Mistakes We Make In Evangelism (part 4)

Mistakes We Make in Evangelism: Review of Common Errors

God, we thank you that you would send the Lord Jesus Christ who would condescend to take on human flesh, perfectly obey the law, be tried unjustly, yet never defend himself, go to the cross, suffer the death that we deserve as sinful people, and then on the third day gloriously rise from the tomb, thus showing, demonstrating, not only that he had victory over death, but that our sins have been paid for every single last one.

We thank you for that. Father, as we've been dealing with questions of evangelism, mistakes that we make, Lord, I pray that you would help us to think about our own conversations, our own attempts at evangelism.

Father, would you help us, encourage us, and focus us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, over the last few weeks, we've gone over several mistakes that we make in evangelism. Number one, I mean, that was quite lengthy, we forget to tell them about Jesus.

I mean, that seems like pretty much a slam dunk that we would do that, but we could fail, and I gave the example of the letter to my grandmother in which this self-professed, self-proclaimed evangelist failed to mention the name of Jesus in anything but a cursory fashion.

Secondly, we proffer Jesus as a solution for their problems, in other words, their bad marriage, their life problems. We present a Jesus who does not exist. Number four, we forget to tell them about sin.

I mean, it's hard to tell somebody the good news without giving them the bad news. It's law, then gospel. Number five, we talk about ourselves and our own experience. Number six, we act like we are better than they are.

I mean, that should be the easiest one to avoid, right? Because a Christian who's not marked by humility, boy, that's tough. Number seven, I don't know if I was really explicit about this one, but as I numbered these, because I added a few more here.

But number seven, lifestyle evangelism, you know, where you hope that just by your example, people will come to Christ. Man, oh man. I mean, how would you like to have somebody live on your shoulder? That would be uncomfortable.

But, you know, if they were on your shoulder, if there was like a camera, would they think, oh, this person so exudes Christ that I want to know more about him? I don't know. Number eight, we try to close the sale.

Well, I mean, treating the gospel as if it's a sales event. And all we're trying to do is meet every objection and kind of find a way to get them to make a profession of faith. Number nine, we act like we know all the answers.

And here, it's okay to say, for example, I don't know the answer to that. Can I get back to you? And sometimes, what are the questions that come your way during evangelism encounters? What are those questions all about?

Okay, lack of faith. But I mean, somebody will ask you, I mean, have you ever been trying to give somebody the gospel and they ask you something really kind of irrelevant? You know, like, well, you know, scientists say that the earth is billions of years old.

Okay. Yeah, the Bible's been changed. You know, the Bible was written by men. I mean, there are 1000 things. What are those? There's the rabbit trails there, you know, excuses, their distractions there.

Let's not talk about me. Let's talk about something else. Let's not talk about sin. Let's talk about, you know, the age of the universe. And if I could answer your question on the age of the universe, then would you believe in Christ?

And the answer is going to be no, they're going to have some other objection. The point is, when we evangelize, what we really want to talk about is sin and the Savior. Number 10, we fail to define terms.

We talked about some of those and the importance in it. If you say grace to some people, it means something entirely different than what the Bible means. For example, you say, if you use the word grace with a Mormon, grace to them is what God supplies after everything that we can do.

I mean, can you imagine a religion like that? You exhaust yourself trying to please God, and then grace picks up your slack. What does that say? That says, I mean, if you think about it, and I've seen Mormon missionaries ask this very thing, have you completely exhausted yourself in service of God?

There's no stone unturned. You've never done anything for yourself. You know, you just keep pushing. Why would God give you grace? Don't go to sleep. Don't go to the movies. Don't eat. Don't do anything.

Just go. It's not grace. Number 11, we fail to ask questions. And I think this is where we ended last week. The number one question that I like to ask people is, why do you believe that? And there was a young woman on the sheriff's department.

And I don't remember because I remember where we had the conversation, which was up in the, there's a space where the women's locker room was this way and the men's locker room was that way. And there were like mailboxes in the middle.

And that's where we were talking. And she told me what she believed. And I was like, I was trying to figure it out because it sounded like Judaism melded together with Mormonism. So I said to her, where, you know, what's your source for that?

Where can I read more about that? What, you know? And she goes, well, you know, some of my family is Mormon. Some of my family is Jewish. So I just took a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I mean, it's funny, but it's also sad.

And, you know, she's like, it makes sense to me. So in situations like that, where people are making up their own religion, which is a lot more common than you might think, right? Even people who are Roman Catholic in this area, what do they do?

Well, they don't believe what the Pope says. They don't believe what the priest says. Why? Because the last time they were in church was, you know, when Aunt Betty died or, you know, when little Johnny got married or whatever, they don't go.

They have no idea what the Roman Catholic Church is. So what do they do then? Make up their own Catholicism. Everybody's their own individual Catholic church. And here's what I like to say to people, because they'll say something along these lines, people who are like this, or I'm spiritual.

They'll say, well, I have something, my belief system works for me. Well, let me ask you something. How many people are there in the world? I mean, it seems like it's going up by the moment over here.

It's like inflation, just keeps going. If there are 8 billion people in the world, is it reasonable that 8 billion people could all have different ideas and they're all correct? No. In fact, it's not even reasonable that two people have different ideas and they're both correct.

What is that called? The law of non-contradiction. Something can't be A and B or X and Y at the same time, right? Can't have two different values that are equal. So you can't have two different truths that are both valid.

I can't believe in Christianity and Mormonism. I can't believe in Judaism and Mormonism. I can't choose from this and that and the other thing because then I essentially am what? I'm God. I set the standard of truth.

I'm going to tell God what I believe and he's going to have to like it. That's the nature of making up your own religion. God, I'm going to tell you what I believe and then I'm going to go waltzing in through the gates of heaven because I obeyed up to the standard I set.

Sounds pretty humble, doesn't it? Excellent question to ask people. Why do you believe that? What's the source for your information? And as soon as you hear, well, it's just what I believe, then you have to be, I would be like, you could say, well, can I tell you what I believe?

What's a better approach? What does the Bible say? Because if you say, well, let me tell you what I believe, then what have you done? They're going to listen to you say that and they're going to say, well, what's the difference?

You believe what you want to believe. I believe what I want to believe. What we believe is immaterial. There is a creator. What does he say? What does the Bible say? Why did Jesus Christ come to earth?

These are the questions that you have to ask because if he came to earth to be a good example, to show us how to give, to show us how to love one another, to show us how to not be judgmental, then what's the problem?

How well is that working out for us? And to, you know, wrench something slightly out of context. First Corinthians 15 would suggest that we're of all men most to be pitied. Why? Because we're still on our sins.

If all we have is a Jesus who sets a good example, a Jesus who teaches us how to share our lunches, we're smoked. We need somebody who died for our sins. And that's the message of the gospel. That's what we're talking to people about.

That same relief, that same kind of burden lifted when you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we want others to experience. And we can only do that by telling them who he is, what he did. Okay, so number 12, our 12th mistake in evangelism.

Why We Can and Must Evangelize

We don't evangelize. We intend to evangelize, but we don't. What are some of the reasons why we don't evangelize? Fear. Fear's a big one, right? What's that? People who are smarter than us. Pride. Pride is a big one.

I mean, you know, fear and pride are different sides of the same coin, aren't they? I mean, I'm really afraid of going down in flames, so I'm not going to preach the gospel. Well, okay, you can say that's fear.

I'd say it's probably pride. I don't want to get my feelings hurt, Jonathan. Hey, no, that's my excuse. I don't know what yours is. We don't interact with unbelievers. Therefore, we just think, okay, it's not on me.

But we do. I mean, each of us, you know, whether we want to admit it or not, I mean, do you, you know, do you go to the grocery store? Do you get gasoline? Do you, you know, I mean, you interact with unbelievers.

You probably just don't think of them as unbelievers. Well, that's just the guy who fills my gas tank. That's just the person who checks my groceries. I mean, we're interacting with unbelievers all the time.

That's my boss. Yes. We don't want to upset them. Okay. And, and right. We don't want to hurt people's feelings. And you know, when is that especially true? I think probably with family. I mean, family is probably the most difficult.

You want to keep the peace. I mean, and we intellectually, we think that, but the reality is we know that apart from Christ, even our cherished family members are, and they're going, they're hell bound, right?

Bill, don't bring Jesus in. Oh, sorry. Can I say this? Jesus said, I came not to bring peace or a sword. You know, we want to have a nice, peaceful, quiet Thanksgiving dinner. And Jesus said, I didn't bring peace, but a sword.

And so we're like, well, well, then you cut the turkey. There, there should be, you know, an uneasiness, I guess, with family, right? I mean, in our minds and a little bit in theirs. I mean, I had the honor of doing my father's funeral.

Nobody told me what I could or couldn't say there. The only guidance I had was from the VA man who said, you have 10 minutes because everything's on a, and I thought, okay, that's all the pressure I need.

I don't need anybody else to, you know, because I'm the only person who's going to be speaking. So I have to both eulogize my dad and give the gospel in 10 minutes. So talk well of my dad. And by the way, you can't start crying and falling into a blubbering mess because you only have 10 minutes and these people have to hear the gospel.

So how do you do that? It's not because Steve is superhuman or because he didn't love his dad or because, and I'm talking myself in the third person. It was because I could just tell myself, I have to minister to the living.

And then I can act like the six-year-old that I want to act like. I can cry for my dad, but first I have to give the good news about Jesus Christ. I have to do that. When it comes to family, I think we do ourselves a disservice sometimes by thinking, if I do that, it's going to cause dissension.

There has to be a time and a place where you can do that, where you can, you know, can I just ask you a question, mom? I love you. And I just want to know how you plan on getting to heaven. I mean, when I would ask questions like that of my mom before she died, she would say things like this.

She'd go, well, when I get to heaven, I'm going to ask God some questions. And I'm like, I just say, well, I kind of doubt that mom, you know, not the part about getting to heaven because, you know, I'm like, I don't, I don't play God in my evangelism situations, but I did think, okay, nobody's going to get to heaven and go, okay, God, there's a couple of things we got to get straight here.

But there are some really, I mean, I remember a situation I was in now, it just so happened I was in a big room full of people. But we were, let's see, how could I, well, let's say, let's say the room is like twice this size, maybe.

But there's about this number of people in there. And we were there to play a game. Now, why we're there, it doesn't really matter. But we haven't been called to order. We're not really doing anything.

I'm just talking to some friends. And I had a friend there, his name was Don. And Don had told me that he was going to a broadly evangelical church. And I thought, I mean, he would talk Christian-y sometimes.

And I thought, maybe I'd spent some time with Don. And, you know, I liked him. He and I were friends. And we, you know, exchanged emails and stuff. But that day in Chicago, he told me that he was now going to a Unitarian Universalist church.

And I said, Don, let me ask you a question. And these are good questions to ask, by the way. Not because I asked them, but because they're good, they're universal. How does that church teach that you get to heaven?

You know what he said? He almost couldn't answer. Because he was like, he kind of goes, hmm. He said, we don't really talk about that. I said, you don't really talk about that. What kind of church is that?

There was another gentleman there who's also since died. And he said, which just means to be there, I'm getting old. And this, this man was mainstream evangelical, or, you know, mainline denomination.

So I don't know if he was really, if he was saved or not. But he looked at Don, and it was just kind of like, you know, so it was an opportunity to give the gospel. And I did real quickly. But those kinds of situations, you can, you know, as you get to know people better, you can push on these things.

But I don't think we should ever be afraid of them. And, you know, I have, we forget, we're afraid, and then I have, we think we can't evangelize. Why would somebody think that they can't evangelize? Corey, they haven't been trained.

What about that? What is that? I'll tell you what it is. It's an excuse. Yeah, it's a cop out. You haven't been trained. You know, you haven't been in my 40 hour class. Steve teaches evangelism. Just follow my easy steps.

And you can convince anybody. Who can evangelize? Cheryl, can you evangelize? Okay. I like that. I'm not worthy to share the gospel. Who is worthy for such things? And sadly, he's not doing that. Why is he doing that?

Because he told us to do it. Right? He said, I have all authority. Yeah, I'm gonna mess it up or something. But you know, the reality is exactly what you said. We do the best we can, and then we trust the Lord for the response.

But this idea that we think we can't, I want to get back to that. Why is it possible for any Christian to evangelize? How's that possible, Andrew? The single most important thing we can do is to preach the gospel.

Okay. And you say, well, I'm not a preacher. Well, let me ask you this. You say you're a Christian. Why are you a Christian? You've been saved. Okay. So let's think about that. Did anything happen? Did you learn anything before you got saved?

Someone preached to you. So if I just say to someone, okay, I don't know everything, but here's what I do know. I went to church, or I was sitting in church, or I was driving with somebody in the car, or I turned on the radio, or I was, you know, here's how I got saved.

Okay. If you could tell somebody how you got saved, listen carefully. It should contain the gospel. Why? I'm sorry? Because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, right? Romans one. So if you got saved some other way, Jonathan, you're laughing.

Why is that? Yeah. I have bad news for you this morning. We need to talk. How many ways can you get saved? It's by hearing, right? Isn't that Romans 10? Faith comes by hearing. Somebody has to share the gospel.

And so you just say, this is what I heard. This is what I believed, right? Why would you believe that? Because it's what the Bible says. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, if it was good enough for Billy Graham, it's good enough for me.

The Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says. The Bible tells us who Jesus is. It tells us who we are. It tells us what Jesus did, right? And it tells us to believe on Jesus, who he is and what he did.

If you can articulate those things, you, your friend, our preacher. Congratulations. Welcome to the Steve Cooley School of Evangelism. That's all you have to do. I was convicted of my sin. I felt guilty.

I knew that before a holy God, I was condemned, that I had no hope of heaven. I spent all my life trying to earn my way to heaven. In fact, I spent my life thinking that one day I might even become God.

But when I recognized that was false, I still had this problem and it was called sin. I needed somebody to pay the price for my sin because I couldn't stop sinning. The bad news is even one sin, which is what?

What's a sin? I mean, these are terms that you have to define. What is a sin? I mean, it's any want of conformity with the law of God, right? We know this. Any want of conformity with the law. Sorry, go ahead.

Okay. It's defying God's law. It's failing to meet God's standard. God's standard of perfection. When we fail to meet it, that's called sin. How many sins does it take to keep us out of heaven? One. We know this.

And you're like, well, I can't evangelize. Yes, you can. You know, you're a sinner. You know that you have no hope apart from Christ. These truths are like, they're written on us, right? We know them.

We wake up in the morning going, man, I am hopeless apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. We go to bed at night thinking, man, I am hopeless apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. We know this, but I can't evangelize.

Yes, you can. Always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is within you. Yes. Okay. People don't believe in God. You ever had that response? I've had that response on many occasions. What do you say then?

Oh, well, you don't believe in God. Okay. Moving on. Okay. I think there's value absolutely in being, you know, transparent in loving people, in praying for them, in telling them that you're praying for them.

I do have a question though, and that's this. Does the Bible allow for the idea of atheism? You said no. Why, Dana? Okay. You have any verse in mind? He says as he opens his Bible. Let's turn to Romans one for a moment.

Yes, that's the one. Romans one, verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness, listen, suppress the truth. What does it mean to suppress the truth?

It means to hold it down, to submerge it. It's like, I mean, the best picture is probably they're trying to drown it. And listen to verse 19. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So even as we look around the world, the universe, I mean, there are a lot of things, you know, if you read the news for any amount of time, you'll see things like scientists discover, and every time they discover something, it has to do with an unexpected pattern or something that they, you know, that they're surprised by because they're looking for chaos.

Why are they looking for chaos? Because that's what they believe, you know, they believe that there was absolute chaos in the universe. And then, you know, there's a giant explosion. And somehow from that, now imagine this for a moment, because here's your evolutionary Big Bang theory, that from absolute chaos came order.

Now, you know, I think there's a law of thermodynamics that says, you know, we were heading for entropy or for chaos, rather than for order. But, you know, the Big Bang thing is that out of chaos came order.

But when we look around, we see, we notice it, and you know, here's the more, you know, the more obvious examples. Dogs have dogs, cats have cats, you know, birds fly, cats don't. Not really. Although, might be fun.

No. She says, don't be like Pastor Mike. Okay. What we see is a world that is marked by order. Why is that? He's a god of order. He's ordained order. He sustains it, he upholds it. You know, nobody ever thinks, you know, your wife's pregnant, you take her to the hospital, and nobody ever thinks, I hope it's a human being.

Why? Because we understand how things work. And they work because we have a god of order. We have a god who sustains things. But getting back to verse 20, everyone sees this, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

And listen, so they are without excuse. And I get it. You know, there are atheists out there. People who say that they're atheists. But when they appear on Judgment Day, they're not going to be able to say, I don't get judgment because I didn't believe in you anyway.

I mean, there are a lot of people, there's one famous comedian who said, you know, the Bible's stupid. It's filled with fairy tales. I don't want to say I'll bet because, you know, I did that whole thing on gambling.

But I would suggest, see what I did there? That if we ask this gentleman to explain how the world came into being, we'd wind up thinking in short order that he's an absolute fool. Why? Because it wouldn't be coherent.

It wouldn't be coherent. If you listen to evolution, you have to think to yourself, well, why are there any monkeys? And then you watch Planet of the Apes and you go, oh, well, because later on they turn into people, sort of.

There's an illogic to an atheistic worldview. And thus you see people who, and I know people like this. I really care for people like this. But there are people in the world who think that dogs, I happen to like dogs, who think that dogs have equal value to people.

That elephants have equal value to people. That the planet earth is more important than people. Is that true? Here's the difference. And we're going to get to this in a moment. Dogs, cats, whales, monkeys, no soul.

They don't have the breath of life in them from God. They have a breath of life, but not the breath of life. They don't have souls. They're not ensouled. Tim, were you going to say something? Well, I think that's good.

And I think that gets back to, you know, if you say, well, can I just tell you what I believe and why I believe it anyway? Most of the time, most of the time they're willing to at least hear you out, humor you, you know, that kind of thing.

And I forgot exactly where I was going to go from there. But I think there is a point at which, you know, you just want to preach the gospel and then trust the results. Exactly what Joni was saying earlier.

Right. Jonathan, go ahead. Right. And I think that, well, I think that's true. And, you know, there are certain things that we know, you know, from the Bible, for example, you know, exactly why is it that people have consciences?

Right. The Bible talks about it, but from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes virtually no sense. Right. You have the sense of guilt. Where does even guilt come from? You know, and again, conscience and all these things, where they come from, they're actually gifts from God, whether people want to acknowledge that or not.

And that's right. We are, in essence, playing the long game in the sense that, you know, we give people the truth and then we allow the Holy Spirit to work on them. Yeah. Well, I don't think I have to do that.

I think people inherently know that evolution is fraudulent. I mean, it's an excuse. When you read about philosophers, the brilliant men, you know, a lot of them had very sad personal lives, very immoral personal lives.

Every Human Being as an Image Bearer

But let me get to number 13, because it ties into this and ties into what Andrew was saying, too, you know, the reasons that we do evangelism. Number 13, you know, so we'll end on a baker's dozen. We forget that every human being is an image bearer.

And what that does is it does a couple things. One is it, you know, gives us kind of a morale check or, you know, ego check to think, well, wait a minute. If I look at someone and I judge them based on their appearance, you know, where they are in life, you know, I could see this person's a drunk, whatever.

I can have a tendency to just go, I'm not going to waste my time. Years ago, I was in Portland, Oregon, and I went into the mall, wasn't too far from where I was staying. And I'm looking around just thinking, dude, this place is a circus.

Look at these people. Look at how they're dressed. Look at how they, you know, do all this other stuff. And I thought, there's something wrong with my thinking. And it took me a minute, and then I just thought, okay, image bearers.

Let us make man in our own image. Genesis 1 .28. This is the mission field. And it's, you know, I don't care what people look like. I don't care what they believe. I need to have compassion on them. Why?

Because they're image bearers. And because apart from someone having compassion on me, I wouldn't know the gospel either. I wouldn't believe in Christ either. And, you know, so there's this arrogance that we have to sort of check and just think, okay, my compassion for these people needs to mirror, let's just say, the compassion that God has for us.

I mean, if God looked at us the way that we sometimes look at other people, you know, instead of compassion and love, there would be laser beams constantly pointing at us, and we'd all be smoked. We need to be mindful that every single person that we interact with, that we meet, that we see, has a soul.

And every single soul is going to give an account for what they did, what they believed with the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the issue. Everything else, what they look like, where they came from, what they're currently doing with their lives, all those things are secondary, tertiary issues.

Here's the important part. They're sinners. They need a savior. And we have the truth. We can tell them who Jesus is. It's like they have, I mean, you know, I don't want to go all big pharma on you, but it's like they have a disease.

We actually have the cure. Their disease is sin. We could tell them about the cure, the savior, Jesus, the God-man, truly God, truly man, who lived that perfect life, died a substitutionary death, rose on the third day, so that all who believe in him would have all their sins forgiven, have his righteousness imputed to them so that they might enter into glory.

Well, we have to close. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for this time, for this opportunity we've had to discuss evangelism. Father, help us to see the world around us, the people around us, for who they are, image bearers at various points of struggle with life, various depths of sin.

But Father, none of those things are ultimately relevant with regard to our goal, which is to proclaim Christ, to trust the Holy Spirit, to apply that proclamation, and to convict them of sin, and to draw them into faith with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Help us to be better evangelists and have that sort of mindset. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.