Matthew 4:18-22 Part 2 - Apr 28, 2024

Mount Zion Community Church

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So it was brought to my attention that that we haven't done the Lord's Prayer and while we may not do it every week

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I think it is is great to do it because a Lot of us grew up doing that in church every week and now we have children or grandchildren or whoever and if they're not doing

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That often enough in church. They won't necessarily learn that prayer the same way we did and that would be a shame.

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So Thank you very much for that. I appreciate it So we're gonna we're gonna continue on with our study now of Matthew So if you recall last week

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We were in chapter 4 verses 18 through 22 And I told you that we were going to talk more about the themes of these verses today

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So that's exactly what we're gonna do. And in fact Everything that we talk about today everything related to discipleship and evangelism is actually going to revolve around one

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Single verse from this passage and that's verse 19 where it says and he said to them follow me

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And I will make you fishers of men because this innocuous statement

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Has so much meat and so much significance and so much importance to it

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That we can spend our entire time today talking about it now last week I focused really heavily on two words that characterized the disciples response to the call of Jesus We talked about the two words immediate and complete so that was important to do as well, but I realized

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As I thought about what we talked about last Sunday Is that I just very briefly

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Touched on the idea of discipleship and kind of gave a rushed Definition and a little bit of an overview of what discipleship is, but I don't think that we gave it enough time

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We didn't give it quite enough explanation But at the same time we have two massive topics

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Left that we have to cover as they relate to this passage and and obviously one is discipleship

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And like we said the other is evangelism, so we'll start with discipleship because this is sort of building a foundation here now

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We already mentioned that what we see in these passages is that Jesus is calling his first disciples

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And we talked a lot about how we're supposed to model our lives after Jesus So what does that mean where the issue of discipleship is concerned

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So once again we start with the question. What is discipleship? Now Mark Dever.

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He's the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church up in DC He gave a good succinct definition one that I thought was pretty helpful that I'll share with you today, and he says this discipleship means growing as followers of Jesus and Helping others do the same.

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I think that's an excellent definition for us to use so for Jesus Discipling others or at least calling others to be discipled

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It was as simple as him saying follow me right because as we're disciples We're trying to be more like Christ he could just say follow me and then of course what

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Jesus does is proceeds to his earthly ministry and His disciples get a front -row seat to what it means or what it looks like to bring the message of Christ to the world

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Because no matter how we feel about what's going on today the world in the times of Jesus and in the times of a lot of the stuff we read in the

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Bible is every bit is Broken and every bit is desperate for Jesus as our world is right now, so some things about people never change

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Now Obviously it's not quite as simple for us as it is for Jesus, but I want to make sure that we don't over complicate the idea of discipleship

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But because we are called to that task We can't avoid the issue So the good news for us as Christians as we start talking about this is that all of our life

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Should be devoted to following Christ Paul writes in Ephesians 8 5 through 10 to remind us of what this looks like he says for you were formerly darkness

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But now you are light in the Lord walk as children of light For the fruit of that light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth trying to learn what is pleasing to the

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Lord and We can turn to scripture for this a description of what the

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Christian life looks like and once again I go to Paul Paul has given us some amazing inspired scripture to help us live our lives, so in the book of Galatians in chapter 5 he gives us not only a

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Description of what the Christian life is to look like but he gives us a description of what the

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Christian life Should not look like he gives us a whole list of things that we shouldn't do we're gonna start there

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These are things to avoid starting in verse 19 so Galatians chapter 5 verse 19

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Now the deeds of the flesh are evident which are sexual immorality impurity sensuality idolatry sorcery enmities strife jealousy outbursts of anger selfish ambition dissensions factions envying drunkenness

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Carousing and things like these of which I forewarn you Just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God So as we go through that list check off the ones that are you

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I'm just kidding You don't have to raise your hand or anything just do it in your head

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We all know and and while that's funny we all have these things we all have these lists

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But but we start out with this negative example To give us an idea of what the life of a follower of Christ is not supposed to look like and this is why

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I say That scripture while it's not gonna give you a very specific answer to a question that you have

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It's not gonna it's not gonna give you the answer to a decision. You're trying to make it'll give you guidelines

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That will help you toward those decisions because as you're as you're considering Any question that you have is one of your options gonna push you in the direction of any item on that list and If it is

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Well, maybe you don't do it So what should our lives look like as we attempt to model ourselves after Christ Well, hopefully

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Paul Continuing on in that same chapter in Galatians gives us a list there as well I'm sure you're you're all familiar with this.

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He says but the fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self -control

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Against such things there is no law Now those who belong to Christ Jesus crucify the flesh with its passions and desires in I Know that I've breezed past that list a number of times

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But when I when I stopped to really look at it when I stopped to really study it a lot of those words are convicting to me because I Don't always show the fruit of the

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Spirit and people Not everybody will agree with this

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But one thing I think is interesting about the way this is translated is is it's called the fruit of the

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Spirit, right? It's not called the fruits of the Spirit So you can't pick and choose from this list which one of these things you want to live your life with which one of these traits you want to have and Which one you know, like I can be kind but I don't want to be self -control right or I can be gentle but not patient I like to look at these all as one thing the fruit of the

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Spirit Evidences all of these behaviors. So to the extent that your life is in line with these attributes

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You're following Christ and to the extent that you're not in line with these attributes

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Then we're not Following Christ as well as we could and none of us are following Christ as well as we could don't get me wrong

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But the things in the first list, they're all patterns of sin and again like I said our nature is

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All of us have one or more of those things that we struggle with and that we're tempted to indulge in on a daily basis

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Or however often it is Now when we consider these things

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I also want to look at something else that Paul wrote and I Like the language that Paul uses in 1st

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Timothy 6, so the theme is similar here but Paul is writing to Timothy about negative behaviors and It in verse or chapter 6 verse 11

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He writes this but you O man of God Flee from these things and then he goes on to list a lot of those negative

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Attributes that we're not we're not to live with he says to Timothy flee from those things and this is good advice for us as well

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Because it's not it's not all the time that these behaviors that we're thinking about they don't just Take take us over where we can't control it or catch us by surprise

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And then all of a sudden we've done something that we know we shouldn't do right. We don't all of a sudden most of the time

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Yell at another person. We don't all of a sudden get drunk a Lot of these things are a process even if it's the process over hours as opposed to weeks or days.

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It's all a process there's a time and an opportunity to flee from stuff like this and And later in that same verse

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After he tells Timothy to flee from some things he tells them to pursue things that are good

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Again this is great advice for us as well and The fact that Paul is writing to flee some things and pursue others is a clue to us that the

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Christian life is going to Take effort this process of sanctification is not automatic and it's not total and complete unfortunately and It's not going to come naturally to us even after we've experienced the gift of salvation salvation granted by the

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Holy Spirit and Despite the fact that we are instructed to flee and pursue certain things and we're instructed to do that We have a role in it

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I will tell you that the process of sanctification the process of becoming more like Christ is not

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Something that you can do completely under your own power Because remember what Peter writes?

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He says that Satan our adversary prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour

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And he's always there tempting us with this list He's always there tempting us with thoughts tempting us with deeds actions behaviors

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Tempting us with the things that we're supposed to flee And he's always trying to push us away from the things that we're supposed to pursue

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Because the goal of Satan is to steer as many souls away from God as he possibly can and Honestly, no matter what any of us think not a single one of us are good enough on our own to live the

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Christian life under our own power and We certainly can't do and have never done a single thing to earn our own

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Salvation or even to earn merit before God again. There's not a checklist. There's not a point system if There was a point system

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Jesus would have all the points. He would have all the points for all of us. Your score would be zero But thankfully

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Jesus has won everything for you. So we need help We need help in this and where does our help come from?

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Well our first clue as we look at that passage from Galatians Where Paul listed the positive attributes as the fruit of the

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Spirit? You'll see that in every translation of the Bible The word spirit is capitalized and fruit of the

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Spirit and that's because it's referring to the Holy Spirit Now Jesus promised the help of the

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Holy Spirit to the Apostles in John 14 26 Jesus says this but the advocate the

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Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you

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Now these are promises specifically to his disciples at the time But I think we'll find that they're true to us as well because the

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Holy Spirit is still our help the Holy Spirit is who Jesus sent after he left to help us with these things and Despite the fact that a lot of us misunderstand the

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Holy Spirit He's no less important than God the Father or Jesus the

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Son the entire Trinity is alive and working in our lives But all that background on living the

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Christian life is important because this is what we're all striving after with the help of the Holy Spirit and Another thing that I wanted to point out is that the process of sanctification is not one that ever ends

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There's no there's no end state. There's no final goal that you can achieve and the reason that I tell you this

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Is so that you understand that there's no retirement from being a Christian just because You have been following Christ and you've been following Christ in a way that is exemplary for 40 50 60 70 years more

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That doesn't mean that you have the opportunity to pass off that responsibility to the next generation now and Just kick back and relax and enjoy your assigned pew seat see

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Especially when you're somebody that knows the ins and the outs and the ups and the downs of the Christian life

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This is when we need you to come alongside of other people in the church to help them do the same

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Because I promise you for every one person who has been doing this for you know

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Longer than a lot of other people have been alive. There's probably a handful of people that are struggling and Don't know what to do next and need help on This this process this journey, and that's what discipleship is

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It's when you come alongside those people that need help You show them what it's like to live the

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Christian life and this is one of the most significant tasks of the church and this is the most significant form of church growth

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Because when we talk about church growth most of the time when we use that term we think of the number of people that are showing up to our service on a

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Sunday, but But far more important than the number of people in A church is the growth in the spiritual maturity and the

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Christ likeness that happens in the members of the church who are sitting in the pews in the process

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By which we help one another is discipleship again it's not worth having a

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Huge group of people who don't know each other and don't carry care for each other a

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Church is a group of people no matter how big that are living the Christian life together and that are helping one another

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But we like to overcomplicate things and and you can come up with programs and classes and all kinds of stuff like that to formalize this and I think the reason that we do that is because we like Processes and we like steps and we like to know exactly what we have to do next

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But unfortunately life doesn't always work like that so When you think about discipleship a lot of times this discipleship takes place one -on -one

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Just when you're living your life just when you're being involved with other people It takes place in Conversations that you have it takes place in in Helping people in the church

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And it also takes place with the way you live your life. It takes place with your example so you also have to be careful there because Chances are somebody's probably watching

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So you have to do your best to make sure that you have a life that's worth emulating Especially if you talk a good game about the

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Christian life one of the things they said to us at the the place where I was for the last few months was

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You better make sure that your video matches your audio Right got to make sure

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That what people see you doing Matches what you say that you are doing or that you should do or in some cases that what you say

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Other people should do you better make sure you're doing it yourself That way you can say this with Paul going back to Paul a lot of Paul today 1st

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Corinthians 11 1 he says this be imitators of me Just as I also am of Christ and this is important because Jesus gave us an example that we're to model

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But we're not like Jesus Jesus was holy Jesus was perfect.

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We are none of those things, but Paul was a man and Paul lived a life worth emulating

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So Just one final word on discipleship and even though I said that formal structured programs aren't required

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There still should be some intentionality there You should be

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You should be looking for the opportunity to be Discipled even if it's only by the example of someone else if there's no one in your life that you can look to to be discipled

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Look to look to other great Christians of the past look to Paul look to people in Scripture and You should also be looking

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For opportunities to disciple other people who aren't as far along as you are Because Chances are someone has helped you grow

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Someone has helped you along in your Christian life at some point along the way and this is your opportunity to do the same thing

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So that's our talk about discipleship so now we want to get into the other significant piece in this verse, and that's the theme of evangelism and It's surprisingly easy to get all wrapped up in discipleship

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And and just turn all your efforts in and turn all your efforts inside the walls of the church

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But at that point you just become a social club now. We might be helping one another grow in our walk with Christ But remember that Jesus has called us to take his message to the entire world

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There's a couple places that we see this Matthew chapter 28 verses 19 and 20 and Mark chapter 16 verses 15 and 16 and we're gonna look at Mark today, but these show

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Jesus Giving his disciples what we call the Great Commission So Mark 16 15 through 16 says this he said to them go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation

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He who has believed and been baptized shall be saved But he who is disbelieved shall be condemned

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So while I said that discipleship is one of the most important tasks of the church

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I don't think it's a stretch to say that evangelism is probably the most important task that the church has in fact

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Everything else is an accessory to evangelism We disciple people

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So that they can go out and share the gospel with Jesus a gospel of Jesus with other people so they can disciple as well

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We read scripture and teach from the pulpit To help equip you and grow you so you can take that message to other people

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So you can share the gospel with other people and we see Jesus in this passage Specifically in verse 19, like I said calling

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Peter and Andrew to be his disciples But he's calling them to be disciples specifically for the purpose of being made into fishers of men and At the risk of going over the same thing too many times

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Discipleship is the training that makes people into fishers of men, but evangelism is the purpose

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Evangelism is the main reason for discipleship to even happen at all So back to this idea that evangelism is the most important thing the church does

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John MacArthur said this he said that Rescuing men from sin is God's greatest concern

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Luke 19 10 says for the Son of Man has come to seek and save the lost

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And we all know what John 3 16 says for God So loved the world that he sent his only son those whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life

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Everything that God did sending Jesus to earth for his ministry turning

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Jesus from God to man Was to save people and in addition to this

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We'll see this as we continue through Matthew that the main focus of Jesus the whole time he was on earth was sharing the gospel and Now we get into some some territory territory that's

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Kind of uncomfortable because there's a lot of misconceptions with people about what evangelism is or how you have to do it.

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I Know that that some of us grew up and some of you grew up Thinking evangelism is basically like the

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Christian equivalent of door -to -door salesmanship, right? cold calling people to sell them

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Jesus And I know that that scarred a lot of people And other people think that you have to be

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Billy Graham we think that evangelism is a gift and you have to be this great speaker and you go out every night and you have

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Revivals and thousands of people walk down the aisle and give their life to Christ. They make a decision for Christ, right?

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We already know that no, we don't do that But that's what people think of evangelism

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Other people think that evangelism is just living a quiet life of serving people or a life of Keeping to yourself, but living out those principles of godliness living out the fruit of the

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Spirit There's a quote what's that quote Preach the gospel at all times, but use words if necessary That's a bad quote because you can't preach the gospel without using words you can't preach the gospel only living your life without telling people why they need

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Jesus who he is and what he did and How to follow him

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So all those things they have a mixture of truth and error again, yeah, you have to live a godly life

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So, you know part of that quote is right You have to live that way but evangelism is a super deep subject and honestly,

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I Struggled trying to figure out exactly what it was that I wanted to share with you today because there's so much to talk about but The great part of this is that I don't have to tell you all of it today

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And I know some of you are glad that we don't have to hear all about evangelism today You know, I pack a lunch and we're just gonna talk about this for the rest of the afternoon

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But but what I do want to share with you today regarding evangelism is a few things so This is gonna fall kind of under three headings the first one is

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I want to share with you the one element that must be present for something to be evangelism and Then I want to share two great misconceptions about about evangelism and then finally,

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I want to share one concept that should be of Great encouragement to you as you practice evangelism.

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So let's start with the one element that must be present so the first thing that we have to get clear about is what evangelism actually is and Definitions are often helpful, but in this case

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The definition has kind of been stated over and over in a variety of ways So I wanted to find at least a little bit more information so that I could say this to you one more time without completely repeating the same thing over and over so The word evangelism is based on a

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Greek word You on jelly on hopefully I said that right, but that translates literally into the word gospelling

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Which is basically taking the gospel and making it a verb as in something that you do

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So evangelism by definition means to share the gospel

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Literally to share the gospel and we can expand on that just a little bit one one way that I saw it put was this evangelism is teaching the gospel with the aim to persuade and That last part is important because the only reason that we would ever practice evangelism the only reason that we would ever share the gospel with somebody else is because we want them to be saved and The goal of people being saved

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Should be what we want out of every evangelistic encounter that we have

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And we'll talk about the outcome of evangelism in just a little bit But for now, I want to highlight the fact that this definition

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Deals entirely with things that are under your control Because you control whether or not you're faithful to share the gospel with other people when you have the opportunity and You control

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Whether or not your hope or your aim is to persuade them to believe in Jesus Christ But I said that I wanted to share with you the one element that what that must be present to be considered evangelism

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So here it is For something to be considered evangelism in any encounter you must present the gospel

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And that means very Specifically that you have to talk about the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and call that person to faith in that message

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Sometimes what people do and this is good is that they share their own stories about what Jesus has done in their life

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But regardless what you share these elements must be present and this can be hard and this is the part that gets intimidating because The starting point for the good news of the gospel the starting point the place we all begin

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With the gospel is the fact that we're sinners otherwise The good news doesn't matter

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But at the most basic level we have all sinned and fallen short of God and you know what everybody knows this

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Even people that don't believe the Bible even people that don't believe in God or what Jesus has done

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They know that they've done things in their life that aren't right and a lot of people are Living with anxiety they're living with depression

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They're living with fear or grief or all kinds of other emotions as a result of the things that they've done

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No matter how how mild or how horrible? But they a lot of times don't have a framework for processing it and and the reason that this is significant in this case is because As all of us are sinners

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All of us are headed for an eternity in hell barring something else happening all of us

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And of course some people have the mistaken idea that they're somehow Good enough or that they've done enough to get to heaven on their own, but Scripture tells us that that's not the case

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That Scripture tells us that we've all fallen short Scripture tells us that no one is righteous And that's all that's all bad news, right it all sounds like bad news, but the good news is

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That God sent his only son Jesus God sent Jesus to earth Fully God and fully man to live a perfect and sinless life to show us how that how we should live

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But also that God sent him to save the people of the world from their sins Now the way

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Jesus saved the world from their sins was living that perfect life And then serving as a sacrifice on the cross

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But not only that Three days later after he served as a sacrifice on the cross he rose from the dead and by rising from the dead by his

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Resurrection he showed that his sacrifice was acceptable to God and that his sacrifice

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Redeemed us from our sins before God and that's a good news, but the best news of all is that all we have to do to escape hell and Spend eternity with God in heaven is to repent of our sins and believe in the work of Jesus and This is great news because the only thing the only thing that's required of Christians is faith

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And this is essentially the only religion where that's the case in every other religion

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You have to act a certain way In order to earn the favor of whoever the deity is or whoever the

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God is there are things you have to do to earn their favor But for us all we have to do is have faith.

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We have to believe in the finished work of Jesus and This is core to what we do as a church because everything comes back to Jesus now the reason

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Evangelism gets so scary and Becomes such a challenge is because it does it does require confronting people with the fact that they're sinners and it does also require that those people repent of those sins and that's a challenge because Most of the sin that we're stuck with we're stuck with because it's so enjoyable to our fleshly nature at least for the moment

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So there's that one absolute requirement for evangelism

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And that's that you share the gospel the whole gospel with the person you're talking to and you don't have to be mean

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You don't have to be rude. You don't have to be accusatory and actually you should never be that way

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Because you're benefiting from the same thing, you know, you're only a couple steps removed from that awful sinner that you're talking to But what happens is we get so worried about what people will think

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We want people to like us we don't want anybody to be mad at us most of us don't like rejection

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So we focus only on the positive aspects of the Christian faith And we try to take the hard edges off the gospel.

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We sort of sand them off But the problem with that is when we try to convince people

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Without giving them all the information We've essentially lied to them If you try to share the gospel without sharing all aspects of the gospel with somebody

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What happens is that you wind up with a false convert? Basically you wind up with people who think they're saved when they're not and and just a few more words on this before we move on because I'm going to kind of touch on this in just a second, but The fact that the gospel must be presented

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It also means that some of the things that we think are evangelism are not evangelism

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So don't misunderstand me when I say this but just inviting someone to church is not evangelism

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That doesn't mean I don't want you to invite people to church I absolutely want you to invite people to church because I saw a statistic somewhere that some

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Enormous percentage of people who came to church and came to know Jesus came because they were invited

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So, please invite people to church however The simple invitation is not evangelism

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Don't miss the opportunity to share the gospel with somebody if you're willing to invite them to church Tell them why?

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Give them the whole story Because remember this our church service is for Christians And while an unbeliever should come to church and hear the gospel if I'm doing what

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I'm supposed to do then The purpose of this is still For me to teach and grow you we don't you don't need the basics every single

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Sunday We have to go beyond that in order to continue in our walk with Christ and what we'll get the basics sometime

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We're getting some of the basics today But you know We don't invite somebody to church for them to take step one and learn every little thing

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They need to know that's gonna come through discipleship so I'm sort of getting my head of myself now because now we're talking about the two great misconceptions and The first one is confusing witnessing with evangelism

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Inviting somebody to church is witnessing sharing the gospel with them as evangelism When you

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Hand out a blessing bag to somebody if you just roll down the window hand it to him and take off that's witnessing

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You're doing a great thing. You're helping people But if you don't share the gospel with them, it's not evangelism, right again the goal

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Jesus did not send his disciples out in the world to help people like this whole social thing

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Comes along with the gospel, but it's not the gospel So you have to share that So all of these things are good again witnessing is a great thing and please don't think

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I'm telling you to stop because I'm not I'm just telling you that it's not evangelism and share the gospel share the good news of Jesus when you have the opportunity now the second great

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Misconception relates to the message of the gospel itself and I'm gonna split this up into a couple different ways.

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And the first one is Looking at the the misguided idea that somehow the messenger is more important than the message.

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So the gospel message is everything but We get the idea that if we want to reach a certain type of people

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We want to reach young people we want to reach professional people or we want to reach people of different ethnicities

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That we have to somehow emulate the culture we have to take our church service if we want to take it to the world we have to make it look like the world and That is a mistake to think that we have to change the style of our music

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The way the pastor dresses the way our building looks just to meet the preferences of the people that we want to hear the gospel

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That's a mistake Because It's the power of God's Word and it's the power of the work of Jesus Christ that convert converts people

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It's not the experience that they have because when we start playing with people's emotions, that's another way that we get false converts and There's no reason that we would leave out anybody of any group of any race culture age

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Clothing preference who's required to preach the gospel from preaching the gospel But we don't ever want to get the idea that the messenger is more important than the message that they're delivering so Always remember that always remember that it's the message it's the gospel and it's the power of God that works through that message with the here and Speaking of the message the second issue we have with that and this is one that I mentioned a little bit already is that Sometimes we want to soften the message of the gospel because we want to make it a little bit easier for people to hear we want to want to Make it easier to draw people into church

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So we take away that sin part We tell you that Jesus died for you

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But we don't necessarily tell you why Jesus had to die for you and Then we wind up With what

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I think we see largely in the in the evangelical church today Being more concerned with being like than telling people the truth.

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And this is something I said already, but you wind up with these kind of pseudo Christian gatherings of people that ultimately

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Are sinning in some way again, we're all sinning in some way, but they're being told that Jesus died for them

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So it's okay. So they continue in that sin Because they haven't ever been told different and they're headed down a path straight to hell and the pastors that are teaching them

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That way are condemning them to hell and they're condemning themselves because they have to answer for God to God for that And and it happens because we want to be popular but If you want to be popular leading a church is a terrible way to go about it

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Because you can you can tell people all that good stuff in some other some other forum where you're well

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Where you're not condemning yourself But Because I remember this message this is more from Paul 1st

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Corinthians 118 for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing

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Because some people and this is why evangelism is hard to you. I get it. Some people are gonna reject your message and they're not gonna want to talk to you and they're gonna see you coming and they're gonna say oh

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Gosh that person wants to talk to me about Jesus again and they're gonna go the other way right and that hurts

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None of us like that But the the Bible has predicted that that's gonna happen and Even if people aren't gonna like it and they aren't gonna come into the doors of this church

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That's no excuse for changing what the truth of the gospel is in an attempt to repeal to unrepentant sinners

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So those are our two misconceptions and there's a lot more but those are the two that I wanted to address the first one is confusing witnessing and evangelism and the

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Second is trying to adapt or change the message of the gospel to to achieve a wider appeal

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The last thing I want to address to close on a high note is to give you what I hope is the most encouraging thing

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I can about evangelism and that is that you have no

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Responsibility for the outcome of evangelism. You have no control over it. You have no responsibility of it

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Remember, we don't save anyone Only the work of the Holy Spirit in men's and women's hearts can grant salvation

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And that's why we don't ask for a decision. That's why if I was talking to somebody

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I wouldn't say Will you decide to follow

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Jesus today right now? I wouldn't say that because that's not what we're going for We can tell people that we hope they will put their faith in Christ We can tell them that yes, they are sinners, but Jesus was

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Jesus lived on the earth He was crucified dead and buried and on the third day

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He rose from the dead for your sins and my prayer for you is that you will repent and believe in what

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Jesus has done Because again We don't have any control over the outcome.

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This is way way beyond us But this doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to present the gospel

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Just because you can't control the outcome doesn't mean that you don't have to tell people because you do

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You do have to tell people It just means that when you get rejected and you will get rejected

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It doesn't have to do with you. It's not about you And I almost wanted to say that your job is over after you present the gospel, but that's not necessarily true either because What if someone does respond?

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What if they do respond right there in that very moment the Holy Spirit moves in their heart and they say yes

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I do want to follow Christ What happens then? discipleship once Now you have to come alongside that person now that you've shared the gospel and they want to know more

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It's your job to join them and it's your job to help them. This is what we do

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These are the sacrifices that we are called to make and by the way, this is why the local church is

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Really the organization that needs to practice evangelism Because imagine if some traveling evangelist comes to town and they go to JPJ and they have a huge event and there's 10 ,000 people there and Everybody gets all stirred up and excited and 1 ,500 people walk down the aisle and say

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I want to give my life to Christ, right? Well, what happens that person's on to Lynchburg next right?

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They're not here anymore. So you have a bunch of people who? Whether they were actually

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Converted or whether they just had their emotions stirred up and they're never gonna go in a church again They don't know what to do next and they don't know where to turn because it didn't happen inside a church

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It happened with somebody who's moving along to the next town, which is not to say they do bad work, but look

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Somebody has to be there for these people so this is why we as a church are the ones that should be practicing evangelism and practicing discipleship because those people

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Now now they think they want to follow Christ, but they don't have a pastor and more important than not having a pastor

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They don't have a congregation That's more important than having the pastor is having the people to to help them so Inevitably difficult times happen and they may not know where to go from there so That's about where we're gonna wrap up for today

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It's it's pretty amazing to me at least when you stop and you look at the implications

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That can be contained in just one single verse of Scripture I mean we looked only at Matthew 4 19 and even really just part of it and It all of this information on discipleship and evangelism is implied there

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They didn't talk about it and we'll see some of this again, but it's all coming from the phrase

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I will make you fishers of men and If you want to go even deeper this gets back around to answering

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God's call Answering God's call when he brings discipleship or evangelistic opportunities into your life

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Because when we talked about an immediate and complete response to God's call It's a lot more likely that you're gonna have the opportunity to share the gospel

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Plop down in front of you then you're gonna be called to pick up your life and become a missionary across the world somewhere

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These are the calls that you will be given that you have to answer to disciple somebody at Inconvenience to you and to share the gospel with somebody in a situation.

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That's not comfortable But again, this is how a healthy and spiritually mature church grows

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Let's go back to Paul one more time with Romans 10 14 as we close He says how will they believe in him whom they have not heard?

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Tell somebody about Jesus Let's pray Father we thank you again for your word.

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We thank you for the wisdom for the knowledge that you share in Scripture We thank you that you've called us

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God and we thank you for the people Throughout our Christian lives who have been there for us

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We thank you for the people that shared the gospel with us And then we thank you for the disciples that came alongside us and helped us grow in Christ God because not a single one of us

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Got here on our own Not only did you sovereignly put people in our paths

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Lord, but you gave us the Holy Spirit to guide us as well God I pray today that as we as we close our time together and as other churches are closing their time together as well

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That you would just continue to work in our hearts Lord soften our hearts to be willing to inconvenience ourselves to answer your call immediately and to answer your call completely

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Lord soften our hearts to be there for the people that need us even when it's at a time that We wish it weren't or even a person that we wish it weren't

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God So we know that each and every one of these people are your children We know that you sent your son to seek and to save the lost

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Thank you for allowing us to come alongside you in that We thank you for the grace and mercy that you've shown us and the opportunity that we have to show us to others