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4 How to
LESSON

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. S PROUL

K i r k ’ s C o m me nt 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.

QUESTIONS & 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, be-
cause 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.

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God’s Love: The Biblical Presentation

he modern message of the gospel is “God loves you and has a wonder-

T ful 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 togeth-
er 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 pleas-
ures 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 bla-
tantly honest about the Christian life? Perhaps not as many as are attract-
ed 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 stan-
dard 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 in-
credible 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

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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 corri-
dors 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 eter-
nal 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 Com-
mandments 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-righteous-
ness. He revealed his knowledge of the Law by declaring that the guilty
party must restore fourfold and must die for his crime. Nathan then ex-
posed 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

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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 per-
sonal 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 reac-
tion 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 ex-
perience 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 trem-
ble 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 preach-
ing 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.

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QUESTIONS
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 R E A C H E R’S P R O G R E S S
Christian: “How are you doing?”
Al Cohol: “Awful!”

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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 gam-
bling 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.”

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FEATHERS FOR ARROWS

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,
Memory he sent him back to his room.
Verse A third time the son returned. This time the father questioned him
“For godly about whether he had broken any of the Ten Commandments. The young
sorrow works boy didn’t think he had. When asked if he was a liar, the child said he
repentance to wasn’t. The father thought for a moment, then asked him how many lies
salvation not to he had to tell to be a liar. When it was established that one lie made a per-
be repented of: son a liar, the child realized he had lied, and broke down in uncontrol-
but the sorrow lable tears. When the father then inquired whether he wanted to “ask
of the world Jesus into his heart,” the child cringed and shook his head. He was fearful
works death.” because now he knew that he had sinned against God. At this point, he
2 CORINTHIANS could do more than experimentally “ask Jesus into his heart.” He could
7:10 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 litera-
ture, 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.”

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