Outline 7.

APPLICATION. -

1. The ungodly. - Awake, before hell awakes you. God will put on his strength. You cannot withstand him - naked you are before an all infinite power.

2. Mourners. - Christ your strength, righteousness, is very near. Put him on. See Jesus, naked, fainting, dying, rising, &c. The sword awoke the shepherd, &c.

OUTLINE 7.

“Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life,” Acts 11:18.

INTRODUCTION. - There are dreadful mistakes about the fundamentals. Few are converted. Few penitents: why?

I. What that repentance is, which is not unto life?

1. Repentance in words. “I have sinned.” Saul, 1 Samuel 15:24.

2. General, not particular; not every sin.

3. Particular, not universal; merely one sin.

4. Afraid of sin’s shame, pain, and punishment: not of sin itself

5. When any excuses are made; mouth stopped.

6. When in a fit of affliction only. Judas.

7. When no reform, or a partial one, follows.

8. When life, pardon, and the Spirit are not obtained. II. What is repentance unto life?

1. Abstaining from all known sin.

2. Practising all known duties. Cornelius, Acts 10.

3. Inquiring after the way and people of God.

4. Listening for life, till we are baptized with the Holy Ghost, and can magnify God.

5. Till we obtain life, a pardon, Christ, and the Spirit. This repentance is hearty, universal, particular, lasting, uniform, transforming.

III. By whom, and to whom it is granted.

1. By Jesus Christ, who is exalted to give it. It is not our gift. No repentance in Adam and Eve before the promise, Genesis 3:15. It is granted. It is a favour, not a judgment.

2. “To the Gentiles also.” Ignorant and wicked, excommunicated from Christ and the Gospel. Not to the Jews only.

APPLICATION. -

1. YOU who are openly impenitent, consider your state, sin, law, curse, God, death, judgment, hell. These is no repentance in death.

2. You that deceive yourselves with false repentance; O let God by this text convince you!

3. Seekers of true repentance. - Behold Jesus.

4. Penitents. - Magnify God, and bring forth fruits meet for repentance. OUTLINE 8.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:19.

INTRODUCTION. - Wound of the body and soul to be opened. I. What is the heart?

Soul, spirit, will, mind, affections, conscience, and memory. “Lest they understand with their heart,” &c, Isaiah 6:10. The heart and understanding opened in Lydia, Acts. Disciples to Emmaus, Luke 24:31, 32.

It denotes conscience, John 3:19, 21. “If our heart condemn us not,” &c.

It implies memory. - “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts,” Matthew II. Description of it.

It is in young and old; moral and immoral.

(1.) “Desperately wicked.”

Adam, conception, infancy, childhood, youth, age, old age.

1. The heart is blind.

Adam hid himself. A veil hides it. “From blindness of heart, good Lord deliver us!” “Not given a heart to perceive,” Deuteronomy 29:4.

2. Hard, stout.

Pharaoh, disobedience, unrelenting, insensible, stony, not flesh, Josiah: 2 Kings 22:19. “Rend your heart,” &c. “Contrite heart.”

3. Stupid.

Daniel 4:16. The heart of a beast, drowsy, sleepy. It has nothing to say to God and man. “Awake my heart,” says David. “Fat as brawn.”

4. Proud.

“Who is the Lord, that I should obey him?” Exodus. Who are the magistrates, ministers? It rises against superiors, against their word, reproof, rod.

5. Passionate.

Saul, Jonah. Full of hatred. Notice Ecclesiastes 10:13. Revengeful, envious, Hazael. Madness in their head.

6. Perjured.

Covenant breakers, false to God, man, self. Inconstant in spirituals, temporals, Peter.

7. Ungrateful, covetous, lustful.

8. Full of hatred to God.

Carnal mind. Lovers of the world. Haters of God, his ways, and people.

9. Full of unbelief to Christ.

Presumptuous, despairing, doubtful.

10. Full of resistance to the Holy Ghost. “My Spirit shall not always strive with man.”

(2.) “Deceitful above all things.”

Above the sea, the weather, the look, the tongue, the devil, deceitful.