The Privilege Of Evangelism (Part 1)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendrop. 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.

We traveled to California not long ago and we have a new evangelistic strategy. It's called ACDF evangelism. Not ACDC, but ACDF. That is to say at the Shepherds Conference, we bring men there to learn and to be trained and to worship.

And so we set them in the seats A and C, D and F. And so the people who are in between those folks in B and in E, they are simultaneously evangelized by our people. It's a new strategy that I can see is going over very well.

I had to fly out a day early because of the hurricane and I just thought to myself, Lord, selfishly I hope no one sits by me. Lord, please let this whole aisle be for me. But if it's your will, I will sit next to someone and proclaim the gospel.

And so I sat down next to a lady and we began to talk and she said, well, what do you do? I told her I was a Bible teaching pastor because these days you can't just say pastor, you have to say Bible teaching pastor.

And she said, well, how did you become a pastor? I thought we've got seven more hours, I would love to tell you. And basically I did this. I know that man, mankind, men and women are built because of the fall to accomplish salvation, to earn salvation, to do something, maybe spiritually, maybe religiously, they want to accomplish something to get salvation.

So I just began to talk to her about free grace, forgiveness, how God called me out of Los Angeles and out of a slave pit of sin and what Jesus Christ did by his work. You are saved by works, but by the work of another and how even though I was a very bad person, I could experience forgiveness, full and free in Christ Jesus.

Well then I flew back, same flight, except now from Dublin back to Boston. And I sat next to a young man and he was a scientist. And then he said to me, four hours into the flight, what do you do for a living?

I said, I'm a Bible teaching pastor. And then he looked at me like, you? Well, that's a good thing or a bad thing. And he said, how can you believe in the Bible when science and fossil records and you just look out there, how could you believe the Bible?

So I said to him, you have a conscience, don't you? How'd you get your conscience? I'm wondering what will happen is when you look outside this window and the God who made everything and he made you and you stand before him one day.

And now you're going to stand before him, hiding behind science. What will happen on that day? I said, here's what will happen on that day. It will be worse than a nuclear winter for you because you'll have to pay for your own sins.

You need a substitute. You need a savior who's conquered sin and death and hell. And then he gave me that look like, wow. And then he said, that would be a bad day. I said, that would be a very bad day.

So we exchanged some numbers and things like that. And I thought to myself, Christian, don't we have a great privilege regarding evangelism? Don't we have an awesome opportunity? We know the truth. We know what happens when you die.

We know what happens about forgiveness, resurrection, substitution. We have such a great privilege to preach the gospel. We know the one who takes away the sin of the world. We know the one who has purged our sins, Hebrews chapter three.

We know the one who has put away sin, Hebrews chapter nine. Let's turn our Bibles to Acts chapter 17 this morning and continue to talk about Mars Hill, Paul, the Areopagus, and evangelism. Now, if you're not a Christian today, this message is a perfect message for you.

And like that lady next to me on the way to Dublin, and like that man next to me on the way to Boston, you need a savior. God has created you, he is your sovereign king, and he's your judge. And knowing that, you need to find refuge in him.

The only way to find refuge from him is in him. And if you're a Christian today, this is a good reminder before we get back into 1 Corinthians 15, that we have a privilege of evangelism, telling people good news.

That's what evangelism is, I have good news. Don't you like good news? Turn on Fox in the morning, turn on the Drudge Report, turn on CNN, turn on debka .com, turn on something, and you go, I'd like some good news, please.

Evangelism Without Guilt and the Christian's Responsibility

Now, I could guilt you into evangelism, probably. Listen to what Spurgeon said, will the heathen who have not heard the gospel be saved? It is more a question with me whether we who have the gospel and fail to give it to those who have not can be saved.

What about the person in Sri Lanka who's never heard? No, what about the person like you who've heard the gospel experience salvation? Do you preach the gospel? So I could probably guilt you. Kittredge said, a love to Christ which is so cowardly and selfish that it is unwilling to proclaim by a public confession of faith in him who hung before all the world crucified for sinners is a love which is hardly worth the name.

But here's the good news, all our failures in evangelism have been forgiven. We worship the great evangelist. And so while I can say to you, you ought to evangelize more. You ought to say to yourself, every person I see, the male person, the person at the bank, the person at the butcher shop, the dairy, wherever you go, that person is a living person, and that person is your neighbor, and you're to love your neighbor.

But when you fail in evangelism, isn't it nice to know you have a representative and a substitute who's paid for your sins of failed evangelism? I'm very happy for that. That motivates me more than when's the last time you preached the gospel today.

And so today when we look at this passage, I'm very, very thankful that we have a savior, the great evangelist Christ Jesus. Well, Acts chapter 17 verse 15, to have a little bit of a review, remember Paul went to this very famous religious center.

He went to a place that I could call the city. If you're close to New York within three hours and someone says to you, it's time to go to the city, you know that's Manhattan. If you're in Northern California, I don't care if you're in Sacramento, I don't care if you're in San Jose, if someone says to you, did you go to the city today, they mean, did you go to San Francisco?

And here, the city was Athens. Athens, this great city, verse 15, those who conducted Paul in Acts 17, brought him as far as Athens. And after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.

And here is this home of Plato, adopted home of Aristotle, home of Socrates. This was the moving and shaking religious, cultural, social center of the world. And when you have smart people and their minds aren't bridled and corralled by gospel truth, that smart intellect creates idols.

And look what happens, verse 16, now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked. He had a proverbial burning in his abysm is what he had. Within him as he saw the city was full of idols.

They had these gross little idols called Herms, for Hermes. And they were very gross. And there's a Herm here and a Herm there for five miles. Paul walks up to this city from the port to Athens, five miles.

And he just sees all these. And he is literally infuriated. He wants the glory to go to God. God, a jealous God, Exodus 34. God who deserves the worship was not receiving them and the city was full of idols.

See the text there, full of idols. It means it was underwater with idols. It was immersed. Okay, let's use the word baptized with idols. What's the solution to a country full of idols? Is it a political solution?

Is it to make the society a Christian nation? Hardly. Maybe something good did come out of the elections. Christians need to realize that making the society Christian without the gospel is a bad idea.

Making the church political is a worse idea. Well, the answer to a city underwater, a culture underwater with idols, is preaching. It's evangelism. That's the solution. One soul saved, one at a time by the sovereign decree of God through preaching.

Paul Reasoning in the Synagogue and Marketplace

Verse 17, look at what Paul did. He could have complained. He could have said, let's secede. He could have said, let's give more money next time to the political parties. Let's rock the vote. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews, and devout persons, and in the marketplace every day, and those who happen to be there.

I'm gonna go straight to where they teach the Bible. I'm gonna go straight to where they have to buy bread, and anybody in between, I'm gonna preach the gospel to them too. Because there's only one thing that forgives sins, and that one thing is a person named Christ Jesus.

There's a lot of smart people there, verse 18. What do you do when you meet the smartest people in the world? What if you don't have a high IQ, and what if you don't have an education, and what if you get thrust into Harvard?

What if you go to Harvard and you have one opportunity to stand up, and what do you talk to them about? Milton Friedman and economic theories. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him.

Some said, what's this babbler wish to say? He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities, because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. Paul had two strings on that guitar, didn't he? Jesus, the resurrection.

Jesus, the resurrection. Jesus, the resurrection. They thought he was preaching two gods, because he was always talking about Jesus and the resurrection. Not two gods, but Jesus, the God-man who was raised from the dead after God confirmed his death on the cross, not for himself, but for sinners.

Almost every religion that says there's a God thinks this way. If I'm just nice to God, he'll just be nice to me. I'll do a few things for God, he'll do a few things for me. Show up on Christmas and Easter, he shows up other days.

I'll just placate this God, I'm in good shape. I'll give this God a sacrifice, I'll go to church on Sunday. Appeasement contracts, well, these Epicureans, they were materialists, they thought that. Just to be happy.

These other people, the Stoics, masters of oneself, they thought the same thing. Now it's time for them to examine Paul, verse 19 of Acts 17. They took him and brought him to the Areopagus, Mars Hill in Latin.

Or when we get Latin, Areopagus. May we know what this new teaching is that you're presenting, for you're bringing some strange things to our ears. We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean. I wish it was with that cadence.

It was more aggressive. You're bringing new things in like Socrates did, and we brought him to this hill, and we killed him. It's time for you to go there as well. We'd like to know what these things mean.

Now all the Athenians, verse 21, and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. Verse 22, so Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, men of Athens, I perceive in every way that you are very religious.

Literally, Paul said, I perceive that in every way you fear deities hard. You fear deities hard. You run after demons with all your strength. Here's what Paul wants. Paul wants the name Jesus on every altar, right?

You go look at a false god. That's a fascinating thing. Whenever I'm out of town or out of the country, and they have these false gods, I'm just attracted to them. Why? Because I want to worship them?

No, but it reminds me that everybody's a worshiper, and every time you see a false god in your heart for the sake of God, you should be saying, I want Jesus on that altar. Not that he needs to be on an altar, but I want the person, that thing on the altar that they worship to be, in fact, the living God that they worship, Christ Jesus.

2 Corinthians 4 says, the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Now, we gotta quickly go through this or else this is gonna be just a repeat of two weeks ago, three weeks ago sermon.

This passage is so rich, verse 23, as I passed along, Paul said, observe the objects of your worship. I found also an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God. Maybe we missed one, so let's make just one extra, kind of a catch all.

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. You think you're failing to give proper worship, so you put up an altar. I'll tell you the person that you're failing to worship, the God who created you, I'm gonna tell you what you don't know, I'm gonna give you the good news.

God has made himself known in Revelation, and now Paul says, the horrors of idolatry need to be replaced with the wonders of the gospel. You're gonna try to put God in a little tiny creature, restrict him to this little dead piece of wood or stone, or bronze, or brass, or gold.

You're gonna localize him, you're gonna kind of put him in this little area code. This is the God of 01583, that's what idolatry does. I wonder how many of those we could sell, the little goddess of zip code 01583.

I don't know if we could sell very many of them, or a God who's a domesticated God. That's what idolatry does, it domesticates God, it makes God kind of a dog. Sit, stay, come, roll over, give, provide, heal, idolatry likes to say this about God.

God, you're not really quite as holy as you say you are, you're actually unholy. So Paul starts off with his message that's specifically about God. God is a creator one, God is sovereign two, God is judge three.

That is the best way to evangelize people who are enslaved to idolatry and who don't know about scripture. One, in review we saw last time, God is creator. You must believe that God is the sole creator of everything.

The God who made the world and everything in it, Acts 1724, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything. Bringing a basket of oranges over to some square piece of marble, since he himself emphatically gives to all mankind.

Life and breath, breath rather, and everything. Isaiah 42 says, the God who created the heavens and stretched them out. He gives breath to the people on it and to the spirit, and spirit to those who walk in it.

You can't give to God because he gives everything to everyone. He's not some domesticated, localized idol. He's a creator of the world, and if he created you, he made you for a reason. To worship him.

John 1 says, all things came into being through Jesus Christ. Say, I don't believe that. Yes, you do. If you're an unbeliever here, you say, no, I don't believe that God created everything. Yes, you do.

Romans chapter 1, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen. Being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.

If you're an unbeliever here today, you have no excuses. You look outside and you see the power of God and the wisdom of God in creation. For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.

God is a creator. Secondly, what did Paul tell them? And I tell you what Paul told them. And if you're a believer, you can tell your unbelieving friends, when you meet them on the plane, or you're married to them, or you're their parent, or their grandchild.

God is your creator. God is your king. Verse 26, related, yes. And he made from one man every nation of mankind, from Adam. Greeks aren't at the center of the universe. To live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.

God created everything in nature, and he also created you. You're a created being, and he determines allotted periods and boundaries. God controls you. God controls nature. God controls history. If I was going to sing you a children's song, I would sing you what?

He's got the whole world in his hands. I remember singing that with my kids. He's got you and me, Gracie, I owe you a dollar, in his hands. And this kind of language should stimulate in you, I have a responsibility.

If God made me, God gave me breath, God gave me life, God gave me taste buds, God gave me this mind that I've been using to construct something, so God doesn't exist, so I can sin with a clear conscience.

And whether it's evolution or hedonism or anything else, I've been using the mind God gave me to worship him precisely, to kind of come up with my own little paradigm, so I can just be the center of the universe.

It's amazing, I could talk to the scientist on the airplane, and he hasn't ever considered, well, wait a second. If there's no God, there's no morality. Why do I have a conscience and I feel bad if evolution is true?

How do I explain that if my blood is any thinner, I get cut and I bleed to death, or if my blood is any thicker, my heart can't pump in through my body, how did evolution come up with that? How many millions of years did that take?

He told me, he said, well, just a lot of billions of years. So the solution to the problem is billions of years, and then something will figure it out. No, God, Deuteronomy 32 says, set the boundaries of people.

God made the summer and winter, Psalm 74, and why did God do all this? Because he wants to play hide and go seek. I'm gonna do all this, and then God's gonna go, no, I'm gonna hide. Can't catch me, can't find me.

No, he did all this so you could find him. Look at the verse, verse 27, that they should seek him. God is the goal of all humanity. God is the source, of course, but he's also the goal, that you should seek him and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.

And he is actually not far from each of us. Yes, sin has broken mankind. Man has fallen in Adam. Consequently, we have a nature of sin, and we do sin. That's all true, but if God says, seek me before the fall, after the fall, he says, seek me as well.

When I was younger, I thought, I'm gonna read that H .G. Wells, The History of the World. Thought that'd be kind of nice in one small volume. I could learn the history of the world. With that same mentality, we understand why there are abridged books.

Never buy an abridged book. I just got Matthew Henry's new commentary abridged in one volume. When you read The History of the World, H .G. Wells gets it all wrong, because the history of the world is to show you God exists, and you are made for his pleasure.

That's why people cannot find happiness in this world, I'm telling you, because they think happiness is found within themselves. And until they're sold out to worship the God who made them, happiness will be elusive, fleeting, vanity.

He's not far from us. God providentially arranges the world so that you might seek him. God's not trying to hide. Man hides in his religion. Man hides in his sin. You have a responsibility, if you're not a Christian, to seek God.

Psalm 145, the Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. Jeremiah 23, am I a God who is near, declares the Lord, and not a God far off? Can a man hide himself in hiding places so I do not see him, declares the Lord?

Do I not fill the heavens and the earth, declares the Lord? God can be found, seek him, look for him. And then Paul quotes a couple of secular philosophers, Epimenides and Eratos, both talking about Zeus.

And Paul redeems the discussion about Zeus and says, this isn't about Zeus. This is about God. In him we live, verse 28, and move and have our being. You are dependent upon God. He provides for you, he sustains you.

That's true, but Zeus doesn't do it, God does. As even some of your own poets have said, and we are indeed his offspring. By the way, God made you to have a relationship with one another, family relationship, friends, associates.

You were made to have relationships. You were made to have relationships. And we are God's offspring, and we come from God, and God has relationships in his own self called the Trinity. And so it shouldn't strike us as odd that God wants a relationship with us, that we were made by God to enjoy him and have fellowship with him.

And commune with him, and to talk to him, and to have him talk to us. If we like this, we're his offspring. If children act a certain way, what does that tell us about the father or mother? And so Paul just uses these secular philosophers to point them to God, so that you realize everything that you have points to you, oh God, as creator.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. 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 right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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