4 4L ESSON How to Confront Sinners Scratching people where they itch and addressing their felt needs is a stratagem of the poor steward of the oracles of God. This was the recipe for success for the false prophets of the Old Testament. R. C. SPROUL Kirk s Comment In this lesson, we will look at how the prophet Nathan confronted King David about his sin with Bathsheba. It would be a good idea to first review this incident in 2 Samuel 12:1 9 in your Bible, and become familiar with the story. Q UESTIONS & OBJECTIONS I am doing the best I can and I m sincere. Even if you could do far better than you are doing now, you still can t do well enough because you don t please God by being good (Galatians 2:21), but by trusting Jesus (John 1:12). Also, sincerity is not the way to heaven. What if you are sincerely wrong? (Remember John 14:6?) If you are relying on your sincerity, then you are saying that because you are sincere, you are good enough on your own to be with God. To appeal to your sincerity is to appeal to pride, because you are appealing to something that is in you, and not to God, for your reason to go to heaven. You must have faith in Jesus. 32
LESSON 4 HOW TO CONFRONT SINNERS God s Love: The Biblical Presentation T he modern message of the gospel is God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. However, our idea of wonderful and the world s may be a little different. Take a sinner through the pages of the Book of Acts and show him the terrifying scene of rocks breaking the bones of Stephen. Then smile and whisper, Wonderful... Listen together to the sound of a cat-o -nine-tails as it rips the flesh off the back of the apostle Paul. Follow together the word suffering through the Epistles, and see if you can get the world to whisper, Wonderful! Tell them that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). After such a ride down Honesty Road, they may think the pleasures of sin are a little more attractive than the call to suffer affliction with the people of God (Hebrews 11:25). Who in the world is going to listen to our message if we are so blatantly honest about the Christian life? Perhaps not as many as are attracted by the talk of a wonderful plan. The answer to our dilemma is to make the issue one of righteousness, rather than happiness. This is what Jesus did. He used the Ten Commandments to show sinners the righteous standard of God (Luke 10:25,26; 18:18 20). Once the world sees the perfect standard by which they will be judged, they will begin to fear God, and it is through the fear of the Lord that men depart from sin (Proverbs 16:6). They will begin to hunger and thirst after the righteousness that is in Jesus Christ alone. If you study the New Testament, you will see that God s love is almost always given in direct correlation to the cross: herein is love, for God so loved, God commended His love, etc. (See John 3:16; Romans 5:5,6,8; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 2:4,5; 5:2,25; 1 John 3:16; 4:10; and Revelation 1:5, among others.) The cross is the focal point of God s love for the world. How can we point to the cross without making reference to sin? How can we refer to sin without using the Law (Romans 7:7)? The biblical way to express God s love to a sinner is to show him how great his sin is (using the Law see Romans 7:13; Galatians 3:24), and then give him the incredible grace of God in Christ. This was the key to reaching so many on the Day of Pentecost. They were devout Jews who knew the Law and its 33
SCHOOL OF BIBLICAL EVANGELISM holy demands, and therefore readily accepted the mercy of God in Christ to escape its fearful wrath. When you use the Law to show the world their true state, get ready for sinners 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. Ponder this quote by John MacArthur until it is written in the corridors of your mind: We need to adjust our presentation of the gospel. We cannot dismiss the fact that God hates sin and punishes sinners with eternal torment. How can we begin a gospel presentation by telling people on their way to hell that God has a wonderful plan for their lives? It is true that God has a wonderful plan for their lives but it is that they would repent and trust the Savior, and receive the righteousness of Christ. Making Sinners Tremble For a biblical illustration of how to confront sinners using the issue of righteousness, let s look to the life of King David. When David sinned with Bathsheba, he broke all of the Ten Commandments. He coveted his neighbor s wife, lived a lie, stole her, committed adultery, murdered her husband, dishonored his parents, and thus broke the remaining four Commandments by dishonoring God. Therefore, the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to reprove him (2 Samuel 12:1 14). There is great significance in the order in which the reproof came. Nathan gave David, the shepherd of Israel, a parable about something he could understand sheep. He began with the natural realm, rather than immediately exposing the king s sin. He told a story about a rich man who, instead of taking a sheep from his own flock, killed a poor man s pet lamb to feed a stranger. David was indignant, and sat up on his high throne of self-righteousness. He revealed his knowledge of the Law by declaring that the guilty party must restore fourfold and must die for his crime. Nathan then exposed the king s sin of taking another man s lamb, saying, You are the man... Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil 34
LESSON 4 HOW TO CONFRONT SINNERS in his sight? When David cried, I have sinned against the Lord, the prophet then gave him grace and said, The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Imagine if Nathan, fearful of rejection, changed things around a little, and instead told David, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. However, there is something that is keeping you from enjoying this wonderful plan; it is called sin. Imagine if he had glossed over the personal nature of David s sin, with a general reference to all men having sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). David s reaction might have been, What sin are you talking about? rather than to admit his terrible transgression. Think of it why should he cry, I have sinned against the Lord at the sound of that message? Instead, he may have, in a sincere desire to experience this wonderful plan, admitted that he, like all men, had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. If David had not been made to tremble under the wrath of the Law, the prophet would have removed the very means of producing godly sorrow, which is necessary for repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10). It was the weight of David s guilt that caused him to cry out, I have sinned against the Lord. The Law caused him to labor and become heavy laden; it made him hunger and thirst for righteousness. It enlightened him as to the serious nature of sin as far as God was concerned. Here, then, is how we can get sinners to cry out, according to Paris Reidhead: If I had my way, I would declare a moratorium on public preaching of the plan of salvation in America for one to two years. Then I would call on everyone who has use of the airwaves and the pulpits to preach the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, and the Law of God, until sinners would cry out, What must we do to be saved? Then I would take them off in a corner and whisper the gospel to them. Don t use John 3:16. Such drastic action is needed because we have gospel-hardened a generation of sinners by telling them how to be saved before they have any understanding why they need to be saved. 35
SCHOOL OF BIBLICAL EVANGELISM Q UESTIONS 1. Why should we not tell sinners that God has a wonderful plan for their lives? 2. Give an example where Jesus used the Ten Commandments to show sinners God s righteous standard. 3. If we mention God s love to a lost person, in what context should it be? 4. How did David come to realize his sin? (See 2 Samuel 12:1 13.) 5. Why is citing Romans 3:23 to a sinner not sufficient for bringing about repentance? P REACHER S Christian: How are you doing? P ROGRESS Al Cohol: Awful! 36
LESSON 4 HOW TO CONFRONT SINNERS Christian: Why s that? Al Cohol: I ve got troubles. Christian: What sort of troubles? Al Cohol: My wife left me. Christian: Why s that? Al Cohol: I ve got a small problem with alcohol...and a bit of a gambling problem. Mind if I smoke? Christian: Go ahead. Al Cohol: Can you lend me a couple of dollars? I smashed my car up the other day and need to get it fixed. Christian: How did that happen? Al Cohol: I d had a couple of beers and was on my way to the courts to pay a speeding fine third DUI this month. What a pain! Christian: Do you ever pray? Al Cohol: All the time. I told you; I have problems. Christian: Do you see your need of God s forgiveness? Al Cohol: No. Christian: The Ten Commandments will help you... (Christian goes through the Commandments, then into the gospel.) Al Cohol: I know I m guilty, and I know that if I died tonight I would go to hell, but I ve got all these problems I ve got to work out before I get into that stuff. Christian: Listen to me, Al. All these problems combined a thousand times over won t be anything like the problem you will have on Judgment Day if you refuse to repent. You may not see this now, but I care enough about you to tell you the truth. I don t want you to go to hell neither does God. Don t put off your eternal salvation. There is nothing more important. 37
SCHOOL OF BIBLICAL EVANGELISM Memory Verse For godly sorrow works repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world works death. 2 CORINTHIANS 7:10 F EATHERS FOR A RROWS A pastor was once approached by his six-year-old son who said he wanted to ask Jesus into his heart. The father, suspecting that the child lacked the knowledge of sin, told him that he could do so when he was older, then sent him off to bed. A short time later, the boy got out of bed and asked his father if he could give his life to the Savior. The father still wasn t persuaded of the son s understanding, so, not wanting the child s salvation to be spurious, he sent him back to his room. A third time the son returned. This time the father questioned him about whether he had broken any of the Ten Commandments. The young boy didn t think he had. When asked if he was a liar, the child said he wasn t. The father thought for a moment, then asked him how many lies he had to tell to be a liar. When it was established that one lie made a person a liar, the child realized he had lied, and broke down in uncontrollable tears. When the father then inquired whether he wanted to ask Jesus into his heart, the child cringed and shook his head. He was fearful because now he knew that he had sinned against God. At this point, he could do more than experimentally ask Jesus into his heart. He could find a place of godly sorrow, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21). Last Words William Shakespeare (1564 1616), the world s outstanding figure in literature, lived near his Bible, as shown by the numerous quotations from it in his plays and dramas. His end came when he was only 52 years of age. His last will and testament revealed his faith in God: I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting; and my body to the earth, whereof it is made. 38