Reclaim the Gospel

06/05/2026

May we all have this passion for church, “We don’t come to get out, We come to Worship Him”

Full sermon: https://youtu.be/Nr3eHP6Byhs?si=Lkeheu5PO73hb_Mn(T...

06/05/2026

Return to the Cross, Not the Mirror

There are few phrases more familiar in Christian language than the words born again. They appear on church signs, gospel tracts, bumper stickers, and countless evangelistic pamphlets. Most people have heard the expression. Many can even quote it. Yet for all its familiarity, few phrases are more misunderstood.

When Jesus spoke those words, He was not speaking to a pagan idol worshiper, a notorious criminal, or an outspoken atheist. He was speaking to one of the most religious men in Israel. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He knew the Scriptures. He knew the traditions of the fathers. He was respected, educated, and sincere. If anyone appeared qualified to enter the kingdom of God on the basis of religious achievement, it was Nicodemus. Yet Jesus looked at this respected teacher of Israel and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

Imagine the shock of hearing those words, Nicodemus expected instruction. Jesus gave him a verdict. He expected a lesson about righteousness. Jesus told him that everything he possessed by nature was insufficient. He expected a discussion about what he must do. Jesus spoke instead about what God must do. The problem was not that Nicodemus needed more information. The problem was that Nicodemus needed a new heart.

That is the great truth behind the doctrine of regeneration. The Bible teaches that humanity’s problem is far deeper than ignorance. We are not merely uninformed people who need better education. We are not merely misguided people who need better direction. We are fallen people whose hearts have been corrupted by sin, people who are by nature hostile toward the God we were made to love, people who cannot by any act of will, any accumulation of knowledge, any consistency of religious practice, produce in ourselves what only God can give.

Scripture describes the natural heart as spiritually dead, hostile toward God, and unable to submit to Him. The prophet Ezekiel described it as a heart of stone. A stone cannot feel. It cannot respond. It cannot love. It cannot suddenly decide to become flesh through an act of determination. That is why God promised through the prophet, “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 11:19).

Notice who performs the action. God does not ask sinners to replace their own hearts. He does not command stone to become flesh through willpower or religious effort. The Lord Himself performs the miracle. And He performs it entirely apart from any merit in the one receiving it.

This is what Jesus was teaching Nicodemus. When Nicodemus asked how such a thing could happen, Jesus pointed him to the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

Just as no one controls the wind, no sinner controls the new birth. Regeneration is not self-improvement. It is not turning over a new leaf. It is not becoming more moral or more consistent or more sincere. It is not making a religious decision that originates in human willpower. Regeneration is a supernatural act of God whereby the Holy Spirit gives spiritual life to those who were spiritually dead. The eyes that were once blind begin to see Christ. The ears that were once deaf begin to hear His voice. The heart that once loved sin begins to feel its ugliness. The Savior who once seemed distant or irrelevant suddenly becomes the only thing worth having.

This does not mean God creates robots. The miracle of regeneration is not that God drags unwilling people into His kingdom against their nature. The miracle is that He changes the nature itself. The rebel who once ran from Christ now runs to Him. The sinner who once loved darkness now longs for the light. The heart that once despised the cross now sees it as the only hope it has ever had. God does not force affections upon an unchanged heart. He gives a new heart with new affections, and then those affections move freely toward the One who gave them.

That is why repentance and faith always accompany the new birth. The regenerated sinner willingly turns from sin and willingly trusts in Christ because the Spirit has transformed what he loves. The turning is real. The faith is genuine. But neither the turning nor the faith is the cause of the new birth. They are the fruit of it.

This truth destroys every ground of human boasting. Nicodemus could not trust in his ancestry. His religious pedigree could not save him. His knowledge could not save him. His position could not save him. His decades of careful moral living could not save him. He needed the same thing every sinner needs, the same thing you need, the same thing I need. He needed to be born again.

The same is true today. Many people rest their hope in things that cannot save. Some trust in the fact that they were raised in a Christian home. Others trust in church attendance, baptism, membership, theological knowledge, or years of sincere religious activity. None of those things can give life to a dead heart. A person can sit in church for decades and still need regeneration. A person can know Christian vocabulary and still need regeneration. A person can carry a worn Bible and still need regeneration. Christianity is not inherited through bloodlines. It is not transferred through family tradition. It does not come through religious ceremony or moral effort or the sheer force of wanting it badly enough. It comes through the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit acts according to His own sovereign will.

There is a reason the veil tore from top to bottom. Matthew does not record it as an interesting detail tucked into the crucifixion account. It is not background scenery. It is a declaration from heaven. “And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51). For centuries that veil had stood as a witness to a painful reality. Beyond it was the Holy of Holies, the symbolic dwelling place of God among His covenant people. Beyond it was the place no ordinary Israelite could enter. Beyond it was the reminder that sinners do not casually walk into the presence of a holy God. Every sacrifice offered on Israel’s altars, every priest who ministered before the Lord, every drop of blood spilled under the old covenant testified to the same truth. Sin separates. Guilt separates. Man cannot bridge the gulf between himself and a holy God. Then Christ died.

The Lamb to whom every lamb had pointed finally arrived. The Priest to whom every priest had pointed finally appeared. The sacrifice to which every sacrifice had been directing God’s people was finally offered. At the very moment the Son of God yielded up His spirit, the veil was torn. Not from the bottom as if humanity had finally clawed its way into heaven. Not from the middle as if God and man had somehow met halfway. It was torn from the top. God tore it. God opened the way. God declared that the sacrifice had been accepted. God announced that what centuries of sacrifices could never accomplish had finally been accomplished by His Son, once, completely, and forever.

Jesus cried from the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30). That word in the original language was written across paid receipts in the ancient world. It meant the debt was settled. Not partially settled. Not conditionally settled pending future performance. Settled. The work was done, the price was paid, and nothing remained to be added to it. No further sacrifice was needed. No further merit could be contributed. The righteousness of Christ had been secured, and the punishment for sin had been absorbed, and the door that sin had sealed shut had been torn open from heaven downward.

That matters because Christians have a tendency to rebuild torn veils. We confess that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. We affirm that Christ’s work is sufficient. We preach justification by faith. Yet when doubt comes, when temptation lingers, when we fall into sin yet again, when our hearts grow cold or our prayers feel mechanical and hollow, we begin looking for assurance in ourselves. We examine our consistency. We evaluate our obedience. We measure our growth. We inspect our feelings. We search for evidence that God still loves us, and before long our eyes have drifted from Christ to ourselves, and we are standing before a veil we have rebuilt with our own hands, measuring whether we are faithful enough to deserve entry.

That is exactly backwards. And it is a misery that no believer needs to carry. The Holy Spirit wields the law like a scalpel in those moments. It is not lying to you when it tells you that your record is insufficient. It is not wrong when it points at your inconsistency and your wandering and your cold prayers and says this is not what righteousness looks like. Every accusation the law brings against you in those dark moments is accurate. The law has never overstated the case. You are not more righteous than it says you are, and no amount of effort or resolve will satisfy what it demands. That is precisely why you need something the law cannot give you and cannot be. The law is not only an accuser. In the hands of God it also restrains, orders, and holds the world together so that the gospel has somewhere to land, a world still standing, still governed, still populated with image-bearers who have not yet destroyed one another entirely because God in His common grace has not yet let them. But even that restraining mercy is not salvation. It is the mercy that keeps the patient alive long enough to hear the cure.“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). Notice where Paul anchors peace, not in sanctification, not in performance, not in spiritual maturity, emotional consistency or the current state of your prayer life. He anchors it in justification. The verdict has already been rendered. The Judge has already spoken. The debt has already been paid. The righteousness of Christ has already been credited to everyone who believes. Justification is not a process unfolding over a lifetime. It is a declaration issued by God Himself on the basis of Christ’s finished work, and it does not fluctuate with your feelings or your faithfulness.

This is the difference between justification and sanctification, and it matters enormously for how you live. Sanctification is real. Holiness matters. The Spirit who gives life also transforms the life He gives, and every genuine believer is being conformed to the image of Christ across the years. But sanctification is an ongoing process. It has good seasons and difficult ones. It has victories and setbacks. It is not yet complete. Which means if you rest your assurance on your sanctification, your assurance will rise and fall every time your sanctification does, and you will spend your Christian life measuring yourself rather than resting in Christ.

Justification is different, it is not ongoing, it is finished. It was declared over you the moment God claimed you as His own, and it has not changed since, and it will not change. You are not more justified on your best day than you are on your worst. You are not less justified when you stumble than you were the moment you first believed. The verdict does not move because the One who rendered it does not change.

That is where your assurance lives. Not in how you feel this morning, in how faithfully you have been reading Scripture this month, in whether your prayers have felt alive or dry or somewhere in between. Your assurance lives in the reality that Christ has claimed you as His own. He has united you to Himself. He has forgiven your sins, clothed you in His righteousness, adopted you into the family of God and spoken a verdict over you that no accusation can reverse and no season of struggle can undo.

There is an old Lutheran saying, but all Christians should when in doubt remember their baptism. Not because the water accomplishes what only the Spirit has already accomplished. The believer who goes into that water is already justified, already regenerated, already declared righteous by God before a drop touches them. Baptism, like every means of grace, is God’s hand reaching down rather than man’s hand reaching up. God does something real in baptism. He brings Word, Spirit, and water together and gives the already-justified soul its first feeding, its first taste of sanctifying grace, marking and sealing a life He has already claimed, speaking publicly, visibly, covenantally into that life and saying not merely this one is mine but pouring His confirming grace into the soul He is naming. When doubt rises, when sin feels heavy, when you cannot seem to feel the reality of what you confess, you do not return to your own record. You return to the claim God has already made on you. You return to the fact that He called you His before you had anything to offer Him, and His claim has not expired.

Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will sn**ch them out of my hand” (John 10:27–28). The security rests in His grip, not yours. The guarantee is His promise, not your performance. You are kept not because you are holding tightly enough but because He is.

So when you stumble, as every believer does, you know where to go. You do not go inward. You do not inventory your faithfulness or search your feelings for enough spiritual sensation to feel safe again. You do not look to others to confirm what only Christ can declare. You go to Him. You go to the cross where your debt was paid in full. You go to the empty tomb where death was put to death. You go to the promises of a God who does not make claims He does not intend to keep.

Again and again you return to Christ, not to your record, not to your resolve, not to the best version of yourself that you are hoping to one day become. You return to the One who loved you before you could love in return, who claimed you when you were still wandering, who bore the weight of everything you have ever done or will ever do, and who will one day present you blameless before the throne of glory with great joy.

You are a child of God. He has said so. He has finished the work that makes it true. That is not a feeling to be chased. It is a fact to be believed. And no bad week, no season of doubt, no accumulation of failure, and no voice of accusation can change what the finished work of Jesus Christ has already declared over you.

The ground of your assurance has never been the strength of your grip on Christ. It has always been the strength of His grip on you.

Inspired by a theological conversation between Molinist Moose and Concordia Sea Panda

06/04/2026

Be in much prayer for Backwoods Baptist family

06/04/2026

The Road Home Begins with Repentance

One of the greatest dangers facing the church today is not outright atheism or open hostility to Christianity. Those enemies have always existed. The greater danger is a Christianity that still uses Christian language while quietly removing the very truths that make the gospel necessary. Increasingly, we are told that God’s love requires no repentance, that grace requires no surrender, that faith requires no turning from sin, and that salvation consists primarily of affirming people rather than transforming them. In many circles, the law of God is no longer viewed as the holy standard that exposes sin and drives sinners to Christ. Instead, sin itself is redefined, minimized, explained away, or denied altogether. Anything that confronts human behavior is quickly met with cries of “Judge not,” while passages about holiness, repentance, obedience, and God’s righteous judgment are ignored, softened, or reinterpreted.

The irony is that many who embrace this approach still speak often about grace, mercy, acceptance, and forgiveness. Yet grace only has meaning when there is guilt to forgive. Mercy only has meaning when there is judgment to escape. Forgiveness only has meaning when there is actual sin that must be forgiven. The law is not the enemy of the gospel. The law is what reveals our need for the gospel. As Paul writes, “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). The law is the mirror that shows us our condition. The gospel is the cure that heals it. Remove the mirror and the cure appears unnecessary. Silence the diagnosis and the remedy loses its urgency.

The result is a message that sounds compassionate but has no power to save. It offers acceptance without forgiveness, grace without holiness, faith without repentance, and a kingdom without a King who has the right to command His subjects. It promises peace while leaving people enslaved to the very sins Christ came to destroy. It speaks often of God’s love but rarely of His holiness, frequently of belonging but seldom of obedience, and much of Christ’s teaching about repentance is either softened, ignored, or explained away altogether. In the end, it does not produce freedom because it never honestly addresses the bo***ge. It does not lead sinners to the cross because it refuses to tell them why they need the cross in the first place.

When we open Scripture, we encounter something very different, John the Baptist preached repentance, Jesus preached repentance, Peter preached repentance, Paul preached repentance, the prophets called for repentance, the apostles called for repentance. The consistent testimony of Scripture is that sinners are not merely invited to admire Christ. They are called to turn to Him. The gospel is not just information to be believed. It is a summons from the King to leave the kingdom of darkness and enter the kingdom of His beloved Son.

Second Kings 25 ends in a place no one in Judah should have been surprised to reach, but everyone should have trembled to see. Jerusalem is broken, the temple is destroyed, the Royal line looks humiliated. The people of God are carried away into Babylon, and the land that once flowed with promise is left under judgment. This was not random tragedy, it was not simply the result of Babylonian power or military defeat. It was a covenant judgment. God had warned His people plainly that if they hardened themselves in idolatry, if they refused His voice, if they treated His mercy as something common and His law as something negotiable, exile would come. Deuteronomy 28 had already said it with terrifying clarity. The curses were never hidden in fine print, God had told them where rebellion would lead, and 2 Kings 25 shows us the bitter harvest of generations that would not turn back.

Even there, at the very bottom of the story, God leaves a light burning. The book does not end only with ruins, ashes, and chains. It ends with Jehoiachin, the captive king of Judah, being lifted out of prison in Babylon and given a place at the king’s table. “And every day of his life he dined regularly at the king’s table” (2 Kings 25:29). That small scene is easy to pass over, but it is not accidental. It is a whisper of mercy in the middle of judgment. It is God reminding His people that exile would not be the final word, because long before Judah ever fell, the Lord had already promised restoration. Deuteronomy 30 says that when the people returned to the Lord, He would gather them again, restore them, and bless them. Judgment was real, but the road home was still open, and that merciful road began with repentance.

Repentance is one of those words the church cannot afford to lose, soften, or assume. It sits at the doorway of the Christian life because it sits at the center of the message Jesus preached. Mark tells us, “Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’” (Mark 1:14–15). That was not a side note in His preaching. That was the summons of the King. The kingdom had come because the King had come, and the proper response to the arrival of the King was not casual interest, vague spirituality, or religious admiration. It was repentance and faith.

The Greek word often translated repentance is metanoia, and it carries the idea of a change of mind. Changing our mind about sin is certainly part of repentance, but it is not the whole of biblical repentance. It is not a shallow mental adjustment. It is not the kind of change where a man says, “I see that differently now,” and then keeps walking the same road, loving the same sin, hiding the same rebellion, and protecting the same idols. In Scripture, the mind and the life are never separated that cleanly. True repentance is a change of mind about sin, about self, about God, and about Christ that results in a change in the direction of life. It is when a sinner begins to see sin as God sees it. What once seemed desirable begins to appear destructive. What once seemed harmless begins to appear deadly. What once seemed normal begins to appear as rebellion against a holy God. Why? Because when God rescues a dead sinner, He does not merely give him new information. He gives him a new heart. The Holy Spirit takes up residence within him, opening his eyes to the ugliness of sin and the beauty of Christ. What he once loved, he now struggles against. What he once ignored, he now grieves over. What he once pursued, he now seeks to forsake. That does not mean he becomes perfect overnight, but it does mean he is no longer the same person he was before grace found him.

At the same time, repentance involves seeing Christ differently. The Savior who once seemed distant becomes precious. The cross becomes more than a religious symbol. It becomes the sinner's only hope and greatest treasure. The heart that once loved darkness begins to long for the light. The soul that once pursued sin for satisfaction begins to discover that Christ is better than the very things it once chased. Repentance is not merely turning from something. It is turning to Someone.

This is possible because salvation is far more than God giving new information. Earlier we saw that when God saves a sinner, He gives him a new heart. Scripture is not describing God creating a robot or forcing unwilling people into His kingdom. God changes the heart itself. He changes the desires, the affections, the loves, and the longings that govern a person's life. The sinner who once saw Christ as unnecessary begins to see Him as beautiful. The sinner who once loved his rebellion begins to see its ugliness. The sinner who once pursued the world for satisfaction begins to discover that what he was really searching for can only be found in Christ.

This is why repentance and faith happen together. The heart turns from sin because it has begun to see something better. It abandons broken cisterns because it has found living water. It lets go of idols because it has seen the glory of the Savior. God does not merely command the sinner to come. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, He opens blind eyes to see the beauty of Christ, and the renewed heart willingly runs toward the One it once ignored. The same grace that causes a man to hate his sin causes him to love the Savior who died for it.
This is why repentance is more than regret. Regret can feel terrible about consequences while still loving the sin that produced them. Judas regretted what he had done. Peter repented. One turned inward in despair. The other turned toward Christ in brokenness. Paul explains the difference when he writes, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). Godly grief does not merely feel bad. It turns. It comes into the light. It stops defending sin and starts seeking mercy. More than that, it begins to delight in the Christ whose mercy it seeks.

Saul left Jerusalem breathing threats and murder against the church. Then the risen Christ confronted him on the road to Damascus, and everything changed. Peter denied the Lord three times on the night of Christ’s betrayal, yet before the sun rose he was broken and weeping bitterly over his sin. The thief on the cross began the day mocking Jesus and ended it entrusting himself to the Savior. The people of Nineveh heard God’s warning and repented. The prodigal son began his return home the moment his heart turned toward his father.

The fruit of repentance unfolds over time, but repentance itself is not measured in months or years. It is the decisive turning of the heart from sin toward Christ. That is why Scripture consistently joins repentance and faith together. Jesus said, “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Paul summarized his ministry as declaring “both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21).

Saving faith and genuine repentance cannot be divorced from one another. They are not identical, but neither can exist without the other. Faith turns to Christ. Repentance turns from sin. They are two aspects of the same Spirit-wrought conversion. The sinner who comes to Christ comes with empty hands, bringing nothing to earn salvation, but he does not come while clinging to his rebellion. The same grace that opens his eyes to see the beauty of Christ also opens his eyes to see the ugliness of sin, and seeing both, he turns.

That must be said carefully, because repentance does not earn salvation. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. The blood of Jesus saves. The righteousness of Jesus saves. The finished work of Jesus saves. Repentance is not the price we pay to get mercy. It is the response of a heart awakened by mercy. No one turns from death unless grace has first come looking for him. No one leaves the far country unless the Father’s mercy is already drawing him home.

This is why repentance does not weaken the gospel. It protects it. A gospel without repentance does not magnify grace. It cheapens grace by pretending Christ came only to excuse sin rather than break its dominion. Grace does not leave a man chained and call him free. Grace does not leave a woman in darkness and call her rescued. Grace forgives, cleanses, restores, and transforms.

Paul captures this beautifully when he writes, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions” (Titus 2:11–12). That word renounce deserves to be recovered. It means to reject, abandon, disown, and turn away from something that once held your loyalty. The Christian does not renounce sin because he thinks his renouncing saves him. He renounces sin because Christ has saved him from the very master that once ruled him.

We have learned how to explain sin, manage sin, rename sin, excuse sin, soften sin, and hide sin behind personality, pain, culture, and circumstance. Some of those things may explain the shape of the struggle, but they cannot remove the call of Christ. The Lord does not call us to make peace with what He died to forgive and destroy. He calls us to bring it into the light, confess it honestly, and turn from it. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

This is where repentance becomes deeply personal. It is easy to talk about Judah’s exile, Israel’s idolatry, David’s sin, Peter’s denial, and the wickedness of the world around us. It is much harder to sit quietly before the Lord and ask where we have grown comfortable with our own rebellion. What sin have I learned to tolerate because I have stopped fighting it? What bitterness have I called discernment? What pride have I disguised as conviction? What fear of man have I excused as wisdom? What private affection has been quietly pulling my heart away from Christ while my mouth still says the right words?

The hope in all of this is that repentance is not a road away from joy. It is the road home. Satan always tells sinners that repentance means losing life, but he has been a liar from the beginning. Sin is what steals life. Sin is what exiles the soul. Sin is what leaves a person sitting among the ruins wondering how they got so far from peace. Repentance is not God dragging joy out of your hands. It is God opening your hands so they can receive something better than the poison you were clutching.

The story of Judah’s exile points beyond Judah. It points to the deeper exile of the human race in Adam. We were made for fellowship with God, but sin drove us from His presence. We are born not merely needing improvement but needing rescue, forgiveness, cleansing, and a new heart. The promise of restoration points beyond a return from Babylon to the greater restoration found in Christ. He is the true King who bore the curse His people deserved. He went outside the city under judgment so that exiles could be brought home. The cross is where the curse fell. The resurrection is where the new creation broke open. The road home exists because Christ walked into the darkness of judgment and emerged victorious with mercy in His hands.

So don’t treat repentance as a gloomy word. Treat it as an honest word, a necessary word, and a gracious word. The call to repent is not God standing coldly at a distance telling sinners to fix themselves. It is the King announcing that the kingdom has come, the debt has been paid, the door is open, and rebels may come home through Him. It is severe because sin is severe. It is tender because Christ is tender toward all who come to Him.

Today, don’t just ask if you understand repentance. Ask if you are repenting. Ask whether there is any sin you are protecting from the searching light of Christ. Ask whether your grief over sin is only regret over consequences or whether it is godly grief that turns toward God. Ask whether your profession of faith is joined to a real desire to follow the Savior who says, “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Then bring the whole mess to Him. Bring the sin, the shame, the weakness, the years of wandering, the excuses, the hidden things, and the weary heart. Bring it all to Christ. He does not save clean people who have managed to repair themselves. He saves sinners. He forgives sinners. He restores sinners. He brings exiles home.