Revival's Golden Key (4 page)

1.    Wearing out the pastor. Instead of being able to fully give himself to feeding the flock of God in the capacity of a shepherd, he finds himself forever counseling those who are “hearers of the Word only and not doers.”

2.    Tragically, the “happiness gospel” then has the
laborers
(who are already few in number) tied up in the function of being counselors and propping people up, when these problem people don’t need counsel or prop-up. They need repentance.

After speaking of the many problems plaguing the modem Church, J. I. Packer says these insightful words:

This is a complex phenomenon, to which many factors have contributed; but, if we go to the root of the matter, we shall find that these perplexities are all ultimately due to our having lost our grip on the biblical gospel. Without realizing it, we have during the past century bartered that gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar enough in points of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing.
Hence our troubles.

In a publication called
What Do You Want From Life
?,
the conclusion is drawn that we all want to be happy. Despite the list of things cited—sex, money, friends, fame, love, and so on—the question is: Can we be
truly
and
continually
happy? The answer is, of course, that knowing Jesus produces “
ultra happiness
... your happiest moment magnified a million times over.”

Not many would see that there is anything wrong with this publication. However, the call of the gospel is universal, and not confined to the unhappy, “hurting” world, as it is so often promoted. The gospel is a promise of
righteousness,
not a promise of happiness, and it therefore may also be offered to those who are
enjoying
the “pleasures of sin for a season.” Before my conversion, I was very happy, content, satisfied, cheerful, thankful, and joyful. I was
loving
life, and living it to the fullest.
Therefore, I was not a candidate for the modern gospel.
However, when I was confronted by the spirituality of God’s Law and understood that “riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but
righteousness
delivers from death” (Proverbs 11:4), I saw my need of the Savior.

Let me repeat: Because of the belief that the chief end of the gospel is man’s happiness on earth, rather than his righteousness, many fail to see its God-given intention. They think the gospel is only for those who lack money, those who are
brokenhearted
by life’s difficulties,
those
who are the problem people in society. The belief is further pervaded through popular worship choruses that have splendid melodies, but carry this message: “Heartaches, broken people, ruined lives is why
You
died on Calvary.” Again, like many others, before I became a Christian my life was not “ruined.” At the age of twenty I was a successful businessman, with my own house, beautiful wife, car, money, and the freedom (being self-employed) to enjoy it to the full.

Evangelistic outreaches are billed as taking the Good News to “the hurting and the needy.” Let me repeat: The gospel is not confined to the “hurting” people with ruined lives and heartaches. Both hurting
and
happy people need to be shown their sinful state before God, so they will seek after the righteousness that is in Christ.

Let me further illustrate this common
misunder
-standing by quoting from another modem publication (I am in no way questioning the sincerity of the author):

You will desire to be where the Lord is. And He spends His time with those who hurt. At the begin-
ning
of His ministry, Jesus quoted Isaiah to describe the work He was called to do: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the
brokenhearted
, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are oppressed, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18,19)...Thus the more you go after God, the deeper you will move into a world filled with hurting people.

In Luke 4:18
,19
, Jesus gives us a summation of who the gospel is for:

■    
The
poor

■    
The
brokenhearted

■    
The
captives

■    
The
blind

■    
The
oppressed

A quick study will show that Jesus is not necessarily speaking of those who lack financial resources when He speaks of the
poor.
The word means “meek, humble,
lowly
”—the “poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). These are the blessed ones to whom the kingdom of God belongs. The poor are those who know that they are destitute of righteousness. Bible commentator Matthew Henry said of this verse: “To whom He was to preach: to the poor; to those that were
poor in the world;
to those that were
poor in spirit,
to the meek and humble, and to those that were truly sorrowful for sin”
(Matthew Henry’s Commentary,
Zondervan Publishing House, p. 1425).

When He speaks of the
brokenhearted
,
He doesn’t mean those unhappy people whose hearts are aching because they have been jilted by a sweetheart, but those who, like Peter and Isaiah, are contrite and sorrowing for their sin.

Listen to the respected Bible commentator once again: “For He was sent to heal the
brokenhearted
, to give peace to those that were troubled and humbled for sins, and to bring them to rest who were weary and heavy-laden, under the burden of guilt and corruption.”

The
captives
are those “taken captive by [the devil] to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:26).

The
blind
are those whom “the god of this age has blinded... [
to
] the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

The
oppressed
are those who are “oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38).

The gospel of grace is for the humble, not the proud. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). The Scriptures tell us, “Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 16:5).
He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly (Luke 1:52).
God looks on the man who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at His word (Isaiah 66:2). Only the sick need a
physician,
and only those who are convinced of the disease of sin will appreciate and appropriate the cure of the gospel.

The Abundant Life

Still, the question may arise, why not use the fact that Jesus said He had come to bring us an abundant life (John 10:10) to draw sinners to the Savior? True, the Christian life is full. Consider the life of Paul. Read 2 Corinthians 11:23-28 and see if you think he was bored while being stoned (once), shipwrecked (three times), beaten (three times), and whipped (five times). His life
was
full. There were also times he wasn’t happy. In fact, at one point he was in such despair that he wanted to die (2 Corinthians 1:8).

The apostle gives the carnal-minded Corinthians a glimpse of the abundant life. He told them that he had been condemned to death. He was hungry and thirsty. He lacked clothing. He was beaten and had nowhere to live. Even with his established ministry, he was forced to work with his hands. He was reviled, persecuted, slandered, and treated as the filth of the world. What a terrible, uninviting path Paul walked down. One would think that he would put up a sign saying, “Don’t enter here.” However, he did the opposite. He told the Corinthians to imitate him (1 Corinthians 4:9-16).

Where is God's Love?

How was it, then, that the apostle Paul knew God loved him? As we have seen, he was whipped, beaten, stoned, and so depressed that at one point he wanted to die. He was mocked, hated, shipwrecked, imprisoned for years, and then finally martyred. What did he look to for assurance of God’s love for him?

He didn’t look at his lifestyle because, to the un-learned eye, it didn’t exactly speak of God’s caring hand for him. His “abundant” life was certainly full, but it wasn’t full of what we think it should have been, if God loved him. Picture Paul, lying half-naked on a cold dungeon floor, chained to hardened Roman guards. Look at his bloody back and his bruised, swollen face. “Paul, you’ve been beaten again. Where are your friends? De-mas and the others have forsaken you. Where
is
your expensive char-
iot
and your successful building program? Where is the evidence of God’s blessing, Paul?” you taunt. “What’s that? What did you say? Did I hear you mumble through swollen lips that God loves you?” Paul slowly lifts his head. His blackened, bruised eyes look deeply into yours. They sparkle as he says two words: “... the cross!” He pain-fully reaches into his blood-Soaked tunic and carefully pulls out a large letter he had been writing in his own hand. His trembling and blood
-
stained finger points to one sentence in particular. You strain your eyes in the dim light and read, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself for me”
(Galatians 2:20, emphasis added).

That
was the source of Paul’s joy and thus his strength: “God forbid that I should glory except in the cross” (Galatians 6:14). Those who come through the door of seeking happiness in Christ will think that their happiness is evidence of God’s love. They may even think that God has forsaken them when trials come and their happiness leaves. But those who look to the cross as a token of God’s love will never doubt His steadfast devotion to them.

If the “abundant” life means something different from a “happy” life, who is going to listen if we are blatantly honest about the trials of living “godly in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:12)?
Certainly not as many as are attracted by the talk of a wonderful plan.
What, then, is the answer to this dilemma?

CHAPTER 4

THE PURPOSE OF THE LAW

W
ho on earth is going to embrace our message if we don’t use the promise of an abundant, wonderful new life in Christ? The answer to our dilemma is simply to do what Jesus did. It seems that the whole of the contemporary Church is running around with placards, T-shirts, stickers, books, wristbands, etc., asking the question “What Would Jesus Do?” They ask this for everything but evangelism. What did Jesus do when He confronted a sinner? He made the issue one of righteous-ness rather than happiness. He used the Ten Commandments to show sinners the righteous standard of God.

In Mark 10:17, a man came running to Jesus, knelt before Him, and asked how he could obtain everlasting life. This man came “running.” He “knelt” before the Savior. It would seem that his earnest and humble heart made him a prime candidate as a potential convert. Yet Jesus didn’t give him the message of God’s grace. He didn’t even mention the love of God. Neither did He tell him of an abundant, wonderful new life. Instead,

He used the Law of God to expose his hidden sin. This man was a transgressor of the First of the Ten Commandments. His money was his god, and you cannot serve both God and money. Then the Scriptures reveal that it was
love
that motivated Jesus to speak in this way to this rich young man (Mark 10:21).