Tonight is probably one of, I
would say, the most controversial nights of the week. Not in the
sense of the content of the message, but rather the traditions of
the message. When you think of the word evangelism,
our world today has come to a place where it is just a cliché phrase
that means, let's hand a tract to someone, let's get someone
assimilated into church, and the like. Evangelism is not that. The word evangel in the Greek
means good news. The word evangelistic is the
process of proclaiming the good news or the word evangelism.
To be evangelistic is a definitive term or an adjective to describe
those who do share the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of
Jesus Christ has been bowled down to a short story, to a message,
and has been put into a concise, precise thirty-second invitation
where someone can respond, and that if their response is adequate
in our hearts and minds, then therefore we declare them now
saved. There is no place in Scripture
where it says man can declare a man saved, but rather God declares
him justified before Him by grace through faith, not of works that
no man can boast. And so my prayer for you tonight
is that you would hear, take notes, write down the thoughts
that you have. And I'll tell you, friends, I
do not preach to you. I share with you what God has
preached to me through His Word. For the first 15 years of my
ministry, if you will, or of my saved life, I struggled and
struggled and struggled. And as I've been a pastor now
for almost 15 years, I would say the first, oh, eight of those,
I felt like a failure. The reason I felt like a failure
is that if I properly prepared a sermon or properly prepared
an evangelistic technique, properly equipped others to do the same,
and then we went out into the community. I've done many, many,
I've done many opportunities or had many opportunities to
do open air preaching of the gospel. I am a strong believer
in open air evangelism, not open air damnation like you see so
many preachers do and stand out and point fingers and call names
and all of that. That's not there's no qualification
for that kind of garbage in the Bible, but rather straight, true
profession of the gospel of Jesus Christ in all circumstances.
But not all of us are called to those things, but I'll tell
you that I felt like a failure because I would preach my heart
out, I would pray my heart out, I would hand the track out, I
would share the gospel, and many, many, many, more than often,
would not come to faith in Jesus Christ. And so that I would get
back to the drawing board of my evangelistic strategic table,
and I would say, God, what is it that I need to do to make
more effective my evangelism? Friends, I think it's always
good to see what we can do to be more effective in our communication.
However, it is not our communication, nor our effectiveness, nor our
training that will ensure salvation unto Christ. It is God's grace
alone that does that. God is the giver of life. Christ
is the giver of life. The Holy Spirit is the one who
brought us. eternal life and regeneration. Jesus says in John
chapter 3 that the spirit of God is that or who reverts a
man who is dead in his sin. And so friends, our job as the
body of Christ is to proclaim the gospel, not convert the soul. Many people would say, well,
I have saved several people. We've saved no one. God saves
all people who come to faith. And we are just a conduit, not
because God isn't willing, it's because in God, as I preached
last night, in His manifold wisdom, He saw it fit to use the body
and a fallible, weak, lowly nothing of a people To profound the wise
and bring to nothing the things that are. 1 Corinthians 1, as
we see Paul talking about the wise. Where is the wise among
you? Where are those who were of great noble worth? Many of
you weren't, he says, but God uses the fullest things of this
world to profound the wise. We preach the cross, which is
foolishness or folly or stupidity, if you will, to the Greek and
a stumbling block to the Jew. And so as we look at that, he
also continues to say in 1 Corinthians that the strength of God, the
wisdom of God is greater than the wisdom of man. The strength
of God is greater than that of man. Some translations say that
the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of man. And we
know God isn't foolish, but he has chosen a foolish way in the
view of humanity to reach out and display his glory for the
saving of his people so that he might see the reflection of
himself and thus be pleased with all that he sees. And so, friends,
as we look at evangelism, I would just say that you just if you
would just pray and listen and think about what you or how you
would define evangelism. And just like I said the last
four nights, then take what the Word of God says holistically.
See, that's another. How many of you remember we talked
about the vitamin-popping Christianity? Well, friends, we've got vitamin-popping
evangelism. We've got vitamin-popping worship.
We've got vitamin-popping ecclesiology of church growth, the understanding
of the church, the study of the church. We've got vitamin-popping
theology. In other words, everything that
we know or everything that we hold to say, this is what I believe,
we can't defend that except through a couple of words, through a
couple of pages on some scripture that we wrote down in front of
our Bible years ago. Defend it argumentatively. Defend
it holistically. If you believe that the Bible
says something, then show it. Show it synergistically throughout
the whole of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, as God
displays His glory to the nations. Show the argument. Because the
apostles have done it. God has done it. It is tight.
There is no subdivisions and letter divisions in these letters. These men, through God's hand
and through God's Spirit, wrote and penned these letters, not
knowing that it would be the Holy Scripture, or the power
of God, or the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but rather it was a command
that He gave them, and then God gives His grace through His Scripture.
But we have divided it, because would it be hard for me to say,
turn to that place in Leviticus where Moses says, and everybody's
going, That would be difficult. So we have to divide it and put
numbers and chapter headings. I think one of the most difficult
things for me to get over when I begin to really study the scripture
is to stop thinking of it in chapter verse, because what I'll
do is I'll see a big fat 9 after the big fat 8 and I'll think,
well, I'm done with everything he says in chapter 8. Let's go
to chapter 9. And what that does to you is it makes you throw
out the argument that has been built, the rhetoric that has
been developed up to the point of the next chapter. And so as
the apostles wrote these letters, they were one long letter. I
like to use the illustration. I remember being, I remember
courting my wife and being engaged. And she was from Metter and I
was from Plaston. She worked in Mentor, and I worked in Claxton.
And we had a one-hour lunch break. Well, you know the distance between
on Highway 129? Well, I would eat lunch with
her every day of the week. And we'd pull into the Hardee's
parking lot there in Mentor, Georgia, and she had already
ordered the food, and I'd jump in the car, and I'd sit there. She'd
jump in the car and sit with me, and it'd take me 25 minutes
to get there, and 25 minutes to get back. I had nine minutes
to eat and one minute to swallow. But I could not wait to get there
and see her. And she couldn't wait. Well,
I say she couldn't wait. She only drove like three minutes. I had
to drive the distance. There wasn't anywhere to eat
in Claxton. But we would not be able to talk much because
we'd be shoving food in our mouth for the eight minutes we had.
Couldn't be late getting back to work. So what we'd do is we'd
just change letters. We'd exchange cars. It was just
precious stuff. And I could not wait to get back
on the road so I could try to read that letter and drive. Now,
one of the things that has happened during those times is if you
ever received a letter that was multiple pages, because usually
it wasn't a nice written letter, it was just a little note, usually
on her work stationery or something like a memo, phone call memo
or something. And I had them in the wrong order
one time, and I was reading the third page out of five pages
as the first page, and I was confused as to what she was talking
about. Because it made it sound like she was very upset with
me about something and stuff. By the time I got back to work, I was
late getting in there. I was sitting in the parking
lot trying to figure it out. What I realized is that what I had done is I
had put something that was supposed to be toward the end at the beginning,
and I didn't understand the fullness of what she was trying to share.
She wasn't upset with me. She was upset with someone else.
But it sounded as though she was upset with me, and I was
scared. Oh, no. I'm going to lose her. I'm going
to have to go back to Hardee's and buy her a sausage biscuit tomorrow.
Maybe it'll make her feel better. And the same thing happens in
the scripture when we go and start to it's OK to go to dive
into certain aspects of the text, but don't ignore what is before
and after, because the whole of the scripture will teach you
something. So what happens is we think, OK, evangelism, I can
teach evangelism and I'll teach everybody about evangelism. Go
to Matthew 28 and there's evangelism. That's all evangelism is. It's
balls down right. But that's not it. That's not
even the beginning of it. The evangel, the evangel, the
good news starts in Genesis chapter one. It says, God said, let there
be light. There was light and it was good
and it pleased him. The evangelist is not just a
message, it's a person. The person is Jesus Christ. And
Jesus is God Almighty, the creator, as we looked at on Monday night.
And Jesus being the creator, he is the one. He is the one
who is the gospel. He's the good news. He's the
good shepherd. He's the he's the faithful. He's the faithful
one. He is Alvin Omega. He is El Shaddai. He's Elohim. He is Adonai. He is the I am. And so the gospel is God. And so the good news or evangelism
or the evangelist, not just the little story there, it doesn't
boil down to the commission or I like to say the Great Declaration.
You know why they call it the Great Commission? Because that's what
it says above the text in the Bible. And it is a commission, if you
will, of those disciples who were there at the Ascension.
However, it's more of a it's also a declaration of what the
church will do. The church will. Why will the
church do what Christ has said? Because the church will ultimately
be obedient to the commands of Christ, because Christ has all
authority in heaven and earth and he is with us forever. Right
now, tonight, Christ is with us. His Holy Spirit dwells within
us. And works around us. And we are
given the grace of God through His scripture every time we study
it and learn it and hear it and teach it and preach it. And God's
grace is sufficient for all good works. God is enough. He is enough for the evangel
and for the evangelism of the church. And so what I want you
to see tonight is what evangelism is, and first I want to show
you what evangelism is not. Evangelism is not, and this is
very quick, if you'd like to write about it, this is not an
exclusive list. I have a lot more things through the years.
I was an evangelist full time for three years, and I probably
preached ten, twelve times a week. And for those three years, way
back in the day, and I'm not that old, but I feel like it,
I remember how disheartening and how much of a failure I was
because I would see the same people coming to faith, if you
will. Like I could see them come to
faith. I saw them walk an aisle. I saw them pray. I saw them sign
a card. But I didn't see them come to
faith. Because if they had come to faith, it would have been
some fruit of their life. And then I would reassure them. I'd
have a young man who'd come from college and he would sit there
and he'd say, I need to really get saved again. And I would
say, well, you can't be saved but once. You know, you need
to be sure of your salvation. You need to be assured of your
salvation. You need to understand that what
God has saved and who those whom God give him, give Christ, come
to Christ and all who comes, he never casts out. And John
says. But what I found is that these
people were not coming to Christ, they were coming to me. They
were coming to my message. They were coming to my enthusiasm,
to my charisma. They were coming to my illustrations
and to my stories. And as I would look out across
the crowd and I would see the struggler, as I would mingle
with people throughout the week of a conference and I would start
to get to know them, I would not purposefully, but in some
sense, I would manipulate them emotionally by sharing something
that I knew would touch their hearts. And then I would say,
OK, now here's the hook and got them. Put the lights down low.
Play the piano real quick. That's not evangelism, that's
manipulation. Now, is anything wrong with setting
the mood? I don't think so. But don't think
that's how you went solo. See, that's the point I'm trying
to say. I'm not trying to... I don't want to preach against
ambiance, but I don't want you to believe that ambiance, or
the lack thereof, like last night, the masks were on our face, and
what else was going wrong? Something else went wrong last
night. And we were two, three minutes getting started. That
didn't bother me. Did it bother you? Did you not want to hear
the Word of God because there was masks on your face? And if
a gnat in your face is going to keep it from Christ, chances
are you don't love him enough to come to him anyway. So nothing
I say or do is going to take you. I mean, the rich young ruler
had massive wealth and he rejected Christ. And if you don't reject
him for a gnat, what do we do? So evangelism is not the sharing
of a testimony. Let me tell you that for a second.
Now, it is evangelistic to share your testimony. It's good to
share your testimony. What is your testimony? Your testimony
better start in here with the gospel. With Christ, God, Creator,
holy, worthy, man, me, James Tippett, sinner, wretched, filthy,
ragged before God, deserving of His judgment, and God, rich
in mercy and love, calls me to be born again to a living hope
who is in Christ Jesus. And even in my sickness and sin,
God drew me to himself as I understood the great love that he loved
me. And he drew himself to me and gave me the gift of faith.
And he gave me the gift of repentance. And it is not of my own doing.
It is not of my own will. It was a gift of God. And I praise
God for what he's done. And most testimonies end up going
into this real positive spin. And ever since I got saved, my
life's been great. My wife's been great. Everything's
been great. And they're lying. Because Jesus
says, if you follow me, you will be persecuted. You will suffer. Paul says in Colossians 1, I
think verse 24, it says, I now therefore rejoice in my sufferings
for your sake, that I may fill up what is lacking in the sufferings
of Christ. So you, when you decide as a
believer in Jesus Christ, that you truly want to begin to live
a little more closer to the truth, your life will get birthed. You will be burdened. You will
have things. God gives cancer to Christians
just like He gives cancer to non-Christians. God allows death
to come on the wicked and the righteous. And if you look across
the world, and I've got friends who work with the voice of the
martyrs. And you look across the world, really, America is
one of the few places that we can put a sign up and say we're
Christians and stand around in public and proclaim it. Are we
proclaiming the truth of the gospel? Let me tell you what
evangelism, a testimony is not evangelism, although it can be
evangelistic, that the gospel must be there. Evangelism is
not a story. It's not an apologetic argument.
I spent a lot of time in several different schools getting degrees
in apologetics. Matter of fact, I'm almost done.
I'm almost done with a PhD in apologetics, and I wish I had
not done that. But when you go that far, you just do it. I've
got to finish it. I wish I had done it in church
history to see how God had just continued. So I'm just going
to have to study on my own in that. But apologetics, what that means
is that we give a defense for Christianity. But if I can argue
you into the kingdom of God, someone else can argue you out
of the kingdom of God. So in order to receive the kingdom
of God, what does Jesus say? You must be born again. So apologetics
is not evangelism, although it's used in the process of evangelism.
You see what I'm saying? You see how I'm trying to help
you paint these pictures? Because for me, and maybe you're
smarter than I am, or I know you are, but for me, in my ignorance,
I used to think that that was evangelism. If I could just get
the argument won, people would be, you know what I found? I
found that the more times that I won the argument, when I say
argument, I'm not talking about a fight, I mean debate, in that sense,
academic or either philosophical, biblical debate, theological
debate. Most of the time when I would actually show or disprove
someone else's thoughts, they hated me. They didn't love it. Well, I'm so glad you proved
me wrong. I think I'll give Jesus a try. Well, friends, you can't
give Jesus a try. He's either your king and your
treasure or he's not. He's not like, I mean, I tried
these shoes on a couple of weeks ago to see if I wanted to buy
them. And I enjoyed the way they felt. And I wore them out in
the store with the tags on them. You know, when they wear out
and the sole starts to go, I'm going to throw them in the garbage and give
them to my dog. That's what sometimes we think it means to come to
faith. Evangelism is not handing out tracts. I have a lot of tracts.
I used to use real spiffy tracts. Now I use tracts that are about
25 pages. I like to hand out little books
to people. I like to hand out books. Oh, okay, and I still
use a little small tract. What does it mean to be born
again? Are you really saved? The reality of hell, I save that
one for some people sometimes, when they're just sitting there,
I don't believe God would ever judge anybody. He's such a loving
God. And I say, well, I've got a little booklet I want to give
you right here, and I'll throw it out, The Reality of Hell. I said,
why don't you read that and get back with me? And I haven't ever
had anybody get back with me yet. My name and number is stamped
on the back of it. Toll free, anywhere in the country, call
me. So hanging out for action can be evangelistic, but it's
not the evangel. It's not the good news. The good
news is that we make disciples, as you'll see in a minute. Evangelism
is not social benevolence. I believe we ought to be tenderhearted
and we ought to think about it. When we see people hungry and
we see people starving, we ought to grieve us. I mean, Jesus fed
5,000 plus, 25,000. He did that plus. He healed many
people, as we see in the Gospels, over and over again. He had a
love for Israel. He wept over them. He has a love
for people. But he also knows that their
only true joy is going to come when they put their eyes not
on the temple, not on the bread that perishes, but on the food
that endures to eternal life, which is himself. Eat of my flesh
and drink of my blood. See, people couldn't grasp that
because they've not been born again. They rejected it. They
rejected it. And I'm willing to tell you that
Judas probably would have too, but he was making too much money.
And so we see here, it's not social benevolence. There's never
been a person come to faith because of how sweet we treated them. They came to you. They come to
faith in what the church can do. And I think the church ought
to be seen as faithful, but the church ought to proclaim, you
know, we love you in Jesus' name and we're going to give you some
clothes, we're going to give you some food, but the reality of life is that
this could happen again next week and there's not going to
always be somebody to help you. And the reality of life is that
you were created for the purpose of giving glory to God and enjoying
Him forever. Until you find the joy that comes
only through Christ, you will never have joy. And when you
come to Christ, if you are saved, if you do experience faith, if
you do end up in a relationship with Jesus Christ, it doesn't
mean that this is going to get better for you. As a matter of
fact, it may get worse. Because Christ is God, and He
commands all men to repent and believe the Gospel. And God commands
all men to be holy, for He is holy. And anyone who is not holy
is an affront to Him. So that puts us all in the same
boat, according to Paul in Romans 3. We are an affront to God. Remember how I defined man? It's like stepping in a plot
in your yard. But it's much worse. So social benevolence is not
the gospel, neither is social justice. And in Oakland, California,
we dealt with a lot of social justice gospel, liberation theology,
where we believe we got to set the world straight. We got to
fix things and get it. You know what? If this world
is going to be a God-centered world, we're going to make it
moral. What is the righteousness of men? Filthy rats to a holy
God. So it's not social justice. It's not any of these things.
It's not Sunday school. It's not church revivals or conferences. It's not inviting people to services.
That's not evangelism. I mean, you can use those things
to be evangelistic. But friends, it's not altar calls.
It's not. It's not in this stuff. Evangelism
is sharing, very simply, the good news of God Himself and
how He, in His mercy, saves Himself of people for Himself, for His
glory. And I was having a conversation with my grandfather this morning.
We talked for about an hour. He's all over the place, trying
to get moved. And I don't know, I've never seen a man so busy
in all my life to be retired. He's never home, never in the
state. I don't know where he's at. He's going to be going off
again. But praise God, he's able to. We were talking for about
an hour. And we were talking and he was sharing some things
with me and I was sharing some things with him. And it just sort of
struck me as we began to speak. We were talking about how much
we love the Lord and how we ought to share what God has done for
us. And then it just sort of hit
me. I said, you know what? God would be worthy of being praised.
It should be worshipped had He done nothing for us. Because
He alone, just by His nature and character and essence, is
worthy to be praised. If He said, I'm never going to
save any of you, we ought to worship Him. Because He's worthy
to be worshipped. He's not worthy to be worshipped
because of what He's done. He's worthy to be worshipped
because of who He is. So it's important to understand that.
And so we ought to be taking the gospel to the world. I'll
really quickly talk about what is the gospel, because I've already
dealt with that a little bit last night and the night before.
And so tonight I want to talk quickly about what is the gospel,
because if we're going to say evangelism is taking the gospel
to the world, I've changed the term, so I use the word gospelism.
I want to be gospelistic. Because just like everything
else, a word becomes so cliché, everybody's got 50 people in
a room, 50 different definitions of what evangelism is. So I like
to coin new little peppy phrases and new little words. And I like
to say things that sometimes are controversial and they cause
people to get a little frustrated. But like I encourage you to do,
talk to me, come at 2 o'clock on Saturday, talk to Pastor Lou.
And I promise you, if you catch me in error, I will stand up
here and repent of it. Because I am fallible, but God is not.
And so that's why I try to preach the full counsel of God's Word,
because I spend a lot of time wasting time preaching a different
God than what the Scriptures taught. Not on purpose, because
of my ignorance. And so the good news starts with
God. What is the Gospel? Here's how
you do it. You can outline it this way. The good news starts
with God. God is holy. God is loving. God
is always righteous. Period. Period. John says in
his first epistle that this is the message we have received
of him, from him, that God is light and in him there is no
darkness. So that God is always right.
So no matter what he does, it's right. And we would say, well,
that's not fair. Dr. Albert Mohler in the conference
a couple of years ago, I heard him answer that question about
fairness. And he said, listen, fair does not question perfect.
You ask my children when you see them Sunday. Walk up to one
of them. I challenge you to do that. Walk
up to one of them and say, your daddy told me to ask you what
fair was and see what their answer will be. Fair, they will say,
fair is that I get condemned for all of eternity. But not,
what is not fair is that Christ took my place on the cross. My
six-year-old was talking with Luke today, and I didn't even
know it, about propitiation. She doesn't know how to say the
word, but she knows what the concept is. Do you know if Jesus
hadn't died for my sins, what would happen to me? That's what
she asked Luke. She shared the gospel. Why? Because
we haven't sat down and taught them how to do it. We raised
them as believers. And we admonished them in the
Lord. And we pray that God, through
our teaching and through our faithfulness, but most importantly,
through His faithfulness, that He would save our children and
bring them to faith. And according to their profession,
all of them are saved. But we'll see. We'll see. And we pray that even in the
lean times, that God would secure our children. But that's His
business. So the good news starts with
God. God is holy, therefore God would not tolerate anything that
is not holy. He does not love anti-holiness. And this is good, because if
God is holy, would just tolerate wickedness, He wouldn't be holy
anymore. You see the point? And so therefore, He wouldn't
be God. So in that, God's holy intolerance toward evil secures
His goodness, which is His worth. I say it like this, that God's
holiness displays His intrinsic worthiness. God's holiness displays
His intrinsic worthiness at our church in California. I printed
that on the front of our bulletin for two years. And then I took
it off and put something else up there and put some Latin phrases
up there just to see if people would pay attention. I put some
French up there one time. Nobody noticed it. I'm like, y'all didn't
even read the bulletin. Well, I didn't know we were having
that next week. Well, it's in the bulletin. People don't read
the bulletin. They don't read the Bible. You
know? And so, the point is that you hear it tonight Write it
down. God is worthy because he's holy.
Because if God weren't holy, he'd just be like us. And so
the good news sounds bad. If we stop there, the good news
sounds bad, doesn't it? But I'll be straight with you.
I think that's good news. God is holy. He does not tolerate
wickedness. And I'm wicked. That's still
good news to me. Because God has expressed and
revealed himself in a different way through Jesus Christ, in
a fulfilling way. The good news sounds bad because
man is not holy, never know where, know how. The world view is that
man is basically good. Over lunch today we got to talking
about Pelagius. who developed the idea that man
was intrinsically good at birth, and then there came a point in
time in a man's life when he would choose to be wicked. And
then the judgment of God was on him. And so that's a works
righteousness that he says that there is no divine intervention
that is needed for a man to be right with God. But what does
the Scripture teach? The Scripture doesn't teach that.
But that's a worldview that many people have. I mean, when I tell
my children that they're sinning against God and people hear it,
you know, I tell my 13-year-old just a couple of weeks ago, she'll
die if she told, I mean, if she's not here tonight, but she'll
die if she knows I told y'all that. But she smarted off at
me in public. And I looked at her and I split
my finger up. I said, we'll talk about this later. And she went...
And I'm like, oh yeah. I said, you want to run it off?
She said, I'm going to my mind. That's fine. I said, sweetie.
I said, you need to... And I'm talking normally. I said,
you need to repent of your wickedness and your sin before God. And
you have disrespected me and your mother and your testimony
in Christ has been ruined. And there's all these women standing
around like this for me. And my daughter's thinking, I
wish she could just faint at me. And I walked away and in about three
minutes she comes up and she says, I'm sorry, lady, but I
really wasn't trying to do that. Tears running down her face.
And I said, well, don't dish out disrespect in a public way. You have sinned against God.
Sweetie, you're not a good person, but I love you and I'm proud
of the woman that God is making you to be. You're going to fight
that little resistance, that rebellious spirit, as long as
you live in this body. But the gospel is the answer.
Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe in the gospel. You know,
and so it's so much easier to parent when you actually tell
your children the truth. Because you spend all the first
five, six years, you're such a sweet child, you're the best
thing in the world, you're so kind, you're so perfect, you're that.
And then they stab you in the back and they tell you some ugly
things and you go, you're wicked. Wait a minute, I thought I was
perfect. You know, it's like when you train a puppy, it's,
oh, good dog, good dog. When they get big enough, you start
popping them. Bad dog! Wait a minute, it becomes schizophrenic. And I'm not saying do it in another
way, but tell the truth, speak the truth in love. And the truth
is that man is wicked. We have a sinful and murderous
heart. And those who are lost are in darkness and hold enmity
toward those who are righteous by grace or those who strive
in their hearts and lives to live in the power of God. Remember
Cain and Abel? What does John say about Cain and Abel? He says
Cain killed Abel because Abel was righteous. He hated righteousness. Now, friends, I'm not talking
about self-righteousness. and holier-than-thou attitudes, I'm
talking about those Christians who actually live as an instrument
of grace and as a recipient of grace. Don't forget to the height
from which you've fallen, as Jesus says in Revelation 3, in
the church in Ephesus. Go back and repent and do the
things you did before. Remember from the height from
which you fell. Remember how God has saved you and from what
sin He has saved you. That's a testimony. That what
God has saved you from, His judgment. So this worldview here in the
gospel, in Romans 3, you don't have to turn there, I'm just
going to reiterate what I'm talking about. What then? Are we Jews
any better off, Paul's speaking? No, not at all. We have already
charged all, charged at all, both Jews and Greeks, are under
sin. are under sin. As it is written,
none is righteous, no, not one. No one understands. No one seeks
God. They all have turned aside. Together
they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave.
They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their
lips. Their mouth is full of curses
and bitterness. Their feet are swift as shed blood. In their
paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not
known. There is no fear of God before their eyes." And I'll
tell you, and I might have even quoted this a couple of days
ago, that's a description of me and a description of you. Man has no capacity to become
right with God in any way except faith alone in Christ. And that
faith is not something that we can just say, hey, I think I'm
going to have faith today. It is a gift of grace through
the drawing and the power of the Holy Spirit, as Paul says
in Romans 10, through the hearing of the words of Christ to give
hearing. And then faith comes through hearing. So who's giving
the hearing? Christ is giving the hearing.
So this is the best choice I have ever made. I hear that a lot.
You ever heard that? That's the best decision I ever
made, is to follow Jesus. I cannot believe that so many
people don't choose Jesus. Well, why is it if I'm so smart,
my neighbor's lost, he must be so stupid? Ever thought about
that? How many of you, I don't have
to shake your hand, but in your own hard mind, you have a neighbor
that's lost or a family member that's lost. How is it that you're
saved and your family or your neighbor is not? Is it because
you made the better choice? And if you did, then you have
something to boast about. Or is it because you were able
to see because of God's grace? When we pray for our lost friends,
how do we do it? We don't say, God, Give me the
words to say to convince my brother to come to faith." We say, God,
please save my brother. Save my mama. Save my sister.
Save my daddy. Save my children. Please, do
something, God, because I've done all that I can. And I've
preached to them, and I've told them, and I've shared with them.
I've sent them to the pastor, and I've sent them to the camp,
I've sent them to the prison yard, and they're just not coming to
faith. What can I do? And what can we do? We can depend
upon God. Be faithful to be obedient to
what God has done. Because men love darkness. We are dead in our sins, and
we do not come to life because we've decided to wake up. We
who are asleep do not determine to respond to a wake-up call.
We love evil. But to all who did receive Him,
John says, all who did receive Him, who believed in His name,
He gave the right to become the children of God, who were born,
not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man,
but of God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and
we have seen His glory. Glory is of the only Son, from
the Father, full of grace and truth. And from His fullness
we have all received grace, upon grace, upon grace, upon grace,
upon grace. For the law was given through
Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever
seen God, the only God, and He who sits at His side has made
Him known. But the good news is God. See, the gospel starts
with God, which is good. The gospel has a bad news section
to it, which is good. And the gospel has a good news
section, which is God. And that good news is, now we
know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under
the law, so that every mountain may be stopped and the whole
world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law,
no human will ever be justified in his sight, since through the
law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of
God has been manifested apart from the law. although the law
of the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God
through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there
is no distinction for all who sin and fall short of the glory
of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift through the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as
propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. This was
to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance
he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness
at the present time, so that he might be the just and the
justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ. Then what
becomes, dear friend, of our motion? Is it excluded? but by the law of faith. For
we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works
of the law, or is God the God of the Jews alone? Is he not
the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, the Gentiles as well. Since
God is one, who will justify the circumcised by faith and
the uncircumcised through faith? Do we then overthrow the law
by this faith? By no means. On the contrary,
we uphold the law. And so the gospel is that. I'll tell you where I go when
I really share the gospel. If I don't have a long time to
really sit down and disciple people, I go to Romans chapter
3 verse 19 all the way through verse 31. And I spend time there
showing people why God put Christ on the cross. To display His
righteousness. To uphold the fame of His name.
Like I preached last night. See, gospel is the evangel. And it is worth sharing. It is
worth making disciples. It is worth telling all people. Even those people who say, don't
tell me. Tell them. Share the gospel as
much as you can. It is a command in Matthew 28,
19 and 21. So, do you know the gospel? Why would I spend all that time
going over sort of the preview of the gospel? Because if you
don't know it, you can't share it. And friends, you know what? I've been studying the Bible
a long time. A long time. And I am so ignorant, it's amazing. And I spend, on average, 50 hours
a week in the Scripture. And that's not an exaggeration.
Some nights I don't sleep. Some nights I sleep 2 or 3 hours.
But the Scripture, when you study the Scripture, you realize just
how little bit you know. The more you study, the less
you, the more you realize you don't know. And so the Gospel
in itself, even though I may have a handle on the text, I
don't have a handle on the essence and the fullness of the Gospel
because it's eternal. And so it's forever the power in me.
I'm not just the teacher of the Gospel, I'm a recipient of the
Gospel. I've been empowered by the Gospel. First the power of
God into salvation, first of the Jew, then the Greek. And
so when you can't tell what you don't know, the question is,
are you truly in Christ? Are you truly in the faith? Are
you truly a child of God? God has given us love. We are
the recipients. We are his children. We are called
his children. We are the recipients of God's
grace. God gave us the right to receive that grace. We are
his children. We have no boasting in our merits
to be His children. We did not sign our own adoption
papers. We have no stake in the working of His grace. Faith alone
in Christ's atoning work is saving. So how does one know if they're
saved? How do you see the effects of the gospel? And then I'll
talk about the evangelism. But if you turn to Acts chapter
2, I'll share with you quickly, I mean quickly, Acts chapter
2 verse 42 through 47. This is the first church. The
time of Pentecost. Great persecution had come across
the land to the Christians. It's only almost four and a half
chapters later where Stephen is stoned and Saul takes charge
and begins the persecution of the church and then in God's
sovereign grace he saves Paul. Chapter 9. In Acts chapter 2,
and they, who? Who are they? The believers,
the Christians. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching,
and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the
prayers. Look at verse 43. I love this. Look, church. And
all came upon every soul. Friends, do you have all in your
heart toward God? Are you in all when you consider
the gospel? Just think about the greatest
thing you've ever seen, and it's boring compared to God, compared
to Christ. Are you in awe? But chances are,
if you are a child of God, you're in awe, and if you are a child
of God and you're not in awe, you're going stale in your relationship,
because you're vitamin-popping this text, I'm telling you. You
are not going to survive and stay healthy as a Christian,
and you will not be effective in evangelism. And I say effective
in obedience to evangelism, the obedience of faith. You will
not be effective if you're not in the Word. And if you say you
don't have time, then stop something. I'd rather you be homeless and
holy than rich in debt. I'm not saying you have to be,
I'd rather it be. That's my opinion. So here many signs and wonders
were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together
and had all things in common and they were selling their possessions
and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as they had
need. And day by day, This is what I really want us to see
for just a minute, and we'll move on. This is not going to be the text
for tonight. Attending the temple together and breaking bread in
their homes, they receive their food with glad and generous hearts.
Do you have a glad and generous heart? Because, I mean, this
is a different context. We're not in first century Palestine. But yet, there are some outcome
of faith. There's an outcome of regeneration. A glad and generous heart. And
all of God. Prayer. Fellowship. You know
in my church, that when you fail to come to church without good
reason, you brought on your discipline? Discipline? Well, that sounds
bad. No, it's a command of Scripture. Do not forsake together those
that gather together a believer, just as some are accustomed to
doing. I love you, honey, and I'm your
husband, but I'm not coming home for a couple of weeks. Well,
you know me, I've got things to do. You come home, the locks
will be changed, your bags will be out front. And we divorce
ourselves from the church when the church is an eternal relationship.
My wife will be my sister forever. She won't be my wife until I
die. Except after I die, she won't be my wife anymore. She'll
always be my sister. So our relationship in the church
is as important as our relationship in our home. So we're looking here. I'm not
saying everybody has to sell their possessions, but would
you? Would you have that kind of zeal for the gospel? And they were praising God and
having favor with all people. And the Lord added their number
day by day, those who were being saved. Do you realize there's
no prescription here in evangelism for the common evangelistic ideals
today? There's no prescription that's
found in this text. It did not say, and they devoted
themselves to gospel teaching and had a concert and drew many
people to the concert. and had an altar call and gave
out tracts and fed them hot dogs. Now, I'm not saying you can't
do those things, but don't think that's evangelism. You know, we're truly where people
who stick it, who show the endurance of the faith, who stay in church
and have a passion for the holy things of God and for His Word,
are those people who are intimately involved with other Christians
who have come to faith through the Word of God and through one-on-one
discipleship. That's most of the time where
people truly come to faith, and you see the greatest impact of
it. And I study statistics. I hate
statistics, but you have to study them in ministry. And I read
George Varna, and I read Billy Graham Evangelistic Association,
and the Way of the Master, what's that guy's name? Ray Comfort. And they all say the same thing,
that less than 1% of all the people who respond to evangelistic
methods actually sustain themselves in the faith. Less than 1%. And
in 2004, when I was working with the Franklin Graham Crusade in
Roanoke, Virginia, that was the thing. That was what we saw.
Very few people who really love Christ, and then you call and
say, well, why don't you want to come to the Bible study? Can
we come to your house? No, I'd rather you just leave
me alone. I'm not interested in that. I'm saved and that's
enough. Well, folks, I'm sorry. The Lord God, when He saves a
man, and I say man, I mean mankind, He actually puts in that man
a love for the brethren, a desire. Yeah, when you're tired and you're
worn out and you do struggle, oh, I really just rather stay
home. We struggle with that. I'm not saying you don't feel
that way, but you are passionate about the Word of God, and you
want to be there. I'm not a legalist. If you're
not in church, you're lost. But the thing is, if you're not
in church, it does indicate there's a problem in your relationship
with the Lord. And so let's look. Let me look at evangelism in
the next little minute or two, or twenty. Turn to 2 Corinthians
chapter 4. Day by day, they were added numbers. They were people added to their
numbers day by day. As they praised and worshipped
God, as they had glad hearts, as they spent time together.
I don't know about you, but most church buildings are not set
up to really spend time together, are they? And I like preaching,
but there's a reason it's only an hour a week. What do we do in the other? However many hours you're awake,
I can't give you my hours because it'd be bad. 2 Corinthians chapter
4. This is probably some of my favorite texts in
the entire Word of God. Chapter 4, verse 1. Therefore,
having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.
But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways We refuse to
practice cunning or to tamper with God's Word, but by the open
statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's
conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled,
it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case,
the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers
to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory
of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is
not of ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your
servants, for Jesus' sake. For God who sent the light shower
of darkness has shone in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
And I'd like to add verse 7, but we have this treasure in
jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God
and not to us. Friends, this is a very encouraging
and very worshipful text. And I wish I had time to just
walk you through the first three chapters, because it would be
very beneficial for your understanding. And there's some Semitic issues
here, there's some Jewish issues here that Paul is dealing with
from his perspective, but he's talking to a Greek people, he's
talking to an unclean people, if you will, the people of Corinth. They not only had a bunch of
sin in the church, but they were lying about it, covering it up.
And if you look at chapter 5 of 1 Corinthians, you start seeing
some of those things. So this second letter here, listen,
we're not, he's saying we're not going to do anything that's
outside the context of open statement of the truth. And so the ministry
of telling the gospel is not, it's not been given. And I'll
say this very carefully because I don't want to, I don't want
to, Well, I don't know what I don't want to do, but I want you to
understand. Don't hear what I'm not saying. Let me put it that
way. God has not given the call to share the gospel to anyone
but the church. The church. The church. And we know what a church is,
and we know what the purpose of a church is, and we know how the church
was born, because the last few nights we've talked about that.
And God has called and commissioned the church to share the gospel,
not Campus Group to Save for Christ. Who, by the way, now,
after many decades, has taken Christ out of their name because
it's offensive to some people. We're going to share Christ,
and I'm going to talk about it. He's, you know, the dude. We're going
to call him the dude. And if anybody wants to know
anything more, now, of course, I'm exaggerating that. So, the telling of the
gospel, the ministry, it's a ministry. And that is the number one ministry
of the Church. Now, ask yourself, what program comes to mind where
the telling of the gospel is the primary focus of it? Man, I plagued myself when I
started studying this passage of Scripture. And I had a list
of things. I love to develop ministries
and programs. And I'm good at it. Administratively,
I can create companies or ministries, and it looks like a, you know,
it's like something, I'll put it on a whiteboard, I like to
get on the whiteboard when I get through, and I'm just so proud of what
I have done. And most of the time, it's all garbage. So God
has opened my eyes to see that the main ministry that I should
have as a pastor is to equip the church to share the gospel,
and to worship God, and to be the shepherd, to oversee their
souls so that they would be effective in their faith. I believe on
verse 6, it says, I pray you'd be more active in sharing your
faith that you may have a full understanding of all the things
you have in Christ Jesus. And so that's sort of like the
Psalm 34, the Psalm 36-4. It's a reciprocating issue. You
share your faith and then you come to a better understanding
of all good things you have in Christ. And the more you have
an understanding of all good things you have in Christ, the
more you share your faith. And so it's a circular, eternal process
as we individually are going to be held accountable for the
sharing of our faith. You realize that? The church is not going
to walk in as one big bride and God say, Ta-da! All of you guys
have done a great job. Let me reward you all evenly. I like the way Dr. John MacArthur
says it, we're going to walk in like a turn post, one at a
time, and give an account. Yes, we're
saved as a people for the glory of God, but individually we're
responsible and culpable for our obedience to Christ. And I say things, and maybe you've
gotten to know me a little bit this week, but I like to say
things that sound extremely controversial because I believe that when you're
confronted with the gospel, it's supposed to charge you. And so
I like to say this, that a Christian who is not actively sharing their
faith and making disciples is a rebellious child. Well, I work. Well, share your
faith at work when the opportunity presents itself. It's not necessarily
the action of sharing your faith, it's the thought of it. Most
of the time we don't even think about it. It's not important
for us. We don't get up and dedicate our day to the glory of God,
to the living out of the gospel for His glory. We dedicate our
day to ourselves, and then if we have time, we might go to
something for Him. How about we actually pause for
the glory of God? And when our co-worker at the coffee or the
water fountain starts talking about how bad her husband is,
why don't you teach her about the true husband? Well, I don't
want to get in trouble. Well, I know a lot of people
have lost their jobs or their faith. One of my elders in training
is actually preaching in my state now in California. He's 28 years
old. And he lost his job. And the
boss sent out a national email in reputation against this boy.
And it was a parachurch ministry that he worked for. Because he
began to share the gospel according to the Word of God, rather than
worrying about prophets and things for the country. But yet his
bonuses were on how many salvations came out of the stores. It's
really weird. So he lost an aunt, he has a
child on the way, and his wife's going to quit her job in a few
weeks, and he's unemployed. He can't live on what the church
is supporting him with. Not in California. So the ministry of the gospel
is by the mercy of God. Look there. Having this ministry by
the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. Do not lose heart, church.
Do not lose heart. This is by the mercy of God.
God has granted it. He says faith comes through hearing
the words of Christ. Hearing is not possible, friends,
if we don't tell it. People don't go, yeah, they should
see the gospel. They should see actively that
we are different than the world around us. But just us being
visible to them, they're not going to come to faith in Jesus,
okay? I mean, it sounds good and all, and there's a lot of
ministries out there. See, that's the thing. There's a lot of ministries
out there. There's a lot of parachurch organizations who will teach
that. And the young people, the twenty-somethings of the world
today, are being sucked in by the droves, by the thousands.
And they're not being taught good doctrine and good theology.
They're not learning Christ. They're learning methods. And
so no matter what method they use, they have nothing to tell.
They're just, they're frou-frouing it. I heard a young man that
I mentored for several years preach just a few weeks ago,
and I was so upset, I didn't know what to do, and I almost
got on a plane and went up there and saw him. But it's expensive
to fly in this area. Because I'm like, what are you
doing? You've said everything except the gospel. And I love
him, and I might pay for his ticket to come here. It should
have been at this conference. So the gospel is not sharing
the testimony, apologetics. It is displaying and sharing
the truth of the gospel itself. The story of God, who he is,
and who man is, and how God has responded to man's wickedness
and his mercy. Because God gives mercy. God's
mercy gives the gospel and God's mercy gives courage. Do not lose
heart. We do not lose heart. See, confidence
comes from knowing with certainty that the message is clear and
true. Knowing that the gospel itself
is God who gives the Son as a gift. And in turn, the ability to see
and know is also a gift of mercy. In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, if
you were to back up, it says not that we are sufficient in
ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency
is from God. Church, your sufficiency is from
the Father through his mercy and through his grace, who has
made us confident to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the
letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter teals, but the
Spirit gives life. See, the apostles did not have
confidence in themselves, but in the gift of God, the power
of God. That's why in Romans 1 16, Paul
says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He
knew that it was his power. He knew that it had been given
him by God. And he at no time ever took credit for anything,
although he had much to boast about. He said, I come to you
with trembling, not of eloquent speech, And friends, there was a day
that I believe the better I got in my communication, the more
people would come to faith. And then I see some guy get up
and sit up there and drool over himself and cry all over the
pulpit and drop his notes and just start praying and people
just come to faith. Well, what the heck? And what
this guy had was confidence in Christ. What I had was confidence
in me. So brothers and sisters, I pray that you have confidence
in Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and
it is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God, not as a result
of words, so that no one may love us. Even when you were dead
in your trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved, Paul proclaims. See, God's power
is enough to save. One doesn't need to change a
thing, but to teach His Word as it is. Verse 2, look at that. But we have renounced disgraceful,
underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning.
Or to tamper with God's word, that by the open statement of
the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the
sight of God. Tamper. That same word, the New
Testament, deals with the watering down of wine. We did not water
down the message. We did not add to the message.
We did not do anything. I've already told you what the
Greek text says in Galatians chapter one. Anachromos be damned
and a purse cut off forever, destroyed, be cut away. If we
bring to you another gospel, well, I'll suggest to you, friend,
that Paul would say that most churches in America We would
be bringing another gospel by the direct association with the
methods that we use to proclaim the gospel. And oftentimes we
think, well, let's do everything. And in the end, we'll sling a
little gospel frisbee out there. And it's not even the gospel.
It's a response that we're asking for, which is not the gospel.
It's OK to say, hey, what are you saying, folks? Stand up.
Let me talk to you. Let's talk. But it doesn't mean
just because they stand up. Judas stood up. And he worked for Jesus, but
he hated it. He loved what Jesus provided. So it's not always a good indicator.
We don't tamper, we don't water down the message because watering
down the message of Christ is deadly. We give invocations to
hell when we come to the place of pushing the decision through
prayer and practice. We are to declare one to believe
and to cry out to God through faith in Jesus Christ. Tampering with the gospel is
not evangelism. As we see there when Jesus speaks in the gospels
and he talks about the story of the Pharisee and the publican,
and the Pharisee thanks God. Do you know this? The Pharisee
says, I thank you, Father, I thank you, God, that I'm not a sinner
like this guy. He wasn't beating his chest in
pride of his own self-righteousness. He was giving God the credit
for it. But his hope was in his works. His hope was in the fruit
of faith and not in Christ alone. His hope was in the fact that
he no longer struggled with the greed and the selfishness. He
was able to walk in a moral place in the world, visible before
God. Coram Deo. His hope and his confidence
was because he was not like the sinner, but the publican, but
the tax collector. He beat his chest. He dared not
look up to the heavens. And he said, have mercy on me
as he tore his clothes. A sinner. Oh God, have mercy
on me, a sinner. That is the only thing that God
sees and hears. And it's not the words, it's
the heart. And what happens when that takes
place is that God has wrought conviction in the heart of a
sinner and the sinner then sees himself in light of God's holiness
and realizes just how far we've fallen from the glory of God
that we should not even be able to speak His name. Yehovah. We should not be able to speak
His name. We should not even be able to say Anything to Him. Have mercy on me. And it is through
God's mercy that we come to that end. And that is evangelism. When we put the truth there,
not tampering with it. How do you know that you are
saved? If the answer comes with the
cause I did, then I would suggest that you have much to fear. You have confidence in Christ
alone? Then you are sure of your eternal life. Christ is your
treasure. You can easily see the measure of His grace and
power in your life. In Galatians chapter 5, starting in verse
22, we see the fruit. It says the fruit, singular,
of God, of the Spirit. Yes, of the Spirit. So we see
the fruit of God in the life of the church, in the life of
individuals and then corporately as we go together. You know,
we'll always have chap in the church. We always will, but why
are we trying to call it? And I think that's what happens
in evangelism. That's what I did. I ended up with so much chaff.
I had like a good handful of believers and everybody else
was just showing up. We do not use God's Word to convince
and to trick others into faith. We don't tamper with it. We don't
practice cunning. This type of evangelism is truly
destructive, I believe. We are to simply call people
to find joy, the joy of all things, in Christ. And to lay their lives
down and their sins down and follow Him. Repent and believe
the Gospel. This is the call of God. And
it does not involve anything else but faith. And so how I've
done in my church for the last, well, for the last seven years,
is that at the end of all my services, I will actually close
out by saying, repent, believe the gospel. And if God is calling
you to repentance today, well, call me on Tuesday and I'll talk
with you about it. And He used to anger people.
Why don't you get them up there now? Because when someone gets
baptized by my hands, I am confident, at the best of my ability, that
those people have been rebirthed and not just went. You ever wash
the dog without shampoo? Because it's wet and it stinks. So that's what we end up with.
So true conversion, see prayer in this sense, well, is a matter
of context. We pray to God for salvation
by asking from a sin-sinned heart, a broken heart. We pray for God
to change us and save us, and we cry out for mercy. Oftentimes
it is confidence in our prayers that give us hope for eternal
life. Because I prayed, I had a man in his 80s tell me that,
and I never saw any fruit of his life. Every time I turned
around, it was always rebel, rebel, rebel, rebel. Anger, anger,
anger. Bitter, bitter, bitter. Frustration,
frustration, frustration. I began to follow some false
teachers and I sat down with them day after day, year after
year. Have breakfast and lunch and
go and do. And how do you know that you're a child of God? Because
when I was so and so, I said the prayer. And what prayer was
that? Can you write it out for me?
So that I might have the magic formula for salvation. And that
made me mad. And probably that was a little sarcastic. And I said, if your hope is in
that prayer, friend, your hope is not in Christ. Why should
I let you into heaven? Why should I let you into my
glory? Because I said the right thing. That's a boast. Because
I believe. That's a boast. Because God,
in your mercy, you gave me However that comes out, that's fine. It's the fruit of what God is
doing. Do you see the point? And not everybody. Do you think
the people on the cross had to cry out anything? No. But He
did. He didn't have to, but He did.
He cried out, Lord, this day remember me. Why? Because when
He was heading the cross, He was mocking Christ. And when
He hung on the cross, He was worshiping Christ. Who did that? Christ. Christ revealed Himself. How about the guy on the other
side? You see the point? True conversion means God giving
a new heart and mind and eyes. Then our cry is a confession
rather than a statement of what we hope for. It's what we desire
because it's what God has brought us to desire. In verse 3, even
if our gospel is veiled, because this is where the frustration
really comes in in evangelism, through biblical evangelism,
we start, here's how it works for me. I have always, in a sense,
in the sense of self-serving, I've always been creative. Somebody gives me a problem and
I've always been able to sort of see a way to fix it. Well, people
aren't coming to faith. Let's look at it for a minute.
Who are we looking at? And, oh, let's try this. And we have more
so-called decisions. We have more response to the
gospel. You know the response I look for as a pastor? I look
for changed lives, holy passions, fight, battle with sin, a love
for the Word of God, intimacy with the fellowship of the brethren,
and struggle. I have the three B's called bathe
in the Word, battle with the Word, and breathe out the Word.
I look for that. I hold people and myself in the
flock accountable to the call of God to be humble, to be giving. But it's not these things that
we do that cause us to be right with God. They are an overflow
of what God has done. He saved us with the good works
so that He can see Himself in us. So that he can be glorified. Jesus says that himself in Matthew
7. Let your light so shine before men that they see your good deeds
and give glory to your Father. The ultimate end is God has glorified
him. Proclaiming the true gospel without
compromise gives confidence that once ministry is approved by
God. Even if man disapproves, what does he say? Our conscience
is right before you and before God. Even if our gospel is veiled,
it is veiled only to those, verse 3, that's where I was, who are
perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded
the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of
the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For
what we proclaim is not of ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with
ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God who said,
I have this on the side of my minivan by the way, this text,
verse 6. For God who said, let light shine
out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
And we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the
surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. So we are to proclaim
the gospel of God from a heart that is like God's, a truly converted
and compassionate heart. And so we'll mix these few, these
verses up a little bit in closing so that they can make some sense
to us today. And 1 John, he tells us that we're not to say we have
the love of God in us if we withhold what one needs when we see them
in need. The same is true when we see the world who is lost
and we desire to share the gospel, but our hearts are really not
for these people. The world needs the gospel. The church needs
the gospel. The gospel isn't what you give
to the lost, and then when the lost become the church, then
we just go, OK, let's move on to bigger, better things. There's
nothing bigger, better than the gospel. The gospel is what empowers
us to be the people of God every single day. In verse 5, he says,
For we proclaim as not of ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with
ourselves as your servant for Jesus' sake. See, we proclaim
Christ as Lord. Jesus alone gives new birth.
In John 3, he tells us to make a demons. And without Christ,
there is no conversion. Christ is God, Creator. Do you realize that almost two-thirds
of professing Christians believe that God had a hand in creating
the world through evolution? Just in some studies I've done
in the East Bay, two out of ten people that I've talked to, personally,
believe that Jesus was not God until after the resurrection.
So if Jesus wasn't God when he died on the cross, we're lost. What Jesus are we? The Jehovah's
Witnesses have a Jesus. The Mormons have a Jesus. The
Muslims have a Jesus. They all have a Jesus. Buddhists
have a Jesus. Sikhs have a Jesus. Everybody has an idea of who
Jesus is. Who is Jesus to you? Is he the
God of the Bible? Or is he the God of tradition? You see, the Jesus that you really
never really know, you know what He did, you just don't really
know Him. And the crux of the matter is, if you know Him, does
He know you? Verse 4 gives us the condition
of man, as we see there. In this case, in their case,
the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers in order
to Keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory
of Christ, who is the image of God. There's so much doctrine
right there in that text that I literally could breakdance
and just preach till tomorrow night. I would love to stay here
and just share that with you. And so here we see that we are
not able to see the gospel In some cases, because Satan, who
controls all that is not of God, has blinded the eyes of the laws.
The laws cannot see the gospel. They cannot hear it. They cannot
know it. So the gospel is veiled, and
they are perishing, and there is nothing that they can do about
it. The effects of the gospel are
not ours to claim, not ours to insist upon. So let's stop trying
to coerce a definitive belief and allow the Word of God to
actually bring real life. The worst gospel telling. The worst gospel telling in the
world can be used by God to bring life to the dead. That's what
I was telling you about earlier. The sorriest sermon that's ever
been preached, God can use it. The Gideon Bible sitting in a
hotel can bring people to faith. The lost hear God's Word from
His children. The Gospel is proclaimed in truth,
and that is the means that God uses to bring light and sight
to the dead and blind. For God said, verse 6, let light
shine out of darkness. Has shown in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. God has shown Him to our hearts
to give the light. We're in darkness. We cannot
see where they're going. But we see that. They do not see where they're
going. They stumble, Jesus says in John's Gospel. They cannot
see. He did not shine the light. Christ is the light. He's not
just saying, hey, look. He's putting the light there.
He's putting the light there. And God makes it possible to
open the dead and deadness of the heart that the unbeliever
might truly have the light of Christ revealed to them. This
is a great message, friends, but this is an offensive message.
Evangelism is offensive, but it's the greatest offense in
the world. Now, why is evangelism offensive? I'll tell you why
evangelism sometimes is offensive, because of the way it's given.
And I mentioned to you some street preachers before. I like to get
around those people and block them off from public, some of
them. There's very few that actually preach the true gospel. Most
of them are just out there just to bark at sinners who are doing
what they're supposed to do, sin. That's like going to your
fish tank and saying, where are you ever going to bark? They're
fish, they're going to swim. Look at you, you're a sinner.
And I mean, most of them go, yeah, we know. And no! Why is the gospel evasive? Because
the gospel takes man off the throne of his life. And instead
of being a blind slave to sin, they become a slave to conceit
and now a slave to righteousness. No matter how we put it, we're
a slave. We're a slave to righteousness or a slave to sin. So God uses us. All of us in
this planet. Everyone. But we have this trade,
look at verse 7, in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power
belongs to God and not to us. Friends, in evangelism circles
and pastoral circles my entire life, I've always sat around
and one of the things that we used to do at pastor's breakfast
is talk about how many people in our churches, how many decisions
were made, how many baptisms were made, how many, what we
call, what do we call those things now? The re-reaffirmation, the
re- Recommitment. You know when we ought to recommit
our lives to Christ? Every second we think about it. We ought to
be completely committed every day. And when we find ourselves
falling short, we say, God have mercy on me. For without Your
grace, I cannot live. And I'm still going to fail.
So one day, Lord, I'm worshipping, and I'm praying, and I'm thankful
that You're going to take this old flesh of mine, and You're
going to destroy it, and You're going to recreate a new flesh
that's immutable and sinless. And I will be like You, and I
will not have to fight this, but until then, God, give me
the strength to fight the good fight of faith. God uses all
of us. And Paul's very clear. We have
this treasure, this treasure who is Christ. He is the treasure.
He's the Gospel. In jars of clay, talking about us. And jars of
clay. Last night at 2.30 in the morning,
a boat that I have hanging on my wall, about to speak, fell
off. And the glass that was in it shattered all over the place.
I couldn't find that that had happened, so I was up for hours
looking for an intruder. Or a cat or something. And then
I found it this morning. And everything that was in those
containers was spilled all over the heart. And that's sort of what Paul
is doing here in this metaphor, in this illustration. We have
the treasure of the gospel in the garden of clay. So if we
move... Have you ever had a clay pot? Have you ever accidentally
bumped it with your foot and it pops? The dirt spills out
and the tree falls over? And if that's an inside plant,
that's a mess. Because we can't do anything but really be in
the hand of the potter. Because if we are able to do
it, then we can boast about it. Look what we've done. Look what
we've accomplished. Look what our strategies and our promotions and our plans
and our programs. Look what we have done. Anybody go, thank
you, God. Does that sound familiar? Sounds like the Pharisee that
Jesus talks about. Thank you, God. We thank you for what we've done. Clay pots are not very powerful.
They're fragile. They're easily broken. But it's
God's power. And we're unable to yield the
fruit of salvation, but God gets the glory for salvation. Lord,
if you don't save them, they're not going to be saved. And we're
going to be obedient to you. You know how freeing that is?
Some people say, well, hey, what you're saying there is that God's
going to save, so why do we even need to go? Because God's commanded
it, and through us, He saves people. He uses us as a conduit. We are the ones who are going
to determine if they come to faith. But God has commanded,
why do we do what we do? Because when we proclaim God,
it pleases Him to hear Himself proclaim. We preached on that
last night. Christ told Paul that He was
sending him to open the eyes of unbelievers. And then Paul, through his apostolic
authority, God, and all the apostles, Christ, ultimately, sends us
to open the eyes of unbelievers. But if they don't open their
eyes, we know what is happening. It's the God of this world. I
could take you to Ephesians chapter 6, and I could show you if I
wish to combat the God of this world. We stay in front of Him.
And trust in who? Christ. The shield of faith,
the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness,
the belt of truth, the shoes fitted with the gospel of peace.
We've got to go. But we stand firm, knowing to stand firm against
the schemes of the enemy. The enemy may be working, but
let me tell you how he works. Under the hand of the sovereignty
of God. Because all power belongs to
God. And so church, what's the ultimate end of this message?
What do I want? Well, I want God to be glorified. If nothing
else, I want you to sit there and I want you to be in awe of
God. I want you to see what He's done and how He operates a little
clearer than you've ever seen before. I've preached that text
in many different ways for many different years and I don't know,
it's just exciting to know and to be encouraged that God is
the one who brings the fruit. So biblical evangelism What we've
learned is the work of God. And how He does that is through
the right preaching and proclamation of the Gospel. And He's commanded
all of us to do it by a straight statement, an open statement
of the truth. And if someone rejects that,
they're not rejecting you or your methods. They're rejecting
God Himself. And so that idea and understanding
should be the foundation of everything you do as a church. If you want
to have a something and you want to draw people here, when you
get them here, you preach the straight truth, Luke. If you've
gotten around a hot dog table, you preach the straight truth.
Don't let it get away in your mind thinking, man, if I tell
the truth to these people, I'm going to run them off. Let's
just get them back next week. You don't want them back next week
if they hate Christ. I mean, you love them and you
should pursue them, but you don't run after them all the time.
Let the truth either bring them or push them. Let it push them. Let it push
your family. Let them see you weep over them. Let them hear
the tears of desperation that you have in your voice toward
the lost and toward their lost condition. And then let them
see you have joy knowing that God alone will bring them to
faith when it's in the time. People rebel against the gospel?
Because that's what people do. And they're responsible for that.
So the church, keep preaching the gospel. Keep proclaiming
the gospel. Each of you, and corporately,
keep proclaiming the gospel. Everything you do, in word or
in deed, you do it for the glory of God. Know that Christ alone
saves. There's someone here, as we close, is emphatically just overwhelmed
by the love and the grace of God and needs to talk about that,
then work it out and sit down and become a deeper disciple
in Christ. It doesn't matter if you've been
a believer for 50 years or 5 minutes. Maybe God saved you through this
message. The outcome and the response
of that is a life of devotion and commitment and war. It's
really war. War, we fight against the world
and against the flesh and against the powers of darkness. So make
war together. And disciple one another. And
make disciples of all nations. Teach them Christ. Let's pray. Father, how we hunger for your word.
How we're thankful for all that you are. And Lord, I am so humbled. by the truth that we are jars
of clay. And Father, if we crack, you've
got plenty of pots out there. But I'm willing to say that we're
probably already cracked. And it's just by the fact that we're
in your hand that we're not losing all that we have. For as we've
learned already, Father, that Christ is the Creator of all
things and He holds the universe together by the Word of His mouth. And all things exist through
him and by him and for him. That includes us. That includes
evangelism, gospelism, that includes the church. So, Lord, we know
that we are in your hands and continue to work in us. Father, let us not look at this
message tonight and say, OK, that's got to be sort of a grinding
board of our existence. Let's just stop everything and
just do that. Lord, let us do this in everything. Whether we work, whether we're
at home, whether we're a pastor, a teacher, whether we're just
walking the street, eating in a restaurant, let us do this
in everything. Father, I pray that you would
save some through this week. and that the fruit of their life
would be glorifying to You, not glorifying to man. We praise You for being a God
of grace and mercy, for sending Your Son in our place on the
cross. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.