Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood
Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.
Thank you so much for tuning in to our podcast.
You're going to hear from God today as we share from His word
about important issues facing your life that can guide you
according to the Bible. I just want to welcome those who
are here live as well as those who'll be listening to this
later. I do want to give a bit of a
disclaimer at the beginning of this entire series and session.
I may do this every single session.
This is a stair stepping study. Although I do believe each time
we're together, there'll be something special and individual
that you can learn. You're really benefit the most
by being in all of them. And if you can't be physically
present, that you would listen, at least because part of what I
try to do in this process is help people, many of whom have
never shared their faith personally with somebody else
verbally. People sometimes have been
afraid to do it. We're going to talk about some
of those personal barriers later.
And how do I actually move from talking about this or that to
Jesus? And that's a main part of that.
That's not tonight, but it's coming.
But we need each step to get there.
And, and I don't believe that step three works without step
one. And so that's, that's what you
need to understand. You need every single one of
these in a sequence to help you, I believe to be the most
effective. And so thank you for for being
here. And, and I just, I also want to
thank those, thank you guys up there, our guy, not sure how
many of you are up there. Thank you very much, Justin.
We are going to be using slides during this series as well as
handouts. And so you'll, you'll be able to
see those. So thank you so much.
But we are talking about, as Pastor Charles said, we really
are emphasizing one of our seven essentials of discipleship where
we talk about living out evangelism in boldness and love.
And, and it's this is also, to be honest with you, a subset of
things that I have taught on both undergraduate and graduate
levels in the past. Don't let that throw you off.
I'm also writing a book right now about this very subject
matter. And so I appreciate you being
here, and I think this will be a significant time together.
So let's dive in. There's a quote on your handout.
You'll see it. There was a Jewish rabbi, and
this is several years ago now, named Joseph Abramowitz, and he
was a Jewish rabbi. Who was actually?
Responding to Southern Baptists, we made the press, as we often
do, very often for negative reasons instead of positive
reasons, which is always fascinating to me because
there's so many positive things that should be in the news about
what Southern Baptists do. But there was some controversy
because a president of the Southern Baptist Convention was
talking about how we still need to evangelize Jewish people, and
that was controversial. You know, do Jewish people
really need the gospel? They're the gods, chosen people.
So why in the world would we think we need to do evangelism?
How dare we? Kind of concept and and this
Jewish rabbi actually came to our defense and he said this.
He said any religion that does not consider itself valuable
enough to share with non believers is fated to crumble
from within. So in the words he understood,
didn't necessarily agree with our content or agree with our
concepts, but he understood that if we really did believe what we
say, we believe that this is something we're supposed to
share with other people and that if we don't, that we're doomed
to extinction, frankly. And so one of the questions we
start off with is, are we crumbling as as evangelicals, as
Baptists, as by biblical believers?
Are we truly crumbling? Because if I share with you the
statistics that I'm getting ready to share with you, they
ought to be, they ought to be daunting.
They ought to be alarming, frankly, because if if we
recognize how little evangelism is actually taking place, it's a
little bit terrifying. And we'll get to that more in a
moment. So our hope for this whole
thing, my hope for you, and I've said it multiple times in other
places already, my goal here is not necessarily to teach you how
to do evangelism, you know, although we're going to talk
about that, I promise. We're going to talk about some
of the most famous gospel tools you've ever known.
You'll know some of them. Some of you have probably used
some of them. I'm going to bring a whole.
Box. O'tools and we're going to
critically analyze some of the most famous tracks and some of
the most famous tools. What's great about them?
What's not what what would I recommend as the best tools for
our culture today? That'll be a part of a session
also talking about how how do we actually memorize a gospel
presentation toward the end, although I've I've already said
this is not about memorizing some 32 point gospel outline and
and not at all. This is about how do I have a
conversation? How do I have a dialogue with
non believers? How do I have a relationship
with people? But so our hope is to become
more evangelistic. This is, this is not about just
learning some new method because unfortunately the programmatic
methodology of evangelism has not been that effective.
It often ends up being something you do at 7:00 on Tuesday night,
but you're not doing any other time.
And and that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about being versus doing.
We're we're talking about who am I?
What's my identity? As a believer, as a disciple of
Jesus Christ, this. Is something I am, I live out
evangelism with boldness and love in my life.
It's not just something I do now.
I'm not opposed to 7:00 Tuesday nights because sometimes the
programmatic stuff gives us, gives us opportunities and
training and whatnot. And I know this church has done
some of those processes in the past.
I know every one of them. I promise I have all the lapel
pins. But but what I'm really talking
about is who are you as a follower of Christ and how
natural is it for you to talk about Him?
And I'm going to give you some helps, I hope along the way to
make it more natural. To where it's not.
Awkward, it doesn't seem. Weird it doesn't.
It isn't something to be afraid of necessarily.
So we'll talk about that. But so to start, we just got to
lay some foundations, and tonight's fairly foundational.
It's absolutely necessary for us to do this so that we can build.
So being evangelistic involves 2 key relationships.
And I've mentioned these at other times too, but we need to
just talk about them for a second, for a second.
So, so being evangelistic involves a relationship, first
of all, an intentional relationship with God and his
people. And and note that I'm not just
talking about a relationship with God, that you know what,
sometimes I have students and they take the test and they get
this. Wrong, because they'll talk
about a relationship with God, and then they're going to talk
about a relationship with lost people.
And, and that's not what I'm saying, you don't every word
matters. This is a relationship.
This isn't just a, a vertical relationship.
This is also a relationship with the church.
And so this is my relationship with God and his people.
And to really be evangelistic, you, you're going to have a hard
time if you're doing it all by yourself.
You need a place to bring them. You need a community to help
you. You need a place of
encouragement. You need a place of training.
And, and the church is that headquarters of training and
encouragement. You need a community to bring
your new friend to for discipleship afterwards too.
So this is really important. But the second relationship,
which is equally important, is that intentional relationship
with the world and it's people and, and the problem we have in
many of our programs for evangelism denominationally or,
or just across the spectrum since probably the 1970s.
And I, there's a reason why I say that I'm a student of this
history. And there it goes back to the
late 1960s, early 1970's. The problem we have with some of
these programmatic approaches is that we start with relationship
#2 and, and, and we thank the whole goal.
How do I get the gospel to lost people?
Now that might that, that sounds great, doesn't it?
I want to get the, the gospel to lost people.
But we're making an assumption. What's the assumption that we're
making that, that we're walking with God in the 1st place and
we're actually going to have the power and the words to say that
we need to say in order to lead him to him.
Relationship number one has to proceed relationship #2 and
that's what's missing. We need the discipleship piece
as a part of this. Don't separate discipleship and
evangelism. They're not separate things.
That one is just the fulfillment of the other and leads to the
other and fulfills the other and leads to the other in a never
ending cycle. And that's why you'll often hear
me say that if you don't like to share the gospel, I really like
to study the Bible or I really like to teach people.
I appreciated that passion. But if you never share your
faith. You're an immature disciple.
And I'll stand by that statement.
Because you're incomplete. Let me show you this in
Scripture, one of the simplest verses, Matthew 419.
Jesus says follow me and I will make you fishers of men and you
can see the two relationships. Now I recognize.
This is a physical. Thing drop your fishing Nets and
come follow me. But the principle still applies.
Before I can become a Fisher of men, I got to follow Jesus.
Or in a familiar passage in Matthew 22 when you look at the
2 great commandments. And you shall love the Lord with
your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul and with
all your mind. Relationship number one.
Then, then and only then will you be ready to will you be able
to, will you be equipped to love your neighbors yourself?
You're never going to be able to love your neighbor the way
you're supposed to love your neighbor if you're not in love
with God first. It's just not going to happen
that. Way it's a part of our spiritual
nature to be able to do this. Or John 15, five.
I'm divine. You are the branches.
He who abides in me and I in him, He bears much fruit.
We actually see bearing that fruit is relationship #2 I can
bear fruit, but the only way this works for apart from me you
can do nothing. We're not going to bear fruit,
we're not going to abide, we're not going to do any of these
things if we're not in an intentional relationship with
God and his people. One of my favorite verses to to
demonstrate this is first Peter 3:15 because we often quote half
the verse and first Peter 315 says, but sanctify Christ as
Lord in your hearts. Relationship number one, always
being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an
account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and
respect. And so it's always interesting
to me how we, how we stop doing this.
And we often think, we often just quote the second part of
the verse where we talk about, where we talk about always being
ready to make a defense, right? And we recognize that sometimes
we miss out on the whole point. And so if we don't have Christ
as Lord in our hearts, we're not going to be able to make that
defense right. And so another passage, which is
even more familiar perhaps, is Matthew chapter 28, which we
talked about here recently and on on Sunday.
And we talked about the fact that even in the Great
Commission, we see these bookends that determine for us
whether or not we're going to be able to do this.
And so this idea that that all authority has been given to me
in heaven and on earth, which would be a relationship #1
issue, go there for and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe this relationship #2 and
then all that I commanded you. And lo, I am with you always,
even to the end of the age. Back to relationship #1 So we
see this, this interconnectivity, this inner
wovenness of these two relationships and how important
it is that we're in both of them.
So our authority to go, because I've shared some of this with
you before, but our authority to go and the content with which we
go comes from relationship number one.
And this is going to become vital later.
This, this is actually the key of how I share my faith.
And I'm going to show you that later on in a, in a little
while, not tonight, but when we talk about how do I actually
lead that conversation to Christ, It is absolutely
depended upon this. And I'll show you this, that
because in our culture today, authentic matters, relevant
matters, real matters. It's and it's got to be right
now. It's not just about what
happened to you when you were 8. And we're going to talk a lot
about that. We're going to do a personal
testimony workshop one night. Some of you have maybe have
never written your testimony or never shared your testimony with
anybody before. We're going to have a workshop
where I'm going to guide you step by step on how to write a
testimony and how to share it with somebody.
So this is going to get very practical.
We'll do a lot of workshoppy type things.
And by the way, our students are doing exactly the same thing.
They're paralleling this study over in The Edge.
So our authority to go and the content with which we go come
from relationship number one. But being evangelistic begins
with the overflow of relationship #1 into the lives
or into our from our lives into relationship #2 So relationship
#2 depends upon relationship number one.
In fact, the more we're engaged, don't get lost in this, but the
more we're engaged in relationship #1 the more you
will be engaged in relationship #2.
I don't have to guess about that.
I got too many studies that prove that.
I can show you statistically that's true.
And so the more I'm in love with Jesus, the more I'm abiding in
him, the more I'm involved in spiritual disciplines, the more
I'm growing in my discipleship, the much more likely.
Hood there is that I would actually share my faith with
somebody else. It's rare that a weak Christian
talks about Jesus to somebody, OK?
And so this is crucial for us. And so we have to have this very
intentional relationship with the world based upon this very
intentional relationship with God in the church.
And don't, don't let that slide away.
You might think, OK, I got that to move on.
You know, you're going to need that building block later.
I promise you, I will come back to relationship number one and
relationship number two language over and over and over and over
and over again. It's vital that you understand
that. So where do we begin?
We begin where I always begin. We begin with the mission of
God. So Missio day the the Latin
version of that simply means that that God has on mission and
as you've heard us articulate a billion times and we'll
articulated a billion more because one of the rules of
church leadership is simply this about the time you're tired of
saying it is just about the time they start to listen.
The mission of God is to bring glory to himself and for us to
join Him in redeeming the nations.
Now let me quote a couple of Messiologists and and
theologians for you, Moltman and Agard.
There you see a couple of names. How many as can you have in one
name? As you can tell, he's
Scandinavian. Listen to this quote.
Though this is important, it is not the church that has a
mission of salvation to fulfill in the world.
This is not our mission, it's God's.
It is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father.
That includes the church. So mission is a movement from
God to the world. The church is viewed as an
instrument for that mission. There is church because there is
mission, not vice versa. So the mission does not exist
just because we're here. We don't own that.
It's the and that's why you hear us articulated as the mission of
God. Inglewood has a vision, but God
has the mission. And so we recognize that our
ultimate mission is to bring glory to God.
And I'm going to that next line can be controversial, but you've
got to understand what I mean. So evangelism is not even our
goal. Now, don't get, don't don't
misunderstand me. We certainly want to see people
saved and, and our goal is to see people saved, but our
ultimate goal is to bring glory to God.
And, and there's a reason why we say it this way.
So evangelism isn't our goal, it's our means, it's our method,
it's our way to bring God glory. Why do I say it that way?
Because I can't control salvation.
So I've, I've seen this in church life to where you go out
on Tuesday night at 7 and people go out and they make all kinds
of visits and then they come back for report time and
nobody's saved and everybody's incredibly disappointed and
everybody thinks the night was a failure.
Well, the night wasn't a failure, was it?
Because Why? Because we were obedient.
We went out. That's all we can control.
All we can control is our obedience.
I can't save anybody, right? I can't make anybody doing
almost anything. They don't want to do.
All I can do is share about the one who can.
And so if you went out with your heart's intent, with every good
intent and motivation is I want to share the gospel with
somebody. I want to lead somebody closer
to Christ. Maybe it's one step closer to
Christ. And that's your intent.
And you go out and you do the very best you can.
And the power of the Holy Spirit to do that, it's a tremendous
success and it brought great glory to God.
See, so we got to be careful how we're measuring the scoreboard.
We're so bent on result, we forget that the process, it's a
ewardism. The process is just as important
as the product. And we don't believe that as
Americans sometimes because we're so product.
Oriented we we have to produce, we have to achieve something.
Well, I'm telling you, the achieving might just be helping
somebody for the first time in their life to share their
testimony. First time in their life they,
they actually had the guts to go talk to anybody about something
spiritual. First time in their life, they
actually tried to move the conversation to cry.
What a dramatic discipleship moment.
See, I, I know people who are never going to share their
faith. And if we can get them to even
think about sharing their faith, that's discipleship.
We've made progress, so we have to be careful.
Now, do I want to see people safe?
Sure I do. We love to see that.
I love to be part of the harvest.
But do I always get to be part of the harvest?
Even the Bible says I don't get to do that.
Some people are going to plant, some people are going to water,
some people are going to harvest.
But God causes the growth. The great preacher, theologian D
Martin Lloyd Jones, said this. The supreme object of a work of
evangelism is to glorify God, not to save souls.
And that may seem like an odd thing to say, but it's a truth.
And so the only he goes on. The only power that can do this
work is the Holy Spirit, not our own strength.
I, I can't save you and we and we use the language.
I LED somebody to Christ and and there's nothing wrong with the
language to it. Make sure that you recognize you
led them to Jesus and then Jesus saved them, right?
I mean, you, Andrew, Peter, write to Jesus, you know, but.
But Jesus had to do the work. All right now.
So let's talk about what is evangelism.
Sometimes it's helpful to talk about what is not.
So evangelism means a lot of things to a lot of people today.
And, and this may not, this may not resonate with you because
you, you all may have a great definition of evangelism.
But I assure you, in my world, there are people who think
everything's evangelism. And so, you know, there's
several things that evangelism is not.
Evangelism does not mean being added to a church role.
That's not evangelism. There are people who join church
roles all, all over the place who aren't even saved, right?
Evangelism doesn't mean talking about it.
There are a lot of people who talk about evangelism and don't
actually actually practice living evangelism, right?
It's not just inviting people to church.
We, we love inviting people. Nothing wrong with that's a good
thing. It's a good thing to talk about
it. It's a good thing to be added to
a church role. But that's not evangelism, not
not in our definition. It's certainly not living a good
moral life. So throw out the fake quote from
either Augustine or Saint Francis of Assisi.
Neither one of them actually said the words.
I'm going to preach the gospel, and if I have to, I'll use
words. That's actually not a quote from
either one of them and throw that out.
That is not evangelism, and I'm going to show you what it is.
I'm not saying it's not important.
Showing is important, but it's not.
Evangelism. I'll show you in a minute.
Expecting others to do it is not evangelism.
Preacher, I got a lost friend. I wish you'd come over and share
the gospel. Well, why don't you share the
gospel with them, right? They're your friend.
I'm busy. No, I'm kidding.
Be glad to come share the gospel.
With your friend, by the way. But but it does occur to me.
So have you tried? Yeah, let me give you a couple
of definitions. Just a.
Two or three.
Here, so John Stott, these are some theologians and then
they'll be me. So you go from the top down to
the bottom here real quickly. But John Stott says evangelism
means announcing or proclaiming the good news of Jesus.
See how simple that is? Now see that's going to be my
definition of evangelism will be very narrow.
I'm going to talk about pre evangelism.
I'm going to talk about post evangelism.
Evangelism itself is a very narrow thing.
I am actually verbally sharing the gospel with somebody.
That's the only, that's the only way the word evangelism is going
to get used by me. So I am proclaiming I'm using
words. I am actually sharing with
somebody. Ji Packer, another theologian,
would say it's an act of communication with a view of
conversion. Sounds like Packer.
But in other words, I'm communicating to somebody.
I'm speaking to somebody, right? A very famous definition is from
Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade and, and he talks
about this. He says it's simply sharing
Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results
to God. And I openly and always give
credit to Bill Bright where I steal part of his thought into
my definition. I always give credit to him.
I don't plagiarize. I do it in class, I do it in
writing anytime I talk about this.
Because here's. Here.
Well, let me give you my. Soapbox first I forgot I got to
get off my soapbox so so. Bill Bright talks about
effective witnessing. So I disagree with Bill I I I, I
have no Bill's incredible and dead now with Jesus, but what a
phenomenal person. I don't like, and I've said this
to some of you before, don't use the word witnessing around me.
Stop it. I'm kidding to some degree.
Not that big a deal, but often let's go out witnessing.
Really. No, this is a soapbox of mine.
So we are called to be witnesses.
Noun. Acts 18.
OK. If we have been saved, if you've
been saved, you've already witnessed His grace.
What are you witnessing? You've already witnessed.
So the other day I was driving down Winstead Ave. and about got
killed. You about lost your pastor about
two days ago. So I'm driving down Winstead,
coming to the church, and I'm in that lane all the way over,
three lanes or whatever it is. And I'm all the way over before
we get to sunset, before the two left turn lanes.
Y'all with me? She comes from a parking lot
over here off the road to the right.
And I'm glad I saw her because she obviously didn't care if she
saw me or not. And she just kept on coming and
I thought, surely she's not going to.
And she did. Inches in front of me.
I slam on my brakes and honk my horn.
And I promise you, to this day, this human being has no idea was
ever there. They were lost in their little
world. Right now, if I had an accident,
you go out here and you witness an accident.
You witness your pastor in a in a wreck on Winstead Ave.
You don't need to witness that again, do you?
No, you've already seen it. You've already experienced it.
I'm trying to make a I'm, I'm overstating a point I'm trying
to make. Obviously, I'm really not hung
up on the word witnessing, but, but the point being is this,
this is not a choice any longer. You have witnessed it.
You don't get to choose whether you're a witness.
You witnessed it. If you've been saved, you have
witnessed the grace and salvation of Jesus Christ.
You don't have a choice anymore. You are a witness.
That's not the question anymore. So if you've been saved, you've
witnessed. When we share with others, we
are not witnessing. We are what?
Yeah, we're testifying. That's what a witness does.
Now think about that. I'm using my mouth.
I grew up in a multi generational lawyer's house.
Right now I know what a witness is.
A witness is somebody who has first hand or expert knowledge
of something and they're going to share that.
They're going to speak words about what they've experienced.
So don't go witnessing. What are you witnessing?
You going? I'm going to go witnessing.
What are you going to witness? I guess you going to argue why?
I'm going to witness the Holy Spirit saving somebody.
I'll give you that. That's fine.
If you want to. You want to chop it into little
pieces. Anyway, I'm off the soapbox now.
The question is simply this, will we remain silent or will we
testify? And that's the question.
And most of us remain silent. I'll talk about that again in a
minute. So here's my definition.
It's a little long, sorry. I think I wrote it down for you.
You can get the hand out, but it says here's what I believe
evangelism is. I am intentionally preparing for
and pursuing opportunities to personally share the gospel of
Jesus Christ with those who are unsaved in the power of the Holy
Spirit while leaving the results to God.
Thank you, Bill Bright, but there's a reason why I say these
words. There's an intentionality to
this. I don't believe this is going to
happen by accident. I don't think this is going to
be a natural default mechanism until you make it 1.
There's an intentionality to preparation.
And we're going to talk about how do I prepare for personal
evangelism so that when I go out into the day, I'm not shocked
when the opportunity comes. I've been looking for the
opportunity. I've been praying for the
opportunity. I've been begging God-given the
opportunity, right? I'm looking for that person to
talk to. I'm praying for the lost person
every single day. I'm praying for my neighbour's
spiritual health so when I see my neighbor, I'm not shocked
when we can get into a spiritual conversation.
I'm begging for the spiritual conversation.
I'm intentionally preparing for and pursuing opportunities.
Most of us don't live that way. Most of us have our own To Do
List. We think it's a good day when we
made progress on our personal To Do List.
And so we hope we get up in the morning, We push the button, the
Batcave opens up, we go out in the Batmobile, we go, do you
know, we go fight crime. We come back in and we push the
button and then we go back into the Batcave and Alfred has
dinner ready. Good day.
And we may have missed everybody.
God wanted us to meet that day. We may have missed every
opportunity along the way because we weren't looking for
it. We weren't thinking about it.
This is key. If you don't remember this part,
this intentionality aspect, you're going to miss it.
This is what's missing. In a lot of people's lives.
Remember what Paul wrote he said in Romans 116.
I am not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God
for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jews
and then for the Gentiles. So I'm not ashamed of this.
I'm intentionally pursuing this. But if I'm going to do this, I
need to know what the gospel is. So what is the gospel?
And, and that, and we can't overlook that.
So I'm, I'm not ashamed of this thing called the gospel.
I'm, I'm, I'm pursuing and preparing opportunities to share
this thing called the gospel. I better know what this thing
that called the gospel is. So what is the gospel?
If we're not clear on this, then we won't live out evangelism
with boldness and love. We might share something, but
we're not sharing the whole story.
And so part of what we're going to talk about, we'll do a little
now, but we're going to talk about this much more later.
What must be in a gospel presentation.
We're going to talk about that down the road in one of these
sessions. What's the bare minimum?
And that's not my goal. My goal is not to share the bare
minimum. My show.
My goal is to share the whole gospel.
But what is the bare minimum if I've got just a few minutes?
What must a person know in order to be saved, right?
And so we're going to talk about that.
We're going to talk about 90 something Bible stories and
figure out which ones we need to share the gospel one of the in
one of these sessions. Oh, it's going to be so much
fun. Can't wait.
But in the meantime, just in a general sense, the gospel in
English, we get this word God spell or God's story.
It's old English and that's where that English word gospel
comes from, just means God's story, right?
The Greek word for gospel and the Greek word for evangelism or
evangelize are very similar. It's, it's very similar to the
word for Angel angelos and, and things like that to where it
means to bring or to announce or to proclaim good news.
Now look at those verbs. It doesn't just mean I'm living
a good life. It doesn't mean I'm nice to
people. It means that I'm actually
proclaiming I'm, I'm sharing something with them verbally,
right? And then when we think about the
content of the gospel, one of the best places to go is, is in
First Corinthians chapter 15. And I've alluded to 1st
Corinthians 13 or 15 before, sorry, in the sense that if you
want a summary of the gospel, then go to 1st Corinthians 15.
It also will give you a great summary of of not only that, but
it it goes into expands even to who all saw that and who who all
saw Jesus after the resurrection, etcetera.
But verses 3 and 4, I'll just keep it to those two verses for
I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received
that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures
that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in
accordance with the scriptures. So everything's done according
to the scriptures. Talk about that more Sunday and
and we're going to see that then it talks about how many people
he appeared to etcetera. And so we need to understand
that the basics of the gospel mean that I'm talking about
Jesus. I'm talking about what Jesus did
talking about the cross. I'm talking about an empty tomb.
I make my students write out a gospel presentation as part of
their final word for word. My finals are not true and false
multiple choice matching tests. They are essay type things like
writing another paper and they have to write out longhand how
they would share the gospel with somebody.
And I threaten them within an inch of their graduation that if
if you don't have something about a cross and you don't have
something about an empty tomb, you ain't sharing the gospel.
And so I make them write it out. They also have to do weekly
evangelism reports in my class where they actually have to go
out and share the gospel one-on-one or personally with
people so that they'll actually know how to do that.
And you can't avoid that class. So people who go to seminary
always take it in their last semester.
It's hilarious. But anyway, so, but the other
thing we got to think about when we think about the gospel, what
do the cross and what do the resurrection really mean?
And we go back to some of the theological conversations that
we've been having. And there's a reason why we've
been having theological conversations.
I connect dots. And so to understand that we
have two great problems. We've got a sin problem, we've
got a death problem, the cross and the resurrection.
They're dealing with these problems, right?
And we're going to talk a whole lot more about that content
later. What do I really need to know to
tell somebody? And, and, and I find to be
honest with you, that's often not the biggest problem,
especially those of you who've been in church for a while, a
lot of, you know, some of that content, the biggest problem is
getting there. How do I get there to where I
can actually talk about the gospel to somebody to where
they're not slamming the door or they're not mad at me throwing
coffee on me at the coffee shop or whatever.
So we want to talk about this and sometimes we mix in this
idea of the Great Commission. You know, we want to fulfill the
Great Commission as disciples and we want to do that, but
we've got to recognize that the whole Great Commission, the idea
of the Great Commission, this whole Great Commission includes
pre evangelism, evangelism and post evangelism.
And if I were to sit here and tell you the difference between
missions and evangelism, that's part of it.
In missions you do all three. Evangelism is the middle part.
Very specifically right. And so when we talk about Great
Commission, the Great Commission fulfillment in its purest form
is a natural overflowing and outpouring of our response to
God's grace and mission. Frankly, it's our relationship
#1 being poured out into relationship #2 and I promise
you that pouring will dry up quickly.
If relationship number one is not strong, you have nothing to
pour. You'll have nothing to talk
about, right? One of my favorite passages of
in all the Bible of evangelism is John Chapter 9.
This guy's born blind. Jesus heals him.
The religious leaders don't like that because they didn't seem to
like anything. And so they interrogate the
man's mommy and daddy and they're terrified.
And they say, listen, he's old enough to talk for himself.
You will ask him, we don't want anything to do with this.
And so then they get the the guy up there and it says, well, tell
us what's going on. And the you are paraphrasing the
whole thing simply this, you guys are going to figure this
out for yourselves and do whatever you think's right.
Here's what I know. I was blind and now I see.
And that dude Jesus did it. That's evangelism to a large
degree. It's your testimony.
That's your testimony. Now you got to tell him how and
why we've got to talk about a cross and a resurrection, but
you talk about a testimony. So when we talk about these
things, Scripture teaches us theologically that evangelism
doesn't start. It doesn't begin with the
desires and schemes of man. This is a God driven thing.
So this is not anthropological, it's theological.
So salvation has to come from God.
And, and I believe with all of my heart that God is way ahead
of, listen, here's how, here's how crazy I am.
I don't think you would come here in the rain physically to
this session if God didn't draw you here tonight.
I just believe that I believe in a God who orchestrates history.
You just wait till my Christmas series and we talk about
Galatians and the fullness of time and what that really means.
What does the fullness of time mean?
I'm going to talk about that in December.
So God's orchestrating. So let's talk about this.
So we need to be able to find evangelism in Scripture.
Is this biblical? Is it biblical for us to share
our faith? So one of the things that we go
do is we recognize that from Genesis to Revelation, we see
God creating man for relationship with him.
And so redemption is found throughout Scripture.
In fact, that's the basis to a large degree of what we would
call the grand narrative. So the Bible documents God
working throughout history in this grand or meta narrative.
And don't let that phrase throw you.
It just means big story in this big story that usually consists
of at least four parts. And there are multiple ways
there are different words that people use, but it's but that
usually these four parts and some of the best gospel tools
today actually share this. They're going to actually take
you all the way back to creation, which we we've talked
about before how important that is in today's culture.
We've probably got to start in Genesis, not in John.
And so the first part is creation that God created, and
that's part of redemption. You may not think of it that
way, but I tried to share that with you not too long ago.
We don't deserve life. We don't deserve existence.
Now, see, this is where the problem of evil conversation
comes back into place because we get mad because we think we're
owed something or we think we deserve something, or we think
we don't deserve something. You don't deserve anything.
You don't deserve to exist. Now that may sound harsh and
weird to you, but it's the truth.
God decided to create out of His incredible nature of grace and
love because He knew when He created we were going to screw
everything up, and so we don't even deserve to be here.
You don't deserve to breathe. So start with that part of grace
and redemption, right? That wasn't a gospel
presentation. That was just the theological
truth. The second part of that is the
fall, because we all sin. And so to to recognize who this
God is, the nature of this God, what God has done, and then the
nature of sin and the nature of man is all part of a whole
gospel presentation. We've messed up.
We're all sinners. We all fall short to the glory
of God. We have a problem, we have a
need, we have a gap, we have a a price to pay.
We have a penalty that's going to be judged.
Something has to happen to fix this.
We can't fix this ourselves. And somehow that that'll be in a
gospel mix. So then the third part's
redemption. God always had a plan.
He had a plan before creation. He's always planned on this.
He always knew redemption was necessary.
He always knew this was going to happen.
And then the 4th part is restoration.
There's going to come a time when it's all fixed and my knee
won't hurt anymore when it rains.
You know. But far much more glorious than
that. So, so the big story is the
whole point of the Bible. Don't miss that, that that meta
narrative, that grand narrative is the whole point.
So I know we chopped the Bible up into different books.
We chopped the Bible up into different authors.
We chopped the Bible up into different contexts.
And, and those are good hermeneutical ways to study it.
But we also have to recognize that this is a whole and it's a
miraculous whole. There's no way in the world this
should all make sense. There's no one the way where in
the world this ought to flow with the thousands of years and
authors and places and languages and situations.
But that's one of the miracles of Scripture.
That is one story. And so that big story being the
whole point, then knowing this helps us to understand the
various parts. That's one of the ways that we
interpret Scripture. Don't interpret.
In fact, I was sharing this today.
We were having a conversation. Don't take a verse without a
context. And and it's not just this
context, it's this context, it's this context, it's that context.
How does that one verse fit into the whole Bible?
Now, you may not think this will be cool and I'll come up with a
really cool name. So don't worry, I'll make
Michelle do that or something. But but our Avery will come up
with a really cool name. But in January and midweek, how
do we actually study and interpret the Bible, not only
personally, but how would we teach the Bible to somebody else
in in a really solid way? What are the questions I ought
to be asking in my personal Bible study?
What are the questions I'd all be asking in my connect group?
What are the questions I ought to be asking when he stands up
here and screams at me in a sermon?
What, what do I really need to do to take a piece of the Bible
and understand how it fits into the whole?
So we're going to talk about engaging the Bible.
After the first of the year. So when we recognize this, that,
that, that, that this is that, this helps us understand the
various parts, then we have to ask, how does this story
actually build? How does it become something?
And so that big story becomes something and to understand how
it builds, first we got to ask how does it end?
So we're actually going to go to the end and work backwards.
Call that scope and sequence in education, you call that
backward planning. So how does it end?
And then how do we get to that end?
Right. So you, you go to Revelation 5
or Revelation 7. Either one of them will work.
And you see these great throne room images at the end of time
and who all's there, People from every tongue, tribe and nation.
That's the goal. That's the end game, right?
To bring God glory to redeem the nation's.
We're helping those people to get there.
We're going to learn about people who were in a place and
have started a church. That's the culmination that we
see. So that's the ending.
And if that's how we bring glory to God, then why we engage in
evangelism becomes significant to us.
And so if that's the end, we got to recognize how do we get to
the beginning, right? So, so the, the culmination, our
goal, this is how we bring glory to God.
This is why we engage in evangelism to help with this end
game. So now we ask, so if that's the
end, where's the beginning? Where do we begin?
So where do we begin? Well, let's go to the Old
Testament. Evangelism in the Old Testament.
Who'd a thunk it? So let's talk about redemption
in the Old Testament for a moment.
We'll we'll go through about 2000 years of history here in
about 5 minutes just to walk. Through this right?
So we see Genesis and we see hit the demonstration of our need
for a Savior from the very first book in the Garden of Eden, we
see the flood stories. Later we see the patriarch
stories. But even in the Garden of Eden,
when you go all the way back to Genesis 315, and I've talked to
you about this before, the proto evangelium where we see the very
first mention, the initial promise of salvation where the
where the offspring of the woman is going to stomp on the head of
the serpent talking about Jesus. So from the very beginning,
salvation is needed. The Christ would come.
And so it's always been a part of the story, right?
So instead of destroying us, which God could have easily
done, it would have been easy. Snuff.
We're all gone. There were just two of them.
That'd have been easy. I'd have done it.
I mean, think about it. That wouldn't just give me
another handful of dirt. We'll try this again.
You know what I'm saying? But he wasn't caught off guard
by sin. And again, you got to rest on
that for a second. God was not caught off guard by
sin, and he still created us. He's a redemptive God.
And so from the very beginning, instead of destroying us, he
promises A Messiah. And what's really going to be
the twist of the story is it's God Incarnate who dies.
Nobody else teaches that. Nobody else comes close to that.
That's why it's the truth, one of the reasons.
So then we go on. Do you see the creation in the
fall? And then you continue in the Old
Testament. We won't do every book because
we don't have time. But think about how Exodus
continues the story. Think about redemption and
Exodus, the freedom from Egypt of the people, that the fact
they end up in Sinai and they get the law and they go out into
the wilderness wanderings. And so you see the law and the
Tabernacle and this whole system of blood sacrifice that is
developed, developed in this in with these people so that their
sins could be atoned for Garden of Eden.
Blood had to be sacrificed to cover them.
Blood always covers sin. It always has, always will.
And then the the Old Testament continues as you see redemption
throughout the Old Testament where you walk through what I
call the cycle of the judges to where to where the people sin.
And then there's an oppressor. And then they cry out and they
whine and they argue and they gripe.
And if I was God, I'd have wiped them out then.
But he doesn't because then he sends a deliverer and they get
delivered and they return to God for about two seconds.
And then they start sinning again.
And you can sit there and say shame on you Hebrews, Shame on
you Hebrews. And then I look in the mirror
and I go, I'm not going to say anymore because I've got the
Holy Spirit living in me and I still sin.
They didn't have that. They didn't have the whole
Bible. They didn't know what I know.
So it's pretty. Fascinating.
And it continues. So then you see the Tabernacle
and then eventually the temple. So this sacrificial system
continues, I mean grows, becomes complicated even to becoming a
problem eventually. And then even the exile comes
along later. You see the exile in the
prophets to where God says, listen, you guys have got to
learn and I'm going to keep teaching you lessons one way or
the other. I'll use Assyria, I'll use
Babylon, I'll use prophet after prophet.
Listen, I've been studying the minor prophets in my personal
quiet time and let me tell you something, after a while you're
just going to go, whoa, is because I'm in every single
chapter. Somebody's getting it because
they sin and they can be. It can be redundant and it's
reading. But then when you recognize the
lesson and you apply it to yourself, and you recognize the
lost people around you who live in woe and they're living in
judgement, and a permanent exile is coming if something isn't
done, if we don't warn them, right?
And so you see 3 themes of the Old Testament.
I didn't create these three themes.
There are other scholars and and people who've done this.
And so the first thing that you see is what's called the
universality of God's intent. Now don't let this throw you
off. This isn't universalism.
What this means in the Old Testament is, is that God wanted
all the nations to know him. He wanted all the nations to
know who he was. He wanted his name and his his
who he was to be known by the nations.
And if you read the Old Testament in, in honesty, you'll
see that this was a purpose. They were to be a light to the
Gentiles. And we'll see that again in a
second. But he wanted all the nations to
read the Psalms. And you'll see this over and
over and over again. Because the second point is, is
that the purpose of God's people was to be a light for the
Gentiles. In fact, this coming Sunday in
the sermon, I'm going to quote from the first missionary
journeys where they quote this passage to some people they were
teaching. And then the third thing that
you see is what's called the narrowing of the means of
deliverance. Don't let these words throw you.
This just means that he moves from a people to a person.
So the Hebrews were supposed to show the world this is how human
beings are supposed to walk with God.
So the purpose of the law, the purpose of the Tabernacle, the
purpose of the temple, we're supposed to show everybody this
is how you do this. Now, they did a horrible job of
it and they got punished over and over and over and over and
over again until the time you get to the New Testament.
It's all twisted and and messed up, but I actually wrote a
chapter for a book for Lifeway in a prayer series where we
analyzed prayers from the Old Testament.
And I wrote a chapter about King Solomon's prayer of dedication
of the temple. And if you don't believe that
the intent was at the temple and every part of it was not just
for the Jewish people, it was for the nations, you need to
reread the stories. Because he even says when the
when the foreigner comes and prays here, listen to them, God,
honor them, God, because they've come to honor you.
And so we recognize that it narrows.
So it narrows from a people to a Messiah is the point.
And so then you enter into the New Testament.
And in the New Testament, God continues on his sovereign
mission. Again, in Galatians 4, he talks
about the fullness of time. And we'll come back and revisit
that a lot in December. We're going to break that down.
Why did Jesus come when and where he did?
And I'm going to show you some of the reasons.
Some of them are practical, some of them are spiritual.
And you'll see how God is his perfectly orchestrating history
and culture. It's amazing what he's done.
So and then you get into the Gospels itself.
And Jesus knew his life was actually a fulfillment of the
Old Testament. Remember as he's walking on the
road to Emmaus after the resurrection and he opens their
eyes and he tells them this is how the law and the prophets all
talked about me. That's what Luke 24 is about.
The whole Bible is about me. Jesus said after his
resurrection and he and, and he pointed that out to him.
So throughout the Gospels, many, many, many Old Testament
prophecies, including the suffering servant passage of
Isaiah being fulfilled, and they're clearly referenced.
They're clearly fulfilled. This is God's mission.
This is God's story, the whole book, all of it.
And so one of the things that we get into to recognize is how
Jesus actually shared with others.
So you, you going to do a little homework right now.
Get ready. So what we going to do, I want
you to do. If you have a Bible, turn to
John chapter 4. If you have a phone, do it
there. If you don't have a Bible
anywhere near you, look on with somebody because I want you to
see a case study from the ministry of Jesus.
This is the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.
I make people do this in class. This normally takes about 3
hours. We're going to do it in about 5
minutes, but one of the things I want to demonstrate throughout
this whole series are little activities that you can do with
your small groups. You can do this with your
families. You can do this yourself to have
a little have ways to to help you to learn.
So I just want you to take a moment.
I'm going to be quiet for a few minutes.
If you want to talk together, that's fine.
You want to do it by yourself, that's fine.
I don't care. Talking together would be fun.
I'd like to hear that, but you don't have to.
And I want you to think about this passage and just be ready
to think about what are some of Christ's methodologies that He
uses with the Samaritan woman at the well.
So take a couple of minutes. I'll give you a few minutes.
We have more time than you know. Now shout loudly and I'm going
to repeat it so that it gets recorded.
Just name something. What was Jesus's methodology?
He says anything, anything He did, anything he said.
What did he do? He introduced himself.
What? He started talking to her.
Now, now, now, seriously, can you talk to somebody?
I'm telling you, I'm telling you, one of the classes that
I've always said on the masters level I need to teach, and that
may amaze you, is how to have a reasonable conversation with
another human being and our culture today, don't take that
too lightly. Think about how difficult that
seems to be today. What else?
He intentionally went that way. He intentionally went that way.
He asked for something. She has made a connection,
didn't he? Yeah.
What else? Spoke in terms she understood,
Use language, use connecting points, Knew us, knew some
history there. That's good.
Anything else? He what?
Yeah, He. He brought up there and then
talking. Started bringing up the subject
matter of God. Had her confessor sin.
That's good. Offered something appealing.
She needed what he had. Yeah, He made her wonder.
That's good. That's interesting.
Say it one more time. He did not judge her.
Also didn't condone what she was
doing, but also didn't judge her harshly.
That's right. Yeah.
Used a normal thing in life to bridge and to use this as the
illustration. Now, I want you to think about
this and I want you to take this home with you.
And I want you to use this and really dwell on this a little
bit. First of all, why in the think
about the disciples later as you read the whole story, they're
like, what in the world are you doing talking to her?
She's a Samaritan and she's a woman and she's out at the wrong
time of day, which means she's up to no good.
And so judgement comes, right? And yet for him, that wasn't the
issue, was it? He saw, he saw lostness.
He saw a soul and need. He saw a person in need, right?
And you read the end of the story and see what happens.
And I want you to study that a little bit and think about the
methodologies. We'll do this in, in sessions
that I do. And we'll have a whole white
board full of things that Jesus did or said and the disciples
did or said and the woman did or said, right?
He didn't let her. He didn't let her take him off
subject. She tried, she tried to change
the subject, tried to distract, but he got her right back on
track. Didn't let that happen.
It was honest, but he was also loving, cared for her, right?
I think he probably shocked her a little bit by actually, what
are you doing talking to me? All right, so think about that
and take that with you and use that.
So we see then as the the gospels move forward, finally we
get to the book of Acts. We've talked about that a lot to
where Jesus ascends to the Father.
The Holy Spirit then steps in to continue the work.
So God displays his purposes through the church.
We've we've spent a whole series talking about that on Sunday
mornings and the gospel breaks through barriers.
Nothing can stop. It doesn't matter.
Geography doesn't matter. Ethnicity doesn't matter.
Race, geography, religion, language, different things
breakdown. The gospel transcends all of
those and it moves from one group to the next.
So these linguistic, these ethnic, these geographic
barriers can't stop the spreading of the gospel.
In fact, it's quite miraculous when you study history, how
quickly the Gospel is in every single Roman province.
Very quickly, in relative terms, if we did half as much as the
first Church did in spreading the gospel, we would cover the
nation in a heartbeat with as many as we are compared to as
few as they were. And so it's an amazing
opportunity we have. It's also an amazing lack of
participation. So one of my goals is to
increase the percentage of participation.
The staff note 100%. The staff knows that my increase
of percentages is a mantra. All right.
So the evangelism permeated the early church.
You see this total penetration, total participation, everybody's
sharing, everybody's inviting. So the early church didn't just
do evangelism. They were evangelistic.
In fact, a messiologist by the name of David Garland would
point out that they were, they were spurred by a divine
compulsion. They, they couldn't hold it
back. They, they wanted the world to
know. And then suddenly you stumble
upon this former rabbi named Paul.
We're going to talk about his first missionary journey Sunday
morning. I'm going to do a whole
missionary journey and one sermon.
Don't worry, it's not even a long sermon.
Barnabas goes along too, so you'll like that part
encouraging in Acts 915, it says, but the Lord said to him,
go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my
name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of
Israel. And so his evangelism, Paul's
evangelism flows out of his passion for God and one of the
great, and I'll make it again every time I step over there,
that does it another great. So I'll step over here.
So another statement that I'll make when we talk about
testimonies is that is that Paul never survived his salvation.
That's one of his secrets. That's one of his keys.
He remembered Saul and he knew who he was and he knew what
Jesus had done and he never forgot that.
And that's a characteristic I talk about, that I want to be a
part of my life. I never want to survive my
salvation. I died.
The old me died, right? And so that was one of Paul's
strengths and his journeys encompass.
They go over a decade. It's funny when you read Acts
and everything seems so compressed.
You have a hard time sometimes understanding time frames.
You know, there were times he spent.
Years here or there. And so all those missionary
journeys took over 10 years, and they spread the gospel into at
least four major provinces around the Mediterranean world,
right? And obviously he's writing
letters to the churches along the way as well.
So let's talk about these letters for just a moment before
we end up here in a second. So one of the things that he
does, when you look at evangelism in the epistles in
the New Testament, you've got to make some recognitions.
Don't make them say something they don't say.
The the epistles were written as letters, and in fact occasional
letters to specific people for specific reasons.
Never forget that in your context, he's writing to a local
church. This is one of the oddest things
about, frankly one of the dumbest theological conclusions
I hear in the world today, that I don't need the church.
If you don't need the church, you are discounting the majority
of the New Testament because the New Testament is written to the
church and the instructions of these letters are written to
local churches and real people who had real issues in real
places. And sometimes we don't even
know, always know what the questions were.
And so we have to study and understand context.
But these were occasional letters for very specific
reasons. They weren't intended to be
systematic theologies. They were, They were intended to
deal with the immediate concerns, with the false
teaching, with the persecution, with with whatever was going on
in those churches. And so although there are
certain theological lessons we learned from them, but
interwoven are these great themes of evangelism.
Now. Now you got to understand that
evangelism is also assumed in the epistles.
You got to think about who was writing these things.
These were all written by missionaries and evangelists, by
disciples and the like. And so these are people who
assumed certain things, but the universality of God's intent is
still clearly seen. He wants everybody to know Him.
His will is that all would be saved, right?
And that none would perish. You'll see these verses.
So let me conclude with this, and I'm going to show you an
image, and I want you to get the difference between Old Testament
and New Testament. It's the difference between
centripetal and centrifugal force.
And you may not you, some of you know these words well.
Some of you, like you, get these confused.
I'm not sure which one is which. So centripetal, where's the
motion going? Anybody remember Inward,
centrifugal, outward. So centripetal means going
toward, think of a drain. You're draining water, so it's
centripetal. Toward the middle.
Centrifugal is where it's throwing it out.
Think about that weird ride. You should never ride at the
carnival on Walmart's parking lot, but you do anyway.
And so that's the difference between the Old Testament and
the New Testament. In the Old Testament, you had
this centripetal redemptive plan.
In other words, you needed to come to the law, you needed to
come to the temple, you needed to come to the Tabernacle, you
needed to come to Israel. You had to go to see these
people. That's where you would find God.
And so you were to come to them, right?
Well, in the New Testament, one of these verses we'll talk about
that we become the temple of the Holy Spirit, right?
And there's a different context to it, but the idea is quite
profound in the sense that now, because the Holy Spirit lives
inside of us, the temple now goes to you.
In the old days, you had to come to the temple.
Now the temple goes to you. And that's one of the switches
that Jesus and Paul make and that we are now supposed to go.
In the old days, it would be come, come, see, come learn,
come watch, come observe. Now we go.
Here's the problem. Most churches still operate on
Old Testament principles. You got to come here.
They know where we are. If they want what we have, they
will come here. Man, I've been told that.
And you know what's what's wrong with that?
It's wrong. It's wrong.
Not only is it wrong biblically, it's wrong practically.
They are not going to just come here, not in any sizeable number
whatsoever, not in today's world.
So we must be a New Testament church and we must go.
And So what we're going to talk about is how do I intentionally
prepare for and pursue these opportunities to go and listen,
we're not, we're not, you know, listen, I'm not opposed to cold
Turkey door knocking if that's really what you want to do.
And you want to just pick a neighborhood and go cold Turkey
door knocking and show the gospel with people.
That's not the primary method I'm going to be sharing with
you. I want to talk about the people,
you know, your neighbors, your Co workers, your classmates,
people you see on a regular basis that you have somewhat of
a relationship with. If we would just lead all of
them to Jesus, we would see the greatest revival of human
history. And so I'm not saying don't go
to the complete stranger. We'll talk about person X, but
I'm really going to be talking about what about that person
that you can see every week, maybe every day they, they have
a relationship. How, how do I, how do I use this
relationship? How do I steer and build this
relationship? So next session is real simple.
We're going to talk about how do we pray for them?
We're preparing for and in our pre evangelism, we're talking
about pre evangelism next time. How do I prepare and pursue
these by prayer? And then how do I begin to
develop a, a very intentional relationship with a lost person?
You need to have relationships with lost people, but they need
to be very intentional to where you are guiding them toward a
place where you can share. So how do I develop a pre
evangelistic, honest, authentic? We're not just trying to
manipulate people, we're trying to love them.
Well, a real relationship. But I'm also hoping that at some
point down the road I can share with you about who I really love
and why. So that'll be next time.
Does that make sense? All right, go home with your
homework and John and and talk more about how Jesus shares the
gospel. Let's pray together.
Father, we thank you so much for your love and your grace.
We don't deserve it. Thank you for it.
Let us tell other people about it in Jesus name, Amen.
God bless you all. Thank you so much for listening
today and I also hope that you'll go to
ourwebsite@englewoodbaptist.com as well as our app and find many
other resources that will bless you and your families.
Thank you once again.