20 - Lesson 11: Evangelism, Part 1

Welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Discipleship. This is our class on an introduction to discipling.

We are going through a book that we're using as a way of encouraging discipleship and that is

Growing in Grace. If you happen to have a copy, you can grab your copy. If not, you can order one from the website down there and grab your own copy.

But we welcome all the new students with us. We welcome all of you who are not new and still joining us.

I don't know why, but we appreciate it anyway. So, this class that we're going to be dealing with today is on the topic of evangelism.

We will get there, but as we have been saying throughout, one of the key elements of discipleship is repetition, repetition, repetition.

Therefore, we want to review what we mentioned for last class, which was on stewardship.

So there's our sheets that we have. You would want to ask the student whether they read 2

Corinthians 9 and 8 and 9. But here is our review on stewardship.

Again, this is most of the stuff that you have from your notes, but there's some extra things. These are put together by a fellow,

Wayne Smith, who has been a longtime friend of mine. He's actually the best man at my wedding, but don't hold that against him.

But here you can see he goes over each of the things that we talked about in class, starting with our attitude toward money, our procurement of money, our use of money, and then our giving of money.

So you notice each of those. Under each one, there was some things that we could review with the student quickly to go over each one of those, as you can look underneath.

You can also see up top, there's some things from the Greek on stewardship that he always tried to add a little bit more in, giving you some things from the

Nelson Dictionary there and some from the Greek. So just some helpful things to help you kind of go a little bit beyond with the person you're discipling.

So those, if you need those sheets, you can email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

Just academy at strivingforeternity .org and we can get those to you. So if you wanted to get a copy of those.

The lesson for today, as I said, is going to be on evangelism.

This is lesson number 11 in this book and you're seeing that we're calling this speaking out for our

Lord. Speaking out for our Lord. This is evangelism.

If you noticed, we started this book, actually do you have the slide for the, with all the, okay, so this is the overview of the class.

If you look, the very first class that we dealt with was the issue of salvation. Now that's very similar in context to this lesson on evangelism because they both deal with what is the gospel, important subject, don't you think?

So as we go through this, let's take a look where evangelism is telling others about what

God has done for us can sometimes be difficult. Which if you think about it, it shouldn't be, right?

Yet if we really believe what we believe, it's a vital part of the Christian life.

Now the pastor who helped write most of these lessons in the Growing in Grace book,

Pastor J .B. Chadwick, he had said a quote when it comes to evangelism.

Actually, it was when we were going over a lesson similar to this, he was talking to someone else and I just overheard this comment, we were discussing going out door -to -door evangelism and somebody said, you know,

I just really feel uncomfortable evangelizing. It's kind of hard for me.

And J .B. asked him, well why is that? Could it be that you're afraid of being rejected? And he's like, you know,

I think that's it. I don't like rejection. And J .B. said something that stuck with me all these many years, 20,

I don't know, maybe 20, 25 years later now. But he said, so you're telling me that you are afraid of being rejected by somebody you don't know and will probably never see again.

Ouch. I mean, doesn't that just hurt? Because isn't that the big reason, like so many of us, we don't want to be rejected?

But who's rejecting us? People we don't even know. We're going door -to -door, we're going on the street, and we're talking to complete strangers.

We're probably never going to meet them again, at least this side of heaven. We will meet them again.

It's either going to be that they're going to be entering into heaven as brothers or sisters in Christ or we're going to be standing in their judgment when

God judges them. Wow. But that aside, on this side of heaven, think about that.

We're afraid of being rejected by people we don't know and will probably never see again.

If they reject us, big deal, right? We won't, it won't affect us any because we really don't know what they're thinking about us after they're gone.

So why not go out? Now we're going to give you some better motivation than that, but like the fact that, well, gee,

God commanded it, that's enough, right? I loved what

R .C. Sproul had once said. He was in a class in seminary and they said, okay, as those who believe in Calvinism, why would we go out and share the gospel?

What's a good reason? And he said, they went around everyone giving an answer, and it got to his turn and he just said, because God commanded it.

And the teacher said, very good. Right? That's enough of a reason for us to go out.

Yikes, but what about those of us who don't? That's hard. Well, I've got news for you.

It's actually only hard after we've kind of been Christians for a long time, it seems. New believers don't seem to have difficulty sharing the gospel.

That's one of the things I find very interesting, and in fact, new believers are often the ones who their friends are typically not believers.

So they're the best people to be doing evangelism because their friends, those people they're closest to, don't believe the gospel typically.

They already have that relationship with them, and they can say, hey, this is what God did for me.

And they just start sharing with their friends what God has done. I have found that very often one of two things happen when someone becomes a believer.

Their friends, those that they're close to, either become believers by their sharing the gospel or just cut them off as friends because they don't want to hear it.

And sometimes it's because they don't have anything in common anymore. You know, you don't want to go to the bars or go to the places where you used to hang out maybe.

You don't want to have the same conversations that you had when you were an unbeliever. Maybe you don't want to be in that position where it brings back the temptations.

So people tend to avoid those friends over time, unfortunately. Some cases maybe fortunately, but the point being is that is a pattern that we notice.

I know one church they used to have what they called Matthew Suppers. What's a Matthew Supper? I can't give the credit to what church it is because I don't remember.

But a pastor that I had met at a conference, at a pastor's conference, and he had said what they do is when there's a new believer that comes to the church, they try to have dinner like Matthew did for all of his tax, you know, his,

I was going to say his IRS buddies, but his, you know, tax buddies who used to do tax collecting.

And Jesus came over and he shared with them. Matthew had dinner for all of his lost friends as soon as he became a believer, right?

This church did a similar thing. When someone would become a believer, they tried to get everyone together to be able to discuss what it is that happened to them and give an opportunity and the advantage of what they would do is they would have one of the pastors come to the dinner so that if the person gets stuck, you know what,

I don't know how to answer that. Pastor, do you have an answer for that? They could turn to the pastor and get an answer, hopefully.

But that's the concept based on the fact that most believers lose their unsaved friends after a while when they start making new friends in church.

So when you're discipling a new believer, they may not have the same fear that you have, by the way.

And so, but you want to be encouraging them kind of to strike while the iron's hot while their friends are still friends with them to share the gospel with them.

It's going to help them in the basically in learning how to share the gospel.

And you're also going to see that what will happen is you end up with a case where it's going to basically become a definitive thing for many of those friendships.

Many friendships do not last longer than the gospel presentation.

And so that kind of can be an issue for some people. They may not be willing to take that step out if they know they might lose their friends.

You want to talk to them about that and say, well, what's going to be more important, your friendship with or your family relationships or God?

And that's actually what in the one passage, I believe it's in Matthew, where he talks about the, you know, if you basically if you put your family members before God, you know,

God came, Jesus came to basically put division between you and your family members, your mother, your father, your stepmother, stepfather, things like that.

Why? Not because he's trying to create a division there. It's not the division. It's more what he's saying is if you're going to put a family member or a friend as a higher priority than your relationship with God, then

God's not your most important relationship in your life. And he demands that he's going to be that most important relationship.

And so that's something that you want to be aware of and you want to help coax them through or lead them through that because that could be a difficult thing for a new believer, especially.

So we understand that so many of us have fears in evangelism. A lot of those fears go away when we practice it regularly.

When we go out regularly, that's one of the reasons I try to go out and share the gospel on a regular basis is so that I know

I'm going to be nervous with that first person I share the gospel with. Every time and every day, that first person

I hand a gospel tract to, I'm a little nervous and I know it's going to go away quickly.

And so that's sort of the thing. So let us begin by talking about the meaning of evangelism.

So what is the meaning of evangelism? Well, the first thing is it is bringing people to Christ.

We see this in John 1. This is with this guy with this great name,

Andrew. Okay, so it's basically where Andrew is going to bring

Simon Peter, his brother, to Jesus. This is really the start for Andrew of his evangelism efforts.

John 1, 40 to 42, one of the two that heard

John, now that's John the Baptist, speak following and followed

Jesus was Andrew. The other of the two was John. Okay, so it's Andrew and John.

Simon Peter's brother. First, now you notice that he first, what's the first thing he did?

He first found his own brother Simon. Simon is also called Peter, you can see that just before.

And said to him, we have found the Messiah, which means Christ. Now look at that.

The first thing he does is go get his brother and say, hey, we found the Messiah. And what does he do?

He brought him, being Peter, to Jesus and Jesus looked at him and said, you are

Simon son of John, you shall be called Cephas, which means Peter.

So Andrew goes and he gets his brother, come on, you got to check this, we found the

Messiah. You got to come hear this guy. And so that's what he does. He goes and the first step of evangelizing, he's getting his brother.

He's bringing people to Christ. I like what a friend of mine,

Tony Miano, sometimes gets challenged. How many people do you bring to Christ when he's out on the street, open air preaching?

He says, every single one of them. Now, whether they get saved, that's

God's work. He goes, but I bring every person to Christ and I leave it to Christ to bring them to redemption.

Okay. So the idea of bringing someone to Christ doesn't mean that they get saved. You bring them to a knowledge of who

Christ is. That's what you saw in that passage in John. Andrew goes to Peter and says, hey, we found the

Messiah. We found the Christ. Christ is Greek for Messiah, which is

Hebrew for what we would say in English, anointed one. This very special one that was spoken of in the

Old Testament as God who would be a punishment of sin for the people.

Now, we also see in Matthew 4, let's read that, Matthew 4, 19, and he said to them, this is

Jesus speaking, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. So you see there in your book,

Christ compared evangelism to fishing. That's your blank there, to fishing. But what does the verse say we're fishing for?

Men. That's the answer. Now, that's not men over women. It's just mankind, humans, okay?

It's the idea of casting out a net, which is how they would do fishing back then. This is a difference because some people made this argument that, you know, the gospel is a bait and switch.

You're throwing bait on a hook. That's not the type of fishing that they did in that time. They would throw out a net.

These are professional fishermen. Professional fishermen don't go for one fish at a time. They're going for the big numbers of fish.

They're casting out a net and trying to get as many fish as they can into the net.

But they cast it out broadly. They have no control over which fish get in the net or get outside the net.

Their job is to cast the net and hope that when they bring it up, fish will be in the net.

And that's sort of the illustration being here. Our job is not to get people into the net, per se.

Our job is to cast out the gospel, spread it out, throw the gospel out there as far and wide as we can in every means possible.

You get junk mail, they give you those little prepaid envelopes, stick a gospel track in it, send it back.

Or you could stamp it and spend a couple cents to get the gospel. Someone's going to open that up and be like, what's this?

Maybe they'll read it and get saved. Someone calls you on the phone, that's the listening call that you just want to get off.

Share the gospel with them first. You could do many things. You could stand on a street corner and share the gospel, hand out gospel tracks.

You can go to your local stores and hand out gospel tracks. There's many things you could do.

But cast that net out. Let God bring the fish into the net.

That's actually what, if you read the context of Matthew 4, that's what happened. These guys were fishing all night, professional fishermen.

They know a thing or two about fishing. They cast out their net, they're fishing all night. They're now in the morning.

Now, in the morning is not the time that you go fishing because the fish don't eat, aren't as active at that time.

They're more active in the evening or in the early, early morning. That's when they go and they do this fishing, not in the heat of the day.

And so what ends up happening is they know this is the wrong time to be fishing and Jesus says, just go over there, cast the net out on the right side of your boat and you're going to get fish.

What are you kidding me? Come on, we just, we're out all night. And they go and they do that. But it's God who brought so much fish into their boat that the boat was starting to sink.

They had to call their partners, James and John. So Andrew and Simon call, sorry,

Andrew and Peter, well Simon's here, called James and John their partners and they have so many fish, their boats are starting to sink.

That is because Jesus redirected those fish that were avoiding those nets all day into those nets when he wanted them to be.

So we look at the illustration, there are some things we can learn from that, that we learn from fishing.

I don't want to take an illustration too far, okay, but that's sort of an idea there.

So let us look then, we talked about the meaning of evangelism, let's look at the motivation of evangelism.

This is important. This is important. I'm dialoguing with an individual right now who's arguing that the motivation kind of for the gospel is the advancement of society.

Feeding the poor or, you know, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, that's not the purpose of the gospel.

The gospel is not for liberation. I understand we have actually right now in the

United States a president right now who is believing in what's called liberation theology, that the gospel should liberate people.

And that's not the purpose of the gospel. I don't believe in liberation theology.

Now will the gospel liberate people? Yes, it will, but that's a byproduct.

I know that in Calvin's day when Geneva, I think we mentioned this in the last class how the gospel radically changed

Geneva from being a cesspool to being really an industrial giant of that day where people really took care of the poor and they took care of the needs and they learned to read and they took care of literacy.

Why? Because of the gospel. But they didn't do it for, they weren't preaching the gospel to do that.

Now the Geneva leaders brought John Calvin in because they wanted a reformation because they saw that where the reformation was happening, people's lives, there was an advancement.

Society was getting better because people were getting saved. Now, all those unbelievers brought

John Calvin in for that purpose, but that's not why John Calvin preached the gospel, no, no, no. And we know that those guys were unbelievers because they threw

John Calvin out when he was preaching the gospel because they didn't like the gospel, okay. So what you end up having is that here they come in and they're proclaiming the gospel and the gospel will change lives.

But the motivation is important. We don't preach the gospel to advance society or to change laws in the country, all right.

So let's look, we just looked at Matthew 4 .19, but the question I want to ask is we're going to look at some other verses is who has called believers to be witnesses?

Now the answer you can already tell from Matthew 4 .19 is Jesus, okay. Jesus is your blank there.

Jesus called people to be a witness for him, but let's look at some other verses. We looked at 4 .19,

let's take a look at Matthew 28 verses 19 and 20. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you and behold,

I am with you always even to the end of the age. We also have in Acts chapter 1 verse 8, we see here that, but you will receive power when the

Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all

Judea and Samaria even to the end of the earth. So what we see there is who has called believers to be a witness?

Jesus has. Jesus is the one who calls us to witness for him, to be his witnesses.

So the first motivation that would motivate us is the fact that Jesus instructed it.

It's by the instruction of Jesus. It's enough to say that he commanded it and therefore that is enough for me to say this would be the motivation to our evangelism.

Second, who is our example? Who is our example? Well, in John 3, 1 -7, now there was a man, and I want to contrast this,

I won't read John 4, but I'll contrast this with John 4, but you can look at John 3, 1 -7 which we're going to read and then

I'll go over John 4, 1 -26, but now there was a man, notice that first he was a man of the

Pharisees. He was a Pharisee, so the man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the

Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God for no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him.

Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you that unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

That which is born of flesh is flesh and that which is born of spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I say to you, you must be born again.

Now, what you see there is, the answer to that, the example, our example is Jesus. Now, here's the contrast between John 3 and John 4.

John 3, you have Nicodemus, a man, a Pharisee, meaning he's educated.

He comes by night and he comes to Jesus. In John chapter 4, you have the account of a woman who comes to a well.

So, first, it's a woman. She's one that's probably not educated because, A, women wouldn't have been educated but she's one that may not have been of the best breeding, shall we say, because we learn about her.

But she's probably not educated. So, she's a woman. She's not educated. She comes by day, not by night, and she comes to Jesus versus Nicodemus searching out

Jesus. Jesus sought out the woman at the well. So, those are some contrasts between those two.

But what you do see in both is that Jesus uses the natural world. He takes that.

He transitions it, and they don't get it. They're just like, what's going on? So, you see this with both cases in John 3 and John 4.

Jesus is our example of evangelism. Jesus is talking to each of them.

He's in both cases. He is talking to them about himself, and we know that Nicodemus eventually gets it.

Why do we say that? Because Nicodemus, though he doesn't seem to understand at this point, later we learn in history that Nicodemus, along with another

Pharisee, are the ones that ask for the body of Jesus to Pilate to go bury him.

So, they eventually got the message, and Nicodemus became born again at a later time.

So, we see that the first motivation is that Jesus instructed us to evangelize, to go share

Christ. That's enough, but he also was our example to follow.

Not only was he an example, but if we go and we look, we already saw that in John 1, 40 -42,

Andrew was an example. We see the example of the early Christians. So, we see, to give you the blanks in case

I missed them, who called believers to be a witness? Jesus. Letter B, who's our example?

Jesus. I sound like your kids when they come home from Sunday school. What did you learn in Sunday school today?

About Jesus. Right? Did your kids ever do that? Like the staple answer.

What did you guys discuss in Sunday school? Jesus. What about him?

The Bible. Right? Those are the two answers that you get all the time. You know, what did you learn about in the

Bible? Jesus. So, those are your two blanks.

But we see Andrew in John 1, 40 -42.

He's an example. He went and he got his brother. We see the apostles in Acts 5, 42.

And every day in the temple, from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that Jesus, that the

Christ is Jesus. So, you see here, you have them going from house to house. You have the apostles going from house to house and teaching and proclaiming that Jesus is the

Christ. That means that the fact that they're proclaiming he's the Christ, they're talking to people that did not believe he was the

Christ. We also see that it was the Christians, it's not just the pastors doing this and the deacons, the apostles and those that are kind of paid to do it, as some may think.

But look here in Acts 8, verses 1 and 4. And Saul, who is later named

Paul, he wrote most of the New Testament. So, he becomes a believer. But then Saul approved of his execution and there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem.

And they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.

And those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

You see, so all of these disciples, because of the persecution, they go to all these other regions where God wanted them to get out and share the gospel.

They go out and it's the church, the people that are out sharing about Christ. See, the

Rome thought and the Jews thought that this persecution would just put a stop to Christianity, would stamp it out.

Instead, it spread it. It forced them to get out of Jerusalem and spread the gospel everywhere.

We also see, and you can look in Acts 7, that's a long chapter, long passage, so we won't look at that.

But Acts 7, that whole chapter, you can see that Stephen is an example. Stephen proclaims the gospel, even to those who are stoning him to death.

Ouch! I don't know. Would that be what our reaction is? I don't know. Philip, we see in Acts chapter 8, we see in verse 5, it says,

Philip went down to Samaria, to the city of Samaria, and proclaimed to them

Christ. And later in that verse, in that same chapter, it says, now the angel of the

Lord said to Philip, rise, go toward the south, to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

This is a desert place. And he rose and went, and when he was, and there was an

Ethiopian, a eunuch of the court of Candace, queen of Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure.

He had come to Jerusalem to worship, and was returning, seated in his chariot.

And so, Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah, the prophet, and asked, do you understand what you are reading?

And he said, how can I understand unless someone guides me? And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

And now the passage of the scriptures that he was reading was this, like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before the shearers is silent.

So he opens not his mouth. And in his humiliation, justice was denied him.

And he described, and he can, who can describe his generation? For his life is taken from, away from the earth.

And the eunuch said to Philip, about whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this?

About himself or someone else? And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture, told him the good news, which is the word gospel, good news, about Jesus.

And as they were going along the road, they came to some water.

And the eunuch said, see, here is water, what prevents me from being baptized? And he commanded his chariot to stop, and they went down into the water.

And Philip said to eunuch, and Philip and the eunuch, and he was, and he baptized him.

And they came out of the water, and the spirit of the Lord carried Philip away. And the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing.

But Philip found himself at Atraz, and he, as he passed through, he preached the gospel to all the towns that he came, until he came to Caesarea.

That doesn't mean he stopped once he got to Caesarea, I don't think that. But the idea is, is that Philip is an example.

Here's Philip, and he's proclaiming, he's preaching the gospel. We also see, not just him, but also we see in Acts 16 that Paul and Silas shared the gospel, and on that Sabbath day, they went outside to the gate, to the riverside.

And they were supposed, there was a place of prayer, and he went and sat down, and spoke to women who came together.

And when one who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Tyre, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshipper of God.

And the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.

And after she was baptized, and her whole household as well, she urged him saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the

Lord, come to my household. And she prevailed upon us. And so what you have there is a case where not only did

Jesus instruct us to evangelize, but he's an example for us to evangelize.

And we have many other people in the scriptures in the New Testament that provided an example for us.

Andrew, the apostles, Andrew is an apostle I understand, but the apostles, the other Christians that fled

Jerusalem, Stephen, Philip, Paul, Silas, many others that we see examples of that as they went, they went about evangelizing.

Now, what should be a motivation? Now, we should be motivated by the fact that Jesus instructed us.

We should be motivated by the fact that this is something Jesus himself did. This was a practice by the early church.

That too should motivate us. It's good reason to motivate us.

But some other things that should motivate us would be, well, let's look at our next question.

What is the condition of those who do not believe? This helps us to understand.

Now, we're going to turn to John 3, 18. That's just after, you know, John 3, 16, 17, the verses everyone knows.

But look what John 3, 18 says. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only

Son of God. We also see a couple of verses later in verse 36. Whoever believes in the

Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the

Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

So, we see there that the answer to the blank there is condemned. What is the condition of those who do not believe?

They are condemned. We have to remember this. When we go and we meet that person behind the cash register when you're maybe buying your coffee, the person who's behind the cash register when you're buying your groceries, we're afraid to open our mouth.

What is their current state if they don't know Christ? They are condemned to an eternity in a lake of fire.

We who have eternal life are no longer condemned. We are not condemned. We have eternal life.

It is our responsibility to go and proclaim this good news to these people who are in a state of condemnation.

They are enemies of God. And it's our job, given to us by the

Creator of the universe, to go and share with them as His ambassador this good news, this message that though they are condemned, they could be forgiven of sin.

It's amazing what guilt does to people. Guilt, I find that many, many people who are trapped in addictions, a lot of it is because they have guilt over something that happened in their past and they're trying to forget it.

They don't want to think about life. It's amazing. It's simply amazing how guilt -ridden some people are and how their life is just stuck in something that they can't let go of.

And yet, you and I have a message of forgiveness given to us who needed it, to give to others who need it.

The state of that person you come in contact with is that they're condemned already.

They're not born neutral. They're not born morally okay, as some would argue.

No, they are in a state of condemnation before God. And what is it, next question, what is

God's commandment for those who are not saved? Well, here we see in Acts 17, the times of ignorance

God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent.

He also says, not only there, but He says in 2 Peter, God commands all unbelievers, all people to repent.

So your blank there is repentance. What does God command for those who are not saved? Repentance.

He commands them to repent. But as we see in that verse, not all come to repentance, but they're still commanded to repent.

And yet, they can't do it on their own. God commands us that it is our responsibility to repent.

Some people in pride refuse to do that. I like what a friend of mine,

Tony Miano, says with this. People say, well, how many people have you led to Christ? And he says, I've led all of them to Christ.

Everyone. When we talk like that, and what he means by that, and I've mentioned that before, but we can lead people to repentance, but that doesn't mean they repent.

We can tell them that they're under condemnation, that God, because of what He did, can offer them forgiveness of sin, but that doesn't mean that they're going to turn to Christ.

We can lead them to repentance, but we can't make them repent. And so our job is not to get them to a point where they repent.

No, our job is to proclaim the good news, to share with them what Christ has done, the forgiveness of sin, and the rest is a work of God.

And so what we do is we go and deliver that message. We beg them and plead with them, repent.

And then we pray that God would do a work. But here's the question.

Next question, how will they hear about salvation? Romans 10, Paul has an answer for that. Paul says this, for everyone who calls upon the name of the

Lord will be saved. How will they call on Him whom they have not heard or have not believed?

And how will they believe on Him who they have not heard? And how will they hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

That's the word gospel, the good news. But they have not all obeyed the gospel.

For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?

So faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

So what you have there is that the answer to that, how are they to hear about salvation?

Through preaching. That's your blank there, preaching. Someone must preach. They cannot believe unless they hear, but they can't hear unless someone's preaching.

And they can't preach unless they're sent. You realize God didn't need you and I. He could have written the gospel in the sky.

Permanently, so that all could see. He didn't do that. He chose to use you and I to be the messengers of this good news, to proclaim to the nations the good news of the gospel.

And as that verse says, not all will accept the gospel. We shouldn't be surprised. But whether they accept the gospel or not, we preach.

God saved us. He sent us to go and to preach. That doesn't mean you have to preach by standing on a soapbox.

Some people do that on a street corner or someplace. That's fine. But maybe it's handing a gospel tract to someone.

Maybe it's having a one -on -one conversation. Many different ways to proclaim that good news.

But we must proclaim it. Don't be so scared of what that person is going to say.

Because the reality is that person, you should be aware that that person is in a state of condemnation.

And you should love them so much that you want to warn them. And that gets into the next question.

What should constrain us or compel us or control us to witness?

Well, Paul gave us an answer to that. One of my favorite passages of the Bible, 2 Corinthians 5, and this is verse 14.

The love of God controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all.

Therefore, all have died. That's a great passage.

What is it that should compel us? Should control us? Should constrain us?

Depending on which translation you have. It is the love of Christ. Christ loved us.

We should love others. There's nothing in us that merits love from God.

We don't deserve it. But God left heaven to come to earth, to die on a cross, to be a payment of sin for us.

That's how much He loves us. We should teach others to go out and share that same message.

I understand that if you're discipling somebody and you're not one that goes out and evangelizes, this is a hard lesson to teach because it's hard to teach something we don't practice.

We feel, it's okay to admit to someone, you know what? I'm teaching this, but I'm not living up to this.

Maybe you can keep me accountable. Maybe you and I could go out and share. This is why

I try to go out regularly to share the gospel. Because one of the things I learned is that most of the fear that people have is because they haven't been practicing it.

I'm always nervous sharing the gospel. I've always said this. The first person I share to, I'm always nervous with.

But I know that fear is going to go away. I know those nerves are going to go away on the second, third, fourth person. So just keep doing it.

Practicing helps you to realize you're always going to be nervous originally with that first person, but that goes away.

Keep being faithful. God doesn't call us to cause people to repentance. We can't do that.

God does that, but He calls us to share the message, to speak out for our Lord. That's what

He calls us to do. Now, we're not going to finish this lesson this week. I had no intention.

Because I want to spend next class on the message in evangelism, the message in evangelism.

And so that's what we're going to talk about next class. If you want to get a copy of the book that we're going through,

Growing in Grace, you can pick up a copy at our store and we will be happy to send you a copy.

Our store is store .strivingforeternity .org. You can pick it up there. If you have any questions about this class or anything else that we've been teaching, you can feel free to email us.

Our email is academy at strivingforeternity .org. Academy at strivingforeternity .org.

Also want to encourage you, the Ohio Fire 2015 registration is open.

We are going to be partnering that conference with another ministry. So it's going to be a first. We're going to do something like that, but we are going to be with the folks over at CARM, C -A -R -M,

Christian Apologetics Resource Ministries. Matt Slick and Ken Cook will be preaching alongside of myself.

We will be in Ohio the second weekend in April. It's, we're also going to do something different this year as we always try to do things different.

We're going to have a pre -conference for those of you who maybe are used to evangelizing a little or need, just want to get out some more.

Thursday night, we are going to have a special outreach with the brothers from Cross Country Evangelism.

That's Michael Stockwell and also Robert Gray. Both of them will be out Thursday night to lead an evangelism team.

And then Friday during the afternoon, they're going to be doing a special training for those who come early to the

Ohio Fire. Now that special pre -conference does have a charge. It's going to be, I believe, $20.

Not that hard to, it's not that expensive. That will go to pay for the guys from Cross Country Evangelism.

And always with Ohio Fire, we don't charge you to attend. We will have the donations that we'll take.

So we encourage you to do that. And now as we close, we always like to have a brother or sister that we want you to encourage.

We want to be encouraging one another. We all need encouragement. And you know, sometimes there's people that are an encouragement to me or maybe some of you that we want you to then go out and encourage.

This next brother is a guy I got to meet when I was down preaching in Georgia. And his name is

Steven Ludwith. Steven is a, as he describes himself, a country boy.

But a country boy I don't want to mess with because as the pastor of the church told me, he's really, really good with knives.

Okay, he does martial arts and one of his specialties is knives. Be careful.

No, but Steve is a guy who I've really been encouraged by. Which is why

I want you to encourage him. He's just a guy that he's like a sponge. He just wants to learn. He's, you know, he thinks it's kind of interesting because he just sits there goes, well,

I'm just a country boy as if like he can't really learn much. The guy knows quite a bit. I mean, he's way smarter than he plays it off.

Okay, he has a really good handle on things and just loves to learn. And that's the kind of guy,

I don't know if you've met people like that, that just they're sponges. They want to learn from everyone. There's no one that they can't learn from.

Guys like that are just such an encouragement to be around because they're always learning and they're teaching you things and they don't even think they're teaching you anything.

And they're saying things and it's like, wow, yeah, I never thought of that. Because they're constantly like putting themselves in a position where they want to learn.

We all should be teachable. And when I think of Steve, that's what I think of. I mean, he's just one of these more teachable guys that I've had the privilege of knowing.

And I can't wait to get back down to Georgia, I hope, and be able to spend more time with him.

So he's the brother of what we want you to encourage this week. Next lesson, we'll finish up on evangelism.

We're going to talk about the message of evangelism, give you some pointers on what are those difficult questions that may come up when you're evangelizing.

We're going to cover those. And I do hope there will be a class next week. I only say that because I will be traveling out to Arizona for the

Super Bowl. We will be, as we do each year, leading teams, have about 100 people that will be going out evangelizing.

You could be praying for us. As long as my flights come in, I will be here for class.

But until then, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. See you then.