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When I look at the book of Romans which is one of my favorite books of the Bible, it
is not a systematic theology, but if you could say any book in the Bible was a
systematic theology the book of Romans would be the closest. Isn’t it amazing that
Paul spends the first three chapters of that book seeking to do one thing? Bring all men
into condemnation, bring all men into condemnation.
But it is not that condemnation is his great sunum bonum in his theology. It is not his
end or his final purpose. It is a means to bring salvation to his readers because men
must be brought to a knowledge of self before they surrender self over to God. Men
are made in such a fallen manner now that you must cut away from them absolutely
every hope in the flesh before they may be brought to God.
It is as important in everything, but it is especially important in evangelism. I
remember. This was… I was 21 years old and had just been called to preach and I
walked into an old store where they would sell suits to ministers for half price. They
had been doing it for 50, 60 years. And I walked in there and I was looking for a suit in
Paducah, Kentucky and all of the sudden the door opened. I heard the bell ring. It
closed. There was an old, old man standing there. I never caught his name, but when
he walked in he looked right at me.
He said, “Boy, you have been called to preach, haven’t you?”
I said, “Yes, sir.”
He was an old, old evangelist. He said, “You see where that building is right outside
this building?”
I said, “Yeah.”
He said, “I used to preach there. The Spirit of God would come down and souls would
be saved.”
I said, “Sir, please tell me about it.”
He said, “There wasn’t anything like this evangelism today.” He said, “We would
preach for two and three weeks and give no invitation to sinful men. We would plow
and plow and plow and plow the hearts of men until the Spirit of God began to work
and break their hearts.”
I said, “Sir, how did you know when the Spirit of God was coming to break their
hearts?”
And he said, “Well, let me just give you an example.” He said, “Many decades ago I
walked into this store to buy a suit. Someone had handed me $30 and said, ‘Preacher,
go buy you a suit tomorrow.’ And when I walked through the door the young clerk
taking care of the shop turned around and looked at me and when he looked at me he
fell down on the floor and cried out, ‘Who can save a wicked man like me?’ And I
knew that the Spirit of God had fallen upon the place.”
Now we just walk in and talk to them, give them three exploratory questions and ask
them if they want to pray a prayer and ask Jesus to come into their heart and we make
a two fold son of hell who will never again be open to the gospel because the religious
lie that we, as evangelicals, have spewed out of our mouth.
I will say something that Leonard Ravenhill used to say. “Now you understand why I
preach in a lot of places once.” But that is the truth.
When we treat sin superficially, first of all we are fighting against the Holy Spirit.
“And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin.”
There are very popular preachers today who are more concerned about giving you
your best life now then they are eternity. And they brag about the fact that they do not
mention sin in their preaching. I can tell you this. The Holy Spirit has nothing to do
with their ministry lest he be working against. That would be the only thing.
Why? When a man says he has no ministry dealing with the sin of men, the Holy Spirit
does. It is a primary ministry of the Holy Spirit to come and convict the world of sin.
And so know this. When you do not deal specifically, passionately, lovingly with men
and their depraved condition, the Holy Spirit is nowhere around you.
Also we are deceivers when we deal with the malady of men lightly like shepherds of
Jeremiah’s day. “They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, Saying,
‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.”
We are not only deceivers, but we are immoral, like a doctor who denies his
Hippocratic oath because he doesn’t want to tell someone bad news because he thinks
that person will be cross against him, will be angry with him, will be sad. And so he
does not tell them the news most necessary to save their life.
I hear preachers today, they say, “No. No, no, no, no. You don’t understand, brother
Paul. We are not like the people of the day of John and Charles Wesley. We are not
like the culture that Whitefield addressed or Edwards. We are not as hearty as they are.
We are broken. We don’t have as much self esteem. We are feeble. We can’t bear such
preaching.”
Listen to me. Have you ever studied the lives of these men? What they preached their
culture couldn’t bear it either. No one has ever been able to bear the preaching of the
gospel. They will either turn against it with a fierceness of an animal or they will be
converted.
And to give you a thing about us being more feeble and not having the self esteem, our
country and this world is overrun with this disgusting malady of self esteem. Our
greatest problem is that we esteem self more than we esteem God.
We are also thieves when we do not speak much about sin. We are thieves.
Let me ask you a question. This afternoon, this morning, where did all the stars go?
Did some cosmic giant come by in a basket and pick them all up and throw them in
and carry them someplace else? Where did all the stars go this morning? They were
there, but you couldn’t see them. But then the sky grew darker and darker and darker
and as that night turned black as pitch the stars came out in the fulness of their glory.
When you refuse to teach on the radical depravity of men it is an impossibility that you
bring glory to God, his Christ and his cross because the cross of Jesus Christ and the
glory thereof is most magnified when it is placed in front of the backdrop of our
depravity.
She loved much because she has been forgiven much and she knew how much she had
been forgiven because she knew how wicked she was.
Oh, we are afraid to tell men of their wickedness and they can never love God because
of it. We have robbed them the opportunity to boast not in self, but to follow the
admonition, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.”