Bathsheba on Billboards

As someone who desires to reach the lost, you have enlisted as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. You have been recruited for warfare, not to idly eye this sinful world. If you have any inkling to, you can be sure the enemy will have a Bathsheba in your sights.  You will see her on billboards, in movies, magazine covers, and television advertisements.  She wants to find her way into your thoughts and into your dreams.  If you are bored, depressed, or plagued with lustful thoughts, then make sure you get rid of every avenue to her door, because with a click of your mouse you can commit adultery in your heart (see Matthew 5:27-28).  

Jesus said that if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off, and then cast it from you; that’s how terribly serious sin is. Hands are pretty handy, so it would be better and easier to get rid of the mouse and cut off Internet access.  If you don’t make a move in that direction, you are a standing target for the enemy. So go onto the streets (the highways and byways) and share the gospel with someone who is on their way to Hell, and doesn’t know it.  Compel them to come into the kingdom of God. 

There’s no room for idle thoughts if you are keeping your mind in the battle for the lost.  I want to eat more if I’m doing nothing. If I find myself idle, I find myself standing in front of an open refrigerator. But if I keep myself busy doing something, I hardly think about food.  If I pack my garden with healthy plants, there will be no room for weeds.  We must fill our minds with the Word of God, prayerfully cultivate a healthy fear of the Lord, and keep busy with a passion for the lost rather than for our neighbor’s wife or daughter.

Dealing with Bathsheba

King David should have been busy in battle, but he was instead idly gazing at where he shouldn’t have been looking.  The devil has a use for idle eyes, and it wasn’t long before David was eyeing his neighbor’s wife.  The Scriptures tell us that lust brings forth sin, and it certainly did with David.  His neighborly coveting lead to adultery, murder, theft and hypocrisy, and it all had its roots in the subtle sin of “idolatry.”  In order to accommodate our sins idolatry convinces us that God is either blind, sinful, or that He doesn’t exist.

Whenever a professing Christian tells me that he has a problem with pornography, I immediately think of idolatry. His image of what God is like is erroneous. What does he think God is doing while he is looking at pornography? If asked if he would ever look at porn in a worship service, he would probably say that he wouldn’t. He thinks that the Almighty--the ever-present and all-seeing God is confined to a building we wrongly call a “church.”  This error is often perpetuated by worship leaders who talk about “entering” the presence of God for worship, when we are always in His presence. He’s there in the bedroom as lust-filled eyes feed upon porn. He’s there in the corridors of the human mind, as unclean images are displayed on the screen of the imagination.

These are days in which it is common for men to have “accountability partners” when it comes to the issue of lust.  It means that we confide in a Christian brother and let him know how we are doing in our moral battles.   We become accountable to him. The problem with that is that if I am going to secretly commit adultery in my heart through lust, I’m not going to have a problem when it comes to lying to someone about my moral state.  It is far more sensible to make God our accountability partner. He’s the One we should be accountable to now, because He’s the One we will be accountable to on Judgment Day.  The Scriptures tell us “Surely his salvation is near them that fear him…” (Psalm 85:9). It’s the fear of God that is missing when we feel at liberty to gaze at Bathsheba.  To be continued…

Dealing with Goliath

If you have a passion to reach the unsaved with the gospel, you are going to confront Goliath. This is the giant the Bible calls “the spirit of fear” that will come against you and taunt you the moment you decide to reach out to the lost. When it’s a one-to-one encounter or you are preparing to preach open air to a crowd, you will hear his tormenting voice telling you that what you are about to do will result in you being torn limb from limb and fed to the birds.
I have a friend who was a Navy Seal who told me that he felt less fear sky-diving for the first time, than he felt the first time he stepped onto a box to do his first open air preaching. This sort of fear certainly has “torment,” and the only way to overcome it is to do what David did. He slung Goliath a straight-forward mind-impressing message that he wasn’t going to be deterred, and then he cut of his head. That silenced his big and loud mouth.
Take a lesson from Scripture--deal with your fears once and for all, and then never listen to them again. Instead, listen to the Word of God and its warning of what will happen to the unsaved. If any son or daughter of Adam dies in his or her sins, they will be justly damned in a terrible place called Hell. We should let such a thought torment our conscience until we open our mouths and speak boldly, as we ought to speak. We have a sobering task to do and with the help of God, we will do it.

The Message

The Apostle Paul followed in the steps of Jesus by using the moral Law to bring the knowledge of sin (see Romans 3:19,20). When a rich young man ran to Jesus and asked how he could find everlasting life, Jesus didn’t speak of a wonderful plan, or even of God’s love or the cross. He firstly reproved the man’s understanding of the word "good," then He gave the man five of the Ten Commandments (see Mark 10:17-21) so that He would know how the nature of God’s goodness. He had to be confronted with his crimes against His Creator.

So if you want to be faithful to the Word of God and to the Great commission to “preach the gospel to every creature,” don’t change the message. Don’t adjust it because you want to make it more palatable to the sinner or because you are afraid of rejection. Don’t change it because you want to follow in the footsteps of modern preachers, because they are not going in the right direction. Modern methods have wreaked havoc within the Church—filling it with tares among the wheat, resulting in a Church that looks little like the God-fearing, fiery, fearless, evangelistic Church of the Book of Acts, who faced death rather than compromise the message.

So, if you profess to be a follower of Christ, do what Jesus did. Take courage and open up the divine Law before you preach the mercy of the cross. It is the Law that makes the cross make sense. Who is going to want mercy if they aren’t shown their sin? There are some, however, who are of the belief that sinners are well-aware of their sin and don’t need the Law. But such a belief is diametrically opposed to Scripture, which says that there are “none” who understand (see Romans 3:11). Opening up the Commandments as Jesus did on the Sermon on the Mount was the way of Wesley, Spurgeon, Whitefield and all the faithful men of God, who knew the great biblical truth that we must diagnose the disease of sin before we prescribe the cure of the gospel.

You are the man!

But Nathan instead told the king of a man who stole another man’s lamb, and then killed it. When David became self-righteous and indignant, Nathan said, “You are the man! Why have you despised the Commandment of the Lord?” That’s what caused David to cry out that he had sinned against God, and plead for mercy (see Psalm 51). Speaking of some “wonderful plan” would not have, and could not have produced such a response.
We are to be like Nathan. We are to ignore our fears and we are not trifle with the message with which we have been entrusted: “Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Corinthians 4:1-2).
The Amplified Bible says of verse 2: “We refuse to deal craftily (to practice trickery and cunning) or to adulterate or handle dishonestly the Word of God, but we state the truth openly (clearly and candidly).” Yet many of us have handled the Word of God deceitfully. Even though every son and daughter of Adam is a criminal in God’s sight--with a multitude of serious crimes against Heaven, our message has become “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” It has been adulterated, with sin being merely addressed with a blanket of “all have sinned,” when we should be following in Nathan’s steps and instead personalizing it with “You are the man…Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord?” The word “commandment” is a direct reference to the Ten Commandments, and David certainly had despised them. He coveted his neighbor’s wife, stole her, lived a lie, committed adultery, committed murder, dishonored his parents, and skittled the remaining four Commandments that make reference to our relationship to God.
Sin is never simple, and it always involves transgression of the moral Law (see 1 John 3:4). Sin is extremely serious, is personal, and its personal nature must be addressed if there is to be personal responsibility and a personal response. This is what Paul did in Romans chapter two. When confronting sinners, he didn’t speak of a wonderful plan, but instead spoke of God’s Law and then he personalized sin with, “You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law? For ‘the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,’ as it is written” (Romans 2:21-24). He was saying, like Nathan, “You are the man.” To be continued.

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Nathan

Adjective: Courageous

There are only a few men of God of whom the Bible is silent when it comes to their sins, or even their weaknesses. No doubt they had them, but they are hidden from us. Perhaps Nathan (like Moses, Jeremiah, Gideon, Elijah and others) complained to God when he was told that his irksome task was to tell a king that he was a murdering adulterer, and that God had seen his sin. Perhaps Nathan thought about how David had already committed murder, how he didn’t hesitate to remove the head of Goliath, and how with one nod of the king’s head, Nathan’s could be removed.

But we are not told of any such discourse between God and the prophet. And even if he did whine in prayer, Nathan was faithful to the task God set before him. David had committed the serious crime of not only taking another man’s wife, but of murdering him to cover up his offense, and he had to be confronted with his sin. So what did Nathan do? Did he change this punitive message with which God had entrusted him? Did he instead come before the king and say,

“David, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life; but there is something that is stopping you enjoying this wonderful plan. It’s your sin. Nevertheless, ‘All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God’.”

Why would he do that? David was a criminal and he had to be confronted with the crimes he had committed against God. To speak of some “wonderful plan” to a criminal would be ridiculous and extremely inappropriate. It would be like a prosecuting attorney suddenly talking about a wonderful plan to Charles Manson or some other mass murderer, and ignoring or diluting his crimes. Such a scenario would be unthinkable. And yet that’s the message of much of modern evangelism.

To be continued.

Adam

Adjective: Perfect

It is because of Adam that we have life. God used him as our first father. Adam was made in the image of God, and with the help of his God-given helpmate, they reproduced after their own kind. But it’s also because of Adam’s disobedience that we have what the Bible calls “corruption” throughout the entire creation. Everything miserable traces itself back to Adam and his rebellion.

However, his life gives us a very important evangelistic lesson. Adam’s transgression shows us that sin is something to be looked upon with the utmost solemnity. We say that God is holy, just, and good; that’s He’s morally perfect, but somehow those words don’t carry much depth in our dull and fallen minds. But in criminal court, we can see how “good” a judge is by how seriously he deals with a devious criminal. If he gives him a very light sentence, then the judge thinks lightly of crime; but if he gives him multiple life-sentences, we can see how serious the crime is in the judge’s eyes.

So, we can get a tiny glimpse of God’s goodness and love of justice by seeing how He dealt with one transgressor of His moral Law. Adam’s one seemingly insignificant sin ushered in pain, insanity, suicide, cancer (and thousands of deadly other diseases), killer tornadoes, devastating hurricanes, massive floods, frightening tsunamis, man-eating tigers and sharks, poisonous snake and spiders, alcoholism, starvation, wife-beating, drug addiction, demonic-possession, loneliness, fear, hatred, rape, abortion, blasphemy, murder, torture, wars, theft, racial prejudice, genocide, pedophilia, aging, death, Hell and damnation in the Lake of Fire. And I have just skimmed over the tip of the top of the iceberg of human misery--all because of one man’s transgression of God’s moral demands. Such is the frightening holiness of God. No wonder Isaiah cried “Woe is me, I’m undone!” when he found himself in His presence!

Sin is so terribly serious that it calls for the lightning of His wrath, and if He wasn’t “rich in mercy” we would be instantly struck down the moment we merely entertained the thought of sin—The Psalmist said, “He shall take them away as with a whirlwind, as in His living and burning wrath” (Psalm 58:9). Every time a sinner sins, he stores up God’s wrath that will, like a bursting dam of Eternal Justice, fall upon him on the Day of Judgment.

How soberly should we then preach the message with which Almighty God has entrusted us, never diluting the hennas nature of sin or the surety of judgment. We should never be afraid of the world’s scorn. To even entertain the fear of feeble man (that the Bible refers to as a worm), is to reveal a lack of the fear of Almighty God.

“Wherefore knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Corinthians 5:11).