Repentance is a change of mind. It's when you basically look at Christ and for the first time you say, "He is not what I thought He was."
See we've got too many people who are thinking, "Believe, believe, believe!" "Just believe, repent and believe." You don't even have a place to start talking about those things unless you've set forth the Christ with all of His signs, that point to Him, that's what His works were. "This is the Christ!" "This is the Christ!" That's what those miracles did.
You want to trust your life to Him? You want to turn from your sin follow Him? See that's why we have a world of people in the churches that say, "I'm trying to repent, I'm trying to believe." It's because nobody is showing them Christ. Ya, we talked very flippantly about, "Ya, ya, we know, Jesus died on the cross, He did that for your sins. You need to believe. You just need to believe." And all of the time John is saying.... Or Mark saying, "Their utterly astonished." "Their absolutely amazed." "They were thoroughly marveling." He is just emphatic and that's what Paul's doing. He's saying, "You want to talk about the mystery of godliness you want to talk about somebody being radically transformed in the church. Let me tell you! Great is this mystery." It has got everything to do with God coming as a man. And all these miracles. And God owning Him, and the Spirit of God coming upon Him. And the Spirit, through the Eternal Spirit, being offered and rising and ascending. There are angels in the mix of all of it too. Miracle after miracle and He ascended to heaven.
People believed on Him in the world? Believed on who? A dead Jew, a dead carpenter? Who couldn't seemingly do anything to Rome. They spit on Him. They stuck a crown on His head. They crucified Him. They scourged Him, and look at it, He died.
If you're going to champion the truth of faith and repentance in this world.
Oh, my brethren, if you're going to be a pillar and buttress of the truth, you remember the great mystery of godliness is the great mystery of Christ. And if you don't have Christ, you have nothing, you have nothing! You have nothing to believe in! And you have nothing to change men's minds with! Nothing. "Without Me you can do nothing!" Nothing.
We do this (Lord's Supper) in remembrance of Him.
If Jesus Christ is not the center of our message to the lost, then we have nothing that can change lost men’s minds. Yet upon hearing of Christ, God may graciously open their eyes to see such a glory in Jesus that makes a man change his mind and repent and believe.
View the full sermon, “Great is the Mystery of Godliness“.
