Election In Evangelism (Part 2)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

Sovereign Election and the Need to Tell Sinners the Truth

Jesus never got the memo, don't talk about sovereign election to unbelievers. Jesus says to these unbelievers, you know, you can't come to me unless the Father draws you. God's sovereign in salvation and you're not.

Talking about election, sovereign distinguishing grace to unbelievers, no wonder at the end of John chapter 6, many of his disciples followed him no more. They just couldn't take it. Someone says to me, an unbeliever.

You don't believe in that election stuff, do you? Well, I'm to teach them everything and I'll say to them, yes. I'll say to unbelievers to ease it in, I might say something like, are you married? Yes.

Did you pick your wife or did somebody pick her for you? Do you have a job? Yes. Did you pick your job or somebody pick your job for you? And the list will go on. And what we love in ourselves, we don't like in God.

We're little image bearers, we're sovereigns. God is the sovereign. Teach everything. This is a good side note for churches to teach the full counsel of God. You've got to teach everything, not just a short list.

I hear continually, what are the minimum amount of things that a Christian needs to believe? That's the wrong question. Of course, we start with the historical event that Jesus died on the cross, the theological event that Jesus died as a substitutory atoning sacrifice, assuaging the wrath of God.

He literally was raised from the dead. Of course, we talk about sin. Friends, you're going to have to tell your friends and your family members that they're sinful. D .L. Moody said, you've got to get people lost before you can get them saved.

And this is only going to get harder, isn't it? We live in a society where soon and very soon, we will not even be able to say, your behavior sexually is sinful. And first, they'll tax us, and then they'll fine us, and then they'll throw us in jail.

Sins are forgivable, but you've got to know your need of a Savior before you run to the cross. The scope of the evangelism, I want to show you one more time, is of all nations. See, right there in the middle of verse 19, since Jesus is the universal Lord, there's a universal mission.

John says he's the Savior of the world, John 4. But Matthew doesn't talk like this until here, because he's been writing the Jewish gospel, son of David, fulfilling Old Testament prophecies. I can never do this on my own, though.

The Sovereign King's Presence in Evangelism

Good. Point three, exhortation three. The sovereign King's presence should encourage you. The sovereign King's presence should comfort you. His authority should motivate you, His command should dominate you, and three, His presence should assure you.

Look at the text, verse 20, And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. How about that? Now, when I was in seminary, we had to go preach the gospel in the area of Panorama City by Grace Community Church.

So they were giving us a teammate, his name was Mike. I was so happy to have somebody go with me. So we were given a list of these names and addresses, and so we would go to their houses, and we had a deal worked out.

I think I was the deal maker. Okay, I'll knock, then you talk. But the next house, you knock, and then I'll talk. Because I knew in my heart of hearts, if I didn't have somebody there with me, if I had to knock and talk, here's what I would do.

Okay, nobody's home, next house. Just to have Mike there, and this was only Mike, to be with me. Even for accountability, so if I knocked and they opened the door, I just didn't say, you know, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life or something.

To have him there, just so thankful that Mike Canham was there with me. Well, then how much better? What's the text say? And lo, I, Jesus says, am with you always, even to the end of the age. Friends, this is really neat.

Matthew 1 .23, God with us, Emmanuel. Matthew 28, God with us, Emmanuel. Emmanuel at the front, Emmanuel at the back. When I'm faithless, he's still with me, being faithful. I am with you. The emphasis in the original Greek is, I am emphatic.

Not I will be with you, but I am with you. Not just until you mess up, but till the end of time. I'm thankful for this because I know Jesus elsewhere has said, apart from me, you can do what? All things.

If I ever need help, it's evangelizing, telling people, I'm no better than you. You might even be more moral than I am. But compared to a thrice holy God, you're undone. And behold, our low, pay attention, take a quick look.

Don't be on the speed reading course. I am, present tense, I always am with you, the risen Lord, no less companion than him. And all the days, whether you're weak or strong, whether you fail or have success, old or young, day in and day out.

But no wonder Whitfield could say, I gave myself up to be a martyr for him who hung upon the cross for me. Never going to end, to the very end of the age, till he comes and sets up his earthly kingdom.

Emmanuel, the sovereign king's authority should motivate you. The sovereign king's command should dominate you. The sovereign king's presence should comfort you. Now in the time left, let me give you some practical comments.

Practical Counsel for Evangelism Without Gimmicks

Some things that you can just take away that maybe will help you in your evangelistic endeavors. Do I think we need better evangelism at this church? Yes. It starts with the elders, starts with me. But this is one of those passages where I say to myself, I can't do it.

I'll just admit it. I don't really like preaching that's like, I'm weak, let me tell you about all my weaknesses and therefore you can identify with me and then I have a leg to stand on to talk to you.

I don't really think that's the best preaching. If you know me well, you already know I'm weak. You already know my struggles. You already know I'm human and my responsibility is to proclaim the truth.

But I will say this, I want people to like me. I want people when I tell them, listen, let me tell you about sin and the savior. I don't want them to go, yeah, you're one of those freaks that pickets people in military funerals.

No, no, no, I'm not like that. When I preach the gospel to people, I want them to go, you know what? You seem fine, you seem respectable, you seem like you're kind of a cool guy. But when I open my mouth and start talking about the offense of the gospel, they are going to say, you know what?

You're one of those televangelists, aren't you? You're one of those Jesus freaks. But as much as I want people to like me, there's an overriding desire for me to say, God, you've saved me from my sins.

I want to be faithful to you. I want to tell people the truth. And if my name is mud, well, there's a pretty long line these days of the mud line for Mike. When I hear another church won't allow some of our people to be there because of me, the truth, then I just go, okay.

This is an incentive for me to preach because I know I want to be a people pleaser and I want to get people to like me. But you know what? I'd rather have the favor of God, wouldn't you? I'd rather have the favor of God.

I mean, I do have the favor of God, but in a practical way. So let me give you a few. Number one, toss out every evangelistic gimmick and technique you've ever learned. Toss them all out. There's no gimmicks, there's no techniques, there's no four easy steps, there's no four spiritual laws, three easy ways.

Friends, you have the authority of God Almighty. You have the message about Jesus Christ, the risen Savior, and those who look to him will not be disappointed. There's a savior of sinners. And you have Jesus there with you besides the Holy Spirit in you.

I mean, who is really the greatest evangelist? Some people say Billy Graham, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards. How about you have the greatest evangelist with you, Jesus? How about you have the greatest evangelist, the Spirit of God, in you?

So why do I... You know, when people resort to gimmicks and duck and jive and, oh, I got to do the missional thing and I've got to do the bait and switch thing, they forget that God is with me. And if God is with me, why do I need gimmicks?

I have the authority of God. I have the message of God. I have God with me. And now I just need, with my mouth dry and with perspiration running off the top of my forehead, to just open my mouth. Nothing new, nothing novel, no high-pressure techniques, no ridiculous missional kind of church philosophies.

I just open my mouth and talk to them about the Lord. You don't need a gimmick. It doesn't take a mature Christian to even read the New Testament and say, there's just not one way to do it. There's all kinds of different ways to say the same thing.

Number two, if you insist on putting tick marks in your Bibles, make sure they're not for conversions. If you insist on putting tick marks in your Bibles, make sure they're not for conversions. When I grew up in evangelicalism, if you led somebody to the Lord, you put a little tick mark in the front of your Bible, a little tally sheet.

I said to the first congregation, I couldn't remember, tally. You know, one, two, three, four, and then that. Somebody says chicken scratch, and then it reminded me of the story of the only time I think I've gotten kicked out of school in elementary school for, I think it was only an hour or two until my parents had to go back there.

But my grandmother gave me some chicken feet as kind of show and tell. And I quickly found out that if you take a chicken's foot and you pull on a tendon down here, right, they're cut off. Pull on a tendon, it goes like this.

And then you can grab girls with that on their shoulders. And then they tell the principle, and then you get in trouble. So if you insist on putting chicken scratches on the front of your Bible, I really want you to avoid that.

But if you say, I led this person to the Lord, therefore let me mark that on there. Put something else up there. The Lord gave me the power to actually talk to somebody about Jesus today. And I didn't cut corners, I didn't minimize sin, I didn't minimize exclusivity of Christ.

And Lord, thank you for letting me be faithful. We're not counting numbers, we don't save people anyway. You don't preach for salvation primarily anyway, do you? Now, you like to see people saved, of course.

But John Stott was right when he said, to evangelize does not mean to win converts. But simply to announce the good news, irrespective of results. Now, see, I could do that. I can tell people about sin and the Savior, about guilt and about grace.

I can tell people that, but I just don't need to reinforce key benefits and go for the close and kind of sign them up, sign sealed and delivered. How could I do that? I don't have to. I preach for the glory of God, and if he's happy, I go to the common, come back, we have a little debrief.

How was the Lord glorified today? Well, I led 15 people to the Lord. No, I got to tell three people about Jesus today. Do I want people to get saved when we tell them about Jesus? Yes, and it regularly happens.

John Payton, when he went to the cannibals in New Hebrides, had a communion service. The Lord had converted some of those men, women. He said when he put the bread and wine into the hands of the cannibals that were once stained with the blood of murder, now reaching forth to receive the body and blood of Christ, the bread and the cup.

He said, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that will nigh break my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself. Of course, you want to have your friends saved, but there's a higher priority to be faithful to the gospel.

Friends, by the way, when you think that way, then you won't cut corners to try to get the conversion, to try to get the results, to try to get the deal closed. So you say, if I talk about hell, and wrath, and sin, and judgment, and the omniscience of God, the immutability of God, that they're going to buckle under that and I'm not going to get what I want.

No, what you want is the approval of God. Number three, I don't know, number three, is this two or three? I change things around. Is this three? Number three, this is kind of said more bluntly but for a point.

If you're waiting to be led, if you're waiting for a leading, you might need a footing. I didn't say footy, I said footing. If you're waiting for a leading, you might need a footing. Here's what I mean.

You have the authority of God Almighty to preach the gospel to people. You have the message of the gospel to preach to people. You have Jesus with you to preach the gospel to people. And now you say, well, I didn't really do that to my, you know, friends because I wasn't led.

Well, you know, I really wasn't led. That's kind of the way we talk, right? That's kind of pious Christianity. Well, you sit on the plane next to someone for six hours, what'd they say when you preach the gospel?

Well, I wasn't led. Now, when you ask your children to pick up their room, two hours later, you return and you say, well, little Johnny, why didn't you pick up your room? Well, I really wasn't led. You don't accept that.

You don't have to be led. You're told to preach the gospel. Feelings-oriented, I love feelings, but I don't feel like witnessing today. Number four, learn from Christ's example, turning conversations to the spiritual.

Jesus regularly preached the good news to people, but sometimes he took regular conversations and turned them into spiritual conversations. By the way, I try to do this. Some people I know in my life, especially when I was younger, had a knack of any conversation that was ever brought up in the group, they could turn it to some innuendo, sleazy, foul-mouthed discussion.

They could just turn every conversation into that. Some people I know, every time that something comes up, a statement's made, I have friends that they could give me a quote from a song, turning this into songs.

Well, how about taking what people say and turning it into a launching pad for the gospel? Woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that's saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

That's such a great way to do it. There's a story I read about this week, a generation ago, somebody came to the door to sell her stain remover. She listened to his comments, then she said, I know something which will remove stains too.

That's exactly the way Jesus did it in John chapter 4. Guy said, what's that? She said, the blood of Jesus will remove the stain of human sin. I like it. Art gallery, photography, a photograph of a boat lying inside a wharf, safely anchored there.

A youth looked at the boat and volunteered the statement, I suppose that boat's as safe as hell. Another student turned to them and said, do you think hell is safe? I have a friend that if somebody says Jesus's words in a derogatory fashion, Jesus Christ, and they don't mean to talk about the Lord, they mean to just use it as a curse word.

I have a friend that likes to say to them, do you know Jesus personally? And off they go. When things didn't cost as much, S. Louis Johnson went to a store and went to the nine items or less section of the grocery store and the person behind the counter totaled everything up and said to S. Louis Johnson, that'll be 316.

S. Louis said, you know, that reminds me of a text of the Bible. For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son. When I see people, I'm seeing them as an evangelistic opportunity, and my goal is to turn this thing as fast as possible.

I think maybe lastly, no, two more. What number am I on? Four or five? Okay, write down four or five. Evangelize with one foot in the anthropology classroom. Evangelize with one foot in the anthropology classroom.

Anthro, man, apology, a word about. What about man? Here's what you need to remember. Remember that men and women without Christ are totally depraved and spiritually unable to respond to the gospel. The only thing they do respond to is as the Spirit of God begins to convict them of sin, the Father begins to draw them through the preached word.

So if you evangelize and say, you know what, I know what I'm up against. And I know people are dead in trespasses and sins, and the only thing that makes them alive again is the word of God, I'll be centered more on the Bible says.

Billy Graham, when he evangelizes and says the Bible says, that's exactly right. Titus 3 says, unbelievers are foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts, hateful, hating one another. How do I evangelize someone like that?

What does the Bible say? We just give them the Bible. And then lastly, this is either number five or six. Lastly, in terms of evangelism, help, and I'm not kidding when I say this, because I think it's helpful, regularly make a fire.

People love fire pits in summer here in New England, and so regularly make a fire. I tell you, I cannot make a fire or look at a fire without thinking hell is real. Hell is hot. Hell is forever. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of a living God.

The Son of God, love incarnate, talked about hell more than anyone else. And when you read descriptions of hell in the Bible, it's supposed to make you horrified. Punishment, torment, fire, that's the most frequent, eternal fire, unquenchable fire, lake of fire.

Why is it not a river of fire? Because rivers have endings, lakes, no way out. Destruction, second death, outer darkness, weeping, gnashing of teeth, the pit, the worm, the worm that dies not, if sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies.

Friends, every person who's ever been born short of Christ Jesus has Adam's sin credited to their account, and then consequently, they're sinful. And whether it's your husband, your wife, your children, your grandmas, doesn't matter who it is, if they're not born again, they're going to die, and they're going to be judged and then eventually thrown into the lake of fire forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

Spurgeon said, it is labor in the fire, no peace, no sleep, no calm, no quiet, everlasting storm, eternal hurricane, unceasing tempests. In the worst diseases, there are some respites. There's no peace in hell's torment.

You cannot compare the pains of this life with the agonies to be endured hereafter. Could all the misery that ever startled the keepers of our hospitals be conceived? It could not convey the least idea of the pains of the spirits that are doomed to dwell in eternal fire and everlasting burning.

The memory aghast, hope and fear, thoughts and imaginations, conscience and judgment, all will be racked, everyone will be stretched on a bed of fire. Every nerve strained to its utmost, every vein made a road for the hot feet of pain to travel on.

Now see, that makes me want to reject my own sinful pride and repent of my desire to look good in somebody's eyes. Preacher Greenwood said, think of a million to the tenth power number of years, and then think that's a second of time in hell.

Who is adequate for these things? Now there was a famous missionary, his name was Hudson Taylor. He talked to a man who was a young Buddhist leader, preached the gospel of Christ Jesus from John 3, 14 and 15.

And the man said, I've traveled far and near, but I've never searched it out. In Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, I've found no rest. But I do find rest in what we've heard tonight. Henceforward, I am a believer in Jesus.

Mr. Taylor, how long have you had these glad tidings in England? Well, several hundred years. Several hundred years. Is it possible that you have known about Jesus so long and only now have come to us?

My father sought the truth for more than 20 years and died without finding it. Why didn't you come sooner?

Convicting words indeed. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're located on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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