontally to those around us. It is primarily a vertical offense against the Lord. And David recognizes this in Psalm 51. And then second, we see that David seeks a renewed joy from the Lord after his sin. And once he is confronted and he realizes his sin, verses 7, 8, 10, and 12 here are some lines from those verses, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness create in me a pure heart, oh God, renew a right spirit within me, restore to me the joy of your salvation. These are phrases, Parkview, that you can use in your own prayer life to the Lord. I mean, how many times ought we to be praying to the Lord each day create me a pure heart, O God. Renew in me the joy of my salvation?
These are beautiful prayers that the Lord has given to us in his word to renew us in our relationship with the Lord. Now our sin, remember, think this clearly. Our sin does not disconnect us from our relationship with God, but it does hinder our enjoyment of that relationship. So repentance then is God's grace to us. It's, it's a gift of God given to us through Christ by the Holy Spirit, to clear the air, so to speak, and to renew our joy in our relationship with the Lord who loves us. And David knew that. And so we too can learn that from Psalm 51. Third, David requests that the Lord bend his whole disastrous sin and his repentance toward making whole disciples. Now, Psalm 51 doesn't actually use the phrase whole disciples, but look, listen to verse 13 of Psalm 51. Once he's renewed and he's forgiven, David says, then, oh Lord, I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.
So David understands that the goal of repentance is not our own glory. It's not only for our own benefit in our relationship with God, though it is that it does benefit us in our relationship with God, but it's God's glory displayed and our now ability to teach and disciple others about the goodness of God and the need for holiness in their lives in the Lord. That's an that's an amazing thing there. There is God in his gracious purpose for us. He can even bend our sin for the sake of advancing his gospel purpose of making disciples for his glory. As David cries out, Lord, then I will teach sinners your way to know you and to love you. It's amazing. And then fourth, David clarifies the sort of person the Lord loves to forgive. Listen to this from verse 17 of Psalm 51, the sacrifices that please God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise the Lord does not hate or despise when repeat sinner offenders like us come to him for the seventh time that day asking for forgiveness.
When sin breaks our hearts, God's face lights up in forgiving us if we would just bring our sin, our mess, our offense to him. He does not despise that. He welcomes that. He rejoices in brokenhearted failures and sinners like us, bringing our failure in sin to him for forgiveness. He doesn't despise that Parkview. He receives and loves that when we come to him in that way. Now here's the question. How can you, I, you and I know for sure, how can we be confident the Lord does not despise us when we yet again in the midst of our sin fail God? How can we be confident that as we bring our sin to him for cleansing, for forgiveness, for renewal, that the Lord will not despise us? How can we be confident of that Parkview? Well look back at verse one of Psalm 51, the very beginning.
David cries out, have mercy on me, O God. According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. We can be confident that the Lord does not despise brokenhearted failures and sinners like us because as David said, he is the Lord of steadfast and abundant love and mercy. And how much more Parkview do we know this today in a way that David could never have known thousands and thousands of years ago what David knew about God of abundant mercy in black and white, sort of like a fuzzy hazy outline. You and I now see in 3D ultra 4K color in Jesus Christ, God has proven himself to be the Lord of steadfast love and abundant mercy through Jesus. And that's why we love Jesus as whole disciples. Look at Ephesians two verse four. But God being rich in mercy, abundant in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses and sin, he made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved. And then later on in the epistle of the Ephesians, Paul then will encourage and exhort the church then to repent, to put off their old ways of life apart from Christ and to put on the new life that they have in Christ. But it all starts here because God is rich in mercy and because God has great love for us. We have all the more reason to repent with the humble hearts because we know Christ and we love Christ. The one who reveals the Father to us. Listen to this, the great 19th century London evangelical pastor Charles Spurgeon. He said, this is amazing. If seven times a day we offend God and repent, does he forgive? Yes, that he does. This is so. This is to be unreservedly believed. And I do believe it. I believe that often as I sin, God is more ready to forgive me than I am ready to offend.
God is more ready to forgive me than I am ready to offend. Do you have the right thoughts of God? If so, then you know that he is a tender father willing to wipe the tear of repentance away and press his offending child to his bosom and kiss him with the kisses of his forgiving love. This is the God shown to us in Jesus Christ, and we who need to love Jesus by having a humbled, repentant heart. This is the God we must know and understand and apprehend and love. So what is repentance? As Spurgeon said it, it's a child who's brokenhearted over their sin that's so destructive, sin that's so offensive to such a holy, to such a good, to such a marvelous father, yet a child who's so broken that they bring their sin-broken, sin-shattered hearts to the father of tender mercy, abundant mercy who is more ready to forgive than we are even willing to be forgiven.
That's how astonishing and amazing the forgiveness of our Heavenly Father through Christ truly is. Parkview, if you and I know that God is like this, the God revealed to us in the Bible, the God of Psalm 51 of abundance, steadfast love and mercy, if we know this God, then we will become the very best and most frequent repenters in the world. You bet that you and I will be people of humble hearts who repent. So here's what this might look like. You realize that you've said something angry to a friend or a spouse or a child. Your conscience is bearing down on you. You know you've done wrong in that situation. What do you do? Well, you go back to Psalm 51, and I like how it's explained by theologian J.I. Packer. He says, there's five Rs of repentance. First, you recognize that you've dishonored God.
Second, you then express remorse that you've dishonored Christ in the way that you have spoken, and you hate that sin in the way that it, it dishonors Christ. But then third, you request God's forgiveness In Christ. You are humbly confident that the God you approach is not a bitter raging deity, but a loving, tender heavenly Father who's more ready to forgive you than you are to confess your sins. This is the gospel. And then fourth, you renunciate that particular sin. You say, no more. I no longer want to live this way. And then by the help of the Holy Spirit, you restore. That's the fifth R. Restore what needs to be restored in that relationship. You recognize the sin, you remorse over it. You request forgiveness and help to change. You renunciate that sin and then you make restoration where needed, where possible.
Here, here are the resources that I'll end with, okay? That will help you to grow in this area. If you want to grow in a heart of repentance, first thing I'd encourage you to do is just pray the Psalms of repentance. There are numerous Psalms in our Bible that teach us how to repent. Psalm 51 is one of them. Or you could read through and pray through Psalm 6 or Psalm 25 or Psalm 32 or Psalm 130. There's many others, but those are a handful that you could open up your Bible. When your conscience is bearing down on you and you realize you've done wrong, you could prayerfully think through and pray through those passages in an honest confession to the Lord and meet with the God of abundant mercy. Second thing I would encourage you to do is pray along with the great saints of the past. Normally those who have gone before us in church history have had a bigger vision of God's grace, a bigger vision of God's holiness and goodness, and therefore, a deeper understanding of just how sinful we are of how much we need ongoing repentance as Christians.
And the two resources I would encourage you to engage with is first the Valley of Vision. It's a gathering of prayers of faithful Christians from the 17th to 19th centuries and just amazing, beautiful poetic prayers. But the the theology and the way it teaches us and informs our minds and hearts about the Lord is so profound. I encourage you to work through that. The second one is this new book that just came out by a pastor in England called Tim Chester. It's called, called into his presence, and it's praying with the puritans. Puritans were Christians in the 16th and 17th century, primarily in England, and he just compiled a bunch of their prayers. There's a whole section on how to confess sin. It's just beautiful. So I'd encourage those two to you. If you are a Christian and you want to not only grow yourself, but help others grow in repentance, but also understanding God's grace in the Christian life and what that looks like in an ongoing way, the two best books that I'm aware of that are available to us today, number one is the book called Deeper by a pastor and theologian named Dane Ortlund.
This book is magnificent. He calls repentance and faith collapsing into Jesus Christ, collapsing in the arms of Christ. Beautiful picture. That's that's what we're doing every day collapsing into Christ. And then I think this is my most favorite book of all time about the Christian life. It's called Rediscovering Holiness. It's a little bit larger by J.I. Packer, who is a theologian 20th century. He died a few years ago, absolutely magnificent. So those might be helpful to you. But overall, Parkview, let's remember what we've learned because Jesus reels to us the God of abundant mercy. We can grow as whole disciples who love Jesus by repenting with a humble heart. May the Lord bless you and keep you.