Revival's Golden Key (18 page)

Professor Douglas
Groothuis
of the evangelical Denver Seminary said, “Even some evangelicals, who generally take a more literal approach to biblical teachings, view hell as ‘a blemish to be covered up by the cosmetic of divine love’”
(U.S. News & World Report,
January 31, 2000). They deliberately cover over any mention of the cliff toward which the blind man is headed. They don’t want to alarm him.

No wonder the world has a misguided understanding of the nature of God.
The Washington Post
(January 9, 2000) put it this way:

Over the years, Ed and Joanne
Liverani
have found many reasons to summon God. But now, at middle age, they’ve boiled it down to one essential: “Not to get clobbered by life.”

So sometime in the past ten years the
Liveranis
began to build their own church, salvaging bits of their old religion that they liked and chucking the rest. The first to go were an angry, vengeful God and hell—“That’s just something they say to scare you,” Ed said. They kept Jesus, “because Jesus is big on love.”

God Hates the Sin

A failure to use the Law lawfully has also forced con-temporary evangelism into saying things like “God hates the sin, but loves the sinner.” This was used in the late 1990s as what was obviously perceived as an inoffensive way to reach out to homosexuals. It backfired, and resulted instead in Christians being accused of “singling out” the sin of homosexuality—which they had done.

The Bible tells us that the Law was
made
for homosexuals (1 Timothy 1:9
,10
). Instead of falling into the trap of condemning homosexuals for their sexual preference, we must show them that they are damned
despite
their lifestyle. Many times I have reasoned with homosexuals about their sin, without even addressing the sexual sin that they are so ready to defend. When they understand that they have other sins—lying, stealing, idolatry, covetousness, lust, anger, blasphemy, hatred, etc.—and that they are in danger of damnation, they will see their need to repent and trust in the Savior. Then they will receive a new heart and new desires.

The “God hates the sin and loves the sinner” thought isn’t a new concept. Charles Finney wrote in
The Guilt of Sin:

God is not angry merely against the sin abstract-
ed
from the sinner, but against the sinner himself. Some persons have
labored
hard to set up this ridiculous and absurd abstraction, and would fain make it appear that God is angry at sin, yet not at the sinner. He hates the theft, but loves the thief. “He abhors adultery, but is pleased with the adulterer.” Now this is supreme nonsense. The sin has no moral character apart from the sinner. The act is nothing apart from the actor. The very thing that God hates and disapproves is not the mere event— the thing done in distinction from the doer; but it is the
doer himself.
It grieves and displeases Him that a rational moral agent, under His government, should array himself against his own God and Father, against all that is right and just in the universe. This is the thing that offends God. The sinner himself is the direct and the only object of His anger.

So the Bible shows. God is angry with the wicked, not with the abstract sin. If the wicked turn not, God will whet His sword—He hath bent His bow and made it ready—not to shoot at the
sin,
but the
sinner
—the wicked man who has done the abominable thing. This is the only doctrine of either the Bible or of common sense on this subject (
Kregel
Publications, 1965, reprinted 1985).

CHAPTER 16

THE MYSTERY OF THE FISH

W
e are now going to uncover a mystery that had me puzzled for years. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that a man put in his gar-den. It grew and became a large tree and the birds
⁹
of the air nested in its branches (Luke 13:18
,19
). Then He said:

[The kingdom of God] is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened (v. 21).

This is a little strange, because the children of Israel were commanded to eat only
unleavened
bread (Exodus 12:15-20). Anyone who ate bread that contained leaven was to be “cut off from Israel.”

Mark’s Gospel records that, not long after Jesus fed the four thousand, the Pharisees came to Him and demanded a sign from heaven. Jesus then told His disciples to beware of the “leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (in Matthew 16:6 He also included the Sadducees). The disciples thought He was chiding them for forgetting to take some bread with them. All they had was one loaf of bread. When they began to wonder why He had spoken of the leaven, Jesus said,

“Why do you reason because you have no bread?

Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Is your heart still hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up?”

They said to Him, “Twelve.” “Also, when I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take up?” And they said, “Seven.” So He said to them, “How is it you do not understand?” (Mark 8:17-21).

How could the leftover bread be a key to under-standing the leaven of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and Herod? In Matthew 16:11
,12
we are given more light on what “leaven” is:

Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

If the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees is merely their “doctrine,” why was Herod lumped in with them? Again, what has their doctrine got to do with excess loaves of bread?

The answer may be in what leaven does. It “puffs up.” Without it, bread lies low. With just a pinch, it exults itself way beyond measure. When Paul spoke of the work of leaven, it was in the context of pride. He said, “Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a
litlie
leaven leavens the whole lump?” (1 Corinthians 5:6).

The self-righteous Pharisee prayed with head held high, puffing out his chest, thanking God that he wasn’t like other men. It was pride that caused the Sadducees—the intellectual elite—to deny (even with the light of Scripture) the existence of angels and the resurrection. It was pride that caused Herod to murder the greatest man born of women, rather than back down in front of his
honored
guests.

Perhaps the reference to the left-over loaves was to remind us that the bedfellow of pride is abundance.

Pride is fed by independent wealth, whether it is a wealth of knowledge (which 1 Corinthians 8:1 says “puffs up”) or materialism. Independent wealth was the sin of the
Laodicean
church. They said, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing” (Revelation 3:17).

The rich man needed bigger barns, but he wasn’t rich in the sight of his God (Luke 12:16-21). He was puffed up with a sense of his own carnal security. He was “high-minded,” something that the rich are discouraged from being (1 Timothy 6:17). The proud, self-righteous man thinks that his own good works will save him. He is “puffed up” by his fleshly mind (Colossians 2:18).

In Luke 12:1 we are given further light on “leaven.” Jesus said, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” The Sadducees and Herod had this in common: they were hypocrites (Matthew 16:1-3). Herod heard John gladly, and yet he lived in adultery. Why is a man proud, why is he self-righteous, why does he live in hypocrisy?
Simply because he has not been humbled by the Law of God.
“The perfect Law of liberty” has never been used so that he could see his true state:

If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does (James 1:23-25).

Peter's Amazing Ties

Before we look at why leaven was placed in
three
measures of meal, let’s take a look at Peter’s close ties to the number three (it would seem that the number three and Peter are tied in with the evangelistic enterprise):

■    Three times the New Testament relates the story of the three disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, where Peter suggested building three tabernacles.

■    In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus returned three times to the three disciples. When He addressed them about sleeping while He was praying, He spoke to Peter.

■    
Three
times Peter denied Jesus.

■    
The
“three-time denial” of Peter is mentioned three times in three Gospels.

■    Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Him.

■    When Peter preached at Pentecost, three thousand were saved.

■    When he preached at Pentecost, the Bible makes a point to give the time: it was the “third hour of the day” (Acts 2:15).

■    In Acts 11:10, Peter’s vision (of the sheet full of animals coming down from heaven), occurred three times.

■    When Peter was called to speak to the Gentiles, three men came for him.

We will now look to John 21:1-14 and see who the Bible speaks of when Jesus appeared to His disciples for the
third
time after the resurrection.

When Peter determined to go and catch some fish, Thomas, Nathanael, James, John, and two other disciples decided that they would go with him. They fished all night and caught nothing. When the morning light came they saw a figure standing on the shore. A voice came from the stranger: “Children, have you any food?” Then He said something similar to words they had heard before: “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” They obeyed and caught so many fish that they couldn’t lift the net. Peter said, “It is the Lord
!,
” put on his outer garment, and plunged into the sea. The disciples followed him by boat, dragging the net full of fish.

When they came to land they found that Jesus already had a fire of coals with fish laid on it, and some bread. When He said to bring some of the fish they had just caught, it was Peter who fetched them:

Simon Peter went up and dragged the net to land, full of large fish,
one
hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not broken.

Why does the Bible take the time to inform us that there were one hundred and fifty-three fish?

In Luke 5:4-7, when Jesus told Peter to “launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch,” Peter caught “a great number of fish.” The number was so vast that the net began to break. Peter then called for another boat, and when both were loaded, they began to sink under the weight.
That is impressive.