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

The perfect law of God

In today's church, the mere mention of the preaching of "law" incites looks of disdain and suspicion. Ever heard Christians say something like this? ...

• "Surely to preach law makes you a legalist, and doesn't the Bible teach against that?"


• "The law is Old Testament, and now that Jesus has come all of that has been done away with!"


• "People don't need to hear about law - they need to hear about grace."

In fact, the routine training of preachers today usually includes the idea, fostered by the pragmatic philosophy of the church growth movement, that it is not expedient to tell people about their sin or failure - instead we must tell people only about a God who loves them no matter what they have done. Preach positive messages that do not offend, and you'll keep people coming back to hear more.

These ideas are 180 degrees, diametrically opposed to Biblical evangelism. The preachers of the New Testament, beginning with Jesus Himself and continuing through the apostles, made it their normal practise to preach "Man's need and God's gift". They declared to people that they were sinners who needed to repent, appealing to their consciences by the law of God, they allowed the Holy Spirit to do His great work of conviction in people's hearts, and THEN (and only then) told of God's gracious answer in the death of Christ to put away sin.

Is the law an outdated message? Is it now superceded in such a way as to have no part to play?

NO! This is a misnomer. Psalm 19:7 tells us that "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." There is nothing wrong with the law - the failure is with sinful man who in his fallen nature cannot keep it. So, can we be saved by the keeping of the law? NO! Every one of us have already broken it, and stand condemned by it, and thereby cut off from a holy God.

We need to understand the PURPOSE of the law. 1 Timothy 1:8 says "But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully". Notice this is a New Testament text, and Paul (a New Testament apostle) teaches that "the law IS good" ... present tense. But it must be used lawfully; that is "rightly" or "correctly", or "for the purpose it was designed for".

He goes on in the very next verse (1:9) to say, "knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine..."

In order to be saved, men must "repent and believe". Repent of their sin, and believe on (cling to, trust in and rely on) Jesus Christ as their only Savior. But how will a person repent unless he sees himself a sinner in need of forgiveness? This is the role of the law. It is to show us how hopelessly short of God's moral standard we fall, and as such we are under His judgment.

Here is the Biblical principle ... it is "Law to the proud, Grace to the humble". Galatians 3:24 tells us, "Therefore the law was our tutor (schoolmaster) to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith." The law is given as the canon to blast apart man's self-righteousness and expose his conscience to the full and unrelenting gaze of Almighty God. Only when his pride is thus broken, and he sees his desperate need will God's grace be precious to him. The message of God's grace is meaningless and irrelavent to people, until they see their sinfulness.

John Wesley told young preachers that they ought to preach "90% law and 10% grace". Some might think this just hyperbole, and if not then it is an extreme view to say the least. But think about it. The real battle is to get sinful man to recognize his true condition. Once this is accomplished and a person is trembling under the knowledge of God's wrath against their sin, you only need the simplest presentation of the gracious gospel of salvation in Jesus and they will cling to Him immediately.

In discarding the preaching of the law, modern evangelism has given up the real power of God to bring about true repentance. A repentance-less gospel is no gospel at all. There is no true work of salvation without it. Hence, your preaching will produce false converts and a powerless church. Far from saving people, you will only achieve the hardening of their hearts in self-righteousness and false assurance.

May God bring us back to the old gospel, and we shall have the old power!

Pastor 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