(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Hello, everybody. It's me, Mr. Taltaway, through back in the video. In this video, I want to talk about the issue of turning back to God after you've backslidden or committed a sin or done something of that nature. A born-again Christian, one who is saved by putting their trust in Christ, will not lose their salvation upon sinning or making a mistake. Jesus promised that it was eternal. He said, Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. And God promised that he would never leave us nor forsake us in Hebrews 13.5. So we don't have to worry about facing the wrath of God in hell if we mess up. We're still saved if we get in the flesh and we get into sin, but that doesn't mean that we just get off freely or that we shouldn't turn back to God and repent. Now, repentance simply means to turn, and the context determines what that means. There are different passages which talk about God repenting. Now, obviously, God doesn't have any sin, so repentance does not always mean to just turn from your sin. Sometimes it means a change of your mind. In the case of salvation, in the case of an unsaved person, we're called to repent in the Bible, meaning to turn to God and believe on Christ as our Savior, to change our mind about what we're putting our trust in and instead put our trust in Christ. That is repentance for salvation. However, after we get saved, God wants us to be obedient to him, and those who fall into sin need to repent of that sin in order to have God's earthly forgiveness and to escape God's curses and judgment on them on this earth. But don't misinterpret what I'm saying, okay? Just to be clear, as I already said, just to kind of drill this in, I will repeat it, that salvation is only by our faith. We don't need to turn from any of our sins. We don't need to give up our sins or stop sinning in order to be saved. And once we're saved, we're always saved. But as I'm about to show you, God will still punish us in the flesh, because it's our spirit this morning and he will punish us in the flesh on this earth if we disobey him. God says in Hebrews chapter 12 verse 5 to 8, So if we disobey God, we will face chastening, we will face discipline. We're the children of God, as the Bible says in John 1-12, So God treats us as a father would to his son. He still loves us, he's not going to send us to hell, he's not going to cast us out of the family of God, but he will still punish us, he still will discipline us in order to help us learn from those mistakes and to turn from that sin and to be righteous. Therefore, we need to know what to do in order to turn back to God when we backslide and how to seek him again. Because we all make mistakes, after all, we all have flesh, the flesh is what causes us to sin, and especially those who are newer Christians, it may be harder to know how to walk in the spirit, because the Bible says if you walk in the spirit, you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh in Galatians 5. But obviously, not everybody knows exactly what that is, not everybody knows exactly what to do and how to seek God and walk in the spirit. So we can still mess up even if we're saved, and in those situations, we need to know what to do. And it's pretty simple. First, we confess our sins. The Bible says in Proverbs 28 verse 13, He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. So covering our sins means hiding them, trying to act as if they didn't happen and just forgetting about them. But this Scripture tells us that if we confess, if we do the opposite of hiding them, if we confess and forsake these sins, we will have mercy. That's how we turn back to God. Confess to him that you've sinned against him, that you've transgressed against him, that you've made a mistake, and if it's a perpetual sin, if it's something that you continue to do, just stop doing it, walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh, and God won't punish your flesh as a result. And we see, for example, in the story of David in 2 Samuel, that David committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then he ordered her husband, Uriah, to be killed, but instead of immediately admitting of his mistake and of his sin and seeking God's mercy, David hid his sin until Nathan the prophet rebuked him in chapter 11. Now the psalm that was written when David realized his sin and confessed his sin is Psalm 51. And I want to illustrate something from that psalm to show that we can't just simply ignore our mistakes and act like we can continue to serve God as we were doing before. In fact, confessing your sin and forsaking these sins is necessary to get back on the right track in serving God as well. It says in verse 1-3 in Psalm 51, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. So he's acknowledging his sin and asking for both forgiveness and mercy. And later in the psalm we see this claim in verse 16 and 17. For thou desirest not sacrifice, else I would give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. And then a few verses later it says in verse 19, Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering. Then shall they offer bollocks upon thine altar. So what's he saying in this passage? Well, David is acknowledging that God is not looking for sacrifice. He's not looking for the obedience of the law and doing good works to cover for the bad things that you did. Our God, the God of the Bible, is not like the pagan gods who judge based on a balance. They just say, well, you have more good things than bad things, therefore you enter into the afterlife. Or you have more bad things than good things, therefore you go into the other world, as in pagan religions. But no, in James chapter 2 verse 10 it says that whoso keeps the law and stumbles at any point is guilty of all. So if you try to fulfill the whole law, if you try to obey God's commandments and you disobey one of them, it doesn't matter which one it is, you're still guilty, you're still a sinner and you still deserve the punishment from God. You still deserve wrath from God. But rather, instead of simply sacrificing to God, David knows that God wants him to be genuinely apologetic for his sin and to turn to God in a broken spirit and ask for mercy. Now that's a picture of both salvation and repentance after salvation. David was already saved, and we know this because the Bible calls David a man after God's own heart and because there were earlier psalms that were written by David, which already spoke of being delivered by God or being saved, such as in Psalm 30 and Psalm 32. So David is saved when he committed this sin, and even then he understands that if he wants to get back to serving the Lord, in his case sacrificing, he needs to first have a change of heart and ask for forgiveness. Now in the New Covenant we don't do actual physical sacrifices or burnt offerings or anything of that nature at all, as taught by the book of Hebrews, but we still need to come to God and repent when we sin, so that God will forgive us and not chastise us and we can continue to serve God, as he was going to do to David. He was going to punish him, but David repented in 2 Samuel 11 or 12, and Nathan said, Now the Bible says in James 4, verse 7-10, Again we see the same principle in this passage right here. Now the book of James was written to believers, as James constantly writes the word brethren in the earlier parts of the book, in James 1, James 2, and James 3. Now if we resist the devil and we draw close to God, then we'll turn back to God. So we need to cleanse ourselves of the unrighteousness which we've committed, and we need to restore our relationship with God. Now in verse 9 of this passage in James 4, we see the same type of language that David was using in Psalm 51. James says, Meaning we just humble ourselves in the sight of God. We are sorrowful, we're sorry about it, we understand that we've sinned against God, and we don't act like nothing happened. We admit that we're wrong, we admit that we have a mistake, and we beg for mercy. And if we do so, it says that God will lift us up. So when you make a mistake, don't just move on, but seek God and turn from your sin, and you will be restored. Jesus put it this way when he addressed the churches in Asia in the book of Revelation. It says in Revelation 2, 5, Remember therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. Revelation chapter 3, verse 2 to 3 says, Now Jesus is commanding these saints, these people in the churches, these are believers, he's telling them to repent and to return to their first works, and to perfect the works that they're doing. So they've backslid, and they've gotten away from following what God has commanded them to do. They've gotten into sin, they've turned away from seeking after God, but now he's just telling them to simply turn to him, to repent. And we know from the Bible that that means that you're confessing your sin, being sorrowful for it, asking for forgiveness, and forsaking the sin, whatever it is. That's the only thing we can do when we disobey God as Christians, and God in some cases will still punish us. In Hebrews chapter 10 it talks about how if we willfully sin after we've been saved, that God will, I don't know the exact wording, but he will punish us because there's not a sacrifice for sins anymore, which means we can't just offer up an animal sacrifice and expect God to just forget about it. But rather, if we willfully sin, if we willfully go against God, God will unleash his wrath upon us. This is about people who make mistakes, who get in the flesh. What we need to do is just admit that we're wrong and confess our sin and to turn to God. Now, if we can't justify ourselves for salvation by doing good works, doing good works isn't going to justify us when it comes to guarding our flesh, guarding the flesh and our life on earth. So the only thing we can really do is seek God's mercy. So, thank you everybody for watching, I hope this makes sense. You know, if you make a mistake, just get on your knees in prayer and confess whatever the sin is to God. Just admit that you have sinned and just ask him for mercy and just, whatever it is, just stop doing it. Walk in the Spirit. The Bible talks about, in Colossians 3, Galatians 5, Romans 7, about how exactly you do that. And I've made other videos on that topic, so I don't want to go too much into that. So, thank you everybody for watching and goodbye.