Matthew 28:18-20
18 – Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
19 – Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 – and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
I Corinthians 9
19 – Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.
20 – To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law.
21 – To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law). So as to win those not having the law.
22 – To the weak I became weak to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.
I Peter 3:15
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.
As the dust has settled from the events on September 11th one thing has become painfully clear to thousands and thousands of Americans. Their eyes have been opened to the fact that they are not prepared to face eternity-and because of what has happened they desperately want to be prepared. Brooklyn Tabernacle, the church in New York City where Jim Cymbala pastors and where his wife, Carol, directs the world famous Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, reports that on September 16-the Sunday following the tragedy-700 people came forward at the conclusion of a worship service asking how they could have the eternal life that Jesus offers.
Here in our own church family I have heard several stories of people asking similar questions of some of you. Cydney Sherman shared a week ago that this crisis has given her the opportunity to share her faith with several co-workers who had questions about life after death. Ken and Deb Vaughn report having similar conversations with one of their non-Christian neighbors. Maybe you have found yourself in the midst of a discussion with friends, or neighbors, or co-workers in the past few weeks and the subject of eternity came up.
So, I guess another thing that September 11th has shown us….is that we who know Christ need to be ready to answer the questions that inevitably surface in times like this. As our text from 1 Peter says, we simply must, …always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks us to give the reason for the hope that we have.
Unfortunately many believers are not comfortable in sharing their faith. And, there are several reasons for this but mainly I think it is due to the fact that most of us don’t know how. We have simply never learned how to reproduce ourselves spiritually. Well, for the next three weeks I want us to take our sermon time and focus on the how to’s of evangelism because I WANT us to be ready here at Redland to lead people to faith in Jesus.
And at the onset we need to understand that ignorance isn’t the only thing that keeps many believers from witnessing. Many of us know the plan of salvation. We know what a person needs to do to become a Christian. But we shy away from sharing our faith because we have bought into one or more misconceptions when it comes to evangelism. For example, according to Billy Beacham….
1. …some Christians think of witnessing as an assault by a God Squad of sorts.
In other words they believe personal evangelism is an activity that should be limited to a few specially-gifted individuals. This is wrong because the Bible teaches that helping the lost come to Christ is the responsibility of ALL Christians….not just a select, saintly society of super soul-winners.
Now, it IS true that God has given some people the specific ministry of being evangelizers. As Ephesians 4:11 says, It was Christ Who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists and some to be pastors and teachers. But in the Bible there are many general exhortations to witness given to the whole body of Christ, texts like II Corinthians 5:18-20 which says that God has given us ALL …the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are [ALL] therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us.
So, even though there are those who are specially gifted and called to a ministry which concentrates only on evangelism all members of the body of Christ are to participate in the GREAT task of making, …disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And then, other Christians are hesitant to share their faith because they have been taught that the only way to do so is to engage in…
2. …some sort of spiritual mugging mission.
By this I mean that they think evangelism is when the witnesser corners some unsuspecting witnessee and more or less shoves a tract down his or her throat. Rebecca Pippert, author of Out of the Salt Shaker: Into the World tells of a time she was sitting in her car at a traffic light with her window rolled down. As the light turned green a car drove by and it’s occupant threw something into her car hitting her on the cheek. It didn’t hurt but she was so startled that she pulled her car over immediately. When she unrolled the paper, she discovered it was a gospel tract. She says that she was the apparent victim of what she refers to as torpedo evangelism.
This kind of stunt is the result of too many evangelism strategies teaching Christians that the key to sharing their faith is based on this faulty philosophy that says to save someone you have to force faith on them. We must remember we aren’t called to IMPOSE the gospel but to EXPOSE the gospel.
Other evangelism training is along these same lines in that it involves teaching witnessers to memorize a gospel presentation in the same way they would learn a canned sales pitch. But witnessing is not about super sales strategies and shrewd sales people. The gospel is not for sale. It is the free gift for those who will receive it. If we view evangelism as an insensitive act in which we hit our friends over the head with the Gospel, then we have misunderstood this Great Commission of ours. Colossians 4:5-6 says, Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace…so that you may know how to answer everyone. And, as our text from 1 Peter says, we should always be ready to share our faith but, …with gentleness and respect.
Well to correct these and other false beliefs about how to go about sharing the good news of God’s love, we need to embrace some basic biblical principles that make it possible for us to lead others to the same personal faith in Christ that we enjoy. They are suggested by Bill Hybels in his book, Becoming a Contagious Christian…
1. …and the first is the principle of HIGH POTENCY.
You see, in order to fulfill the Great Commission, we must have a highly potent relationship with Christ…a vibrant walk with our Lord that is obvious to all who know us. That’s what Jesus was getting at when He described us as SALT in the Sermon on the Mount because when salt is salty, it’s presence is always recognizable. So as Paul says in Colossians 4, if you want to be effective in sharing your faith you must, …Let your conversation…your LIFE…be always full of grace, seasoned with salt… In other words, to have an impact on the lost world around us we must have a relationship with Jesus that is so deep and real that every moment of our lives, even our daily conversation, is salted with the love of God.
Matthew 5:16 says that this relationship must flavor everything we do so that people watching us see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven. That is to say, they see the way we live and recognize us as God’s children. To lead others to follow Christ, we must convince them that we follow Him. We must spend so much time with Jesus, communicating with Him through spiritual disciples of prayer and Bible study and worship and giving, that the result is a life that is clearly recognizable as that of an authentic disciple.
You know….in the book of Acts the phrase filled with the Holy Spirit occurs fourteen times. In each case when a person or a group of persons was filled with the Holy Spirit, they immediately began to witness dynamically for Jesus Christ. I think this should say to us that one sure evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives is that they witness. As our Lord said, If a man abides in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. (John 15:5 ) which means if we GENUINELY abide in Him and vice versa, we will tell others about it.
Maybe that is why Jesus was so critical of Christians who did not genuinely abide in Him. Remember? He described them as salt that lost it’s savor… no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled on by men? Do you recall His words to the flavorless Christians who made up the church in Laodicea? To these bland, lukewarm followers He said, I wish you were cold or hot….because you are lukewarm…neither hot nor cold…I am about to spit you out of my mouth. In other words Jesus said he would rather they were not followers at all than to be inauthentic, lukewarm followers. You see Christians who have a shallow faith…Christians who are halfhearted and inconsistent…do more harm to the kingdom of God than would be done by non-Christians.
People are watching us, especially in these days when Christians are often perceived as being narrow-minded and judgmental. They are looking for flaws in our relationship with Jesus. When our faith is shallow and we do not live out the truths of the Gospel, we are keeping people from wanting to get closer to Christ. This is why God would prefer that we be cold than lukewarm. This is why it is so important that we have a relationship with Jesus that is genuine and HIGHLY POTENT! One day as a woman was crossing a street at London station, an old man stopped her.
Excuse me, ma’am, he said, but I want to thank you. Thank me? she exclaimed. Yes ma’am. I used to be a ticket collector, and whenever you went by, you always gave me a cheerful smile and a good morning. I knew that smile must come from inside somewhere. Then one morning, I saw a little Bible in your hand. I bought one too and read it and decided to give my life to Jesus.
People like this man are examining our lives to see if Christianity works. By the way we go about our daily tasks, we are either telling them that our walk with Christ is a dynamic relationship with the living God or that it is a meaningless religion that has nothing to offer them. This is why in Titus 2:7-8 Paul wrote, In all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, sound in speech which is beyond reproach, in order that the opponent may be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.
So to share our faith…to be able to tell people how they can have eternal life…we must first of all live HIGHLY POTENT Christian lives…
2. And then, the second principle is that of CLOSE PROXIMITY….
You see, it doesn’t matter how POTENT our relationship with Christ is if we never get close to people who don’t know Christ themselves. Salt does no good if it is left in the shaker. So if we are going to impact our world for Christ, the most effective approach will be through friendships with those who need to be reached.
You know statistics show that within 2 years of becoming a Christian most people have no significant relationship with a lost person. They get so involved in the church that they center nearly every free moment of their lives within the church and have no time left to develop relationships with lost people. The salt stays in the shaker. And many evangelistic campaigns are not fruitful because they end up being focused around inviting lost people to come into a church building. This is because many Christians erroneously think that evangelism is where Christians herd the lost into the stained glass corral of a church so the preacher can pick them off one by one with his high-powered sermons. Dr. Roy Fish, professor of evangelism at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth was right when he said, Evangelizing in the church is like fishing in a bathtub. It’s terribly convenient, but you don’t catch much.
To really influence the lost in our community we must leave the church and go out there making friendships with people through which we can share our faith. Nowhere in the Bible are we told that the lost are going to come in here to us. But repeatedly we are told that we must be willing to go to them. It is estimated that less than three percent of the non-Christian people in the world ever come into our buildings. So, we will never fulfill the Great Commission by building great buildings. We must remember that relationships bring people into a saving relationship with Jesus. People bring people to the Lord.
I remember hearing Hybels speak about his love of sailing. He frequently enters his boat in races and for a long time he said he made the mistake of choosing only Christians to be his crew. One day he realized that hiring non-believers would provide him a great opportunity to share his faith and since then that is what he has done.
Now, I don’t think many of you own a sailing boat, but you do have other opportunities to build relationships with the lost. So, pick a car pool that you know is made up on non-Christians. Join a garden club or a craft circle or a bowling team….whatever…but look for opportunities to go out there and introduce yourself to people who need to be introduced to Jesus Christ. Follow Paul’s example in our text from 1 Corinthians and, …become all things to all men so that by all possible means you might save some.
So, to complete our God-given mission we must go to where the people are and build relationships with them. Now, ask yourself a question: How are you doing at this? How many unsaved people do you know? A recent study asked 10,000 Christians how they came to Christ and 79% said they came to Christ because they were invited to do so by a friend! This means that almost 80% of the people who respond to Christ do so through an already established relationship. And here’s some more pertinent info. A recent article in LEADERSHIP JOURNAL revealed that 80% of the people won to Christ through relationships become actively involved in a local church. On the other hand 80% of those won in a one-time witnessing encounter, say on a street corner or in a door-to-door witnessing campaign. 80% of these people never become actively involved in a church.
Okay, let’s review. In order to lead non-Christians to embrace a personal faith in Christ we must have a HIGHLY POTENT walk ourselves and we must live and work and play in CLOSE PROXIMITY with them and then we must add one more principle to our efforts…
3. …the principle of…CLEAR COMMUNICATION.
In Matthew 5 Jesus said that if light is to have it’s intended effect, it must not be covered up or obscured in any way. And in order for us to have the powerful influence on this world, we must know the gospel message cold and be ready to communicate it concisely and clearly. It only makes sense that any time we have a message to communicate we must do so in a way that it is clearly understood by the people with whom we are communicating.
My missions professor in seminary was Dr. Bryant Hicks. Dr. Hicks was a retired missionary and had served much of his life sharing his faith with the people of the Philippines. In one of his lectures I remember him telling us of his early days as a missionary evangelist. He told us that it was customary for new missionaries to be accompanied by experienced ones until they were sure of their language skills. So in his first few months he traveled in the company of other evangelists…men and women who knew the language well. Finally the time came for him to go out on his own. He was to preach at a church service in a remote area of that country. He apparently did a good job communicating his message because well over 100 people responded to his invitation, saying they wanted to give their lives to Christ. At the end of the service he asked all who wished to be baptized on that day to remain and he would symbolize their commitment to Christ in the waters of baptism. But no one stayed. In fact they all left rather hurriedly. Well, when Dr. Hicks got back to the missionary station he told his mentors what had happened. They asked him to repeat exactly what he had said and when he did, the reason for the new converts’ reluctance to be baptized was made clear. Apparently Dr. Hicks had not communicated that part of his message clearly. Instead of asking those who wished to be baptized to remain, he had asked those who wished to be drowned to do so. He and his listeners had a breakdown in communication because real communication takes place when I say something and you understand what I said.
And effective evangelism involves clearly communicating with another person so they come to understand who Jesus is and what He has accomplished on our behalf. In Colossians 4:3-4, Paul said, And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it CLEARLY, as I should.
So when relationships give us an opportunity to share our faith we must talk in terms that people understand. In other words, keep it simple! Don’t be like the professor that was talking to a man whose car had evidently broken down beside the road. The professor said, Your tubular air container has lost most of its rotundity. The motorist replied, What did you say? The professor restated, The cylindrical apparatus which supports your vehicle is not longer inflated. The motorist answered, I beg your pardon? The professor tried one more time, saying, The elastic fabric surrounding the circular frame whose successive revolutions bear you onward in space has failed to retain its pristine roundness. Finally a little boy came to the rescue and said, Hey mister, you have a flat tire!
Keep your message simple and clear. In I Corinthians 2:1-2 Paul wrote, When I came to you brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Paul was saying that his message was not fancy or complicated. It was simple and he explained it concisely and to the point. And if we are to do our part to win the world to Christ we must know how to verbalize the central truth of the Gospel simply and clearly. Now, there are many ways to share the good news of the gospel. We’ll talk about one next week but this morning let me suggest another tool that any evangelist can use to remember the basic truths of the gospel: your hand.
LET YOUR THUMB REPRESENT GOD’S DESIRE. God desires that each of us experience a full and abundant life. In John 10:10 Jesus said, I am come that you may have life and have it to the full. So look at your thumb and think of Thumbs up!…the Gospel is good news!
LET YOUR POINTER FINGER REPRESENT MANKIND’S PROBLEM. Look at your pointer finger and let that remind you that when you point at someone else, three fingers are pointing toward you. This teaches us that, as it says in Romans 3:23 and 6:23, we are all sinners separated from God.
LET YOUR CENTER FINGER REPRESENT GOD’S SOLUTION. This stands for the central truth of the Gospel. As it says in Romans 5:8 .. God demonstrates His love for us in this. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He gave His life to pay the penalty for the sin that separates us from God.
LET YOUR RING FINGER REPRESENT OUR RESPONSE. It stands for the intimate relationship like marriage that is required for us to benefit from the good news of the Gospel. We must come into a personal relationship with God through Christ. Romans 10:9 says, If YOU confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in YOUR heart that God raised him from the dead, YOU will be saved.
Then, LET YOUR PINKY FINGER remind you that it only takes a small step of faith to enter into this personal relationship with God and that we cannot be saved by our own weak efforts. Salvation is a free gift. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith…and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…not by works, so that no one can boast.
So the wonderful news we are trying to communicate with a lost world can be summed up in this simple way: God loves us (thumbs up), but each of us is cut off from God because of our sin (pointer finger). The central truth of the Gospel is that God’s solution to the problem was solved by Christ’s death on the cross (center finger) and we can take advantage of what Christ has done by entering a personal intimate relationship with Christ as Lord (ring finger), taking the small step of trusting Christ for salvation (pinky finger).
Okay, let’s review our principles. To be effective evangelists…
We must have a highly potent personal relationship with Christ.
We must build relationships with non-believers. We must live and work and play in close proximity with them.
We must communicate the gospel clearly…
It is important to never forget these basics because we all have the God-given responsibility to sow the seeds of the gospel wherever we live. And we do this…not just because God commanded us to do so…but because all Christians know why He gave us this task. God commissioned us to evangelize the human race because He loves people…all people. In Luke 15 Jesus told three stories back-to-back. to underscore this truth. Do you remember the stories? Shepherd looking for a lost sheep….woman looking for a lost coin….father out on the porch looking for a lost son……And when each was found a great celebration resulted. God put these three stories back to back in His word to underline one central truth. Lost people matter to Him. And they should matter to us. We must witness, but not out of an uncomfortable obligation but out of a love for people that causes us to put this above all other priorities. We are on this planet for purposes greater than having a career, paying bills, and fulfilling our role as upstanding citizens. We are here to serve as God’s agents of reconciliation who will first catch His love and then urgently and infectiously offer it to all who are willing to consider it. This morning will you commit to sharing your faith? Will you pledge to always have a relationship with at least one non-Christian?
If you are a Christian and you need a church home, a place to equip you to witness, then if you feel so led, come and join us. We would love to have you as a part of our church family. And if you are here and are not a Christian, then remember the good news of God’s love is as clear as the hand in front of your face. Will you come and respond to it today? As we stand and sing I invite you to walk forward and share your decisions with me.