Ten Indictments (A Historical 21st Century Message) - Part 1

Let us go to the Lord in prayer. Father, I come before you in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, you know all things. They are all before you like an open book. Who can hide their heart from your presence and your eye? The deeds of the most clever men are exposed before you. Your omniscience knows no bounds and if it were not for grace I would be of all men most terrified, but there is grace, abounding and glorious, poured out upon the weakest of men and abounding to your glory. Father, I praise you and I worship you and I thank you for all that you are and all that you have done. And there is no one like you in the heavens or the earth or under the earth. You are king and there is no other. You are Savior and you share that glory with no one. Father, this night you know me and my great need of grace. Why am I here except that you called the weakest among men, the most ignoble among brothers and that by your grace, often times, the lesser teaches the greater? That is always my case and I praise you. I worship you. Father, help us tonight. To the wind with eloquence, to hell with the brilliant intellect, Father. Let the truth go forward. Let me be changed that the state of your Church be more glorious. I pray for grace upon grace and mercy upon mercy for myself and for the hearers who are present here. Help us, oh God, and we will be helped and we will boast in that help in Jesus’ name. Amen. It is a great privilege for me to be here this evening, an astounding privilege to stand here before you and to speak about things such as revival, reformation, the working of God among his people and among men. But tonight I am going to share with you an indictment, an indictment, but it is an indictment of hope. As I was praying through what I should do in this series of meetings I came to a great conclusion, a great burden that was laid upon my heart. We need revival. We need an awakening, but we cannot simply expect the Holy Spirit to come down and clean up all the mess we have made. We have clear direction from the Word of God with regard to what he has done through Christ, how he expects us to live, how he expects us to order his Church. And it does little good for men to cry out for extra biblical manifestations when biblical principle is violated all around us. I want you to know this. There is little need for the devil and evil men to oppose a man praying for revival unless he is also laboring for reformation. We have been given truth and we cannot simply do what is right in our own eyes and then expect the Holy Spirit to come down and bless our labors. As we look into the Old Testament we see that Moses is given very, very detailed explanation how to build the temple. Now was that given for Moses’ sake or for the Church’s sake? I think that what is being explained here is that God is specific in his will and that we are not to presume that we can take the smallest detail and ignore it. Now I know that I am frail man and I know that I am buffeted by many weaknesses, but I have an indictment and I can’t call it my indictment because who am I to indict anyone. And I dare not call it God’s indictment for how can I presume upon his name. But I will say this. As I look around at the Church and compare her to Scripture, I see that there are certain things that must change. I am not Martin Luther. This is not 95 declarations nailed to Wittenburg’s door, but this is a burden on my heart and I must share it. I must share it. Now let me say this. What I am going to say will anger some of you, but let me warn you. It may be true that you will be able to accuse me of arrogance. It may be true that you do not like my delivery. I have many times been arrogant and I have many times delivered truth in a wrong way, but don’t allow that to be an excuse for you. The question is. What I am saying, is it true whether it is delivered through a faulty messenger or no? Others of you will be rejoicing in what you hear and you will want to say, “Amen,” and maybe pump your arms. But don’t do that because all of us bear a measure of guilt. And if you have attained to some spiritual state, then I would say what my brother has said. “What do you have that you have not received and if you have received it, why do you boast?”1 Would it not be better to worship God in humility? If you are a younger minister, I do not want you to get caught up in these truths and take them back and storm your church without love. I would make one suggestion. See to it that your knees are bleeding before you begin any sort of reformation. And if you are an older minister serving the Lord for many, many years I beg you not to be arrogant. An old foolish king can learn from the weakest of his servants. And also I beg you this. Have the courage to change everything even if it is the last day of your life, at least you can go into glory knowing that you attempted a reformation that was biblical. And I will say this as a warning to the older men. Now, listen to me carefully. I know the admonition in 1 Timothy chapter five of the way I am to address you and so I address you this way, but there is a great awakening going on in this country and not only in this country and Europe where I have been and in South America and many other places, I see young men going back to the rock from which we were cut. They are reading Spurgeon and Whitefield. They are still listening to Ravenhill and Martin Lloyd-Jones and Tozer and Wesley and it is a great, incredible movement. Just because popular media and Christianity today hasn’t discovered what is going on, I want you to know that I would have never dreamed 15 years ago that I would see the awakening I am seeing, not through my ministry, but as I go to different places and see what God is doing without any of our ministries. Whether it is Holland, a thousand young men declaring, “Things have to change,” crying out all night in prayer for the power of God and the truth of Scripture or South America recognizing that they have been so influenced by psychology and all sorts of superficial techniques coming from America with regard to evangelism and now weeping and broken are going back and evangelizing their churches, or the inner city of the United States where I have sat up at times until two and three in the morning discussing theology with young African Americans in the hood whom God is going to raise up to do more preaching than anyone will ever be able to imagine on this day. There is an awakening. And I am going to say this with tenderness. Most men over 40 don’t even have a clue about it. Many of the young people who are turning back to the old men and the old ways and to truths that have brought awakening time and time again in this world, most of these young men are quite young. And they will go to their pastors, they will go to their leaders and say, “Look at this, what we have discovered. Look what happened in Wales. Look what happened in Africa. Look at this and look at this and look at this teaching. It is absolutely amazing.” And most of them will either turn it away or say, “It is nothing any different than what I have been preaching for 25 years,” when, in fact, it is completely different than what they have been preaching in 25 years. And so we need to be very, very careful to understand that God is doing work. And he who began a good work will finish it.2 Many people have the idea that they are going to pray in a revival. And other people say, “Revival will come whether you pray or not.” I am not in either one of those camps. But I know this. When I see men and women and young people all over the world praying for an awakening, to me that is the first fruits of revival. And I can count on the fact that he who gave those first fruits will bring in the full harvest. Now I want to look at 10 indictments, if we have time, things that I believe that we must change. First of all, the first indictment: a practical denial of the sufficiency of Scripture, especially my denomination, a practical denial of the sufficiency of Scripture. 2 Timothy 3:15 and on says: And that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.3 Over the last several decades there has been a mighty battle with regard to the inspiration of Scripture. Now some of you have not been a part of that battle, but many of us in more liberal denominations most certainly have, a battle for the Bible. But there is only one problem. When you come to believe as a people that the Bible is inspired you have only fought half the battle because the question is not merely is the Bible inspired, is it inerrant. The major question following that that must be answered: Is the Bible sufficient or do we have to bring in every so called social science and cultural study in order to know how to run a church? That is a major question. Social sciences, in my opinion, have taken precedent over the Word of God in such a way that most of us can’t even see it. It has so crept in to our Church, our evangelism and our missiology that you can barely call what we are doing Christian anymore. Psychology, anthropology, sociology have become primary influences in the Church. Several years ago, many years ago when I was in seminary I remember a professor walked in and he started drawing footprints on the blackboard. And as he marched them across the blackboard then he turned to all of us and said only this. “Aristotle is walking through the halls of this institution. Beware, for I hear his footsteps more clearly than those of the apostle Paul and the team of inspired men who were with him and even the Lord Jesus Christ himself.” We have come to believe that a man of God can deal in certain tiny areas in the life of the Church, but when it really gets tough we need to go to the social experts. That is an absolute lie. It says here in Scripture that the man of God may be equipped, adequate, equipped for every good work. What does Jerusalem have to do with Rome? And what do we have to do with all these modern day social sciences that were actually created as a protest against the Word of God? And why is it that evangelism and missions and so called church growth is more shaped by the anthropologist, the sociologist and the Wall Street student who is up on every cultural trend? All the activity in our church must be based upon the Word of God, all the activity in missions upon the Word of God. Our missionary activity, our church activity, everything we do ought to flow from the theologian and the exegete, the man who opens up his Bible and only has one question. What is thy will, oh God? We are not to send out questionnaires to carnal people to discover what kind of church they would attend. A church ought to be seeker friendly, but the church ought to recognize there is only one seeker. His name is God and if you want to be friendly to someone, if you want to accommodate someone, accommodate him and his glory whether it is rejected by everyone else. We are not called to build empires. We are not called to be excessive. We are called to glorify God. And if you want the Church to be something other than a peculiar people, then you want something God does not want. I want you to listen to Isaiah just for a moment, chapter eight. Listen to what he says. “When they say to you, ‘Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter...’”4 This is a perfect [?] and the church growth gurus and everything else because every two or three years all their major theories change. Not only on what is a man or how you fix him, but what is a church and how you make it grow. Every two or three years there is another fad coming down the line of what can make your church into something super in the eyes of the world. Just recently one of the greatest or most well known church growth experts said that he discovered that he was entirely wrong on all his theory. But instead of turning them to Scripture on his knees broken and weeping, he goes out to find another theory. They give no clear word. It says here in Isaiah, “Should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?”5 Should we as churchmen, as preachers, as pastors, as Christians, should we go out and consult the spiritually dead on behalf of those whom the Holy Spirit has made alive? Absolutely not, absolutely not. The second indictment: An ignorance of God. At times I am asked, “Brother Paul, please come and do a week long series on the attributes of God.” And many times I will say this. “I am... Well, brother, have you thought this through?” He said, “What do you mean have I thought this through?” “Well, it is quite controversial, the subject that you are putting... you are giving to go teach in your church.” They say, “What do you mean it is controversial? I mean it is God. We are Christians. This is a church. What do mean it is controversial?” I said, “Dear pastor, you listen to me. When I begin instructing your people on the justice of God, the sovereignty of God, the wrath of God, the supremacy of God, the glory of God, you are going to have some of your finest and oldest church members stand up and say something like this. ‘That is not my God. I could never love a God like that,’ because they have a god they have made with their own mind and they love what they have made.” Jeremiah 9:23-24: Thus says the LORD, "Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me.6 Psalms 50. “You thought,” God speaking: You thought that I was just like you; I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes. Now consider this, you who forget God, Or I will tear you in pieces, and there will be none to deliver.7 Now, what is the problem here? There is a lack of the knowledge of God. Many of you, possibly think, “Oh, talking about the attributes of God and theology, it is all high, ivory tower stuff that has no practical application.” Listen to yourself speak saying the knowledge of God has no practical [?]. Do you know why all your Christian bookstores are filled up with self help books and five ways to do that and six ways to be godly and 10 ways not to fall? Because people don’t know God. And so they have to be given all sorts of trivial little devices of the flesh to keep them walking as sheep ought to walk. 1 Corinthians 15:34. “Become sober-minded as you ought, and stop sinning; for some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.”8 Why the rampant sinning even among God’s people? A lack of the knowledge of the God, of God. Now let me ask you a question. When was the last time you attended a conference on the attributes of God? When was the last time, as a pastor, you taught for a solid year on who God is? How much of all the teaching that goes on in America all week has anything to do with who God is? And then we wonder. Isn’t it so easy to go with the flow, to just follow everybody else and then one day you hear something like this and all of the sudden you go, “I can’t even remember when anybody taught on the attributes of God”? No wonder we are a people as we are. To know him, that is what everything is about. That is eternal life. And eternal life doesn’t begin when you pass through the gates of glory. Eternal life begins with conversion. Eternal life is to know him. Do you honestly think you are going to be thrilled about swinging on gates of pearl and walking down streets of gold for an eternity? The reason why you won’t lose your mind in eternity is because of this. There is one there who is infinite in glory and you will spend an eternity of eternities tracking him down and you will never get your arms even around the foothill of his mountain. Start now. So many different things you want to know and do and all the books. Get out a book on God, this one, and study it to know him, to know him. Sunday morning, because of all of this, I would submit to you that it would be better not even to have a Sunday morning. Sunday morning is the greatest hour of idolatry in the entire week of America because people are not worshipping the one true God—the great mass at least—but are worshipping a god formed out of their own hearts by their own flesh, satanic devices and worldly intelligence. They have made a god just like themselves and he looks more like Santa Claus than he does Yahweh. There can be no fear of the Lord among us because there is no knowledge of the Lord among us. The third indictment: A failure to address man’s malady. 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.”9 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.”10 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, 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.11

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Ten Indictments (A Historical 21st Century Message) - Part 1

Paul Washer

Paul Washer (1961 - Present)

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