Having a place in the harvest is indeed a sacred trust. We are co-laborers with God (1 Cor. 3:9) and find ourselves amidst the ripened wheat because God Himself as thrust us forth in response to our pleading (Matt. 9:38).

Since my salvation experience I have had a deep consciousness of God and a sense of His calling upon my life. I was ordained an evangelist in 1988. The road to that event would take several websites to report.

It is my conviction that God does not quantify our efforts at least in the sense that we consider the magnitude of our accomplishments. Rather, God honors the quality of our motives and conformity of our wills to His leading. I have been overwhelmed at times with the sacred trust of having a place in the harvest. What a privilege!

Laborers Together represents a personal plea to be used as one of God's reapers. In 1988 I had the opportunity to take my first cross-cultural mission trip. Our team resided in san Salvador and evangelized thousands during the one-week excursion abroad. Not long after, God opened the door to Eastern Europe and I had the opportunity accompany Evangelist John Crabbe through nine countries, including Poland.

In 1992, I was invited to Poland for a two-week Bible camp to give lectures to about 70 university students. The annual camps became English schools, evangelistic meetings and Bible conferences.

In 2002 the Lord opened the door to West Africa and the nation of Mali. On two occasions I have taught pastors and Bible students in the northern Sahara region of Timbuktu and Gao.

While remaining selective in my teaching opportunities abroad, I am increasingly burdened for training need here in the USA.

The Foothills Center for Biblical Studies is a grass roots indigenous effort to train local church workers as an impetus for biblical revival.

It is my prayer that God will raise up a host of workers, equipped with the skills to "rightly divide the word of truth" (2 Tim. 2:15) and give them eyes to see their place in the vast harvest of souls.

Rescue the Perishing:

Understanding the Biblical Concept of “Lostness”

Luke 19:10

 Introduction

ABC launched a new TV series recently called, “Lost.” The series is filmed entirely on location in Hawaii and chronicles the adventures of a group of stranded castaways. We use the term “lost” popularly of an item we’ve misplaced, or a state of denial indicative of the majority of male drivers attempting to get somewhere without the aid of a map. Yet, when it comes to its presence in the Bible, the word “lost” is far more severe in its use and description.

The use of language is often problematic in general. It is our practice as soul winners to use familiar terms and expressions that represent broader theological truths or spiritual ideas.

-             For example, we say that someone is “born again,” referring to an individual who has entered the family of God through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit (Jn. 3:3, 7; 1 Pet. 1:23; Tit. 3:5).

-             Consider also the use of “Christian” to identify a follower of Jesus Christ, a disciple adhering to the teachings of Christ (Jn. 8:31; Acts 11:26; Col. 2:6-7).

-             Another example is the use of  “saved” or “salvation” as a reference to one who through faith has been delivered from the immediate condemnation of sin (Rom. 1:16; 10:9,10; Eph. 2:8; 1 Cor. 15:2).

Confusion Among non-Christians

The Christian, who is only familiar with an expression, or uses “Christian jargon”, being unfamiliar with the theological truth it represents, introduces confusion into the conversation.

-             Imagine what “born again” or “Christian” or “saved” phrased in a question would mean to a non-Christian. “Have you been born again?” we might ask. The reply might be, “No, I’m not religious”.

-             Or, we could simply ask, “Are you a Christian?”. The response undoubtedly would be positive here in the USA where the expression is commonly used as an adjective: “Yes, I like Christian music”… “Yes, I attend a Christian church”… “Yes, I live in a Christian nation”… “Yes, I have Christian parents.”

-             The more direct, “Have you been saved?” is today construed by many as, “Are you currently in a 12 step program?”

On the other hand, questions such as, “Have you entered into the family of God?”, or “Are you a follower of Jesus Christ?”, or “Have you been delivered from the penalty of sin?”, while not immune to misunderstanding, strike much closer to home. It follows, then, that the greater our own understanding of a particular biblical doctrine or theological truth, the greater our ability to impart that truth effectively to others.

Confusion Among Christians

If such confusion exists on the part of the non-Christian, perhaps it is also possible for the Christian to possess an incomplete or distorted picture of those without Christ.

-             References to unsaved persons as being “lost,” for example, are often associated with images of lost sheep and a searching Shepherd.

-             These images, while accurate and biblical (Lk. 15:4; Jn. 10:15), are incomplete in description.

-             There is more to being “lost” than what is portrayed by figurative expressions. Men are “lost”, having been alienated from God by sin and rendered “dead in trespasses and sins” (Is. 59:2; Eph. 2:1).

If we are to evangelize effectively, we must properly consider the plight of those we hope to reach. In addition, we must also with a complete concept of what it means to be “lost.” Only then will we possess an accurate mental image of those who stand daily in need of Christ.

I.   What Does It Mean To Be Lost?

A.   An Experiential Approach to Lostness: Cosmic Loneliness

1.   An Emotional Indicator

Loneliness has been called “one of the most universal sources of human suffering…an almost permanent condition for millions of people.”[1] In his book, Christian Counseling: A Comprehensive Guide, Gary Collins describes loneliness as, “a feeling of inner emptiness, isolation, and intense longing...sadness, discouragement, restlessness, and anxiety, accompanied by a longing to be wanted and needed.”[2] Nowhere is this universal plight more evident in American society than in the so-called “loneliness industry.” One sector of this billion-dollar burgeoning industry is the $300 million per year psychic hotline services. Still others, ostensibly offering relief for the lonely, include a host of late-night infomercials featuring celebrity endorsements.[3]

2.   An Historical Example

What drives millions of lonely people to such superficial and desperate measures to secure relief? One evangelical response has been the identification of “cosmic loneliness,” a condition that is the direct result of the sinner’s separation from God.[4] Augustine of Hippo (b. 354) was such a soul. Lamenting his life of sin, the searching Augustine proclaimed:   “Thou   hast   formed  us  for  Thyself, and our  hearts  are  restless  till  they  find rest in Thee…Let  me seek Thee, Lord, in calling on Thee, and call on Thee in believing  in  Thee.”[5]  It was this yearning for God that guided him during his tedious wanderings through the labyrinth of carnal pleasures; Manichean mock-wisdom,[6] Academic skepticism,[7] and Platonic idealism [8](see Schaff).[9]

Augustine knew the Scriptures well, including the successive inquiries of Paul in his letter to the Romans, “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?[10] For Augustine, his answers came through the instrumentality of Ambrose, a preacher of the Gospel in Milan, who with additional aids employed by the Spirit rendered the man of thirty-three years an incalculable blessing to the Christian world.

 3.   A Philosophical Model

There exists an undeniable void within the very depths of man’s being. In its essence, the void is a yearning for the knowledge of God.[11] Man would know God, but his sin-laden nature betrays his ability to do so (Rom. 1:21).[12] A corrupt heart has alienated him from God (Gen. 6:5; 8:21) and left his lifeless soul in utter darkness (Jer. 17:9).[13] Without light on the path, man stumbles in the darkness, groping for answers which escape his grasp (2 Cor. 4:3-4). This is where the faithful evangelist enters, bringing the light of truth, exposing the devastation and peril of sin, and pointing the way to salvation (Acts 8:26-35).

B.   A Biblical Understanding of Lostness

In Matthew 9:35-36, Jesus is described as seeing the multitudes and being moved with compassion for them.

-             It was not the physical appearance of men that evoked such emotion on the part of our Lord, but rather it was their spiritual condition that moved His heart to agony.

-             The imagery recorded by Matthew is that of “sheep having no shepherd”, having been “harassed” and “cast down to the earth.”

We may conclude that the observation of men bears relevance to the cause of Christ only when their spiritual condition is fully comprehended. Whether derelict of morality or affluent with material gain, the same abiding condition of the soul unites men at the point of need.

-             The state of the “lost” in the Bible includes a cause-effect relationship between the entrance of sin into the race and the subsequent ruin it occasions (Rom. 5:12).

-             Man as a sinner has fallen out of favor with God and exists in immediate condemnation and imminent peril (Jn. 3:18, 36; Rom. 1:18).

-             What is more, man himself is to blame for this predicament by reason of his willful rebellion against God, an act so severe as to admit hope only at the point of God’s gracious intervention (Is. 1:18; 45:22; 53:6; 55:1).

This, of course, is the great theme of the Gospel (Jn. 1:29, 36; 12:32; Acts 4:12; Rom. 5:8; 6:23; 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 1:4; 1 Pet. 2:24; 2 Pet. 3:18; Rev. 5:5,6; 22:17).

1.   Lostness in the Old Testament

a.    The Figure of Ezekiel: Sin as the Occasion for the Moral Fall of Man

Genesis 3:1-24 records the historical occurrence of the “fall” of mankind into sin. R. C. Sproul:

It is commonplace to hear the statement, "people are basically good." Though it is admitted that no one is perfect, human wickedness is minimized. Yet if people are basically good, why is sin so universal? It is often suggested that everybody sins because society has such a negative influence upon us. The problem is seen with our environment, not with our nature. This explanation for the universality of sin begs the question, how did society become corrupt in the first place? If people are born good or innocent, we would expect at least a percentage of them to remain good and sinless. We should be able to find societies that are not corrupt, where the environment has been conditioned by sinlessness rather than sinfulness. Yet the most dedicated-to-righteousness communes we can find still have provisions for dealing with sin. Since the fruit is universally corrupt we look for the root of the problem in the tree. Jesus indicated that a good tree does not produce corrupt fruit. The Bible clearly teaches that our original parents, Adam and Eve, fell in sin. Subsequently, every human being has been born with a sinful and corrupt nature. If the Bible didn't explicitly teach this, we would have to deduce it rationally from the bare fact of the universality of sin. Yet the fall is not simply a question of rational deduction. It is a point of divine revelation. It refers to what we call "original sin." Original sin does not refer primarily to the first or original sin committed by Adam and Eve. Original sin refers to the results of the first sin - the corruption of the human race. Original sin refers to the fallen condition in which we are born.[14]

It was temptation that occasioned the fall of mankind into sin. From the event in Eden, mankind bears the guilt and consequences of sin (Rom. 3:23; 5:12). Henceforth, the issue is no longer the entrance of sin into the race, but the effect of sin upon the race.

During the days of the prophet Ezekiel, Israel was commanded to repent in order to avoid the “ruin” brought upon themselves by sin (Ezek. 18:30). The word translated “ruin” by the KJV and NKJV is rendered “stumbling block” in the NASB and “downfall” in the NIV. The Hebrew verb kah-shal[15] provides the imagery of one who “falls to the ground due to stumbling, tottering knees, or by being thrown.”[16] Elsewhere the verb is understood, “to cause to stumble”, or, “to bring to ruin.”[17]

Ezekiel used the related noun, mikshol, or “stumbling block,”[18] rendered literally by the NASB, but understood figuratively by the KJV, NKJV, and NIV as representing the means by which one falls into a state of ruin. One commentator notes that the Hebrew kah-shal comes from ka-shil, the word for “ax,” suggesting that sin, as with the function of an ax, is the agent of falling (Matt. 3:10; Lk. 3:9).[19] As a cut tree lying on the ground, sin has caused man to fall into an abiding ruined condition.[20] This woeful state of existence, according to Ezekiel, is the direct result of man’s nature and choice (Ezek. 18:4, 20).[21]

This Old Testament depiction of a hopeless state of peril is graphically illustrated by our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount. In the conclusion of the sermon, Jesus referenced two builders, on founding his house on the gravely surface (Matt. 7:24-27) and the other on bedrock (Lk. 6:46-49). The latter house stood amidst the storm, but the former perished from the beating elements. The expression, “and great was its fall,” or “and the ruin of the house was great,” is indicative of final and irreversible collapse.

b.   The Psalmist and the End of the Wicked

Another expression found in Scripture details the sinner’s destruction. The Hebrew term is abad[22], meaning “to perish or be destroyed, to pass away.”[23] The Psalmist uses the word often with reference to the end of the wicked (1:6; 37:20; 49:10; 73:27; 83:17). One graphic example given by the Psalmist is found in 68:2, “…As wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.” We are not to infer a passing from existence from abad, but rather an abiding condition, one whose existence is characterized by destruction.

The contexts of Psalms 49 and 73 refer to the soul’s survival beyond the grave (49:15; 73:24) and argue against any annihilation theory.[24] The grave does not constitute the end of existence, nor does it permit the passing from existence at some point thereafter. On the contrary, the grave marks a transition to either an eternal righteous state of being with God, or an endless state of destruction (ruin) apart from Him. If there is any sense of “loss of existence,” it is temporal with reference to passing from the concourse of life with others (Est. 4:16).[25] Sin has not placed man’s “being” in jeopardy; rather it has compromised his “well-being” to the point of endless destruction. This is the horror of hell (Matt. 13:49-50; Mk. 9:43-48; Lk. 16:23; 2 Thess. 1:9; Rev. 20:10-15).

2.   Lostness in the New Testament

In his letters to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul classified the human race according to two spiritual conditions, “those who are perishing” and “those who are being saved.”[26] The ones “perishing” are identified by the Greek word apollumi[27] that appears often in the New Testament with the sense of “loss of eternal life” (Matt. 8:25) or of “being lost” as in spiritual destitution (Matt. 10:6).[28] 

With respect to “perishing,” apollumi carries the sense of “destruction,” or “ruin,” the loss of well-being of the unsaved hereafter (Jn. 3:16; 10:28).[29] Paul’s use of the phrase, “those who are perishing,” is significant as it identifies an abiding condition with no human remedy for those without Christ.[30] As ominous as this truth is regarding the lost, the corresponding phrase, “those who are being saved,” represents an abiding condition for those who are in Christ.

H. C. Hahn explains: “Just as salvation and eternal life connote sure and lasting salvation, so ruin and destruction mean definitive destruction, not merely in the sense of the extinction of physical existence, but rather of an eternal plunge into Hades and a hopeless destiny of death.”[31]

Some Images of Lostness in Scripture

A fractured bone may be set and healed. A broken object may be repaired and found useful again. Something that is spoiled, however, is ruined, devalued and discarded. This is the sense in which Paul describes sinful man as “unprofitable,”[32] a term referring to something that has “gone bad, become sour”, hence, “worthless” (Rom. 3:12). Sin has rendered mankind in a state of ruin. All men may not be as bad as they can be, but they are all as “bad-off” as they can be.

The miracle of salvation is seen in God’s love, mercy, and grace whereby He elevates such unworthy objects to a position of favor (Jn. 1:12; 1 Jn. 3:1). Through no merit of his own, man is transformed from a state of “worth-less-ness” to a state of “worth-i-ness,” a state owing to the revealed truth of God’s Word, the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, the imputed righteousness of Christ, and the corresponding pronouncement of justification by God (Jn. 3:3; 1 Pet. 1:23; Tit. 3:5; 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 5:1).

Why God would entertain such a notion as the salvation of a fallen race is perhaps the most profound tribute to His great love and abiding mercy (Jn. 3:16; 1 Jn. 4:9-10). R. B. Kuiper comments on John 3:16:

In a sermon on John 3:16…that eminent theologian Benjamin B. Warfield has insisted that the world must be qualitatively rather than quantitatively [understood]…The emphasis falls, not on the size of the world, but on the sinful quality of the human race…The point, then, is not that the world is so bad that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad that it takes an exceedingly great kind of love to love it all…John 3:16 makes an unimaginable declaration. It reveals the greatest marvel of history, an unfathomable mystery. It is that the holy God, in whose presence the very seraphs cover their faces with their wings…loves sinful men, afflicted with spiritual leprosy, covered with leprosy from the crowns of their heads to the souls of they feet…The reason why God loves them lies not in them, but in God Himself.[33]

 Conclusion

Since the saving of the fallen is the heart of God toward a rebellious humanity, ought it not to be our heart as well? This is the basis for our commission as Christian disciples (Matt. 28:19-20; Mk. 16:15; Lk. 24:46-49; Jn. 20:31; Acts 1:8). An adverse response to the need of humanity is illustrated in the opening portion of the book of Jonah. Here we find the Word of the Lord to His prophet: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it…But Jonah arose to flee.”[34] 

Jonah received a co-mission in the words, “Arise, go to Nineveh.” The prophet of the Lord was given his mission with the words, “and cry against it,” words understood by Jonah to mean taking the message of repentance and deliverance (4:2). The tragedy, however, is seen in Jonah’s o-mission, “But Jonah arose to flee,” possessing a knowledge of the need without the corresponding heart to be God’s appointed means for providing the remedy.

Ponder for a moment a medical emergency wherein patients are dying for the lack of a vaccine. Someone is appointed to transport the vaccine to those infected with the deadly virus. Yet, the individual fails, not for fear of the journey, not for fear of contracting the fatal illness, but for fear that having received the vaccine, the sick would recover! That was Jonah’s omission. He did not fear the violence of the Assyrians, but he resented the very notion of God’s willingness to offer repentance and deliverance to souls he deemed unworthy.

The words of Paul come to mind, “And such were some of you. But you were washed…sanctified…justified.”[35] The more we know about the plight of the lost, therefore, will not necessarily motivate us to greater efforts in personal evangelism (Jonah knew much!). Something additional is required, the heart of Christ, one that is “moved with compassion” and active in the harvest (Matt. 9:35-38). Pray for such a heart (Ps. 51:10)!