A blessed God has graciously blessed us with His truth. Let us give our hearts attention to it as we read from His blessed Word. 2 Corinthians chapter 7 beginning in verse 8. The Word of God. For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent.

For I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance. For ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold, this selfsame thing that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, Yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge.

In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter. Amen. Holy and righteous Father we stand before Thee as Thy people. We praise and thank Thee for all that Thou has done for us in Christ Jesus our Lord. We thank Thee for the faithful men who have come and brought the Word of God to us yesterday and today.

And I pray, O righteous and holy Father, that Thou wouldst help me now as I speak to Thy beloved children. They are thine. They are thy blood bought people and I pray that thou wouldst feed thy sheep. Help us to understand thy blessed word and may Christ be exalted. I ask it in His name, Amen.

The goal of church discipline is the glory of Jesus Christ through a congregation's restoration of a child of God or its removal of a rebel. The factor that makes the difference between one and the other is repentance. Repentance is necessary to conversion, essential to mortification, and indispensable to church discipline. Or to put it another way, without repentance, there can be no salvation, no sanctification, and no rehabilitation. Deep, transforming, abiding repentance is the work of God's grace through the Holy Spirit in the human soul.

And this spirit wrought repentance is the bedrock of every aspect of flourishing, living Christianity. Without repentance, there can be No biblical Christianity. It follows then that without repentance there can be no restorative church discipline. The issue is repentance. But what does this essential aspect of the Christian life look like?

If we are going to pursue church discipline to the glory of Christ, we must learn to discern true repentance. And in this sacred text, the Holy Spirit gives us a glimpse of authentic repentance. So our message is entitled, Understanding Repentance. We want to Consider the following things. 1.

Paul rejoiced in the Corinthian sorrow. 2. Paul distinguished between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. 3. Paul described the elements of Spirit-wrought repentance.

With that in mind, we pray that God in His mercy, through the power of His Spirit, will grant us great light, transform our hearts, and make our churches to glorify Him in this thing. Let's take up the first thought. Paul rejoiced in the Corinthians' sorrow. That is in verses 8 and 9a. Paul and the Corinthians had a stormy relationship.

The Corinthians had come to doubt the genuineness of Paul's apostleship. Therefore, they had begun to listen to false apostles. Get rid of the true. There is no other option. You will go to the false.

Paul knew that if they rejected him, they would be rejecting Christ. His was not one of many ministries that they could plug into. So he wrote them a tearful and severe letter. Titus, who delivered the letter, returned and gave Paul the good news. The Corinthians had read that letter and repented.

Now this is why Paul says in verse 8, For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent. Though I did repent. For I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry." Paul is not being contradictory here. He meant something like this, although the letter I wrote to you grieved you, I presently do not regret that. Though when I wrote it, I certainly regretted having to wound you." Now it is unclear what letter Paul refers to here, and he mentions it again in verse 13.

Wherefore, though I wrote unto you. Now, some believe that Paul is referring to a letter that no longer exists, and others believe that he was referring to 1 Corinthians. Either way, the letter had been a powerful corrective. In it, Paul had used strong, even severe language And it produced a great sorrow in the Corinthians in which Paul rejoiced. Well that raises a question.

Why did Paul rejoice in the Corinthians' sorrow? Was he a sadist? What normal person, what person in his right mind says, I rejoice that I made you sad. Paul explained, I rejoiced not that you were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance. He says, I want to be clear about this.

I'm not worked up about the fact that you just felt sorry. The point is that the sorrow led you down the path burning in my mind. The path of repentance. Paul was not happy with the Corinthians' sadness for sadness sake. He rejoiced because the Corinthians needed to repent.

The Corinthians needed to repent and his letters smote their hearts and brought them to a sorrow that changed their lives. That's what filled him with joy. Though it grieved Him to grieve them, God used that letter to produce the desired result. Ye sorrowed to repentance. Ye sorrowed to repentance.

Now this brings us to ask the obvious question, what is repentance? What is repentance? Modern Christians are deeply confused about repentance and it is one of the missing elements of today's preaching. We hear a great deal about believing, but we rarely hear a call to repentance. Repentance itself is much like church discipline.

Most people don't know what it is, and if they think they're doing it, they're often not doing it right. When we carefully study the words repent and repentance, we discover that they imply an element of sorrow and regret. There is an emotional aspect. But we're not to confuse the act itself with the attending emotions. The primary emphasis of the biblical writers is not the emotional aspect.

The emphasis in Scripture is a change of mind. Literally it's what the word means. Therefore, biblical repentance is a spirit wrought change of the human mind that leads to a change of human action. It is a spirit wrought change in the human mind that leads to a change of human action. Now the larger catechism helps us to understand this.

It is a very lengthy definition, but I trust that you will find it profitable. It's easy to find. It says, quote, repentance unto life is a saving grace wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Spirit and Word of God, whereby out of the sight and sense, not only of the danger but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins. Odious means hatefulness. And upon the apprehension of God's mercy in Christ to such as our penitent he so grieves for and hates his sins as that he turns from them all to God, purposing and endeavoring constantly to walk with him in all the ways of new obedience.

That's a very expanded version of the simple notion I've set before you. A change of mind that leads to a change of life. If what you call repentance does not lead to a change of life, to a change of that from which you repent. It's not repentance. And that's why we must not confuse it simply with the regret or the remorse.

Paul rejoiced because God had used his letter to pierce the heart of those Corinthians and to bring them to sorrow, a sorrow that led to a crucial change of mind. This change of mind led to a different attitude toward Paul, towards his teaching, and their way of living. If there's no change, there's no repentance. True enough, the Lord's people can struggle and there may be a period, a season, a time when we are repenting often over a particular sin. But that in itself points to a change of mind.

You're warring against that sin. You are crying out to God to mortify it, and that will come. So the Corinthians experienced a genuine change of mind that led to a change of their life and Paul rejoiced over that. That brings us to our second thought. Paul distinguished between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow.

Verses 9b-10. The apostle said, For ye were made sorry after a godly manner that ye might receive damage by us in nothing." In other words, Paul rejoiced that their sorrow was godly sorrow And godly sorrow would not damage them in any way. None of us likes the idea of sorrow. I don't imagine any of us get up on any particular day hoping and praying that we will be sad or that something will bring us into great grief. It's not something we rush to embrace as such, but this again is why Paul is rejoicing.

We are sinners. We need to change. Our lives need to change. The Corinthians, though believing on Christ, had cast off, at least at some level, Paul's genuine apostleship. And now they were listening to false teachers.

There was a bad attitude. There was bad and stormy relations. They needed to repent and by God's grace they did. They had this turn. It was all involved in this idea of godly sorrow.

And Paul could say this, Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of. Now how do you say something like that to Christians? And why? I mean, we're saved by grace, right? By grace alone, through faith alone, in the Lord Jesus Christ, why would we say something about repentance unto salvation?

Don't we already have it? Well, the reality set before us in scriptures that not everyone that names the name of Christ finishes the course. Not everyone that says he's a Christian is. And it is a life of repentance, among a number of other things, that gives evidence that we indeed are alive in Christ and are his people. It leads to, It is a path to salvation.

It is the path we walk until we finish the course. So Godly sorrow led them to true repentance that would lead them on to the consummation, the fullness of their salvation, and they would surely not regret that sorrow because of that. So what then is godly sorrow? The words godly sorrow are literally the according to God sorrow. The according to God sorrow.

That is, it's a sorrow of a manner agreeable to the mind and will of God. In other words, when the Holy Spirit takes the sword of God's word and cuts deeply into the heart of one of God's elect. It is because God loves that blood-bought child and he's going to bring him or her to think differently. He's going to be different in his thoughts, different in his words, different in his deeds. A child of God sees and despises sin because it is Sin, because it is foul, because it is loathsome, because it is rebellion against a holy God.

Sin grieves a true Christian, humbles him, and turns him to Christ. Or, excuse me, it turns him by faith back to Christ. Spirit wrought godly sorrow will drive him to confess his sin to Christ, to change his mind, to change his way of living. Until you see the horror of your sin as God presents it to you by His Word, you will have no real sense of the need of a saving Christ. And even as a believer unless you see something of the nastiness of your attitude toward your wife or your husband or your children or the people you work with or the things you're doing when nobody's looking, you will not cry out to Christ you will not change your mind and look to him.

This is godly sorrow one that arises from God's work we're not always aware that that's what's happening, but we see our sin for what it is and it drives us on to our Lord and to our Savior. It is according to God. What is worldly sorrow? Paul says that the sorrow of the world worketh death. What does he mean by this?

Worldly sorrow is nothing but selfish, self-centered, self-motivated, self-inflicted sorrow. It is similar to godly sorrow but with an eternal difference. God works Godly sorrow, the flesh works worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow is real, and I can't emphasize this enough. Worldly sorrow is real, and those gripped by it often weep, moan, and groan, because their sins make them miserable, because their sins make others miserable, because their pride is wounded, or because their shame, their or because their shame, their disgrace, and their guilt are unbearable.

Their eyes overflow, often with rivers of tears. They're sorry for what they've done, and they will tell you that. They fear God's damnation, but they have no abiding desire to be holy. They want to be out from under. They want to be released from the misery of their sins.

But they are not concerned that sin itself is an offense to God. The sorrow of the world is self-centered. It may involve self-loathing, but it is only rooted in one's misery. If you dig down deeply enough, you will usually find that that is exactly the case. It's not from a sense of God's holiness.

It is not from a sense that God in his astonishing righteousness, purity, holiness, is utterly offended and rightfully angry over sin. Consider Esau, that afterward when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected. For he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. Consider Judas, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself. The idea here is that he was filled with regret.

He was filled, he was overflowing with remorse. He knew without a question that he'd done something wrong. But it was to no avail. His godly sorrow drove him to take his own life, not to the Savior. It was worldly sorrow, not godly sorrow.

Every person with a heart like Esau cries, Look at the mess I've made! Look at the grief that I've caused others. Look at the grief I've caused myself. I'm so ashamed. I feel so guilty.

Look at what I've lost. Look at the consequences that this will bring. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

And they usually really mean it. But that's not repentance. It's not godly sorrow. It's a worldly sorrow. It's a feeling that evaporates.

It is real, but it's not from God. It is real, but it does not change their life. It is real but it leads to judgment and eternal hell. Godly sorrow leads to repentance and eternal life. Worldly sorrow leads to eternal death.

And of course, there is a great challenge here, and that is discerning between godly and worldly sorrow. That's not always easy for elders or a church to determine. It doesn't come with a one, two, three how-to book? More about that in a moment. Let's consider then number three, that Paul described the elements of spirit-wrought repentance.

The Word of God teaches that when the Holy Spirit converts a sinner to Jesus Christ, two things are always present. Repentance and faith. These are inseparable in the converted man or woman. In fact, the apostle Paul described his ministry as testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith and repentance are not only inseparable, but both will continue in the life of God's children.

It isn't simply that we believed. It isn't simply that we repented at one time, but it's that we continue to believe, that we continue to repent. These are identifiable and distinguishing marks in regenerate souls, because it is indeed the life of God in the soul of man. He's constantly going to be driving us toward the goal. Well, what is that?

Well, whom God did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son who is holy and pure and righteous. There is that within us that sees and understands sin, begins to recoil from it so that We might walk toward that which is righteous, to embrace it, to live it the best we can. And the best we can is always by faith in Jesus Christ and repenting of those sins whenever they rear their heads. Now that's where we're pretty weak. Sometimes sin raises up its head and we start up a conversation.

It's not a good idea, but it's far too human. So, What then does this repentance of which we are speaking, this repentance that's always joined to faith, what does it look like? What does it look like? Well thankfully the Lord gives us two wonderful passages in Scripture which help us to see along with many others but two especially and we only have time to look at the one we are presently engaged with. We can examine our repentance by the seven things that Paul lists in verse 11.

The other passage I'm referring to, of course, is Psalm 51. Not these seven things that he lists were the Corinthians expression of repentance to salvation. When he said, you sorrowed after a godly sort. This is what it looks like. This is what that sorrow began to work its way out to be.

Paul said, For behold this self same thing, this very thing ye sorrowed after a godly sort. What carefulness it wrought in you. The word carefulness is first. It means earnestness in accomplishing, promoting, or striving after anything. The primary idea being earnest, eager, diligent.

Carefulness in this context then means an earnest and eager commitment to get things right. The Corinthians had not taken their sin against Paul seriously until that letter came and the Spirit of God moved in their souls and something happened. They got very careful. In other words, they became very earnest about changing their attitudes. They became very earnest about getting things right with Paul.

Not only did they want to get things right, they were eager, let's do it, let's do it as soon as possible. When it comes to church discipline, is the person being disciplined eager, chomping at the bit, to get right with everyone touched by his sin. Number two, clearing of yourselves, Paul says. The idea here once again is associated with eagerness. It's an eagerness to clear yourself.

The Corinthians had heard the voice of God in the letter of Paul and instead of continuing in their sin they wanted to set the record straight and to clear their name as Christians which they had tarnished. They wanted to clear the name of Christ at all costs from the stain of their sin. They realized that they had spoken wickedly and developed sinful attitudes toward the one who loved them. They not only wanted to get that right, they wanted to clear the record. We were wrong and we want Christ's name lifted up.

When we sin, we take that holy name and drag it through the filth of our rebellions. We want His name cleared. And because we wear his name, we want to clear our Christian lives. As we heard yesterday, Our sin takes the name of Christ in vain. There ought to be something about us that wants that cleared up.

Everyone, Christ is glorious. I am sinful. That's the way it is. I failed. And now I want to live like a Christian and clear that up.

Thirdly, indignation. This state, or this is a state of strong opposition and displeasure against someone or something judged to be wrong. In other words, It is an anger that arises within because of the way we're viewing something. Indignation. Apparently someone had made an attack upon the apostles' character and the Corinthians did not defend their father in the faith.

I was once sitting with a family that had grown discontent and disaffected in our congregation. It was heart-rending as those things always are. Those of you that are pastors, don't you hate that when you see someone getting cold and distant? I just hate that. But we're sitting at a table with a family that we were hoping to rekindle and I was hearing the list and litanies of my failures, and that was fine.

I was willing to hear all of that, and honestly, I didn't, but I was thinking when they finished their list to say, it's much worse than that. But then they brought up my wife, and something stood up in me instantly. And with what I heard, I said, with all the gentleness I could muster, I hope that by what you just said, you are not intimating my wife in this and that. There was real indignation in my heart. It was an anger that arose because there was wrongdoing, not just because she's my wife, but because there were things being implied that were absolutely wrong.

Well, the Corinthians had not only begun to believe those kind of things about Paul, they were spreading it. They were talking. They had a bad attitude toward the apostle. He says to them, the more I love you, the less I'm loved. But when repentance comes to the heart, there's an indignation.

You understand what you've done. And you're not mad at everybody else. You're angry because you see the filthiness of your sin. When brought face to face with their failure, the Corinthians saw the sinfulness of the one who had attacked Paul. They finally got it right.

And even worse, they saw their failure in having not done what was right. There was a genuine indignation about their sin, not, aw, I messed up, but that they realized that before God they had done something that was deeply displeasing to him and there was no one to blame but themselves. They saw that their sin grieved God, they saw that their sin hurt Paul, and a holy anger arose deep within their own bosoms, displeasure within themselves, displeasure that they had let someone sin against Paul without dealing with it, displeasure with their sin before a holy God. Pastors, do you see anything like that in those that say they're repenting? Is there any indignation about their sin?

When they start talking about other people and blaming other people, their heart's not in the right place yet, even when other people are actually involved. Listen, when the Holy Spirit's dealing with you, there's only one center that your mind focuses on, and that's the one you see in the mirror. Indignation. Well, number four is fear, and this means alarm, fright. The weight of Paul's words and the sight of their sins brought the Corinthians to a state of severe distress aroused by an intense concern for an approaching pain and judgment.

Let's not forget that in 1st Corinthians Paul has told them many among you are sick many are dead because of the way you're coming to the Lord's Supper. Now if a few people here's deaths were completely tied to the way they were coming to the Lord's Supper, some of us might be a little concerned as we approach the next Lord's Supper. That's what we're talking about here. We're talking about, if I can just put it this way, I don't mean it irreverently, but it's like, I'm in trouble with God. My mother, excuse me, my wife's constant testimony about her father was that when she and her siblings were acting up, they said their father, all he had to do is he was sitting, he would just do this room got quiet.

They stopped talking, They stopped doing and their eyes were just on him. That's what we're talking about. It's like I understand. Wait a minute. I'm in the presence of supreme authority with sin.

Lord, I'm going to get still and I'm listening. Is there anything like that in the people that say they're repenting? They're concerned that they have grieved their God. See we've given so many people the love God for so long that we've imbalanced his identity. He is the God of love.

He is love. We don't want to diminish his love for a moment, but he is holy and he's not blinking at our sins. We ought to take our sins seriously. When he begins to rise up off of his throne we want to say, I'm listening. It's that kind of thing.

It's not crawling around on the floor in some kind of slavish fear, but it is a genuine and reverent alarm. I know that I've grieved God. I know that I have made his name the mockery of others. Do we find any kind of reverent fear in a person being disciplined? Or have they so bought to love God that it's like, well saved by grace, no reason to be concerned, right?

Well number five, vehement desire. This means yearning desire for longing. Excuse me, a yearning desire for. It is a longing. Yearning desire for longing.

In the recognition of their sin against Paul and against Christ, the Corinthians experienced a renewed love and affection for both. Because it appears they really were Christians. At least there were some real ones among them, and that letter brought them to their senses and their repentance looked like these things. Their lives changed. This isn't the way they were before, or at least if they were, it had begun to fade because of their foul attitudes and their sins.

I mean, Corinth, nobody that I know would want to apply for membership in the church at Corinth. I mean, we really don't understand what a mess they were. And yet Paul calls them a church. But he doesn't give up on them, and he continues to show them the love of Christ which includes sometimes severe language. Well this worked a vehement desire within them.

Now those of us that are parents have probably seen this acted out before us sometimes when we have a child and we have to discipline him or her and they throw their arms around your neck weeping. They know That they have divided the relationship. They may not know how to articulate it, but they know that they've done something wrong. They know that that smile that I like, those arms that hold me, stroke my face, the spanking I just received or whatever, in the child that's really connected to their parents, the first thing they do is they just hug them and they cleave to them. And his arms around my neck.

Sin breaks fellowship. The rod brings correction. And when lovingly applied, it produces restoration. Church discipline must be a lovingly applied rod in the hopes of fainant desire welling up in the heart of the corrected. Those who have new hearts by the Spirit of God usually, there are exceptions, understand the stroke that corrected them.

Not always the case. Very often the case. Number six is zeal. This is ardor marked by a sense of dedication. Zealous dedication to Paul, to Christ, to doing whatever is needed with fervor now fills the Corinthians.

What do we need to do to get this right? Their hearts were bubbling over. There was a zeal to get things right. We see this kind of thing in Zacchaeus, don't we? Zacchaeus stood and said unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I've taken anything from any man, by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.

And Jesus said unto him, this day is salvation. Come to this home. Why? Because this was a genuine zealous repentance, a change of mind that was leading to a change of life. It was bringing the life in conformity with God's righteous law, and it was working out restitution.

Let's get this thing right. I know of two rival businessmen once in Louisiana, both of them just as wicked as they could be. They would cut each other's throat at every business deal that they possibly could. They were on different sides of town and I happened to meet one of them and he told me the story. He was just a wicked and a vile man and the Lord gloriously saved him and as he began to grow in his understanding of the Lord of the paths of righteousness, this businessman on the other side of town kept coming to his mind, but not because he needed to beat him out of the next deal, because he knew he'd sinned against him for years, for years, and that uncomfortable feeling began to rise up in him.

I need to go and get right with this guy. He was scared to death. He thought as soon as he opened his mouth and told the man how filthy and wicked and ugly he'd been about him and to him, that the man would probably punch his lights out, but he couldn't stay in his desk. There was something in his soul. He wanted to get right with that man, And he went to him zealously, began to talk, and he said he couldn't keep eye contact with him.

His feet just kept falling to it. His eyes kept falling to his feet. He said his tears were falling like rain. And when he finished, he said it was quiet. And he looked up and the man's face was wet.

He said, I've been just as wicked. Is there any kind of zeal in the people that say they're repenting. I mean zeal to get right with those that they sinned against. Zeal. Paul said this about the Corinthians.

Man, there's a zeal about what you're doing. A zeal that is real, that is powerful. Zacchaeus is a beautiful biblical picture of that seal. Well, number seven is revenge. Now we might misread that in our day.

The authorized version translators were however using it in one of its senses, Not what that we usually use today. Paul is using a word that means penalty inflicted on wrongdoers. Having seen the loathsome, abhorrent character of their sin, the Corinthians obeyed Paul's command to change their behavior. Burning in their hearts now was a desire to see justice done. Now that their hearts were right they were actually ready to deal with those who had been sinning.

It would have been totally wrong for them to do so in their wicked state. It's sad to say I've known of situations where elders were called upon to have to do church discipline when privately they were sinning. That's not the time. That's not the time. There was a zeal, a zealous revenge, meaning a desire to see a penalty inflicted upon the wrongdoers.

Whatever the full nature of their offense was, the Corinthians were now ready to deal with those who had attacked Paul and to make everything right between themselves and Paul, between themselves and Christ, the head of the church. This points to an important matter of restitution, which we don't have time to develop. So that's another message for another Church Discipline conference. Now we want to make just a few applications. Because of the necessity of repentance, Christ's churches need to understand I'm sorry is not necessarily repentance.

Just to have someone standing before you crying rivers of tears and saying, I'm sorry, is not necessarily repentance. It could just as easily be worldly sorrow. True repentance includes that regret and remorse, but it is a change of mind that leads to an identifiable and observable change of life. Paul knew exactly what he was talking about here when he gave us these seven things. If we learn them, if we understand them, we can begin to discern whether we're dealing with a godly or a worldly sorrow.

May not be immediately, may take a good while. But we'll see it because when the change comes to the heart, the change will ultimately come to the life. Secondly, because of the necessity of repentance and restorative discipline, both elders and church members need to study and learn from the Bible and their own lives the difference between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. It isn't either or, it's both and. I would say any of the men here that have been pastors that are speaking have been speaking from their hearts because they've studied the Word of God, they've learned what it has to say in its doctrine about repentance and about discipline, but it's only as they've had to apply it to people and had to work through those situations, they've begun to understand not only the hearts of others, but their own hearts.

The Puritans were theologians of the heart. The reason they're so wonderful to read is because they took the Word of God, they immersed their hearts and souls in it, they communed with Christ, they communed with Christ in his glory, and as they saw themselves they took note and they catalogued and they wrote books and they became great physicians of the soul. They learned both from the scriptures and from their own lives to discern. You can read Edwards as he talks about the revival and time he could begin to see solid conversions and things that he knew were flighty, flaky. It doesn't come overnight.

It doesn't come in a seminar. It doesn't come with just a conference. It comes with a living. As I told Jason a while ago, Arthur Pink said that there are certain passages of Scripture that only the commentary of your life will explain. And so it is with this.

You can read all the books you want on church discipline, But when you get into it, you start finding out, oh, the Lord gave me something that doesn't fit in those examples. Pastors? Yeah. So we have to learn in the trenches. Worldly sorrow just wants the shame and disgrace to be over with.

I've repented, let's get on with it! You ever heard something like that? Godly sorrow submits to authority and does whatever is biblically necessary to get things right. Worldly sorrow remains in a defensive posture. Watch for it.

Worldly sorrow remains in a defensive posture. Godly sorrow openly and unqualifiedly accepts the responsibility for sin. I'm the one. It's me. Period.

Worldly sorrow often continues to blame others. It will say, oh yes, I have sinned, but him, her, they. Godly sorrow no longer blames anyone. Even when they know others are guilty, they know that they are the ones that are going to stand before God. And that's what grips their hearts.

We hear that godly sorrow in the voice of the publican who would not lift up so much his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner." He knew there were other sinners, but he knew he had to deal with God. Number three, in matters of church discipline, the burning issue at the heart of true repentance is to be right with God, not for the situation simply to be closed. Now we all want to be done with unpleasant things. There's nothing wrong with that, but the issue isn't just, is it over yet, is it over yet, is it over yet, the issue is, have I gotten right with God? Have we settled this?

Lord, am I just resting and trusting in you? We hear this in David's cry. Have mercy upon me, O God. Why is he saying that? He knows he sinned.

He's aware. There's something burning in his heart. According to thy loving kindness, I've learned some things about you. I know that your book says that you're kind and I know that you're loving, and I'm counting on that right now. According unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.

And that woman, " no, he didn't say that. He said, me, me. "'Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight." He knew he'd sinned against Bathsheba. He knew he'd sinned against Uriah.

But he also understood that everything involved in his sins against them and everyone else it included were against God. Is the person you're disciplining burning in his or her heart just to be right with God? And then are you able to pour in the blessed balm and oil of the gospel? They want to be right. Make sure they understand there's only one way.

It's not flagellating yourself. It's not beating yourself up. It's not thinking of as lowly of yourself as you possibly can. It is looking up to Christ and trusting Him alone. Now number four, we must remember this caution, and there is a caution here, not all repentance will have all these elements in the same measure.

That's a mistake. That's like looking for an elder and demanding such a rigorous perfection in each of the requirements of an elder, you can't find anybody. I know churches that have been just exactly that way, that Paul would never have measured up to their understanding of the requirements for an elder. And we've got to be careful here. Sometimes it's in our fallen flesh, even when we're attempting to do good, we want to just make sure somebody's flinching enough.

And we've got to leave that in God's hands. There's got to be a holy balance. It is vital that we understand this because of the very nature of sin in our flesh. Our expressions of the Lord's work within us are not all going to look the same. I know a church that for years, when you came to church, you had your Bible and you had your box of Kleenex.

And if you did not weep in the service, you did not have Holy Ghost conviction. You were not spiritual. You might not be saved. We can't have that kind of mindset with people. We can't say you haven't cried enough tears.

In our presence, they may not weep. But do we see flashes? Can we see identifiably these things beginning to work out in their hearts in what they're calling their repentance. This is why the Spirit has put them there. It's quite interesting the detail given us here when we don't know all that much about what it's ultimately about.

We've been given a list to look at, to learn, to examine in its context. But we don't have a knock-down, drag-out, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine ways of looking at it and impressing everyone to have the same response. Fifthly, Nothing, nothing is more calculated to move our souls to hate sin and to cleave to the God we have offended than to see His holy Son hoisted up in our place. We must understand that the spiritual pollution in our minds and God's just wrath against our law-breaking. True, true.

But in light of this we must have gospel grace we must see the glory and the beauty of Jesus Christ God's eternal son agreeing to be our sin-bearing substitute agreeing to be our prophet priest and king. The holy and darling Son of God come in the flesh, coming into this world to save his people from their sins. When we see his life, when we understand the gospel, when we know what he endured for our sin, our hearts are drawn to an evangelistic repentance. What brought the whips down upon his back? What pushed the crown of thorns into his head?

What drove the nails into his hands and into his feet? Why did the spear pierce his holy side? It was my sin, my sin, my hatefulness, my lies, my my lies, my immorality, my idolatry. If the gospel does not ultimately bring us to repentance, There is something wrong with us. And in church discipline we want to be very careful to constantly set the horror of sin and the glory of Christ before those with whom we deal.

So my brethren, with that in mind, repentance, repentance, repentance lies at the heart of restoration for the child of God. Elders and church members by careful study of the Scripture and by their own experience, must look for genuine repentance in the lives of those that are worthy of church discipline. They will not be perfect in their repentance, and every one of us that is born of God's Spirit knows that ours is not. But it is identifiable. And when we approach discipline, it should be both in love and in grace with a sense of God's majesty and righteousness and elders and church members need to remember Paul's other instructions.

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such in one in a spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted. May Christ help us to understand repentance. Amen. We thank Thee, Father, for Thy goodness. Help us to learn these things to the glory of Christ and to the health of Thy Church.

Amen.