evangelism

A Power Couple Meets the Apostle Paul

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

power.jpg

“After some days Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, and he sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus.” (Acts 24:24, ESV)

The Apostle Paul would have understood the drive for success that motivated Felix and Drusilla. He too, had this focus at one time. He had studied and worked hard to rise in the ranks of Judaism as a Pharisee of Pharisees. He had the passion and the smarts to go far. But on that road where he encountered the risen Christ, everything changed.

He wrote about this change in his letter to the Philippian church:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:7–11, ESV)

Paul’s whole worldview had changed. Jesus was everything to him, and nothing else mattered. He counted it all as rubbish. Now, he stood before a couple that were like he was, looking to gain whatever they could from this world because they believed the philosophy that says that “the one who dies with the most toys wins.”

The problems with this philosophy is that the one who dies, still dies—no matter how many toys he has. And as Jesus said, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36, ESV). What would Paul talk about when he had the ear of this power couple? We don’t have to guess because Luke tells us in v. 24—he spoke about “faith in Christ Jesus.”

You see, the Christian faith is based upon a person, upon Jesus Christ. It isn’t about this earth, or what we can get. Those people who claim to be Christian preachers and teachers who are trying to sell us our best life now don’t get it. Our faith is heavenward, and that is where our focus is. Jesus is in the heavens preparing a place for us, and he is coming again for his Church.

Spurgeon on Preaching with Emotion

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

That is what you must do with your sermons, make them red-hot; never mind if men do say you are too enthusiastic, or even too fanatical, give them red-hot shot, there is nothing else half as good for the purpose you have in view. We do not go out snow-balling on Sundays, we go fire-balling; we ought to hurl grenades into the enemy’s ranks.—C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner: How to Lead Sinners to the Saviour; Fleming H. Revel edition, 69.

Theological Commitments of the Biblical Gospel: Preserving True Saints to the End

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

eternal-security

Preservation of the True Saints

This doctrine will have an impact when we come across a person (whether inside or outside of the church) who says that they received Christ as Savior at an earlier time, but that they have “backslidden” or lost their salvation and need to be saved again (or similarly, “rededicate my life to Christ”). But as we are assured in Rom 8:28-39 and other passages (Jn 6:37; 10:27-29; 17:12; 18:9; 1Cor 1:8-9; Phil 1:6; 1Thess 5:23-24; 2Thess 3:3; 2Tim 1:12; 4:18; Heb 7:25), our assurance of salvation is based upon the bedrock of the gospel. This is primary.

But a close corollary that cannot be missed is the need to walk in newness of life (Rom 6:4), bearing fruit in keeping with repentance (Matt 3:8), renewing our minds to conform to Christ (Rom 12:1-2; Col 3:10), putting off the old self, putting indwelling sin to death and putting on the new man(Rom 6:6; Eph 4:2; Col 2:11; 3:9), walking in the Spirit and not in the flesh (Rom 8:4; Gal 5:25).

All of these together, and more, mean that a person redeemed by Christ is a new creation and should not walk in their former manner of life. If that has not happened, then that person may need salvation for the first time and has not come to grips with the fulness of the truth of the gospel. Another possibility is that they are a true believer, but they have been disobedient to the Lord for an extended period of time, are immature, and in need of loving correction and to be discipled.

The bottom line is this: many of those in America who profess to be Christians know little to nothing about the true gospel and are in need of salvation. Some have been “Christianized” through exposure to the church, but their lives demonstrate a rebellion to our King. They too must be evangelized.

Those who are sincere and broken will need further conversation and observation to conclude their spiritual state, along with many gospel conversations that will either bring them to Christ or bring them to stability and point them toward maturity.

Theological Commitments of the Biblical Gospel: Unable to Resist God’s Calling

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

Dragged against your free will?

Resistance to the Gospel

If a person is elect, what assures that they will actually answer this divine call? The Arminian/semi-Pelagian, seeing everything through the lens of libertarian free-will, assumes that man can walk away from the drawing of the Spirit of God. But clear and straightforward passages such as the so-called “golden chain of redemption” in Rom 8:28-30 show that the process once begun by God cannot be thwarted:

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” (Romans 8:28–30, ESV)

Again, if the Lord God is sovereign in all things, he must have the power to overcome the deadness of sin and the resistance that inevitably comes from the naturally sinful desires of the elect before they are regenerate. The one who rejects the irresistible calling of God point to the observable reality of those who on a daily basis reject the gospel call of the evangelist.

But this general or universal declaration of the world to be saved is not the call of salvation we are speaking of here. This universal call is, of course rejected every day by many. We are speaking here of the “electing call” of God. This is the act of the Spirit of God moving, changing, provoking the will of the sinner so that all at once he sees his guilt before a holy God and his spiritual predicament, he also sees his need for a Savior, and he sees the beauty of Christ and how irresistible the call to come and drink of the living waters is. 

Dr. Lloyd-Jones says of this doctrine:

And again I could refer you to Ephesians 1:18 and to 1 Thessalonians 1:5 once more, and to Philippians 2:13. In other words, there are proofs positive of this statement that it is the internal operation of the Holy Spirit upon the soul and the heart of men and women that brings them into a condition in which the call can become effectual. And when the Spirit does it, of course, it is absolutely certain, and because of that some people have used the term—which I do not like myself—irresistible grace. I do not like the term because it seems to give the impression that something has happened which has been hammering at a person’s will and has knocked him down and bludgeoned him. But it is not that. It is that the Holy Spirit implants a principle within me which enables me, for the first time in my life, to discern and to apprehend something of this glorious, wondrous truth. He works upon my will. ‘It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do.’ He does not strike me; He does not beat me; He does not coerce me. No, thank God, what He does is operate upon my will so that I desire these things and rejoice in them and love them. He leads, He persuades, He acts upon my will in such a way that when He does, the call of the gospel is effectual, and it is certain, and it is sure. God’s work never fails, and when God works in a man or woman, the work is effective. [1]

When Paul and Silas approached the women who worshipped by the river in Philippi, it says in Acts 16:14 that “The Lord opened [Lydia’s] heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.” The Lord did not destroy her volition, but as the Sovereign Lord, he overcame her inability to see and understand and believe so that she paid attention to the gospel and believed.

Those who say that they believe in the sovereignty of God yet, because of love, God allows man to have a free will to choose or reject him is biblically, theologically and logically flawed. If God gives up his sovereignty in the area of salvation, he is not truly sovereign, because God cannot ordained the end without ordaining the means. God’s saving grace overcomes the internal resistance by changing the will of those whom he will save so that they have ears to hear and eyes to see and a heart to behold the glories of Christ, the One who died to set them free from their sins.

[1] David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God the Holy Spirit (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997), 73.

God and the Fool

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

foolishness

“The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none who does good. God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” (Psalm 53:1–3, ESV)

These words, quoted by the Apostle Paul in the third chapter of his letter to the Romans, are a stark reminder that the spirituality of this age that we live in is not a genuine seeking for the One true God, but rather is a seeking after another idol that can alleviate the void that is felt outside of God.

Even though the fool says in is heart that there is no God, his claim is contrary not only to the facts, but his raging against the God that he says does not exist shows that he does not believe his own words.

From God’s perspective, as he looks not only down on humanity, but looks into the darkened hearts of men, he does not see anyone who truly desires a relationship with him. Truth be told, humankind would be completely satisfied in pushing their Creator out of the picture totally—filling the void of their soul with anything else that they can find or create. In our futility and desperation, we have grown in our corruption. We even claim to be morally good, while God’s own estimation is much different.

Without the saving grace of Jesus Christ, we are living in a mass delusion. We are living as if there is no God, as if there was no moral standard except for the one that we have made, and that we are good according to our arbitrary standards. No wonder God calls us fools.

Jesus Christ is our only hope. He is the answer to our greatest need. He is our Creator, our Savior and Justifier. He takes out the hardened heart in men that is like stone, and he gives us a new heart that is tender toward him. He puts his Spirit in us so that we can grieve once again over our foolishness, and rejoice over the forgiveness that we have received. He gives us eyes to see his beauty and the beauty around us and ears to hear his voice as he calls and leads us.

Do you know this Jesus? He is God. He is Savior and Lord. He is calling to sinners and fools to depart from your sin and folly and call out to him for mercy. He will surely give it.