Acts 2:38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Yesterday we said you must confess Christ is Lord and now we add to that requirement for rebirth the requirement for repentance. You already have a sense of repentance if you have parents who caught you doing something wrong. Parents have a way of shaming you for what you do wrong. They want you to acknowledge you did wrong and feel shame for the act.

Experience tells us that this repentance happens over and over again. We feel it every time we commit a sin of conscience. Even if you do not want to admit it, confess with your mouth, you feel it if your parents brought you up to feel regret. This is not that same repentance that Peter is speaking about.

Joel 2:13 And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.

Here once again it is within the heart, that broken and contrite heart where faith works, that repentance is seen as a turning from our evil deeds to a gracious and merciful God. This is not a turned mind, it is a turned heart. It is not a matter of conscience but rather a matter of character.

We led a life of choices which led to consequences for our actions. I was willful, I ran my life, I ruined my life. This repentance that Peter speaks about is a heart that changes from being willful to being willing.

Romans 12:1-2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

At the beginning of this new year I said my first effort would be to demonstrate how God communicates with His creation. We have come to a point in this discussion that is the hinge pin of communication. Without it everything falls apart. If you are not born again communication by faith is impossible. Without faith communion is impossible, so the process of this rebirth needs explaining.

Romans 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Time and time again I have heard it said, confess your sins and you will be saved. Not so, not in accordance with the Word given here. We must first confess Christ is Lord and believe in our hearts that He is the risen savior. On the surface this seems simple but all too often preachers and teachers do not go the extra mile to detail exactly what that means.

Deuteronomy 4:35 Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him.

The first denial within the religious community of His day was that God Himself would take on the form of man, that He would stoop so low as to become one of us. For the religious of the day to say that Jesus Christ was Lord would have been sacrilegious. Heresy would have been the word they used to describe such a claim.

There are hundreds of prophecies about the coming Christ, the Jewish Messiah. I cannot here quote them all and in truth you do not have to know them all to believe Jesus Christ is Lord He is God. Beyond that you will learn through studies of the tupos, or Christ types. Moses is the primary example of a tupos in how Christ would act, which is just as important as the prophecies.

That is just one step in the rebirth process.