Revival's Golden Key (5 page)

Every time we witness to someone, we should challenge our motives. Do we love the sinner enough to make sure his conversion is genuine; or do we love the feeling of getting another decision for Jesus —when in truth our zeal without knowledge has just produced an-other potential Judas?

Why did Jesus take the time to use the Ten Commandments? His method seems a little archaic compared to the quick and easy instant converts of modem methods. Dr.
Martyn
Lloyd'Jones
gives us the answer:

A gospel which merely says “Come to Jesus,” and offers Him as a Friend, and offers a
marvelous
new life, without convincing of sin, is not New Testament evangelism. (The essence of evangelism is to start by preaching the Law; and it is because the Law has not been preached that we have had so much superficial evangelism.) True evangelism... must always start by preaching the Law.

When you use the Law (the Ten Commandments) to show the world their true state, get ready for them to
thank you. For the first time in their lives, they will see the Christian message as an expression of love and concern for their eternal welfare, rather than of merely proselytizing for a better lifestyle while on this earth. They begin to understand why they should be
concerned
about their eternal salvation. The Law shows them that they are condemned by God. It even makes them a little fearful.

Look at how John Wesley reconciles the use of the Law (to produce the fear of God) with love:

The second use [of the Law] is to bring him unto life, unto Christ that he may live. It is true, in performing both these offices, it acts the part of a severe schoolmaster.
It drives us by force, rather than draws us by love. And yet love is the spring of all.
It is the spirit of love which, by this painful means, tears away our confidence in the flesh, which leaves us no broken reed whereon to trust, and so constrains the sinner, stripped of all to cry out in the bitter-ness of his soul or groan in the depth of his heart, “I give up every plea beside, Lord, I am damned; but thou hast died” (emphasis added).

Perhaps you are tempted to say that we should
never
condemn sinners. However, Scripture tells us that they are
already
condemned (John 3:18). All the Law does is
show
them their true state. If you dust a table in your living room and think it is dust-free, try pulling back the curtains and letting in the early morning sunlight. You will more than likely see dust still sitting on the table. The sunlight didn’t create the dust,
it merely exposed it.
When we take the time to draw back the high and heavy curtains of the Holy of Holies and let the light of God’s Law shine upon the sinner’s heart, all that happens is that the Law shows him his true state before God. Proverbs 6:23 tells us that “the Commandment is a lamp and the Law is light.”

It was the wrath of the Law that showed the adulterous woman that she was condemned. She found herself between a rock and a hard place. Without those heavy rocks waiting to pound her sinful flesh, she may have died in her sins and gone to hell. I doubt if she would have fallen at the feet of Jesus without the terror of the Law having driven her there. Thank God that it awakened her and caused her to flee to the Savior.

The sinner thinks that he is rich in virtue, but the Law shows him that he is morally bankrupt. If
he
does-
n’t
declare bankruptcy, the Law will mercilessly call for his last drop of blood.

What About Legalism?

One evening when I had taken a team to Santa Monica to preach the gospel, it began raining. It not only rained, but the heavens flashed with lightning. Thunder seemed to shake the earth in an unusually severe thunderstorm for Southern California. As a consolation for our team, we purchased two large pizzas to snack on as we took shelter from the pelting rain under a movie
theater
veranda.

As most of the thirty-member team munched on pepperoni pizza, I noticed the
heartwarming
sight of an elderly homeless woman having a fight with a ten-inch piece of cheese. It looked like a stretched rubber band as she pulled at it with what teeth she had left. I smiled
at her and asked if she wanted me to get her a pair of scissors. Amid the battle, she was able to return a courteous smile.

After she had downed the large slice of pizza, I offered her another one. Surprisingly, she declined. A few minutes later, however, she was battling a second piece. The scene
was
truly
heartwarming
.

Suddenly, the police arrived. The
theater
manager had called the law and told them he wanted the woman removed. There were thirty of us sheltering from the rain, yet he had sorted out a poor, hungry, homeless woman, and was telling the police to force her to move away! I heard the officers protesting that she was just sheltering from the rain. The manager was adamant: the woman had to move on.

At that moment I remembered that my pocket was bulging with a bundle of one-dollar bills. Each Friday night I would pull in a crowd by asking trivia questions and giving dollar bills to those who answered correctly. Once the crowd felt comfortable, I would swing from the natural to the spiritual and preach the gospel. As the police officers (reluctantly) began to move the old woman on, I stepped forward and grabbed her hand. She flinched and swung her fear-filled eyes toward
mine,
probably thinking that she was being handcuffed. Then she noticed that I had stuffed a wad of bills in her hand, and in a second her fear changed to joy.

The Bible tells us
in 1 Timothy
1:8, “Now we recognize and know that the Law is good if anyone uses it lawfully [for the purpose for which it was designed]” (Amplified). Just as the
theater
manager had used the law for something for which it was never designed— turning an elderly homeless woman out into the rain— so there are those who would use God’s Law for something for which it was never designed.

For what purpose was God’s Law designed? The fob lowing verse tells us: “The Law is not made for a righteous person, but...for sinners” (1 Timothy 1:9
,10
). It even lists the sinners for us: the disobedient, the un-godly, murderers, fornicators, homosexuals, kidnappers, liars, etc. The Law’s main design is not for the saved, but for the unsaved. It was given as a “schoolmaster” to bring us to Christ. It was designed primarily as an evangelistic tool.

The Law’s rightful purpose is simply to act as a mirror to show us that we need cleansing.

It is an
unlawful
use of the Law to seek to use it for “justification.” The Scriptures make that very clear: “A man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ...; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified” (Galatians 2:16). The Law’s rightful purpose is simply to act as a mirror to show us that we need cleansing. Those who seek to be justified by the Law are taking the mirror off the wall and trying to wash themselves with it.

Neither should the Law be used to produce something we call “legalism.” We are given incredible liberty in Christ (Galatians 5:1), and there are those who would seek to steal that liberty by placing the Law on the back of Christians. Obviously a Christian refrains from “lawlessness.” He doesn’t lie, steal, kill, commit adultery, etc. However, his motivation for holy living
isn’t one of legalism imposed on him by the Law. Why does he refrain from sin—to gain God’s
favor
? No. He already has that in Christ. He lives a life that is pleasing to God
because he wants to do all he can to show God gratitude for the incredible mercy he has received through the gospel.
His motive is love, not legalism. D. L. Moody said, “The Law can only chase a man to Calvary, no further.”

Why then would any Christian stray into legalism? Why would he begin telling believers what they can and cannot do in Christ? This happens simply because the Law hasn’t been used lawfully in the first place. Let me try to explain what I mean. If the spiritual nature of the Law is used in evangelism, it will once and for all rid a new believer of any thought of legalism. The Law reveals to him that there is no way he can please God outside of faith in Jesus. As he stands before the ground-shaking thunder and vivid lightning of Mount Sinai, it dawns on him that a holy Creator sees his wicked thoughts. He cringes as he begins to understand that God sees lust as adultery and hatred as murder. The guilty sinner sees that he is “by nature a child of wrath,” and therefore flees to shelter in Christ from the rain of God’s indignation. He knows that grace, and grace alone, saves him. Nothing in his hand he brings, simply to the cross he clings.

The true believer is saved knowing that
nothing
commends him to God. After a lifetime of good works, of reading the Word, of prayer and seeking the lost, he is still saved by grace and grace alone. He is an “unprofitable servant” who merely does what he should.

However, he who makes a commitment to Christ without the Law usually comes because he is seeking true inner peace and lasting
fulfillment
. He comes to fill a God-shaped vacuum in his life. There is no trembling. There is no fleeing from wrath. There is no fear. To him, God is a benevolent, fatherly figure, not wrath-filled. The Law hasn’t stripped him of self-righteous-ness. He doesn’t truly believe that his just reward is eternal damnation. Therefore, even as a professing Christian, he thinks that he is basically a good person.

Because of this, he is the one who is likely to think that he is pleasing God by reading his Bible, praying, fasting, and doing good works. He is the one deceived into thinking that somehow his good works commend him to God, and he is therefore the one who is liable to stray into “touch not, taste not, handle not” (Colossians 2:16-23).

The Law, when used lawfully, liberates the believer from legalism. If, however, it is neglected before the cross, those who profess faith in Christ are prone to go astray into legalism and then impose demands on other believers, stealing from them the great liberty we have in Christ.

Look at the function of the Law from the great classic
Pilgrim’s Progress
by John Bunyan:

“It was he [the Law] who did bind my heavy burden upon me.” Faithful agrees: “Aye. Had it not been for him, we had both of us stayed in the City of Destruction.”

“Then he did us a
favor
,” answered Christian. [Faithful then shows how the Law alarms us:]
“Aye.
Albeit, he did it none too gently.”
Then Christian says, “Well, at least he played the part of a school-master and showed us our need. It was he who drove us to the cross.”

There are many wonderful references to the work of the Ten Commandments hidden within the pages of God’s Word. We will unveil some of these in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 5

OUR BROKEN BACKBONE

T
here are two reasons why the Church would seem to be full of people whose lives don’t live up to what they should. As we have seen, the modem gospel has degenerated into a means of happiness, rather than one of righteousness. Second, we have failed to show the sinner that he is a lawbreaker, that he has violated the Law of a holy God.

When I speak of using the Law in evangelism, I am not speaking of a mere casual reference to it, but as the backbone of the gospel presentation, because its
func-tion
is to prepare the heart for grace. Martin Luther said of the Law, “In its true and proper work and purpose it humbles a man and prepares him—if he uses the Law correctly—to yearn and seek for grace.” The Law is the rod and staff of the shepherd to guide the sheep to himself. It is the net of the fisherman, and the hoe of the farmer. It is the ten golden trumpets that prepare the way for the king. The Law makes the sinner thirst for righteousness, that he might live. Its holy light reveals the dust of sin on the table of the human heart, so that the gospel in the hand of the Spirit can wipe it perfectly clean.