School Of Evangelism Session # 4

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Sunday School School Of Evangelism Session # 4 Date: 03/13/2022 Teacher: Pastor Brian Garcia

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Let's ask the Lord's blessing over our time together this morning. Father, we just come before you and approach you in the name of Jesus, who opened a new and a better way for us to have access to the
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Father by grace in which we now stand. Father, help us in our time together in our discussion to keep our mind, our heart focused on you and on your great commission work.
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Help us, Lord, to see the urgency and the need and the power that lies ahead for us if we share this gospel good news to the nations.
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And Father, bless us as we endeavor to do just that in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, if you can turn to, we're in chapter three still on page 14 of our study today.
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We didn't quite get to finish last week's chapter, which is just fine, and we'll pick up where we left off and have a wonderful discussion again,
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I hope. And once we're all there, we're again, chapter three, and we are in the last page before the recap, and so the first heading should be, we close our gospel sharing with the hope of the gospel.
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Everyone there? Perfect, okay. Now, if anyone can remind me, what was the topic of last week's chapter?
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Chapter three, what are we discussing? What are we discussing? How to share the gospel, right?
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I mean, let me ask this question. How many of us have shared the gospel before, just generally?
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Okay, praise God, a good amount of us. How many of you have maybe had questions on how to evangelize people before, right?
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I mean, we all do. I still get questions. I mean, I'm like, okay, should I do this, should I do that? Is there a better way of doing this?
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And the great news is that evangelism is something that's actually quite simple. And we don't have to go far, because where is it?
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Where can we find the answers? In the word of God. The word of God gives us the answer on how to share the gospel.
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And of course, it gives us, first and foremost, what is the gospel, which we went over the week before? And what is the gospel, just by way of remembering?
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What is the gospel? The good news of Jesus Christ, specifically in?
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Kingdom of God, in his death, burial, and resurrection, right? 1 Corinthians chapter 15 says, I received what was the first importance, that according to the scriptures,
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Christ died, and then he was buried, and he rose again, that's the gospel, Paul says, that saves.
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And so that's the gospel that we preach. And of course, Jesus preached the good news, the gospel of the kingdom of heaven.
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But what is a kingdom without a king? And the kingdom of God centers around the king himself, Jesus Christ, who, in his death, burial, and resurrection, opens up the way for God's kingdom to reign on earth as it is in heaven.
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And so with that understanding of what the gospel is, what are some ways in which we could, what are some of the three things that we can practice that can be practically effective in our witnessing that we learned about last week?
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What were those three things? First, you have to be what?
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Hey, close, good listener, right, you gotta listen well.
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And first and foremost, that should be something that, as Christians, we endeavor to do as often as we can, even in settings outside of witnessing.
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Because when we listen to people, first of all, everyone wants to be heard, right?
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That's why people have social media accounts, that's why people tweet, that's why the former president of the
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United States is very sad that he can't tweet anymore and get his message out, cuz he can't be as heard as he once was.
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But we all have that innate desire to be heard. And as Christians, we should be good at hearing, good at listening to people.
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And so we wanna be a good listener. What's the second thing we must do? That's right, we gotta demonstrate
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Christian love. Why do you think that's an important aspect of our Christian witnessing? To demonstrate
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Christian or genuine love? Yeah, we're modeling
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Christ, right? Amen. And now what's the third thing that we can do to be more effective in our witnessing?
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Don't fall for what? Don't fall for the bait. So don't debate, don't fall for it.
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We don't have to fall for every argument or every rabbit trail that comes up in our discussions with unbelievers.
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And there may be a time or setting for such discussions. But when we're intentionally trying to witness, trying to share the gospel, those things will only detract and get our minds off of the gospel and not on it.
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And so it's best if we simply don't fall for the bait.
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And the bait can represent what? What are some arguments that the bait can represent? Abortion, which is a huge issue, right?
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But is that the gospel? How about politics, right?
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Especially, guys, stop, thank you. Especially when we're in a time of election season, right?
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Election season, it's like every four years, every two years, the church kinda gets drawn into this political debate and discussion.
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And people outside are saying, well, before you even tell me what you believe in, who'd you vote for, right?
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Cuz then that will determine whether I'm gonna actually spend time to listen to you if you share the same political philosophies or interests as me.
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And if you don't, then I'm not going to even hear you out. Has anyone ever encountered something like that before?
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Yeah, right, and it's unfortunately a reality.
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But we don't have to fall for that bait. So with that being said, we're gonna be in page 14.
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And Fah, would you read that first paragraph for me? We close our gospel sharing. We close our gospel sharing with the hope of the gospel.
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Receive Jesus as their Lord and Jesus. They should be taken to a room that's ten nights.
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For if you confess with your own dead, you shall be saved.
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If a person is fond of faith, you must now walk alongside them. If a person is non -responsive, then you go in peace, knowing that you are faithful and obedient in sharing the gospel.
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Ultimately, we are just associates. For it is God who makes the world. 1
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Corinthians chapter 3, verses 6 through 8. We may never know about our gospel sharing may impact a person.
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Days, weeks, months, or even years later. Pray for those who do share the gospel.
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I want you to turn to Romans chapter 10, verse 9 real quick. We just quoted from it, but I want you to turn there.
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This is probably one of the most important verses of scripture that you can commit to memory in the context of sharing the gospel.
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I know we have an evangelicalism. The number one text tends to be
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John 3, 16. Why I really think Romans 10, 9 should be the John 3, 16 of Christian evangelism.
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Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised from the dead, you will be saved.
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For with the heart one believes and is justified. With the mouth one confesses and is saved.
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A couple of things I want to point out real quick. What is the confession that saves? What's the confession that saves?
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Jesus is Lord. This is the most important statement in human history.
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It's the Lordship of Jesus. That's the message that we want to carry.
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The Bible says in 2 Corinthians, I believe it's in chapter 4, it says that we do not preach ourselves, but we preach
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Jesus as Lord and we as servants for his sake. And so the message that we carry in our bodies, the message that we bring in our churches and our evangelism is the centrality of the
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Lordship of Jesus. And as a result of a person's confession of faith, so it says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is
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Lord and believe in your heart, which one do you think is harder? Confessing with the mouth or believing in the heart?
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Believing in the heart. So anyone can say those words. Anyone can say Jesus is
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Lord. Matter of fact, apparently seven out of 10 Americans do just that. Seven out of 10
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Americans claim to be a Christian. And when you go deeper into those statistics from the
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Barnard Group, you'll find that really only about 33 % of Americans are actually
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Bible -believing Christians. And then out of that bunch, you've got a whole host of theological quarries and issues amongst people professing to be
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Christians. And so most individuals will confess and say, hey, I believe in Jesus. Yeah, Jesus is
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Lord. Cool, I believe that. But have they been regenerated? And regeneration is a matter of the heart.
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Look what it says in verse 10 again. For with the heart, one believes and is justified. Before one can make a proper confession.
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So although in Romans 10, 9, it's confess and believe in your heart.
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So the mouth comes first and the heart comes second. But then in chapter 10, verse 10, it reverses.
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It says, but with the heart, one is justified. So what is that text trying to explain to us there?
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What comes first, the mouth or the heart? The heart. But out of the heart,
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Jesus says, out of the mouth, the heart speaks. The abundance of the mouth speaks.
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And so when you're saying Jesus is Lord, it had to be an internal work inside of you prior to it to be justified, regenerated, given the gift of the
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Holy Spirit by belief. And then you're able to make that glorious profession of faith that brings forth salvation, right?
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And so first one must believe and then they can confess.
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And then it says in verse 11, four, the scripture says anyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.
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This is a great text because when we're witnessing the people, and especially after we take them through the 10 commandments and we try to give them a knowledge of sin through the law, there may be a bit of shame associated with that because maybe for the first time in a long time, they're seeing themselves the way that God sees them under the light of his law and of Holy Scripture.
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And we wanna say, hey, we're not bringing this up to shame you. If you put your faith in Jesus, you'll never have to be ashamed again.
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Because those who put their faith in Jesus are not to be put to shame. What does that text, what is it trying to communicate to us when it says that we'll not be put to shame?
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What do you think that's trying to communicate about the transformative power of the gospel?
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Does that mean people will never shame you for being Christian? No, people will shame you. People will laugh at you, spit at you.
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They'll still treat you like the Bible says, like the garbage of the world, okay? But you're not gonna be put to shame, which is to say that you have a security in Jesus.
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Shame usually comes for a lack of security, right? I'm ashamed that I did this, or I'm ashamed that this happened.
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But we who put our faith in Jesus, we don't have to live with that shame of saying that I no longer have to contend with my sins of the past have been paid for on the cross of Jesus.
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What a gift that is, to have full forgiveness, full assurance. And that's the hope that we wanna offer people, amen?
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Goes on to say in that text, it says, for there is no distinction between, verse 12, there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same
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Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. Now that text is very important because God is making it clear that there is no distinction.
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So we're not persons, we're not only looking for white people or black people or Asian people, we're looking for all people because Jesus Christ is
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Lord of all. Regardless of their background, regardless of their language, regardless of the color of their skin or their religious affiliation, we want all men everywhere to repent of their sins and to trust in Jesus.
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Then in verse 13, quoting from Joel 2 .32, it says, for everyone who calls on the name of the
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Lord will be saved. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
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And so we, as Christians, we can walk and do this work of evangelism with assurance that God is gonna work in it, that God is gonna bring forth salvation, justification, he's gonna bring forth transformation in the lives of people that we're witnessing to.
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But ultimately, it's not your work, is it? It's the work of God. It's not our human cunning that leads people to the cross.
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It's Christ. If the Son of Man be lifted up, he'd draw all men unto himself, he said. So the job of the evangelist, the job of the
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Christian is to simply lift up Jesus and he'll do the drawing all on his own.
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But we have to lift him up. Just as the serpent was lifted in the wilderness, so we have to lift up the
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Son of Man so that all men can be drawn unto him. Any questions so far? Excellent.
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Excellent. Now, what is the work of an evangelist in terms if we could use an imagery?
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What would we use? We could use the imagery of a police, could we use the imagery of a police officer?
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Could we use the imagery of a doctor? Give me something to work with, what do you think?
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Yeah. A lighthouse, that's good. The church, right?
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It's a city on a hill. Yeah. No worries.
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Pastor Conley? Fisher of men, that's a great one, right? It's a biblical one.
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Messengers, oh, so we're like angels, right? Because angels are messengers. Valley of dry bones, okay, those are all good.
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What's that? Businessmen, ooh. Yeah, that's an interesting one. Coming by, people have to come and buy from people.
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Coming by. Oh, like Psalm 55, right? Psalm 55 gives us a great invitation to come buy milk and honey without any money.
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So come and buy freely, right? So that's a good one. How about one that's kind of alluded to in that paragraph that we just said on page 14 towards the end?
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What's that? Farmers, farmers. Now, I lived on a farm for two years in Wisconsin.
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I still don't know much about farming. All I know is that my body doesn't seem to like all the farming stuff that comes along with it.
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I'm always stuffy and absolutely miserable when they start planting and reaping and sowing and all that stuff.
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But what's interesting about this is that the Bible gives us this analogy time and time again. Matter of fact,
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Jesus uses this analogy more than any other analogy in the Gospels in terms of relating us to a specific type of work in our ministry.
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And we are called to be farmers. Now, what does a farmer do? A farmer has to work the ground.
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He has to till it. He has to remove rocks and impurities. He has to then fertilize it.
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Then he breaks it. And in the Bible times, he'd have a beast of burden that would break it having a yoke around his neck and an ox would come along and break the ground.
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And then the farmer would have to then go behind the ox and start spreading seeds. Now, the seed, according to Christ, represents what?
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The Word of God. The seed is the Word of God. Now, Jesus told us in,
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I think it's Matthew chapter 13, that there's kind of three or four scenarios that may happen when we're sharing the Word of God and we're sowing.
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Sometimes when we sow, when we put the Word of God into the ground, that's our evangelism, our preaching the gospel, it may fall on good soil.
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Take root, bear fruit, praise God. Other times, it may fall on the rocks.
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And on the rocks, it doesn't have any room to grow or to take root and it withers away.
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You have times in which the crows come and they take and they eat. And this is actually a real thing. Like in Wisconsin, man, the crows come by the dozens.
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And not only do the crows come, but the deer also. The deers love to come in and start picking away at all the seeds that were grown.
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And so the farmer has to work double time in order to keep his crop from being destroyed by crows and deers and animals.
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And so is the work that we do as Christians. Not only do we declare the gospel, but we, in a sense, also have to contend for the gospel, which is what scripture tells us to do, to contend for the faith once and for all, delivered unto the saints.
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And there's no guarantee that those seeds will grow, take root. But it's always really surprising to see seeds grow in the most unexpected places.
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I've seen seeds grow in a really, really weird places. It's like, how did that happen?
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Like, how did it grow there? And the reality is that God is the one who gives the increase.
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He's the one who gives success because it's not our success, it's his success. It's not our kingdom, it's his kingdom.
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It's not our gospel, it's his gospel. And so he's the one who's gonna give the increase. He's the one who's gonna give the reward or success.
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Any thoughts or questions on that? So now you can put that your occupation is now a farmer.
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You are a farmer for the kingdom of God. All right, let's go back to our teaching in the book.
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Now we must briefly touch on three contexts in which we share our message. In the Bible, there are three main methods we find
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Christians sharing the gospel. Now these are not exhaustive. Of course, especially in the day and age that we live in today in the 21st century, there's a myriad of ways that we can share the gospel.
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You got the airways, you got Facebook, you've got television. There's so many ways in which people can share the gospel.
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But I wanna focus on three methods that the Bible emphasizes and brings to our attention.
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The first one being open air, public. This one was one of the most popular forms of Christian evangelism in the early church.
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In the New Testament, we observed John the Baptist publicly and openly preaching. Jesus preached in open air settings.
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The apostle Peter open air preached at Pentecost. Paul in Athens preached publicly in the marketplaces.
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Now I wanna expound a little bit on open air preaching. Open air preaching is probably one of the least liked forms of preaching in our culture and even in the church.
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Why do you think that is? What comes to your mind when you think of an open air preacher? What's that?
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Confrontational. So you got this guy maybe with a huge sign, says turn or burn. And maybe speaking very unnicely or unchristianly and it just doesn't reflect well on the message or Christ.
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Are there any other reasons why you may think why open air preaching may not be so liked?
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Yeah. Yeah. You know, you're hitting on something really important where especially in our culture, right?
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People don't like being preached to. That's just the reality. People don't like people being preachy.
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And instead the idea even amongst evangelicalism is, well, let's just have a relationship, right?
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Let's just, let's become friends. And then, you know, over the barbecue, maybe I'll share Jesus with you every once in a while.
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And is there anything wrong with that? Not necessarily. Well, right. I mean, that's great. But when that becomes the main talking point of Christian evangelism, then you're missing something, aren't you?
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Right? Because of course we wanna share the gospel lovingly and gently with those who are around us, with friends, neighbors, and family.
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That's a no brainer. But when we say we are gonna do that exclusively, basically,
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I find that to be a way of folks saying, I just don't like it and I don't wanna be obedient to that form of evangelism.
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And I'll tell you what, open air preaching is probably the hardest of these.
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It's the hardest one, especially in our day and age, because you'll, first of all, it's scary.
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Has anyone here ever opened your preach before? No. It's kind of scary, isn't it?
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It's kind of nerve wracking. It's not like you're going into a church and you're gonna be sharing the gospel in front of friendly faces.
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You're going into hostile territory and you're trying to bring the gospel of life to them.
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And so one of the things that I really suggest doing, what we're gonna actually be doing in the future and testing this out, is we're gonna attempt to do some open air preaching.
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And if people wanna come and do that, we're gonna be doing that. Here's some of the things that, man, what a blessing it is to live where we are in the time that we are.
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We live, this church is situated not too far from this new stadium, right?
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This football stadium, the 49ers stadium, right? What an opportunity that's gonna be when people are in there, thousands, for Christians to show up, not with turn or burn, but with the gospel of reconciliation and preaching the life and message of Jesus to them.
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Not in a way that's confrontational or adversarial, like you have two opposing football teams going at it, but rather preachers and Christians should be more like the referee.
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You know, we're now on one side or the other. We've got a book, we've got a rule book to follow, and that's what we're going to abide by.
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And what a blessing it would be if this church became known for preaching the gospel publicly in the public squares, such as these 49er games or other big conventions.
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We're in Silicon Valley, there's conventions here all the time, yeah. Yeah, and here you're preaching the gospel, and it's more of a confrontation with the government.
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That's right. From the staff, and here, actually, with all the executives. Yeah, that's great.
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One of the things that, we're already a church that's doing open -air preaching, did you know that? We're already a church that does that.
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We do the abortion ministry, and we go outside the abortion centers, these clinics of death, and we are, not a microphone, but like a little code, we're open -air preaching.
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We're begging folks to come and speak to us, and just this past week, Ken and I went out to the clinic, and I had an
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African -American gentleman that was there for an appointment, and I was begging him to come talk to me.
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He's like, I'm not interested, I'm not interested. I said, please, sir, we don't know why you're here. We just wanna talk to you, wanna help you, wanna give you some resources, wanna share
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Christ with you. He's like, listen, I grew up religious. I grew up Jehovah Witness. I said, sir, you really wanna talk to me, then?
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I grew up Jehovah Witness, too, and he perked up, and then he came and talked to me, and we had a great conversation, and got to share a little bit of the gospel with him, and things like that, and as Uber came to pick him up, but the last thing he said to me was,
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I'm really glad that I came to speak to you, and so, again, open -air preaching doesn't need to be confrontational on our end, right?
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How they react is gonna be the way they react. We're not responsible for the way the world reacts to our message, but as far as being the messenger, we ourselves don't have to be confrontational in the way that we do that, and so, another avenue that we're gonna experiment in the future with open -air preaching is we have our food ministry here on Saturday morning, and we've noticed that we have quite a crowd that develops about 10 minutes before the food ministry opens, and we're already doing a prayer and a song, and we're gonna start introducing little micro -messages, five -minute messages, in there with the crowd to share the gospel with them, because we have a captive audience right there at our food ministry, and so, taking advantage of the opportunities that the
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Lord has been opening for the church to witness, I think, would be a huge blessing for all of us, and that'll be also one of the avenues in which we're gonna get to practice some open -air preaching, and so, if that's something, and let me put this out there as well, like, if that's not your cup of tea, don't feel like this is gonna be forced on you.
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If that's not something that you feel equipped or called to at this moment, don't feel like, oh, now, if I wanna be part of this church,
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I have to open -air preach, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. The reality is, is that some people will be gifted in this area, and others can be developed in their gifting in that area, so don't feel like, okay, well, now
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I've gotta do this. There are other opportunities in which we can share the gospel, and we're gonna go into that right now.
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Any questions on the open -air? Any questions on that?
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Okay. Next one is gonna be door -to -door. So, this is like the second most unpopular way of sharing the gospel in Christianity.
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Jesus, in Matthew chapter 10, let's actually go there real quick, Matthew chapter 10.
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In Matthew chapter 10, verse 7 to 13, who'd like to read that text this morning?
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Jesus? For plain as a gold stain, they kindle and receive without pain, and give without pain.
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For sandals or a staff, for the labor, the services, we wanted it, and it stayed there until the
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Lord. And you entered the house, prayed it, and if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it.
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But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And read verse 14 too, please.
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So, there the Lord Jesus instituting Christian evangelism amongst his disciples.
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And the method that he uses is to go house -to -house, town -to -town, village -to -village to preach this good news throughout the tribes of Israel.
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And he tells us that as we enter the house, greet it, and if the house is worthy, which is to say that they're receptive to you, you bring your peace in with you, and you share the gospel, you preach the kingdom of God.
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And so the Lord Jesus institutes this door -to -door method, and so he instructs his disciples to go city -to -city, village -to -village, and from house -to -house, preaching the good news of the kingdom.
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In Acts 5 .42, the early Christians went declaring the gospel from house -to -house. And so we see this methodology time and time again throughout the
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New Testament. Christians preaching the gospel by means of going house -to -house.
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Now, why do you think Christians don't like going house -to -house today? Who is known, or what groups are known for going house -to -house?
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Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, yeah. And I was part, the last church
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I was part of, early on, I tried to bring this form of evangelism to the church.
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One of the elders says, we will never be a door -knocking church. I said, okay, well, why?
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Well, we just won't do that. That's what the cults do. I'm like, yeah, the cults also meet on Sunday.
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Are we not gonna, like, that makes no sense to me. We can't not be obedient to scripture because someone else that's wrong is doing it.
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If anything, what should the church be doing? Reclaiming that which is rightfully ours, which is
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Christian evangelism. And the problem is, is that in the United States of America, starting in the 1950s, we started to lose ground in our missionary field right in our backyard, right?
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So you had an explosion of growth within the LDS Church, within Jehovah's Witnesses, and other
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Christian cults. And because we gave up evangelizing in our own backyard, instead what we started doing was funding missionaries to go all around the world, which is a great thing, but we kind of forgot about our own backyard.
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And we allowed, now we have over 8 million Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide, 14 million
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Mormons worldwide, most of them being right here in the United States. We have growing cults like Iglesia Ni Cristo that's also growing in the
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United States. And it's because of the fact that we are not doing our job effectively as Christians. And so we want to also be a church that at least tries and attempts to do some evangelism by means of going door to door and house to house.
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Now, what's unique about this church is that God has placed this building and this people in a neighborhood.
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You know, that's not very common. And most places around the country, churches are like more, are, you know, residential neighborhoods are not very zone friendly towards churches anymore.
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Most churches, if you start a new church, you got to go find a strip mall somewhere. And that's where your church is.
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But this church is in a residential community. And one of the questions that we need to ask ourselves is, if this church closed its doors, would the community even notice?
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Would they notice? Would it leave a hole and a gap in the community? And I don't know the answer to that because I haven't been here long enough, but you may have an idea.
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And may that convict you to be all the more energized to partake of this work of Christian evangelism, maybe even going door to door.
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And so I actually plan in the spring, as we're fast approaching it, while we're concluding this teaching in the next couple of weeks, to take a
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Saturday morning and go house to house here in this neighborhood.
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And we're going to canvas it and we're going to meet our neighbors. And one of the ways that we're going to do that, and we're going to train you on how to give a gospel presentation.
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And it's really going to be, it's amazing how easy it's going to be. Like, don't think it's going to be hard.
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It's actually going to be really easy. And we're going to have nice pamphlets for you to hand out and easy ways for you to start a discussion, or even just to get to know people, right?
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We have an untapped resource in this community through all the houses and the people that live here.
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We want to reach these folks with the good news. And so any questions on the door to door work? Yes. Yeah, that's totally fine.
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I mean, we can't, I mean, unless the Lord gives you the gift of tongues in that moment, I don't think there's anything you can really do.
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But the reality is that we have a church that's multilingual, right?
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We have a church that's pretty diverse. And so there's Spanish speakers, Chinese speakers, people who speak
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Tagalog, right? That's the Filipino language. And I mean, there's a diversity here.
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And so maybe you might not be able to speak that language, but maybe someone else here does, and that could leave an open door for us to come and visit them again.
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So, great, yeah. Yeah, and in fact, there's speakers that are like, well, if they don't speak
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English, then they go to this person that is speaking a language that they don't know.
36:39
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Any other thoughts or questions on door to door evangelism?
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So is the criticism that the Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons do it, is that enough for us not to do it? No, not at all.
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If anything, that should make us all the more eager to take it back, because they stole it from us. So, any other thoughts or questions on that?
37:05
All right, yeah. They are.
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Now, that is a trend within Baptist churches. And door to door evangelism is historically very much associated with the
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Baptist church movement. And I went to a Baptist church in East Hartford, Connecticut when
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I lived there. And they actually, I thought this was really tacky, but they had like a jumbotron with how many doors they've knocked on.
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And their goal was to knock on 2 million doors. They were like at a million already at that point. I mean, really impressive.
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And so they were very evangelistic. And everyone knew who they were because they had purple shirts and they had a purple bus.
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So anytime you saw the purple shirts or the purple bus, you knew it was that Baptist church.
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And so one of the things that we're gonna be looking at is maybe doing t -shirts for us as well, probably not purple, but when we're doing acts of evangelism, either here at the church or outside, open air preaching, to have something that can easily identify us as members of this church,
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I think would be a neat thing to have. It's not a necessity, but I think it would be helpful as we develop a culture of evangelism here.
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And so any thoughts or questions on this so far? Good to go. Next one is intentional, what
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I call intentional witnessing. This is where you share the gospel with people you're either randomly encountering or are doing life with them.
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For example, when Jesus preaches the born again message to Nicodemus in John three, verse one through seven, or when
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Philip ministers to the eunuch in Acts chapter eight, verse 26 to 40. All of these are biblical and important ways of ministry that every believer will be called or equipped to preach in all three contexts.
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But it's important that we engage this fallen world in at least one of these biblical contexts. And so intentional witnessing basically is what most people tend to do anyways, right?
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You meet someone or you're friends with someone and you start opening up and talking about the gospel. And so that really doesn't require a whole lot of training in the sense that these are things that you're probably already doing, right?
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Just sharing Christ with people, loving on people. Even when we're doing the food ministry here and we're talking to folks that we're interacting with, that's kind of an intentional or what
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I would also use the term informal witnessing, where just as the opportunity arises, we're taking that opportunity to bring forth the gospel in a productive manner.
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So any questions on the intentional or informal witnessing? Yes. No, go for it.
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Right, right. Well, I would say Acts chapter five, you have the disciples and the apostles both doing this work.
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And so it wasn't exclusive just to the apostles. And I think there is an exclusivity to the apostles in that they had this unique ability to heal the sick, exercise demons, this was an apostolic ministry for sure.
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But the methodology isn't exclusively apostolic in that sense.
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Because then if that were the case, then so would open air preaching because we see open air preaching from Peter and Paul.
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And does that mean that open air preaching is also exclusive to the ministry of the apostles? Or, you know, of course,
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I wouldn't take that position. And matter of fact, it seems even as far as the epistles of John towards the end of the
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Bible, that he's warning us about receiving ministers into our house that are not preaching this gospel, which is essentially saying that this preaching work was still happening door to door.
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And so, but it's a great question. I think that that's an interesting point. Does that kind of help you process maybe?
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Yeah, I don't, I'm not convinced that that would be exclusively to the apostles. Yeah. Yeah.
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He sends a 70. Yeah. That's right. That's right. That's a good point. Yeah. Yes.
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Right. That's right. That's right.
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Amen. Yeah, that's an X 2020. X 2020 and X 542. We see that the majority of the church was partaking in this work.
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And so, any other thoughts or questions on any of the witnessing aspects? Dale? X 542.
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Yeah. Yeah, I would say that I think that, I think door to door is implicit in the text in Matthew chapter 10, as we would also see in Luke chapter nine and chapter 11.
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It's pretty implicit that this is part of the work that they were doing. Because if they were going house to house, like what were they doing?
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Were they just saying like, hey, would you like guys let me stay here? And then, you know, what were they doing while they were in the houses?
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They're preaching the gospel, which is exactly what Jesus commanded them to do prior to that. It was the commission work for the apostles and then for the 70.
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That's right. And what were they doing in the town? Yeah.
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Yeah, I think one can see it in both ways, right? You can see it certainly the way that you're bringing it forward.
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And I'm familiar to some degree with the criticism of door to door. Like I've read a lot of Christians write things like, oh, no, door to door is not a biblical method.
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And where I always walk away with those criticisms is like, all right, so what are you doing?
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It's usually an excuse not to do it. And it's usually an excuse not to bring forward the gospel kingdom message.
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And so I think if we can all at least agree that Acts chapter five, verse 42, and I think even
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Acts 20, 20, and I'm sure I can find even more verses. Again, this is not exhaustive that would really bring home the point.
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I think then if we're in agreement, at least in a sense that this is certainly something the early
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Christians did. And I can take you also through the church fathers and the church fathers all were very agreed that this was a popular method of evangelism in the first, second, and third centuries of the church.
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We see it also early in the Puritan history of the
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United States. House to house was a very popular method of preaching in the 1800s.
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Baptists were known for knocking on doors, preaching the gospel, good news from house to house. And so throughout church history,
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I think it's a pretty exhaustive evidence that the door -to -door ministry is indeed a biblical and desired methodology for Christians to partake in.
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And again, I give you the caveat. Not everyone is gonna feel called or comfortable to do this door -to -door work.
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But I wanna challenge you to come out of your comfort zones. The one of the problems in the
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United States is in our Christianity, we have grown accustomed to comfort, the comfort of our pews, the comfort of the four walls of the church.
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And anything that makes us uncomfortable usually is seen as a negative. It's usually seen as a, oh, well,
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I don't like the way the pastor said that, or I don't like the way that, you know, they're making us do new things.
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And the reality is is that we don't serve comfort. We serve the God of all comfort, but we don't serve comfort.
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We don't do this to be comfortable. If the government came down and took away our assets and our buildings, we wouldn't be so comfortable.
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Yet that's what's happening in many countries around the world, even today. And so let's not focus on what would make us comfortable, but rather what is the call?
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And the call is crystal clear. Regardless of methodology, it's to preach the gospel, make disciples.
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We all in agreement on that, right? We agree on that. Now, if you have a better way,
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I'd love to hear it. Especially if you can exegete it from the scriptures and say, hey, well, what about this over here?
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Look at how the disciples or the apostles did this and Jesus did that. I'd be very open to that.
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Yes. Is there something changed?
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That's right. It's a great question.
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And I think there is a room for modern technology to be implemented in our evangelism.
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And one of them is just simply having more of a social media presence. And so live streaming our services, for instance, on social media, not just on YouTube, maybe spending a little bit of money advertising.
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But also one of the things that can be done digitally as well, it's not just digital campaigns where you're just buying ads and sharing that.
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That's an easy way of getting attraction, but you're probably not gonna attract unbelievers. You're probably gonna attract other like -minded believers.
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That's a great thing, but it's not necessarily evangelism. One form of evangelism that we can maybe do in the future,
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Colleen and I have talked a little bit about this, but we haven't really gone anywhere with it, is doing something like a podcast where we're preaching the gospel by means of doing a podcast, which is very popular nowadays.
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And so things like that. There's a lot of ways that we can implement technology. But I think that technology should be the means and not the end.
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And so that's to say that I'm much more of an old -school guy, although my generation is millennial.
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I'm very not great with technology usually. And so I'm an old -fashioned type.
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I like meeting people. I like knocking on doors. I like open -air preaching.
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Those are the true and tried methods of the church. And I think those are the ones that will have the most blessing in terms of our evangelism.
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And so, any other thoughts or questions? Yeah. I get that they were,
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Jews and Christians were kind of. Yeah, I love that, that thought.
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That's a great thought. And I think, of course, it's not apples to apples anymore because that transitionary period is now kind of over with in terms of the overlapping between Christians and Jews worshiping together in the temple and when there is no temple anymore.
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You know, I could easily see that being played out, something in like the miraculous forum that we do here where we're hosting more of a diversity of religious thought and we're speaking and preaching the gospel in that context.
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Also, I mean, I see that also, you know, we're gonna think of temple almost like as a New Testament church.
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You know, when we host things here as a church, when we do our food pantry, when we, if we open up the church to the community for a block party or something like that, that's an opportunity for witnessing as well.
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That's why we're gonna try to implement some of the open air preaching while we have people here in the temple or in the house of God for the food ministry.
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And so, those are some great thoughts that I think we can definitely expound on and work on.
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Any other thoughts or questions? Okay, so here's what we're gonna do because we're gonna get about six minutes left.
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I'm just gonna read this last couple of, this last paragraph here and then we're gonna go into the recap. The early church did not wait for people to come to them.
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They were convinced that they needed to go to the loss. And that's the heart, I want you to know, that's the heart of this, okay?
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It's not about which way is the best way. It's that we have to follow the way, which is to go to the loss.
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So whatever mechanism we're using, the goal is to get to the loss and to share the gospel with them.
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Many churches will preach the gospel within their four walls, but the gospel is meant to be preached in the world, not simply within the walls of the church.
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May you decide to be a faithful witness of Jesus and share this gospel good news with others. And so, what is the purpose of sharing the good news?
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What's the purpose of it? There's a lot of ways you can answer that.
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Where's the obedience? Obedience is a huge part of it, amen. Yeah, the gospel is meant to be shared.
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Yeah, and what is the purpose of sharing it? It's to declare Christ in his kingdom.
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All right, so what's it? Is it Luke 4, 43?
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For this reason, for this purpose, I have been sent forward to preach the good news of the kingdom.
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That's what Jesus says. And Luke 4, 43. And so it's to make Christ and his kingdom known.
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And what are we witnesses of? This was early on in the teaching. What are we witnesses of?
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It's from last week. Amen, that's right. We are witnesses of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection.
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In what sense are we witnesses of that? You're born, well, you're born again, right?
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If you're born again, that means that you now identify in his death and identify in his resurrection, that though Christ is ascended to the right hand of the
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Father, he lives because he lives in me. And because he lives, I too shall live.
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And so it's a really, your testimony is evidence of the power of the risen
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Savior. And do we save people? This should be a really easy one. No, we're not saviors.
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And what are the three strategies? That's right.
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Just the early ones that we had up at the top where be a good listener, demonstrating love, and not falling for the bait.
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Those are three strategies to keep in mind. And there's three thoughts to keep in mind.
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Now describe what is the way of the master? What is the way of the master? We looked at that methodology for Christian evangelism.
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What's its main hook? That's right, amen.
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You know, the way of the master is really just showing God's law to the sinner to lead them to Jesus.
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Why take people through the 10 commandments? Why take them, yeah.
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Show them the way. That's right, so Romans 3 .23,
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right? All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And we want to bring that knowledge of sin to them, because for the most part, again, in worldly people, most of them think that they're pretty good.
55:10
Well, I'm not a murderer. I've never robbed a bank, right? And they think that because of what they have not done, so it's the sins of omission that they have not done, that they're good, not taking into account all the sins that they have committed throughout their lives, and that's why it's important to give them a knowledge of sin through God's moral law.
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And then it says, last one, how do you lead someone to Christ?
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How do you lead someone to Christ? That's right. You know, really, it's kind of a misnomer, because you can lead someone to a knowledge of Christ, but a person needs to be regenerated, receive faith, in order to make that profession or make that decision for Christ.
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So before anyone can make a decision for Christ, God had to have made a decision for them.
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And so God is the one who elects his people. We don't get to elect our leader in the kingdom of heaven. He is unelectable.
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He is forever king of kings or of lords, but in eternity past, he made a decision for his elect.
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And when we as Christians, or when we, at the moment of profession of faith, make a decision for Christ, decision coming from the word decisiveness, who would not want to be decisive for the king?
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So we don't, so basically, you know, I would say Romans 10, nine is the best text to keep in mind when we're talking about leading someone to Christ, because Romans 10, nine says that if you confess of your mouth that Jesus is
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Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And so you lead, how do you lead someone to Christ?
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You lead them to Christ by sharing the gospel of reconciliation.
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You share the gospel of reconciliation. And ultimately, again, you can't force someone to be a convert.
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You can't force anyone. We're not the saviors. And so here's what's for homework. The homework is gonna be pair up with someone in the class and come up with a demonstration of the way of the master, create a setting, circumstance, and be prepared to act it out in class next
57:35
Sunday. Now, because this is a rather large group, not everyone will be required to share, but I think it'll be an important exercise either way for you to at least attempt to try this, to meet with someone, it could be even of your own household and attempt to use this methodology of the way of the master, which is taught in this chapter.
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And some of you, maybe two or three, will be called upon to share the gospel.
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And I might talk to a few of you beforehand just to make sure that you do it so that we have some presentations next week.
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Sound fair? All right. Well, let me pray. Father, I thank you, Lord, for today, that you have blessed us with a desire and knowledge and a thirst for being obedient to you.
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Lord God, help us in our weakness. Help us where we fall short to draw closer to your perfect image.
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And Lord, we are just so thankful that you've given us the instruction that is in your word to go forth in boldness and authority to preach this good news to the kingdom.