Seek ... do ... teach

“For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.” (Ezra7:10)

I love this character, Ezra. He was an honorable man, chosen by God to lead in the rebuilding of the Temple. He was not a warrior or a king; nor even a thundering prophet. He was a “plain” man, faithful to his calling as “a skilled scribe in the Law of Moses” (v6). In other words, he was a “workman in the Word” (see 2 Timothy 2:15).

Note what verse 10 says. Ezra gave himself with a serious commitment to “seeking”, “doing” and “teaching” the Word of God. Some people might see these skills, this occupation, as mundane and unglamorous, but God seeks out such a servant to use for His purposes – for “He has magnified His Word above all His Name”. (Psalm 138:2)

Ezra’s distinction was in his devotion to his calling. He “prepared his heart” for it. A lot of people have been deemed great Christian leaders for their charisma or natural leadership ability, but the Christians who have changed the course of world history for God’s glory have been those that have buried themselves in the Word of God, seeking to know His message, and have meticulously applied it to their own lives to be changed by it, and only then have emerged to teach it to others. This is the only right order – “SEEKING” (studying) … “DOING” … then “TEACHING”.

Think of St. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, and others, who “though dead yet still speak” … men bent over parchments and books by lamplight, wrestling with the great truths of God, and emerging broken and humbled, walking with a spiritual “limp” as real as Jacob’s physical limp after his wrestling match with God (Genesis 32). And only then did they dare to open their mouths and with trembling lips instruct others.

What a contrast to the flippancy of our day. The spotlight seems to fall on any novice who can tell a joke with good timing. If a preacher comes out with something that seems ”new” and pithy, it is received with oohs and aahs, regardless of whether it has any substantive basis in rightly interpreted Scripture.

Thank God there are still Ezras. In fact, there is a growing column of “soldiers of the Book”, who love God’s Word and are dedicated to SEEKING, DOING and only then TEACHING it. We need more.

There is a clear challenge here, of course, to pastors and preachers. But not exclusively. Every Christian ought to be a seeker, a doer, and a teacher of God’s Word. Can I challenge you with the following:

1. Avoid “soundbyte” Christianity, where we live on a diet of sermonettes and bumper sticker slogans. Don’t look for “3 steps to a happier life” – learn everything God’s Word has to say about living for His glory. It will take you a lifetime.


2. Prayerfully read God’s Word every day.Learn to study God’s Word (take some training in how to rightly interpret the Bible. CLICK HERE for a resource I highly recommend).


3. Eagerly participate in Bible Study opportunities at your church. Be there when it's being taught, sit up the front, take notes; be determined to get everything you can!


4. Be sure to put what you are learning into practice in your own life; don’t allow hypocrisy in your life by “knowing and teaching” but not LIVING it.


5. Share the truth with others. Tell the gospel to unbelievers, and share the encouragement and correction of God’s Word with other committed Christians to build them up.

Phil

Paul's burden

"For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles ... that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel" (Ephesians 3:1, 6)

We see here what was driving Paul in his passion for preaching the gospel. He had a very evident love for the Lord, and also a love for people; for precious lost souls. He said “I am Christ's prisoner FOR YOU GENTILES." "I wouldn’t be in this prison cell, except for my love for you, that you hear and know the truth, and come to Christ."

It's the same burden that he conveys in Romans 1:14, "I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to unwise. So, as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel ..."

He was a prisoner. He was a debtor. He saw their faces when he was lying down at night trying to sleep. He was haunted by the sound of their footsteps marching toward the precipice of hell without Christ, and therefore with no hope.

God is always looking for the man or woman that He can yoke His passion for souls to. Such people have changed time and eternity by their prayers and preaching.

“Oh mother! Mother! The thud of these Christless feet on their way to hell breaks my heart!” (Willie Burns, at age 17, later used by God to start revivals in Scotland and China)

"I care not where I go, or how I live, or what I endure so that I may save souls. When I sleep I dream of them; when I awake they are first in my thoughts…no amount of scholastic attainment, of able and profound exposition of brilliant and stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep impassioned sympathetic love for human souls." (David Brainerd)

"If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for." (Charles Spurgeon)

These men had caught a glimpse of the lake of fire; they had smelled it's rising sulphur. Do WE have any idea what an eternity in hell will be like?

Listen to the words of Jonathan Edwards:

"Thus it will be with you that are in an unconverted state, if you continue in it; the infinite might, and majesty, and terribleness of the omnipotent God shall be magnified upon you, in the ineffable strength of your torments. You shall be tormented in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and when you shall be in this state of suffering, the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look on the awful spectacle, that they may see what the wrath and fierceness of the Almighty is; and when they have seen it, they will fall down and adore that great power and majesty. Isa. 66:23,24. 'And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.'

"It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long for ever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be infinite. Oh, who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it, gives but a very feeble, faint representation of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable: For 'who knows the power of God's anger?'"

(Excerpted from "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God")

If we would only shake off our apathy and stupor, and get this same vision before our eyes, it would drive us to 2 certain things:

1. To examine ourselves and make sure WE are in the faith. (2 Corinthians 13:5)


2. To reach out to others like nothing else on earth matters at all. “Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Corinthians 5:11)

Many will scoff and call this "alarmist". But if the flames are real (and God's Word leaves us in no doubt that they are), we will very shortly wish that we had screamed ourselves to the last breath raising the alarm.

Phil

Precious!

1 Peter 2:7 - “Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious…”

This was the text that Charles Haddon Spurgeon took for the first sermon he ever preached. He was just 16 years of age at the time, and he was asked to preached to a group of farmers in a small cottage in the village of Teversham. Some years later he said: “I do not think I could have said anything upon any other text, but Christ was precious to my soul.”

And that's about all I want to blog today. Jesus is precious to ME.

1. He is precious to me because of who He is.

The King of all kings, and the Lord of all lords, Co-partner of the eternal throne of God Almighty, Creator of the rolling spheres and Sustainer of all things. The Self-existent God who needed nothing, had to prove nothing, was challenged by nothing. Yet He set His love on the sons of men whom He had made. And when mankind rebelled and went astray (every one of us, without exception, the Bible says), He left all the glories of Heaven behind in a moment, just as He had planned to do, and subjected Himself to poverty, and mistreatment, and rejection – to stand by our side.

Jesus, our Savior, the eternal God, is good. Worthy of glory, and worthy of honor, and worthy of praise. He is precious to me because of who He is.

2. He is precious to me because of all that He has done.

“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6)

His humiliation took Him all the way to the Cross. He suffered and died there in my place - in OUR place. In His death He paid the price for our sins, satisfying the demands of Holy justice. God can now justly commute our death sentence. Having made that payment in His own blood, Jesus rose from the grave, and ascended to heaven where He now lives interceding for us. He’s applying the victory that He won for us, over and over again – blessing our lives. He salvages us from sins, He saves us from ourselves, He makes us holy through the power of His Holy Spirit, He heals, He leads us, He provides, He empowers us, He’s preparing a place for us, He’s coming again for us!

Oh, Jesus is precious to me for all that He has done.

3. He is precious to me because I am precious to Him.

“We love Him because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

Jesus came to stand by our side, not because we were calling for Him – we weren’t. He came because He knew we needed Him. Because He knew there was no other way. And because He loves us with an everlasting love.

Jesus esteems US as precious. Precious enough for Him to seek and to save us. Doesn’t that amaze you? Doesn’t it change everything?

Andrae Crouch used to sing:

“I don’t know why Jesus loved me
I don’t know why He cared,
I don’t know why He sacrificed His life,
Oh, but I’m glad, so glad He did.”

Phil

Wisdom from some guys the Church loves ...

Admiring them and eulogizing them is a poor replacement for listening to them and learning from them!

"Evermore the Law must prepare the way for the gospel. To overlook this in instructing souls is almost certain to result in false hope, the introduction of a false standard of Christian experience, and to fill the Church with false converts ... Time will make this plain." - Charles Finney

(Time HAS indeed made it plain! See my last post)

"Satan, the god of all dissension stirs up daily new sects. And last of all which of all others I should never have foreseen or once suspected, he has raised up a sect such as teach that men should not be terrified by the law, but gently exhorted by the preaching of the grace of Christ." (Martin Luther)

"I do not believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the Law."

"Lower the Law and you dim the light by which man perceives his guilt; this is a very serious loss to the sinner rather than a gain; for it lessens the likelihood of his conviction and conversion. I say you have deprived the gospel of its ablest auxiliary [its most powerful weapon] when you have set aside the Law. You have taken away from it the schoolmaster that is to bring men to Christ . . . They will never accept grace till they tremble before a just and holy Law. Therefore the Law serves a most necessary purpose, and it must not be removed from its place." (Charles Haddon Spurgeon)

"First, then, before you can speak peace to your hearts, you must be made to see, made to feel, made to weep over, made to bewail, your actual transgressions against the Law of God." (George Whitefield)

"...it is the ordinary method of the Spirit of God to convict sinners by the Law. It is this which, being set home on the conscience, generally breaketh the rocks in pieces. It is more especially this part of the Word of God which is quick and powerful, full of life and energy and sharper than any two-edged sword."

"Before I can preach love, mercy and grace I must preach sin, law and judgment."(John Wesley)

"Ask Paul why [the Law] was given. Here is his answer, 'That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God' (Romans 3:19). The Law stops every man's mouth. I can always tell a man who is near the kingdom of God; his mouth is stopped. This, then, is why God gives us the Law—to show us ourselves in our true colors."

"The law can only chase a man to Calvary, no further." (D.L.Moody)

And what more shall we say? Time fails us to tell of John Wycliffe, John Newton, Jonathan Edwards, C.S.Lewis, J.I.Packer, John Bunyan, A.W.Pink, St.Augustine, Matthew Henry, J.C.Ryle, A.B.Earle, A.W.Tozer, D.Martyn Lloyd-Jones, John Stott, John MacArthur, and a multitude of others who God has used to preach His perfect Law (which "converts the soul" Psalm 19:7), and shut men up under that Law, and bring them to the foot of a blood-stained cross.

Pastor Phil

The "R" word

Here are the scandalous observable facts:

• 80-90% of people who are recorded as making "a decision for Christ" in today's Evangelical churches do not go on to committed discipleship. They are lost to the faith within a very short time, many of them immediately.


• These people will generally be harder to reach again in the future (for simple reasons that we will discuss another day).


• Of the 10-20% that can still be found in church attendance a year later, many join the swelling ranks of evangelicals who demonstrate little or no difference in lifestyle than unbelievers.

What are we to make of this state of affairs? Quite simply this: the Church is full of false conversions.

How has this happened? It is the natural (entirely predictable) result of the "gospel" that is now preached from the majority of Evangelical pulpits worldwide. We are simply not preaching the same message that was fearlessly declared by Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, George Whitefield, C.H.Spurgeon, D.L.Moody, Charles G.Finney, and a host of others who God so powerfully used to bring untold numbers of unbelievers to thoroughly committed faith in Christ. Our "gospel" in fact is not the same gospel that was preached by the Church-at-large up until the 20th century.

What is the difference? During the last 100 years a monumental shift has taken place. Biblical evangelism (as laid down in the New Testament and modeled in the teaching of Jesus Himself and the early church) uses the Law of God to expose to men their sinfulness and the wrathful judgment that they are subject to when they must stand before a holy God and give an account. Only when a person is convicted of these realities by the Holy Spirit will they truly REPENT and cling to Jesus Christ as their only Savior.

You can sum up the deficiency of today's Church in one word. The "R" word. The missing grace. REPENTANCE.

What is the 'gospel' we are preaching today then? There is no doubt that Ray Comfort has accurately diagnosed the problem when he writes:

"The tragedy of modern evangelism is that, around the turn of the twentieth Century, the church forsook the Law in its capacity to convert the soul and drive sinners to Christ. Modern evangelism therefore had to find another reason for sinners to respond to the gospel, and the reason it chose was the issue of 'life enhancement.' The gospel degenerated into 'Jesus Christ will give you peace, joy, love, fulfillment, and lasting happiness.' Something like this is usually said, 'You will never find true happiness until you come to the Lord. You have a ‘God-shaped vacuum’ in your heart that only He can fill. God will heal your marriage and take away that addiction problem. He’ll get you out of financial difficulty and be your best friend.'" (Ray Comfort, The Problem with the Modern Gospel.")

If right now you are saying to yourself, "What's wrong with that? That sounds like the gospel to me!" - you need to be taken back into God's Word to see the real message of true gospel preaching:

1. Bookmark this blog now to read future posts which will continue on this vital subject.
2. Add your question or comment to these posts and let's have some good discussion about it.
3. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you get Ray Comfort's book "Revival's Golden Key". You can download it for free ... HERE. If you're not a reader, you can watch a video summary of the same concepts entitled "Hell's Best Kept Secret" ... HERE.

Change MUST come!

Pastor Phil