Revival's Golden Key (2 page)

We are told that ninety-one percent lie regularly at work or home, eighty-six percent lie regularly to parents, and seventy-five percent lie regularly to friends
(The Day America Told the Truth). A
massive ninety-two percent own a Bible, but only eleven percent read it daily. Surveys also show that ninety percent of Americans pray, but eighty-seven percent do not believe in all of the Ten Commandments. To top it off, according to the Roper Organization, sixty-one percent believe that “premarital sex is not morally wrong.”

When I find myself in a hotel, I usually channel-surf in an effort to find something wholesome.
This often means crossing the polluted and shark-infested waters of MTV. If anything epitomizes this foul-mouthed, sexually perverted, depraved, blasphemous, and rebellious generation, it is MTV. An article in the December 1995
Youth Leader
magazine stated:

More Christian teens watch MTV each week (forty-two percent) than non-Christians (thirty-three percent), according to a
Barna
Research Group survey of evangelical teens.

The article went on to quote
Barna
surveys showing that of these same teens, sixty-five percent said they prayed daily. An amazing seventy-two percent believed the Bible. However, over a three-month period, sixty-six percent confessed that they had lied to a parent or teacher, fifty-five percent had had sex, fifty-five percent had cheated on an exam, and twenty percent either got drunk or had used illegal drugs.

A Christian youth leader was interviewed recently on a popular national radio program. He spoke with great concern of the fact that young people were “leaving the Church in droves.” Then he cited the number-one reason they were turning their backs on God. He had taken a survey to find out why and discovered that it was a “lack of opportunity in the Church,” inferring that the Church should get its act together and give young people more opportunity.

Ask any pastor if there is “opportunity” to serve within his church and he will no doubt tell you of the lack of people to teach Sunday school, to visit the sick and the elderly, to go out with the evangelism team, to clean the church building, etc.

The truth is
,
if someone is a “Judas” at heart, he will find
any
excuse to go back into the world. If Judas had been given a survey form to fill out, no doubt he would have had many justifications for his betrayal of the Savior and his falling away:

■    He was publicly humiliated by Jesus when he suggested giving funds to the poor.

■    He felt a deep sense of rejection because he
wasn’t
part of the “inner circle.”

■    He needed the money.

■    The Chief Priests made him do it.

■    
The
devil made him do it.

■    
The
responsibility of looking after the finances became too much for him.

■    He was abused as a child.

■    He had a betrayal syndrome.

■    He lacked a father figure.

■    He didn’t think his actions would have the grisly repercussions they had.

There are some who don’t believe that Judas was even a Christian. There is a good reason for this: Jesus said of him, “One of you is a devil.” That’s not something one would be likely to say about one of
God’s
children.

Judas Iscariot was a hypocrite—a
pretender.
He had no idea who Jesus was. He complained that an act of sacrificial worship was a waste of money. He thought the expensive ointment with which a woman anointed Jesus should have been sold and the money given to the poor. Jesus of Nazareth just wasn’t worth such ex-
travagance
. In his estimation, He was only worth about thirty pieces of silver.

The Bible tells us that Judas was lying when he said that he cared for the poor. He was actually a thief, who so lacked a healthy fear of God that he was stealing money from the collection bag (John 12:6).

The Parabolic Key

When Jesus gave His disciples the Parable of the Sower, it seems that they lacked understanding of its meaning: “He said to them, ‘Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?”
’
(Mark 4:13). In other words, the Parable of the Sower is the key to unlocking the mysteries of all the other parables. If any message comes from the parable, it is the fact that when the gospel is preached, there are true and false conversions. This parable speaks of the thorny ground, the stony ground, and the good soil hearer— true and false converts.

Once that premise has been established, then the light of perception begins to dawn on the rest of what Jesus said in parables about the kingdom of God. If one grasps the principle of the true and false being
alongside each other,
then the other parabolic teachings make sense: the Wheat and Tares (true and false), the Good Fish and Bad Fish (true and false), the Wise Virgins and the Foolish (true and false), and the Sheep and Goats (true and false).

After the Wheat and Tares parable, Jesus gave the Parable of the Dragnet:

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Jesus said to them, “Have you under-stood all these things?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord” (Matthew 13:47-51).

Notice the good fish and the bad fish were in the net together. The
world
is not caught in the dragnet of the kingdom of heaven; they remain in the world. The “fish” that are caught are those who respond to the gospel—the evangelistic “catch.” They remain together until the Day of Judgment.

Judas was a false convert. It would seem that he was a thorny-ground hearer. The Bible says of the thorny-ground hearer: “The cares of this world, the deceitful-ness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful” (Mark 4:19). Some of these professing Christians stay within the Church; others leave it in “droves.”

False converts
do
have a measure of spirituality. Judas did. He convinced some of the disciples that he did truly care for the poor. He
seemed
so trustworthy that he was the one who looked after the finances. When Jesus said, “One of you will betray me,” the disciples didn’t point the finger at the faithful treasurer, but instead suspected themselves, saying, “Is it I, Lord?” That’s why it’s not surprising that so few within the Body of Christ would ever suspect that we are surrounded by those who fall into the “Judas” category. However, alarm bells should go off when we look at statistics such as those just cited. A warning should sound when it seems that the Church ought to have massive clout in society, but sadly lacks it when push comes to shove. With our millions of professed believers we can’t even outlaw the killing of the unborn. Something is
radically
wrong. But before we look at the remedy, we are going to look at the cause.

CHAPTER 2

THE WAY OUT OF PROBLEMS

I
n light of alarming statistics, few could deny that the Church as a whole has fallen short of the powerful, disciplined, sanctified Church we see in the Book of Acts. This has happened because the enemy has very subtly taken the focus off our message. Instead of preaching the good news that sinners can be made righteous in Christ and escape the wrath to come, the gospel has degenerated into the pretext that we can be made happy in Christ and escape the hassles of this life.

One of America’s largest publishers recently produced a quality, full-
color
publication that epitomizes the promise of a hassle-free life. Entitled
Is There a Way Out
?,
inside it reads:

Everyone is looking for a way out of their problems. There’s no easy way out. You won’t get respect by joining a gang. You won’t find love in the back seat of a car. You’ll never find success by dropping out of school. And the chances are about one million to one that you’ll win the lottery. If you’re
really
serious about making your life better, then try God’s way. God gets right to the source of most of our problems: sin.

It may sound admirable—and even biblical—to in-
fer
to sinners that Christianity promises “a way out of their problems,” but it’s just not true.

It seems that we are so entrenched in traditional evangelism that we don’t equate
real
life with the message we preach. It’s no exaggeration to say that the
following
words from the pulpit are commonplace in many churches each Sunday morning (I know from many years of itinerant ministry that this is often what happens):

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. He wants you to have
true
happiness and to fill the God-shaped vacuum in your heart that you’ve been trying to fill with sex, drugs, alcohol, and money. Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.” So come forward now and give your life to Jesus, so that you can experience this wonderful new life in Christ.

While they are coming, let’s pray for the Smith family who lost their two children in a car accident this week. Brother Jones has been diagnosed with cancer. Remember to uphold the
whole
family. His wife had another miscarriage on Tuesday, and both of their other children are chronic asthmatics. Sister Bryant fell and broke her hip. She’s such a dear saint—she’s had trial after trial in her life, especially since the death of her husband, Ernie. Elder Chambers lost his job this week. That will make things difficult for the Chambers family, with his upcoming triple-bypass operation. Sister Lancing died of kidney failure on Monday night. Keep the Lancing family in prayer because it’s their third tragedy this year.

How many of you
this morning need prayer for sickness or have
problems with depression?
That many?
You had better stay in your seats and we will have a corporate prayer.

Let me tell you about a few of my Christian friends who live in the real world. One went with his wife to a meeting. Their teenage son drove there alone. On the way home, my friend came across an accident, so he stopped to help. When he looked in the vehicle, he saw his beloved teenage son dead—impaled on the steering wheel.

The senior pastor of a church at which I was on staff was once asked to get out of bed at 3:00 a.m. to counsel a man who was waiting in his living room. As he stepped into the room, the man began to cut him up with a machete. The pas-tor almost died, and was irrevocably scarred both physically and mentally, so that he was unable to minister and required twenty-four-hour care.

Another pastor friend learned that his wife had multiple sclerosis. The crippling disease left him as the only one in the family able to take care of their three young boys. Then he was diagnosed with cancer.