Evangelism

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Thank you, Steve. It's great to be here with you guys this morning As Steve mentioned
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I am originally from this area. I grew up in Leominster and It's just it's a great thrill
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To be able to come back with you this morning and encourage you It's a shame I had to go all the way to Omaha to hear the gospel though I never heard the gospel in my life growing up in Leominster and Went out to Nebraska and ended up the way
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God did things he brought the gospel to me there And I just just radically changed my life
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I'm still amazed as I trust you are if you're a believer this morning in God and his abundant grace that is able to save sinners such as us and to change our whole lives and change our affections and give us a desire for him and to see
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Christ as beautiful and then to live that life and honor him and Just be amazed by it and to proclaim that gospel, so it's a treat to be here this morning
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With you pastor Mike and pastor Steve our friends and encouragements to us in Omaha as well
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And the whole leadership team here at Bethlehem Bible is just a great encouragement to us And I I grow by listening to the podcast and so I feel like I know a lot about what's going on here
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Just by even listening to the sermons and being encouraged as well So it's a great thrill to be here this morning with you my topic this morning to tackle to talk about is the issue of evangelism or the the activity of evangelism
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The proclamation of the gospel and what I just want to give you this morning really informal if you have any questions
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Feel free to fire them up just raise your hand or do anything that and I'd be happy to talk about these things as we
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Go, but I don't think I'm going to give you anything new this morning I trust that these are things that have been covered before But it's good by way of reminder to stir these things up afresh and remind us and I just want to be a part of a
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I Guess a living exhortation here as someone that went to Nebraska heard the gospel and coming back to tell everybody
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There's other people here that don't know Christ And they need to hear the gospel and when people hear the gospel it's an amazing thing, but people get saved
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So there's a lot of other people just like me that just are all around here It's just been amazing to bump into them even around in the last few days here
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So I'm here by way of exhortation encouragement and to just hold the gospel of Christ high and to encourage you
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Really in the area was just some cross -centered truths about evangelism and hopefully we encourage you to that end
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So I'd ask you to open your Bibles to Matthew 28 And we'll consider a passage first and again a familiar passage, but one that needs to be
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Brought to our minds repeatedly Of course the setting here in Matthew is the
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Lord Jesus Christ has resurrected from the dead. He's Triumphed magnificently over the grave death has been defeated and here is
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Christ standing and he has manifested himself in his glory and comes He has his disciples with him and look down at the end of the chapter there in verse 18 and Jesus came and I'm rereading from the
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English Standard Version this morning So it might be a little bit a little bit different, but the trust that the same sense
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Verse 18 and Jesus came and said to them that is to his his disciples all
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Authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations
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Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
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Holy Spirit Teaching them to observe all That I have commanded you and behold.
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I am with you always even to the end of the age The first thing
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I want to consider this morning with you is the mandate for evangelism. It's right here in the text
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You notice what Jesus says? Go therefore make disciples of all the nations.
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It is a calling to do something What do you think the main Verb of this passage is the main gist if you had to pull something out of it and say this is what
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Jesus is telling Us to do a Lot of people say it's to go. He's telling everybody go go go go actually grammatically.
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It's not the go It's the making of disciples is what Jesus is commanding. The going is assumed.
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It's actually a participle Make disciples as you're going that's what's going on. You are actually out there going.
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That's just our life What we're doing we're running around we're going to the store. We're going to work.
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We're going to the park We're we're having time with our family and friends. We are just going people.
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We are transitory people We're running around and we're meeting with people and what Jesus is saying is you make disciples
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You make followers you're a disciple. This is what you do and this seems simple enough
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We wouldn't have trouble with the going part We could all say we're fulfilling the Great Commission if it was all about the going The Great Commission's is all about the making of disciples to make
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Christ followers And this is an interesting point.
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I guess in verse 18 if you back up even further Because if anybody ever said to you as you tried to evangelize you try to talk to people perhaps somebody would say something to you
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Like this well who are you to say that to me? I?
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Who do you think you are after all? to say that I Need to believe in Jesus Christ is the exclusive means for forgiveness and that I'm wrong
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Who are you and you step back and you're like well? I want to be polite, but there's something in you
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That wants to retreat, but there's something in your spirit This is you can't retreat because you look at verse 18 and Jesus says what?
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all Authority He has all authority. It's all been given him so the answer to that question is
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I am nobody I'm just I'm a miserable sinner and frankly. I'm the worst sinner. I know So therefore
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I'm talking about the one named Jesus Christ who says he has all Authority in heaven and on earth and he's coming in a confrontation mode to talk to everybody about the gospel
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And I'm the means by which he's bringing it to you right now, and I want to lovingly talk to you about these things
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So notice that he has all authority and the goal is the making of disciples see a lot of us I don't know if that's the case around here, but a lot of people in Omaha is a
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Lot of church growth churches in Omaha, so there's a lot of a Lot of emphasis on doing a lot of stuff where you would go
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And it's kind of the reflection of contemporary evangelicalism get a lot of people together, and we'll get some decisions
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We'll get a lot of people saved if you will fill out the cards and people will get saved So we're really pro pro life in evangelical movement
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Right we want to see we're pro birth. I should say that's your backup. We're pro birth We want to see people born again But the
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Great Commission is pro life if I can use the popular term just so you can think about it We want to see people yes born, but we want to see them grow.
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We want to see them actually made into disciples So teach them to be disciples It's a
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Great Commission that mandates believers to go and go and proclaim the message of Jesus Christ to everyone
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Do you notice also the the broad reach of the Great Commission? Do you see what it says go into it go and make disciples of all?
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nations That is Jesus Christ eradicating any cultural sociological any other type of borders
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They've all been eradicated by Jesus. You know what he tells his disciples. You know what he tells you and me by application
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He says you Be a gospel radical and you go everywhere and tell everybody this message.
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I don't care if they're in other countries I don't care if they're in other cultures locally. I don't care where they are
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He's removed any obstacles any borders, and he said you go and you tell them about me, and you make disciples
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How great is that? now if he has all authority and if he is the exclusive means of forgiveness and if he is the only way by which we
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Can be forgiven this makes complete sense But if he's one among many Doesn't make any sense, but he is the only name given under heaven by which we must be saved
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So he says to go And he says to proclaim and to make disciples and to teach them
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So there's a great responsibility there for not only proclaiming the message, but then coming alongside and teaching
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So there's a mandate for evangelism to get it to share the gospel. Yes but sometimes it's not just It's not the comfort.
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You know the confrontation on the street where you walk up, and you say You know you give a tract and you say here's a track
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And I want to share the gospel and you explain the gospel and you go and they say you know what I'm really not Interested and you say okay, and you go
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It might be hey, maybe maybe we can get together Maybe we can come over and watch the Red Sox or maybe we go to the park or maybe
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We go out and have a coffee somewhere Maybe maybe our families get together and have dinner or something like that And maybe you're gonna talk and ask questions, and you may be just talking about life
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You may be just talking about thing, but you're proclaiming the gospel you want to talk to these people It might just be more than the 30 -second evangelism exchange it might be the 30 -month evangelism exchange
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So just the challenge there to not just be Let me get my quote -unquote sales pitch out
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But let me let me spend some time and let me evangelize you and give you the gospel And I want to make disciples spend time there.
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Okay, so there's a mandate for example evangelism, so if we're not evangelizing What is it called in the
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Bible when God says do something that we don't do it? Right James 4 right that's exactly what would you know what the right thing to do, and you don't do it.
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It's it it's it So guys real simply if we're not doing evangelism
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We're not we're not doing what God's called us to do. It's simple to go like this and walk around And not say anything
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Jesus commands his followers to share the gospel. He commands his followers to proclaim his glory.
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He commands his followers to make disciples Speak the truth and make disciples
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So there's a mandate for evangelism Now there's a motivation for evangelism.
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This is two parts And we're just gonna make we're just jumping through some different scriptures and going through so not gonna mean a specific text
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We'll be kind of jumping around a little bit the motivation for evangelism this this is twofold and If I was to ask you what is the reason we do evangelism?
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Well now you'd say well obviously God says to absolutely But what is our goal?
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What's the ultimate aim in evangelism? You might quickly say so somebody gets saved absolutely
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But as I know is preached over week in and week out the ultimate goal of everything that the believer is supposed to do as The ultimate goal of everything that God himself does is the glory of God and evangelism is no different It is the glory of God So the first part of our motivation for evangelism is in fact the glory of God in the second aspect of the motivation is the love for our brothers and sisters or our friends and family or our mother and father or our
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Neighbors or our co -workers it is the love for others in the desire to see them actually transformed
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Actually saved so the first side would be the motivation flip over to 1st Peter Chapter 2
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This is great tangent. We can just go off of just talking about Where is God most glorified and I think biblically the
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God is most glorified? Through the explosion of who he is on the attribute on the cross the attributes of God shown forth as God is a loving
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God of forgiving God God himself is bringing sinners to himself and showing himself to be gracious and God and the the cross really becomes the the vindication of the glory of God man has smudged the glory of God with Disregard for it and God vindicates his own glory on the cross
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So therefore the message of the cross is the the center of everything and it is so beautiful and so glorious It is is the glory of God on the cross
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So when we speak the gospel we proclaim the gospel to folks We're bringing glory to God in what we're saying
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God rejoices in the truth and we proclaim the truth look at first Peter chapter 2 in the context talking about being a holy people the
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The people who have been born again according to this living stone verse 9 But you talking to believers you are a chosen race a royal
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Priesthood a holy nation a people for his that's God's own
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Possession that purpose statement you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light
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Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people once you had not received God's mercy, but now you have
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Received mercy. He's actually picking up some Old Testament theme of Exodus. I believe it's chapter 19 verses 5 and 6
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He's picking up that theme that was looking at the nation of Israel and then being God's people and him then being the people that would be the mouthpiece the
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Reflection of the glory of God of his grace and his kindness and he's now he's applying this To the church and saying hey, this is this is you this is who you are this stage in history right now the
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God is using the church to proclaim the message and even Even other parts of the Bible say even proclaiming the message to Israel Because God has a future plan for the nation of Israel as well
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But here in this chapter He's talking about you you've been called for this purpose and he reminds you that you've been called out
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You were not his people, but now you are as people and what is the purpose to? declare his
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Excellencies what a great verse for evangelism. What are we doing? We're declaring his excellencies
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What are his excellencies his attributes his holiness that is so pure. He cannot look upon sin
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His righteousness, which is an unflinching righteousness that he will not for one second clear the guilty
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But then his love His mercy his kindness his forbearance
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That he would he would wait and he would not totally destroy us the very instant
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We sinned but he would be forbearing and even more he would be merciful and gracious and he would supply
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Jesus Christ Who is the incarnation of God while taking on the flesh of man and living a perfect life?
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Which we could never do fulfilling the law perfectly which we could never do and then going to the cross to abolish sin
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Absorb heaven's artillery of all God's wrath all upon himself that God would treat him as the cursed when we're the cursed
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And he would do this for us and then he would he would proclaim the gospel even through messages to us and say come to me
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Oh, that's excellent the glory of God in the cross So we declare that we declare justification by faith
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We declare the depravity of man in in the the grace of God coming to man.
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We declare it And God is excellent indeed, so we want to declare his excellencies, that's my motivation
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And I have to remind myself that I want to Love people more
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That's a struggle. I don't know if it's a struggle for you But sometimes I I think this is my mindset.
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I'm being transparent here It would be God. I am I'm so ashamed for robbing glory for you from you for 20 years of my life
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And I'm ashamed of that And I look around this world and it's just a big canvas of people robbing glory from you.
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I want to stop so I Proclaim the gospel and then then you'll get your glory
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But when people don't respond, right? Sometimes I have the tendency to say Just get mad and not love them, but you see where the love comes in where you need to love them
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It spend time with them and talk to them about the gospel That's part of the gospel as well.
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So I have to work I know on the loving of other people as well But we understand that the motivation for evangelism is
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The glory of God then also knowing that it actually saves sinners flip over to Romans chapter 1
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It will be in Romans this morning during the regular service But just by way of a quick introduction
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Paul Writing this letter and he can't wait to come there and preach the gospel And he gives us the reason why he can't wait
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Look at verse 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes the
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Jew first And also the Greek so Paul understood that the gospel is actually the power of God So when you speak the gospel it is going to by God's grace save sinners
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So the most loving thing we can do to love our neighbor which is what
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Jesus would say the second greatest commandment Proclaim the gospel to proclaim the gospel
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Conversely just connecting dots the most unloving what thing we could do is to have friends and family co -workers neighbors
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And just talk about the Patriots just talk about the weather
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Just talk about our kids Family our gardens
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Or maybe even a church But we never tell them about Jesus We just have these moral relationships with people when
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I do that and I do and I hate it I asked myself Eric. How much do you love the glory of God?
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How much do you love this person the heart questions if you?
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Have the right biblical motivation for evangelism the glory of God the love for other people
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And you're motivated to do evangelism, and you'll go do it Thirdly the methodology for evangelism.
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We just read Romans 1 Methodology just means well.
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How are you gonna go about doing it? Okay? We get that we understand is the mandate. Let's go out Let's do it. We need to do it
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We understand the motivation the reason for doing is the glory of God and the love for other people now What do we do let's get a bunch of people together and give them popcorn and candy and that'll work, right?
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Or let's you know give away free TVs churches do that can you believe that get people to come to church?
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They give them a TV Hope you guys haven't done that yet. No no It doesn't happen here, but people do all kinds of crazy stuff to try to try to do it
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And then then they'll soft serve the gospel, and they'll hide things from people and they won't tell them about Sin they won't tell him about judgment.
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They definitely won't tell him about discipleship. I don't tell him all these things Paul says I'll tell you what you do you give him the gospel
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What what we just read in Romans 1 it is the power of God for salvation so if your goal is the glory of God And the goal is to see people saved.
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What do you think we're gonna talk to him about? There's one thing that's powerful to do it There's one thing that God has given the means by which people actually become saved
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It's the gospel So we don't want to shave off edges of the gospel.
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We don't want to sand down the contours in the gospel We certainly don't want to obscure the gospel. We don't want to marginalize the gospel.
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We just want to take the gospel and all of its antiquity And all of its beauty and all of its offense
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And all of its pride crushing this if I could use that and we want to lovingly give it to people
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Because we understand when the Gospels preached people get converted
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You preach a false gospel. They're not gonna get converted So we want to speak about Wrath and we want to speak about justice and we want to speak about blood and we want to speak about the
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Savior groaning on The cross we want to speak about his confrontations. We want to talk about lordship.
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We want to talk about commitment We want to talk about the affections. We don't talk about this stuff
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We want to talk about justification Where God has taken all of his wrath and he has poured it on Jesus Christ He treated him as if he was the sinner though.
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He was not So that he could take me and cover me with the righteousness of Jesus Christ though.
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I am NOT righteous So he charges my sin to Christ. He charges Christ's righteousness to me and by faith it is applied
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So when God looks at me, he doesn't see me the sinner He sees me covered in Christ's righteousness because on that cross he looked at Jesus.
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It did not see Jesus the righteousness He saw Eric the sinner So we want to explain that transaction when
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God looks at me and declares me righteous not because he has bad eyesight But because his glory has been vindicated by the cross and it's been applied by faith
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According to the grace that is now working through the gospel. I Want to explain that to people makes a lot of sense
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It's glorious, it's simple it's glorious So the methodology For it is the gospel.
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Well, you might say Eric people don't want to hear it I know you might be in Nebraska and you know, you might be religious out there, but we're in Massachusetts Do you understand how intellectual people are here?
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Do you understand how many atheists I work with well, do you understand how many
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Catholics I work with? Sacramentalism reigns here. They don't want to hear it. Do you understand how post -christian we are here all the universities?
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This was smart people. What are we gonna do? Open your Bibles at 1st Corinthians 1 and 2
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Methodology, okay. So you got an environment that's not necessarily ripe for the gospel.
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Okay What's the methodology? Do we change do we adapt Paul gives us the answer because he went to a place like that You can read
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Acts 17 what he does with them He doesn't compromise there either but this is very interesting when we look at chapter 1 of 1st
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Corinthians I'm just gonna pick a few verses here as we go through but look at verse 18 Paul says
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For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. Okay, so you got to know that up front if it's foolishness
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They're perishing I Should break your heart if you proclaim the gospel they go
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Silliness you believe in that don't you know fill in the blank? You gotta say
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But to us who are being saved it's the power of God What is written?
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I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discernment of the discerning. I will thwart look at verse 22
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Jews demands signs in Greek seek wisdom. He just said what they seek
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Give me signs. Give me wonders. They did the same thing with Jesus during his ministry do this do this do this do this then
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I'll believe I thought Jesus was some type of genie.
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They can make him do whatever he wanted Then if he served them, then maybe they would believe we knew that wouldn't be true Did plenty of miracles and they called him
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Satan? But they asked for they asked for miracles The Greeks seek wisdom.
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Give us wisdom. Give us intellect. Give us these things So Paul knew what they wanted and oh, by the way,
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Paul had both of those things You read Romans Paul's pretty smart guy He could argue with the best of them
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So he had the wisdom He had the signs. He's the Apostle and he goes riding into Corinth on his
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Camel or whatever he's riding and he's got two saddles. He could have wisdom. He could have signs He could be bringing that to them, but he says there's one thing
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I bring verse 23, but we preach Christ crucified
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That's what you want signs you want wisdom I give you Christ crucified what the people wanted
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Paul didn't give him you see that and he knows the effect we preach
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Christ crucified a Stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the
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Gentiles So you have two groups of people here Jews Stumbling block a trip on it
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Gentiles Folly it's foolishness Those are the groups of people
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He says but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God I want you to notice that's not a third category
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That's a subset of the first two categories You see It's not like we got the
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Jews over here the Greeks over here and then the elect over here the elect come out of those two categories who said foolishness and Ridiculousness, it's amazing
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They said it was falling they wanted signs They wanted wisdom Paul gave them
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Christ crucified, but those who are called that's another way of saying those who God is Calling those who are elect those whose
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God will bring from those two groups ha the power of God and the wisdom of God I Don't know.
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I don't know if you've made that connection before I love to think about this But it's not like I'm walking up to somebody and sharing the gospel and they got a folly and I'm like, all right
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See you later. No, I want to proclaim the gospel to them because you know what? It's the ones that said folly That actually gets saved
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So we go with our Mandate for evangelism we go and we proclaim it to everybody that we possibly can we have the motivation the glory of God and the
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Love for people and we go in with our methodology. We give them the gospel undiluted unadulterated. Give them the truth
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Give them the gospel and they say folly and we just tell him. Hey, I want to proclaim the truth to you and God if he is working in their heart to regenerate them will call them
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That's amazing. God calls them and he becomes the power of God and the wisdom of God for salvation the reason for all of this
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Because if it was all about wisdom if it was all about signs Paul makes it pretty clear that back in verse 17 the cross of Christ would be emptied of its power
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If it was all about him, it was all about his stuff people would think it's all about Paul the purpose for why
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God has chosen the weak and why God has chosen the People who aren't noble He's chose what in verse 8 what is low and despised in the world even the things that are not to bring to nothing the things
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That are it's all about showing that the things that are valued by the unregenerate man are not valued by God But the things that are not valued by the intergenerate man are valued by God namely his
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Christ in his gospel And look at verse 29 purpose statement so that no human being may boast in the presence of God That's the purpose of the gospel is to completely eradicate boasting and completely exalt
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God in his glory so as you proclaim the gospel even to those who Snicker at you you glorifying
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God you're loving them and God just might open their heart to believe the truth
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I think of we we go into the prisons in Omaha. We go and Proclaim the gospel wherever we wherever we possibly can but I go in there, and it's the same thing that I would do
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In my care group, which is a group of college and young singles they come to our house And I teach in the
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Bible I take the same stuff and go there to the jail and teach them. It's gospel centered stuff I want to teach them the gospel they come in and they have all kinds of stuff going all kinds of baggage of things
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That's gone on their life And then they've gone in there And there's all kinds of religious groups that come in there and don't teach the truth and they get all these issues
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They got to work through What do you think we do? Claim the gospel just talk about Christ talk about the glory of Christ in the gospel
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If God has been so kind over the last year or so To work in people's hearts so that you see them
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Actually understand these things have their lives changed Believe the gospel and cling to the gospel and love
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Christ in his glory in the gospel When that stuff stops happening around you you just remind it again.
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You're reminded here when you see it It's just another affirmation encouragement the gospel changes lives
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That's the only thing that you have not only to impact where they're gonna go when they die But even right here and now
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The gospel is the center of your marriage. The gospel is the center of your work ethic Gospels the center of why you drive down the road the way you drive down the road everything
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It's all gospel centered because of who God is and who you are Bit of a tangent verse 30
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He's the source of your life in Christ Jesus whom God made our wisdom our righteousness and sanctification and redemption
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Therefore as it is written. Let the one who boasts boasts in the Lord And if you wanted a synonym for evangelism, it's boasting in Jesus Christ Galatians 614 forbid it that anyone boast or forget it that I boast in anything but the cross of Jesus Christ Evangelism is bragging on God.
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That's what it is. You're bragging about God. Let me just tell you about God how great he is Now I've been here for a few days and I have forgotten
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How much New Englanders brag about the Red Sox I Was at a wedding yesterday.
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My sister's wedding. She married a guy from upstate, New York big Yankee fans and they had it on their shoulder like most
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Yankee fans walk around with the chip on their shoulder and My family Red Sox fans and I mean it was a point of contention
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It was kind of some sparring and good stuff going on rehearsal dinner back and forth It's good, you know
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But I just couldn't believe the level of you know I'm not making fun of it the level of bragging about the
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Red Sox Manny, you know You know tease and all they were just talking about this stuff It was just it was just so happy the people's faces light up talking about the
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Red Sox and different things that I'm thinking, you know This is a good picture for me because I Should be like this about the gospel but much more so I should be like, you know propitiation, you know
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Redemption justification Eternity with God worshiping before his throne enduring pleasures forevermore
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How great is that all my sin gone out one day? I'll worship before him unhindered without without this flesh and I'll just praise him with unmitigated praise.
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It'll be awesome I can't wait for that and this body of death is gonna be removed and I don't have to see tears anymore
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I don't have to see people and feel bad for them because of Medical conditions or whatever and I don't have to hear so -and -so died anymore because we'll be in the kingdom and we'll be there with Christ And he'll be reigning and that's better than any parade on Yawkey Way It's better than any of that.
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That's the best they have That's the best they have is unregenerate people is the excitement of sports
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There's nothing wrong with that I like sports I'm not a hater of sports. I like it But that's not that's not the end for me.
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It's Christ in his glory. It's a good picture to be reminded When your co -worker in a cubicle of the office next to you boasts harder in the
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Red Sox of the Patriots than you boast in Christ, that's that's a convicting thing Or wherever wherever the shoe is wear it if it's
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I Don't know. It's not the Red Sox of the past, but you understand the fanaticism here We should be gospel maniacs gospel fanatics finally you have the
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The mandate for evangelism go and do it. You have the motivation the glory of God the love for others. You have the methodology
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It's the gospel give them the gospel. Don't hide the gospel Don't veil the gospel preach the gospel because the gospel is the means by which
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God is ordained the salvation of sinners So preach it and finally the miracle in evangelism
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You're in 1st Corinthians jump over to 2nd Corinthians, we'll close here. This is just a glorious passage
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Kind of connects the third and the fourth point a little bit here Paul's talking in chapter 3 about the ministry of the new covenant and How he goes about this ministry and the superiority of the ministry
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Excuse me, the new covenant the old covenant versus the old covenant and talking about this ministry
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The apostle Paul writes in verse 1 of chapter 4 Therefore having this ministry by the mercy of God we do not lose heart
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We've renounced disgraceful underhanded ways We refuse to practice cunning or tamper with God's Word but by the open statement of the truth we
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Commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God So right there
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Paul says, all right, we've got this ministry We're not going to adulterate the word. We're not going to compromise We're going to speak the truth.
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We commend ourselves to everyone's conscience that implies if you're dealing with people's consciences You're talking about sin righteousness and judgment because when you tell people how good they are that does nothing to their conscience
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That flatters them so implicit in this right here is some pretty jagged pills if you will
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He's speaking to them about issues that would humble them So we commend ourselves to everyone's conscience
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In the sight of God that's a little motivation God sees everything Verse 3 and even if our gospel is veiled it's veiled only to those who are perishing
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So if people can't see see the issue, they can't see the gospel
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It means they're perishing Paul say this is a bad thing. So right away
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Paul's in Inserting this this blindness the spiritual blindness that goes on right here
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We'll pick this up this blindness theme in just a minute It's veiled to those who are perishing in their case those who are perishing the
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God of this world That is Satan has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel
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Hold on the Satan would not if it's bad enough that man is totally depraved completely Hates God now
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Satan's got in the mix and he's he's blinding the eyes of the unbelievers But what is he blinding them from and what can't they see in verse 4?
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Keep them from seeing the light Of the gospel of the glory of Christ Who's the image of God This is amazing because what when people you talk to people and they are
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You know outwardly indifferent about things religious. Oh, you know, it's good for you. It's not for me, you know, whatever I got my thing.
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You got your thing Jesus christ, you know, well, no big deal You know and you talk to people and you say why?
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They don't see the glory which would be the beauty of Jesus Christ in the gospel so your job is to proclaim the gospel that Shows Jesus Christ to be glorious and to be beautiful Because they don't see him that way and you're not going to convince them just by your persuasive arguments
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Your job is to do just what God's called you to do to proclaim the gospel Which is to to show Jesus Christ to be beautiful to show him to be glorious to show him to be mighty to save That's what our jobs to do
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Here's the miracle Verse 5 for we for what we proclaim is not ourselves
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But Jesus Christ is Lord with ourselves as servants for Jesus sake so so Paul is basically saying we don't we don't have this
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This this magic formula that we do we just proclaim Plainly proclaim the gospel.
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That's all we do. He's getting straight his role here. We just proclaim the gospel Now you see
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God's role in verse 6 for God Who said let light shine out of Darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ This this is great.
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We have five minutes left. So I'm gonna abbreviate it here Paul goes back to creation
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It says when there was nothing this God spoke and light came
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There was nothing in this God spoke and the lights were on This same
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God with respect to those who are blind and cannot see shines light
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Into their own heart So he takes with the wrecking ball of his grace and comes into that hard heart in the light beam from heaven comes in and they see
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That is the first thing that happens when you're an unbeliever to become a believer Unbeliever beauty of Jesus.
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I just don't see it. I'm sorry. Give me something else Believer Light of the gospel shines in by God's grace and they see and they see suddenly the gospel
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He's beautiful. He's glorious. I love him before I hated him now
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I love him before I couldn't didn't see the value now I see the value you see the difference it is the mark of a genuine
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Christian when they see Christ as beautiful as glorious as Mighty to save that's what
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God does you see the Parallel between verse 4 they don't see the light of the gospel, which is the glory of Christ In verse 6 he shined into shown in their hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God They don't see they don't have knowledge.
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They don't see the glory of Christ. They see the glory of God So when you proclaim the gospel in the miracle of evangelism in evangelism is when a heart is
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Opened to see the glory of God the glory of Christ in the gospel And when they start saying things about the beauty of Jesus and the glory of Jesus When you have somebody that didn't want to talk about the gospel
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You know those people that you talk to about spiritual things and they just don't want to talk about them Now suddenly this person just starts talking about how they amazed they are by the gospel and amazed they are by Christ you start thinking
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I Think this guy might have got converted All he's talking about is Jesus. All he's talking about is the gospel
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It's the miracle that happens in the gospel when God is kind to accompany the preaching and the evangelism
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Of his word with holy his Holy Spirit and according to his grace Those who are called are called and when they are called the light of the gospel shines their hearts and they see
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Jesus Christ is beautiful See him as glorious sees. God is mighty to save and they love
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And they love so we have the mandate we need to do it
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We have the motivation the glory of God Love for others. Yeah, the methodology.
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It's simply the scripture in the gospel. We have the miracle which is
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God doing it We're just minimum wage workers
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To bring the truth to people so here it is We're not called to spice it up.
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Add some Tabasco sauce or pull off the veggies and get them off the plate or whatever We're just called to take the goods from the master chef if you will and take it and bring it
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Just bring the truth. Just bring them the truth and God will take that simple shameful
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Foolish message of a crucified God and proclaim it to a sinner and he will open their heart to believe the gospel and see him as Beautiful and he will be glorified
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And he will be glorified It's that simple What's that heart? So how can you pray for others and how can you pray for yourself?
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Pray that God wouldn't press you more with the gospel press you more with the glory of God Pray that God would cause you to love others more and love yourself less
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So that you might break over their sin and proclaim to them Pray not that God would give you opportunities because he does pray that you would take the opportunities and be faithful Pray that God would be pleased to bless your message knowing that even if no one believes
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It's successful evangelism when God is glorified and you've loved them and if God is pleased to convert them
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He will but pray for sinners that they'd be converted and a practical piece of advice off the side would be
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Don't shrink from the fact That you're a sinner Don't act like the pious religious person
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That's got it all figured out in years your moral and then you turn the cross Into a picture of how good you are that God had to God had to pay that price of Jesus just to show you how valuable
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You are The cross is the picture of God Giving Jesus to show how valuable his glory is
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Because you and me smudged it and we've robbed it and the only way to vindicate it is by the cross
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Any questions or comments or anything? All right.
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I'll go ahead and pray You dismissed father Thank you this morning for this
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Quick tour through evangelism. There's so much more that we could say and it's so great to read the Gospels and Read the epistles read the
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New Testament and see that you have been proclaiming your message through humble means for a lot of years and even church history
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Amplifies that we can see that encourage us Lord Not like we're trying to pay you back for the cross
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So we need to be faithful in evangelism but because of the cross and because of the great grace that you've given us
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Lord so move in our hearts to make us want to Speak about the excellencies of Christ Lord cause us to love others
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Like you love them. We think of Jesus who? Looked out on those who were unconverted those who were tormented by religion and he felt compassion on them
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Oh Lord, we need compassion Teach us to be compassionate like our
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Savior For he looked at them and they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd and he even went and taught them
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Motivate us to have an eternal perspective to speak the gospel To have a right view of you ourselves and others with an ultimate aim of your glory
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We pray these things that we believe you'd be exalted You'd be glorified Through Jesus Christ our