Revival's Golden Key (22 page)

In Luke 16:19, the rich man’s problem was that he was idolatrous. His understanding of God was wrong. He lacked the knowledge of God, and therefore he didn’t fear God, and because he didn’t fear God, he didn’t obey Him. He didn’t love his
neighbor
as himself. Lazarus was starving at his gate, and he couldn’t care less.

The irony of the story of the rich man was that he waited until he was in hell before he became concerned for others.

CHAPTER 20

WHOSE
COOKIES?

I
f you witness regularly, you will know that many in contemporary America think they are good people. This is the fruit of a nation that has forsaken God’s Law. The Law is “good,” but when there is no knowledge of the Law, “good” becomes subjective. This was the case with the rich young ruler’s question, “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16). Jesus reproved his misuse of the word “good.” The young man was one who used the word without knowledge of its true meaning.

Sinners often say similar things. An athlete may say that “the good Man upstairs” helped him win a race. Or they seek to justify their sin by saying, “You’re a good person; tell me why the Bible says...” This is why I find it frustrating when I do a good deed for someone who doesn’t know that I am a Christian. If I help push a car, for example, I don’t want them to think, “I knew there were still good people. That restores my faith in human nature.” Often, the more “good” people the world can find, the more they will try to justify their own goodness and reject God’s mercy
Like
the rich young ruler, they need to be enlightened as to what
good
is. The way to do this is to follow the example of Jesus and decimate the fig leaves of self-righteousness with the Ten Cannons of God’s Law.

A famous Rogers and Hammerstein musical contained the words, “Somewhere in my childhood, I must have done something good.” The young lady who was singing the song had fallen in love and was brimming with happiness. It was her way of saying that God was rewarding her with the blessing of true love because she merit-
ed
it. While God does reward good and evil, her words exemplify the world’s erroneous philosophy. Any good that comes our way doesn’t solely come to us because
we
have done something good, but because God is good. Until we understand that “there is none who does good, no, not one,” we will expect blessings because we think we are good and therefore deserve them. When life brings us suffering, we become angry at God because we think God owes us happiness.

The Law not only gives us understanding of the grace of the cross, but of the grace of life itself—that He has not dealt with us according to our iniquities. The only thing God “owes” us is wrath.

A man in a London airport decided to purchase some English butter cookies. He opened the small tin, took one out then placed the tin at his feet. After he had waited for his flight for some time, a middle-aged woman smiled politely and sat next to him. To his astonishment, without a word of permission she reached down, took a cookie out of the tin, and ate it. He couldn’t believe what this complete stranger had just done! Suspecting that it may be a local custom, he smiled at her and took one himself. A few minutes later, she took another one. He smiled awkwardly and took a second cookie himself. She then took a third.
Who did this woman think she was?
Then she took the very last cookie, looked at him, broke it in half and offered it to him.
The audacity of the woman!
Other words such as “brazen,” “rude,” “impudent,” and “presumptuous” flashed through his mind.

As he was about to express his thoughts, he bent down and saw that his identical tin of cookies was still at his feet. In an instant, he realized that
he
had been the brazen, rude, impudent, and presumptuous person.
He had been eating the cookies of a complete stranger!
He also realized how her response to his actions had in truth been very gracious.

An unregenerate world judges God as being the guilty party for the sufferings of humanity. As far as they are concerned, He is unjust. But the Law of God gives us sudden light to our misconception. It shows us who is eating whose cookies.
We
are the ones who are in transgression. It dawns on us that we are
more
than brazenly impudent in our accusations. We are guilty criminals standing before an unspeakably holy and gracious Judge, accusing Him of transgression. In light of God’s holiness, it is hard to understand why He continues to let a sinful humanity such as us even draw another breath.

Facial Injuries

In March 1993, Sue and I were involved in a head-on collision. Fortunately, we sustained only minor head injuries. I was on my way back from the bathroom in the early hours of the morning when Sue got out of my side of the bed. For some reason she looked down for a second and we collided head-on, leaving us both with a fat lip. She presumed that I would see her in the dark, but I was coming from a bright light into a blackened room. I couldn’t see a thing.

To presume that the unregenerate man already has the necessary light to be saved is to have a head-on collision with the many Scriptures asserting that there
is none
who understands (Psalm 53:2
,3
; Romans 3:11,12; 8:7). If we
adulterate
the Word of God by making the Law invalid in its lawful use of bringing light to the sinner, we will have
adulterous
converts. Their hearts will love the world and the things in the world. But as we “teach all nations” and, like the disciples, do not cease “teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ,” we will see sinners come to “know His will, and approve the things that are excellent,
being instructed out of the Law”
(Romans 2:18, emphasis added). “Instructed out of the Law” suggests more than a casual reference to the Ten Commandments. It means to rightly divide the Word of Truth, as a father at the head of a table would break up bread for his children. Charles Spurgeon, in lecturing his students on evangelism, said, “Explain the Ten Commandments and obey the Divine injunction; ‘Show my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins. Open up the spirituality of the Law as our Lord did.”

Pastor Jack
Hayford
wrote an article in which he spoke of many people coming to the Savior after he taught a series on the Ten Commandments. He said,

As a pastor I’ve had to come to terms with a devastating fact: Through my teaching on God’s grace, an alarming number of my flock have perceived that there is nothing to learn from the Commandments now that the Law, as a schoolmaster, has gotten them to Christ. Too many view their conversion as a graduation from accountability to the Law... which violates Jesus’ own objectives.

He saw the consequences of an imbalance of Law and grace as being a “devastating fact.” I would go further and say that what has resulted is utterly disastrous. This “alarming number” of people
are
not confined to
his
church. They think they have graduated from accountability to the Law and they therefore live their lives accordingly—in lawlessness. They have a mere “form of godliness.” They are hearers and not doers; they listen to the sayings of Jesus, but don’t do them.

Sinning Converts

The direct result of the Church being confronted with biblical teaching on true and false conversion would be that the “sinning convert” would no longer be consoled in his sins. Instead of dealing with the symptoms of his non-accountability lifestyle—his fornication, pornography, lack of discipline, lack of holiness, theft, wife beating, adultery, drunkenness, lying, hatred, rebellion, greed, etc.—the pastor would deal with the
cause.
He would say, “A good tree
cannot
bear bad fruit,” and “no spring yields both salt water and fresh.” He would gently in-form his hearer, “It sounds as though you have had a spurious conversion and you need to repent of your law-less deeds and make Jesus Christ your Lord.” Then, using the Law of God, he should show the “exceeding sinful-ness” of sin and the unspeakable gift of the cross. This should awaken a false convert, put most Christian psychologists out of business, and cut “counseling” to a minimum.

A clear understanding of the reality of true and false conversion would give light to church leaders who are horrified at the state of what they see as the “Church.” One respected leader said:

In survey after survey, researchers find that the lifestyles of born-again Christians are virtually indistinguishable from those of nonbelievers. The divorce rate among Christians is identical to that of nonbelievers. Christian teens are almost as sexually active as non-Christian teens. Pornography, materialism, gluttony, lust, covetousness, and even disbelief are commonplace in many of our churches.

Such teaching would also stop the insanity of modern evangelism’s zeal without knowledge, by showing that the category of lukewarm “converts” doesn’t exist. There is no division in the kingdom of God for those who are tepid. We should be either hot and stimulating or cold and refreshing. Lukewarm “converts” are not part of the Body of Christ; they merely weigh heavy within the stomach of His Body until He vomits them out of His mouth on the Day of Judgment (Revelation 3:16). They didn’t pass through the jagged-edged teeth of the Law of God. They remain hard and impenitent; they were never broken by the Law that they might be absorbed into the bloodstream of the Body of Christ, to become His hands, His feet, and His mouth. They never felt the heartbeat of God, so their hands didn’t reach out in compassion to the lost, their feet were not shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and their mouths didn’t preach the gospel to every creature. This mass of converts are like the “backslider in heart,” who is “filled with his own ways” rather than the ways of God. Their “Here I am Lord,
send him,”
doesn’t come from a rational fear of man, but from rebellion to the revealed will of the God they call Lord and Master.

Elisha told his servants to make some stew. How-ever, “one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered from it a lapful of wild gourds, and came and sliced them into the pot of stew, though they did not know what they were.” When the stew was being eaten, the guests cried out, “Man of God, there is death in the pot!” Elisha then put flour into the mixture, and “there was nothing harmful in the pot” (2 Kings 4:38-41).

The servants of the Lord have gone into the field of the world and brought back the wild vine of the modem gospel, which they added to the Church. Now there is death in the pot. What should give life-sustaining nourishment instead leads to death. As sinners are fed a gospel poisoned by modern evangelism, they are consuming a deadly mixture and becoming false converts.

The answer is to add flour. Flour is created by going through the process of brokenness; it has been ground to powder. The Law is the millstone that does that most necessary task.

The Wide Gate

In Matthew 7:13
,14
, Jesus said, “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Be-cause narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Jesus warned that the way that leads to destruction was broad. But more than that, He said it had a “gate,” and that “many” would “go in” that way. If the way of destruction is the way of the world, which is the usual interpretation, why did Jesus call it a “gate” that many would “enter”? Surely if that were the case, He would have said that the ungodly are born into the way of destruction. This thought is supported by the conjunction Jesus used to join verses 13 and 14. He said that the way of destruction is broad and many will enter into it
because
the way that leads to life is narrow. There are only two gates: if they don’t go through the narrow, then they will end up going through the broad. He said the wide gate is entered
because
the other gate is narrow.