The Work of Evangelism

Alpha & Omega Ministries iconAlpha & Omega Ministries

7 views

Comments are disabled.

00:00
Well, it is a pleasure to be with you here this afternoon, and I wanted to make mention of something from the earlier prayer.
00:14
There was a particular group in Africa that was made mention of, and I was reminded as soon as I heard the prayer.
00:27
Something was said along the lines of a prayer for them to hear the gospel. They're an unreached group, that there aren't really any
00:34
Christians amongst them and things like this. And I was reminded of what it looked like, very different than where we are here, to have the opportunity of debating in the
00:48
Abu Bakr Siddiq Mosque in Erasmus, South Africa in October of 2013.
00:56
And it's a very large mosque, it's in a rather affluent area. So I mean, they had their own indoor swimming pool there, which was quite interesting.
01:06
But no chairs, well okay, they did bring in chairs to the wimpy Christians who were in attendance because the
01:15
Muslims don't do the chairs thing, and since everybody sits on the floor, then everybody takes their shoes off for obvious reasons, sort of like when
01:23
I go to my daughter's house now, you have to make sure to take your shoes off there too. So don't want to bring all that stuff in on the carpet.
01:31
But we had this mixed group of people in that mosque, and the debate was on the subject of how we have peace with God, and I remember so very, very clearly, they're much closer to me than you are.
01:48
We were – it sort of is broader but not as deep, and they're sitting right there on the ground in front of me, and I had the opportunity of walking through the discussion of the imputed righteousness of Christ, close enough to look right into their eyes, and you could just tell it was something they had never, ever heard before in their life in that context, and it was a tremendous opportunity.
02:18
And so I haven't had the opportunity of traveling internationally now since – something weird happened in March of 2020.
02:27
I'm sure it hasn't impacted you all, you haven't heard about it, but – and now
02:33
I travel back in the United States again in a fifth wheel. The world has changed a great deal, it really has.
02:41
I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to go back to those places, I'll be perfectly honest with you.
02:48
Given how the world is going, there are certain countries, such as Australia, that I'm really not sure that I would want to go back to right now, simply because those places could shut down at the drop of a sneeze.
03:03
And there were thousands of people that were trapped either outside or inside that country, and I'm not too sure if I want to do that,
03:12
I'll be perfectly honest with you. I also should note, this may be the first time you've ever seen a bow tie behind this pulpit, right?
03:19
It's a joke, folks, come on, it's all right. I actually was in Zambia in 2018, and Vodi tried to set up a debate with a local imam, and that fell apart just a few days before it was supposed to happen.
03:41
So we did a mock debate with Vodi as the imam, that one was interesting. I remember sitting there, sort of looking up like this, this giant of a man sitting next to me, standing next to me, and doing his best, but it wasn't really a good job anyway, it was so hard to, you know, but we did our best as we were there.
04:07
And the one thing I do remember very well is that the roads there are very similar to the roads here, pretty much,
04:14
I'm not sure what's going on in Houston, but it's tough on me and my truck, that's for sure.
04:22
So anyway, if you would join me in turning to the 18th chapter of Acts, I have been asked to seek to, in a sense, encourage you in your evangelism, encourage you in going out into those types of situations.
04:39
Now I don't think most people get the opportunity of standing in front of the Qibla in a mosque to engage in debate and proclamation of the gospel.
04:49
That was certainly a tremendous opportunity for me, I will admit. But there are opportunities,
04:56
I heard someone else say this, and I've said this many, many times, I don't know, I haven't done
05:02
Uber and stuff for quite some time either, but when I was doing Uber and Lyft and things like that as I would travel around, especially in London, in 2019
05:13
I flew 165 ,000 miles, I taught in South Africa, Samara, Russia, Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, spent two and a half months in London, and you'd get around either on the tube, the train, or with an
05:26
Uber in London. And I do not think it was just simply me or God's providence, but the vast majority of those drivers were
05:36
Muslims. And I've had some of the best witnessing opportunities ever in that car because they've got a vested interest in not getting rid of me,
05:49
I'm paying money for them to be in there. And especially with Muslims, what
05:58
I will do, just a little hint here that if this is something you think about doing or maybe you do travel a lot and have this opportunity, the
06:06
Muslims have something, the Sunni Muslims in particular, have something called the Hadith. The Hadith are the sayings and actions of Muhammad and his companions that were collected over the two, three hundred years after the time of Muhammad, and they comprise the filter through which the
06:24
Quran is interpreted. And so all the different, even Sunni Muslim groups, really come from the using of those stories, the
06:36
Hadith, to interpret the Quran, and you get different people emphasizing different things and what we would call denominations, they don't use that terminology, flow out of that.
06:48
And most Christians have never read the Hadith or never even heard of the Hadith. There are two major accepted collections of these things amongst the
06:58
Sunni Muslims. The Sunni make up 85 to 90 percent of the world's Muslims, so if you're talking to a
07:05
Muslim, there's a good chance they're going to be Sunni. They might be Shia, but that's a much smaller group. There are two major collections that they draw from, and when they gather on Fridays for what we would call sermons, very often what the imam is doing is narrating one of these
07:23
Hadith and commenting on it and things like that. Doing what we do with looking at the passage of scripture and exegeting it, that's just, that's not what you get in the mosque.
07:35
That's something that's much more our way of doing things. And so, over the course of about a year and a half or so,
07:44
I read all of Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. There are seven and eight volumes each.
07:52
While I was riding my bike, I recorded them to MP3 and listened to them using a computer voice.
07:58
Now, some of you would go, man, that was torturous, but I've gotten completely used to listening to things in that wonderful monotone voice from the computer.
08:09
And so, I know the Hadith pretty well, and I know many of the popular
08:14
Hadith. And so, what I'll do is I'll begin a conversation and I'll say, well, it's like that story in the
08:23
Hadith. Do you remember? And then I will narrate one of the important Hadith that lead directly and seamlessly into a presentation of the
08:32
Gospel. And I have talked about kicking doors open when a
08:38
Muslim finds a Christian that has read the Quran and then can narrate
08:44
Hadith, they want to talk to this person. And we'll get to the destination, and I'm writing down my
08:51
YouTube channel and the debates I've had with this Muslim scholar and another
08:57
Muslim scholar and so on and so forth. It's an extremely effective way, and it's so much easier to reach these people because for the vast majority of them, they want to talk about religion.
09:09
It's not like the secularist who's walking past you that you have to trip him up or something like that just to get them to even take a track or stop and talk to you for any period of time at all.
09:18
Yet, most Christians are afraid to talk to Muslims, and it's that point of fear that briefly causes that delay that very often keeps us from being able to pursue those opportunities of witness to the
09:37
Muslims. So please pray with me that Christians will get over that fear, that fear of,
09:45
I'm going to say something wrong, I don't know enough to say something to this person, or that fear of the fact that most of what most of us know about the
09:53
Muslims we learn from Fox News anyways, which is not a reliable source. It's better than MSNBC, which isn't a reliable source for anything, but it's still not where we should be getting our information from in talking to these folks.
10:07
So for Acts chapter 18, I want to look at sort of the beginning and the end as a means of hopefully providing some encouragement to you as you seek to,
10:20
I heard earlier, going down into Houston and doing street preaching at Apologia.
10:26
We have right now, we will have groups out this morning. You go
10:32
Sunday morning, yeah, we don't have a building. So we rent and we don't meet until four o 'clock in the afternoon.
10:38
And so there are groups, we just did a church plant in Salt Lake, and so there are groups from that church and there are groups from the church there in Phoenix that are outside Mormon ward chapels right now talking to Mormons.
10:53
We have a real strong focus, of course, upon dealing with the LDS people. And we're out in what's called
11:02
Mill Avenue, which is right next to the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe, numerous evenings.
11:09
We even have a group of men, more mature men, that target various men's clubs in Phoenix and stand across the street.
11:19
And it's amazing how many men going into those places know that they're slaves to their own sexual sin.
11:27
And so we do a lot of street work aside from the
11:32
Mormon Easter pageant. And the last time we were at the general conference was in October of 2019 because the
11:40
Mormons have masked up and dove directly into their basements during the entirety of the
11:48
COVID issue, and they have not had a live in -person conference. I'm hearing rumbles that they might be doing something in April, but I'm not totally certain about that.
11:59
But anyway, we are a people who go out and do a tremendous amount of this type of work.
12:05
And so in encouragement in that way, Acts chapter 18, after these things, he left
12:10
Athens. So one of the Scripture readings was from Acts chapter 17, the conclusion of Paul's talk there at the
12:19
Areopagus, where he finishes with that amazing, amazing verse, verse 31 of Acts 17, because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead.
12:42
That's always struck me because you see what happens. Now when they heard the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer.
12:49
Paul knew that as soon as he used the Greek term anastasis, that which died coming to life again, that these dualists, these
12:58
Greek philosophers would sneer at that. Because for the Greek, salvation is being freed from this physical body, not having this physical body rise from the dead.
13:11
You want to get rid of this thing. And so first of all, Paul knows at what point they're going to interrupt him and they're going to become abusive, which they really did.
13:23
But because of that, I had for years missed an amazing statement, verse 31, because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness.
13:32
Okay, so there is, God is going to judge this world. Secularism denies this, and secular people live their lives seeking to ignore the reality that there is a day of judgment coming.
13:49
He will judge the world in righteousness through a man, incarnation, whom he has appointed.
13:57
So, he gets to choose who the right judge is going to be. Having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead, and we are so accustomed to arguing about the resurrection and dealing with that subject, that I had always somehow in my mind assumed that the proof being given to all men was about the resurrection.
14:27
But that's not what it says. The resurrection is the proof of something else. He furnished proof to all men by the resurrection, and what was that?
14:38
That he was going to judge the world in righteousness by Jesus. We are so accustomed to coming up with proofs for the resurrection that we are somewhat startled when you see the resurrection as a proof, and that proof is that the day of judgment is coming.
15:02
So Paul knew, and still there were some who did hear him and followed and believed, and So after these things he left
15:11
Athens, and he went to Corinth, and he found a certain Jew named
15:17
Aquila, a native of Pontus, having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the
15:24
Jews to leave Rome. By the way, that was in AD 51, so if you want to sort of nail down the time period here, we know of this taking place from other sources.
15:35
He came to them, and because he was of the same trade, tentmaker, he stayed with them and they were working, for by trade they were tentmakers, and he was reasoning in the synagogue every
15:48
Sabbath and trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. And so here you have an apostle of Jesus Christ.
15:56
He comes to a major city that has a tremendous amount of trade going in and out of it, and hence you establish a church there, you're going to have the word going forth to places that he is not going to be able to go to himself.
16:10
But it is an exceedingly wicked city. It is filled with idolatry. There are temples on every corner.
16:19
And so there is a synagogue, and he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath and trying to persuade
16:25
Jews and Greeks. And so he is engaged in tentmaking, which takes up some of his time, but he cannot help but speak.
16:35
He goes in the synagogue every Sabbath persuading Jews and Greeks. But when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself completely to the word, solemnly testifying to the
16:47
Jews that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus was the Christ. So evidently, maybe they brought some funds with them, maybe they're doing something, to where he does not have to be distracted by secular engagement.
17:01
And so now he devotes himself completely to the word, solemnly testifying to the
17:06
Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. Eventually, as we see over and over again, given the clarity of that message, there has to come a breaking point in the synagogue.
17:20
And when they resisted and blasphemed, so we've seen this before, remember Acts chapter 13, the exact same scenario takes place there.
17:29
He shook out his garments and said to them, your blood be upon your own heads, I am clean. From now on,
17:35
I shall go to the Gentiles. And he departed from there and went to the house of a certain man named Titius Justice, a worshiper of God.
17:43
There's this whole group of people we encounter in the book of Acts, just briefly, were called God -worshippers, they were attracted by the monotheism of Judaism, but they had not gone all the way through all the ceremonies to be converted, and they were a very important source for the early church.
18:02
They were people very much ready to receive the gospel. And so a worshiper of God whose house was next to the synagogue, and Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the
18:12
Lord with all his household, as we see in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, where this is mentioned. And many of the
18:18
Corinthians, when they heard, were believing and being baptized. And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent.
18:32
For I am with you and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.
18:39
And he settled there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. And so he is given divine revelation to not be afraid, but to go on speaking, do not be silent, no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.
18:57
So he recognizes that it is God's will that he invest in this particular location.
19:07
But, while Galileo was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews, with one cord, rose up against Paul and brought him before the judgment seat.
19:15
Now, stop for just a moment. Didn't God say no one's going to attack you, but now he's being brought before the judgment seat?
19:21
Well, he had been given 18 months. And if you're going to be clear in your proclamation, in 18 months there's going to be a result.
19:33
And the Jews see this, and finally the time comes when the Jews arise with one accord against Paul, brought him before the judgment seat.
19:41
And I'm not going to go through the whole issue here, though I will say this. You will see at this point a – it's not a premonition of what's coming, but you have over the next number of centuries this historical reality of the church's encounter with the state.
20:05
And in this situation, the individual just simply doesn't care. He considers this merely to be a religious fight amongst
20:15
Jews, primarily. There was a period of time before the
20:20
Roman state came to fully understand and recognize the distinction between Christianity and Judaism that takes place in light of whether you accept
20:32
Christ as the Messiah or not. And while that was a necessary distinction to be made, it also had tremendously negative impacts upon the church later on.
20:42
What I mean by that is eventually the Old Testament became somewhat of a closed book, even within the church, because that connection became broken, especially when a man named
20:54
Origen a few centuries down the road would introduce the idea that there was an allegorical meaning to the
20:59
Old Testament, its literal meaning was irrelevant. And it really honestly took until the time of the
21:05
Reformation for serious, meaningful, exegetical work to be done on the Old Testament again that was considered to be truly spiritual and an appropriate thing to do.
21:15
And so they basically are driven away from the judgment seat. Gallio's not concerned about the fact that violence breaks out in front of him.
21:26
And Paul, having remained, verse 18, Paul, having remained many days longer, took leave of the brethren and put out to sea for Syria, and with him were
21:34
Priscilla and Aquila. In Sancria he had his hair cut for he was keeping a vow, well, let's not get into that one today, and they came to Ephesus and he left them there.
21:43
Now he himself entered the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews, once again, and when they asked him to stay for a longer time, he did not consent, but taking leave of them and saying,
21:52
I will return to you again if God wills, he set sail from Ephesus. And when he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church and went down to Antioch.
22:01
So he's going back across some of the places he's already been. Having spent some time there, he departed and passed successfully through the
22:09
Galatian region. That would have been interesting, depending on how you time the writing of Galatians.
22:16
And Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples. Now here's what I want to focus on. Now a certain
22:21
Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man, came to Ephesus and he was mighty in the scriptures.
22:35
Mighty in the scriptures. He had great ability. It's the term that you're familiar with, dunitas.
22:43
He had great ability in the scriptures. Here's a man who had studied them, undoubtedly probably knew them in their original languages.
22:52
This man had been instructed in the way of the
22:58
Lord. Now it's interesting, that term, to be instructed in the way of the Lord. You've heard of the catechumens.
23:05
These were individuals who were being instructed in the early church before being brought into full membership within the church, and that's always been a challenging issue for the church to know how to handle these things in regards to membership and participation, the ordinances and things like that.
23:25
That's the term that's used here. He was instructed. The Greek term there is where we get catechumen.
23:33
He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, but we're going to find out in only a part of that, because it says, and being fervent or burning or boiling in spirit.
23:49
This is a fascinating man. He knows the scriptures and he is fervent in spirit.
23:54
He is not the type of person who can just sit down and not be involved in spiritual things.
24:05
He was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John.
24:13
Now it's interesting because in Acts chapter 19, Paul is going to encounter a group of John's disciples.
24:22
And so clearly what had happened over the years is there had been people who had sort of in a pilgrimage sense had come to Israel, had come to the area around Jerusalem, had encountered the ministry of John the
24:36
Baptist, as brief as it was, had been deeply influenced by that ministry, and that had gone back to their lands, having heard the message of repentance and prophecies.
24:50
And had these men heard John's preaching once John had come to know who Jesus was?
24:58
When he said, behold, the Lamb of God, were they there? We're not told, but the point is they only had a part of the message, a part of the message.
25:13
He was accurate. He was teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John.
25:24
And he began to speak out boldly in the synagogue. And so why always the synagogue?
25:33
Because this is where people are already familiar with the scriptures. They already have that foundation there.
25:42
And what he would know would basically be only what John had been able to say, maybe some prophecies concerning the coming of the
25:52
Messiah. We don't know. But he would not have had the great advantage that the apostles had, and that is that period of time after the resurrection, where the first thing that Jesus does is he opens their minds to understand the scriptures and how from Moses all the way through they had prophesied of him.
26:14
And so it would be fascinating to know just what level of knowledge he did have. But whatever it was, he was accurately speaking about Jesus, but not the whole message.
26:26
And so he speaks out boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.
26:40
Now I want you to think for a moment. What did that look like? What did that look like?
26:47
I personally think that despite all the glowing things that have been said about Apollos at this point, this verse gives us,
26:57
I think, the deepest insight into how mature a man he was and how godly a man he was.
27:07
Because if you are a man of mighty speech, if you have a great deal of knowledge of your field, if you are already accustomed to speaking boldly, and two tentmakers come along and say, let us give you the rest of the story, what's the temptation for almost any single one of us to look down upon such people?
27:37
What can you give me that I don't already have? They're not bold in speech. They're tentmakers.
27:45
And yet there is this willingness, this humility in Apollos that instead of simply turning them off and pushing them out of the way, they explained to him the way of God more accurately.
28:03
They gave him the rest of the information. Certainly all of those passages that Jesus himself had taught his disciples as he's walking along the road to Emmaus, those two disciples, and he opens the
28:18
Scriptures to them. What a treasure that was to the early church. I've often thought how wonderful it would be to be those disciples.
28:27
But the reality is we have the New Testament. We know what text. Just look at the preaching of the early church.
28:34
Look at the writings of Peter and Paul, and we know. So, and yet, how many of us, honestly, let's just be honest with ourselves, this is a good self -check question, how many of us would feel confident that with just what we call the
28:57
Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, could we demonstrate that Jesus truly is the
29:04
Messiah? Well, we know Isaiah 53, and that's a really good place to go. But how many more of those messianic prophecies would we be able to confidently bring forth and share with people in that type of a context?
29:22
They did not have the New Testament yet. This was a period where the message that we take for granted is being orally proclaimed, but it has not yet been written down.
29:35
I mean, maybe Galatians has been written, maybe, you know, it could be that Mark existed at this point in time.
29:43
It depends on the order in which they were written, and I know scholars think they know, but personally,
29:49
I don't think that we really do know the order in which they were written. But the point is we have this entire collection, and we need to recognize that possession of the whole of Scripture, for the vast majority of the history of the church, has been the purview of the church and not individuals.
30:12
I mean, there's some people who've done some studies as to what it would cost just simply for the scribe and for the materials to have possessed an entire copy of the
30:28
Scriptures, like Codex Sinaiticus, for example. How much would that have cost?
30:35
And the average Christian would not even come close to having the ability to possess something like that in those centuries.
30:45
And it was literally not until the printing press comes around, and even then the
30:50
Reformation comes around, that you begin to have what you and I have, where people could possess in one volume the entirety of the
31:00
Scriptures together. And so when you look back on people, not only in history but even people in the
31:09
New Testament, try to remember you are not only standing on the backs of giants, you have access to far more light than they had as far as just the expanse of Scripture.
31:23
Think of how many passages of Scripture we listened to just before the sermon started.
31:31
That would have been very difficult for people to do for a very, very long time. We are greatly blessed, and to whom much is given, much is required.
31:39
So he hears, and when he wanted to go across to Achaia, the brethren encouraged him and wrote the disciples to welcome him.
31:50
And when he had arrived, he helped greatly those who had believed through grace, for he powerfully refuted the
31:58
Jews in public, demonstrating by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.
32:05
So here we find out about this man, and notice how he helps greatly those who had believed through grace.
32:19
What an amazing phraseology. They had believed through grace, and yet, having believed through grace, they could be helped greatly by the means of grace.
32:36
And one of the means of that grace, in this instance, was a man that God prepared.
32:43
He gave him the mind. He gave him the ability to speak. He gave him the ability to think and to react, and he gave him humility, so that he could be accurately instructed in the ways of God concerning the prophecies of Jesus.
33:05
And so he comes to Achaia, and he powerfully refuted the
33:11
Jews in public. Everything about Apollos. He could have taken pride in, but he didn't.
33:20
He recognized that was all the result of grace, but he didn't just sit back.
33:27
He powerfully refuted the Jews in public, demonstrating by the
33:32
Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. Now, someone might say, well, we're probably not going to be heading over to the local synagogue.
33:44
We're going to be talking to pagans. We're going to be talking to secularists.
33:52
Even in the Bible Belt, there's not a lot of people who know the Bible very well anymore. There might be,
34:01
I would assume that especially in the non -city portions of Texas, you're going to find a little more knowledge of the
34:09
Bible than you would in anywhere near Seattle.
34:16
There are Christians in Seattle. I've met some. They're hard to find, but there are some Christians in Seattle. God has
34:23
His people everywhere. But in your context, you're in a big city.
34:31
And we are living in a day where we are in transition, and that's what's bothering older folks like me.
34:43
I'll be perfectly honest with you. The ground is shaking under our feet.
34:48
I mentioned last evening in talking to some of the young men that one of the things I struggle with is that when
34:54
I grew up, each year was pretty much like the year before and was pretty much like the year after.
35:03
You did not have this rapid earthquake -style change in society.
35:12
But especially my grandchildren, but even my children have grown up in a situation where you can expect major changes morally, ethically, in our people in six months' time.
35:31
And for me, that's just absolutely disorienting. We developed our ways of doing ministry in a different time, and we're struggling.
35:42
Older folks like me are just simply struggling. And some people have just lost their footing, to be perfectly honest with you.
35:49
And some have become somewhat desperate. I won't name names, but there are those who – let's just say we had a whole lot more unanimity in certain conferences only 15 to 20 years ago.
36:05
And now all of a sudden, people that we used to be very much together with for the gospel have divided up because many of them have seen this change and have tried to react to it so swiftly and so quickly that they've sought to adopt some of the very attitudes and perspectives of the world, and it has led to some real issues.
36:31
But you're going to be dealing with secularists, and how do you – you can't even – many secularists are extremely apathetic about spiritual things.
36:41
We – all the surveys that are done today, what's the group that's growing the fastest? The nuns.
36:47
Not the N -U -N -S. That's what I would have thought when I was a kid. The nuns. No, they're not growing fast.
36:53
The nuns, N -O -N -E -S, the people with no religious commitment whatsoever. But now
37:00
I'm noticing something. For a long time it's been, okay, have to try to get past apathy, have to almost use – when we'd pass out tracts, even when we were talking to the
37:12
Mormons, and I've seen a lot – you want to see changes? Wow, Mormonism is changing rapidly.
37:18
Not so much the theology, but the people of the church changing rapidly. And we would have to develop lines to use to get
37:28
Mormons to take tracts. When I first went to Salt Lake City, oh my goodness, the first time we went to Salt Lake for the general conference, there were only three of us.
37:38
I did something really wrong on that trip, by the way. I've done lots of wrong things as far as methodology goes down through the years.
37:45
And what we did, we were so young that we took off Friday night,
37:52
Friday afternoon, drove through the night to Salt Lake City, stood there all day passing out tracts, got back in the car, drove through the night back to Phoenix Sunday morning.
38:08
That's stupid. Okay, that's just dumb. I don't know how we got back in one piece without wrapping ourselves around an oak tree someplace.
38:17
But the Lord takes care of young dumb people, so that's why any of us are still alive and we're old dumb people.
38:26
But we took a guy with us, his name was Dave, who hadn't really studied
38:31
Mormonism, but he was gung -ho. And he got all of his training in the car on the way up.
38:37
That's not how to do it, okay? That was not smart. And my recollection is he never went up there again because after about two hours standing outside the temple with lines of Mormons waiting to talk to us,
38:51
I heard, Jim, and I turned behind and he is up against a wall and there is a feeding frenzy of Mormons slowly taking parts off of his body.
39:01
And I waded in and rescued him and he pretty much got right into my hip pocket for the rest of the day and just stayed right there.
39:10
I probably ruined the poor man, so that was the dumb thing that I did. But I appreciated his willingness to go up there. The point is the
39:15
Mormons wanted to talk. They really wanted to have conversation. Today, you have to almost trip them up, just like the secularists.
39:25
That's how much things have changed in only about 30, 35 years. Mormonism is undergoing a tremendous amount of change.
39:32
So we have noticed that now the apathetic stream is changing a little bit and you're now getting a strong negative response.
39:51
Why? Because we're now entering into a younger generation that has been thoroughly secularized.
39:57
Their parents are secular. And now the religious aspect of secularism is coming to the fore.
40:06
Don't be deceived. Our society wants to try to tell you that, well, you've got your religion, but secularism needs to be the view of the state because that's not religious.
40:19
Don't even let them get away with that for a moment. Secularism has its sacraments, its creeds, its fundamental assertions, and the religious aspect of it is becoming clearer and clearer.
40:36
You stand on a street corner today. Think with me for a second. Let's say you go down to—let's say something's happening outside.
40:45
I happen to—the RV park I'm at is real near Astro Stadium. That is where the
40:51
Astros play, isn't it? Just sort of south of downtown down there. And let's say something's going on there, so you all decide to go down and start passing out tracks.
41:01
And let's say what you're distributing is just simple gospel literature. If a group of people come up to you today, especially younger people, and you seek to hand them literature, and they ask you, what is this?
41:17
What is going to be one of the very first questions that they are going to hit you with as to why you're doing this and where you're coming from?
41:28
What do you think about homosexuality, same -sex marriage, transgenderism?
41:37
Might bring up reproductive rights. Talk about twisting the language.
41:44
And before you can talk about anything else, before you can start raising issues of heaven or hell or anything, they have their standards, their religious standards.
42:00
And this is their ethical system. And if you don't hold to their perspective on these things, they will accuse you of moral turpitude.
42:14
You are not worthy for me to listen to you because you do not stand in the right place on these issues.
42:23
Now, obviously that means we have to be prepared. When Apollos goes into synagogue, he knows what the issues are going to be.
42:35
And he is prepared. He knows what the scriptures have to say. And notice that he demonstrated by the scriptures.
42:45
You might say, well, that's easy. Okay, yeah, he's talking. He's in a synagogue. They have the scriptures there.
42:51
They have the scrolls there. That's what a synagogue was all about. How does that work for us today?
42:56
Folks, the power of God has not changed. It has not changed. Now, the person to whom you're speaking may be far more ignorant of the scriptures than the
43:12
Jews were of their scriptures, obviously. But does that change the reality that what you have in the scriptures is the word of God?
43:20
I sometimes fear that we, in our day, start thinking like the rest of the world, and we lose confidence in the scriptures and the power that they have as the scriptures.
43:33
I'm not talking about some kind of mantra -like thing where just as long as you quote a scripture, when you are seeking to glorify
43:43
God and to present the claims of Christ in our day, the
43:49
Spirit of God will honor the proclamation of his word just as strongly today as he ever did in the past.
44:00
If we don't believe that, I don't know why we're going out to do anything. His word remains his word.
44:10
The person to whom you're speaking, well, what is your contact with that person?
44:16
I know you all know this, but let me remind you. The point of contact with the person that you'll be speaking to on the street is not a neutral ground.
44:30
You are not seeking a neutral ground. There is no neutral ground for them.
44:35
They have their own worldview, and they will interpret things in light of their worldview. You have your worldview, and you will interpret things in light of your worldview.
44:43
And if Jesus is who Jesus claimed to be, there is no neutral ground because anything that is a fact,
44:53
Jesus made it a fact. So whatever you do, get away from the myth of neutrality.
45:01
There is no such thing as neutrality. And don't be seeking, and don't lie to people and say, let's come up with a neutral place where we all can just sort of stand together.
45:10
No, there is no such thing. The point of contact, and the reason the word of God remains powerful, is that they're made in the image of God.
45:23
They're made in the image of God, and therefore the word of God remains the mechanism that the spirit of God uses to accomplish his purposes.
45:33
Do we really believe that? When we look at the cheesy methods that some people come up with to try to trick people into listening to the gospel, do we really believe that the word is sufficient?
45:53
If you are ready, you have a tract, and your tract is addressing, maybe you are passing on a tract, specifically on God's right to define humanity so that we would flourish appropriately.
46:07
Are you ready to back that up? Are you ready to be an Apollos? Do you have scripture memorized in context, not just as a proof text?
46:20
What's really important when you use scripture in that way is that you're able to give the background, give the context, and then give what the word of God says and apply that to that person.
46:34
And what are you dependent upon in that situation? You have to be dependent upon the spirit of God.
46:41
Isn't that the case in any situation? You're talking to your own kids, you're dependent upon the spirit of God, aren't you? Can we trust that the spirit of God will do as God pleases and glorify the proclamation of the gospel?
46:58
Remember something, folks, and I'm running out of time, so I'll be brief.
47:06
Remember, back when we would pass out tracts, we'd get to the end of an evening, we'd be walking back toward our cars, and here's one of our tracts on the sidewalk, and it's got footprints all over it, and it's been ground into the ground, and, you know, we'd pick it up.
47:25
We didn't want to be charged with littering. We'd pick it up, and I'd pick it up, and I'd go, a fallen warrior, a fallen warrior.
47:35
Was that wasted? No. No, it was not wasted. Any time you seek to proclaim
47:44
God's truth, even if it is rejected, God is glorified in that event.
47:52
And so you may go home more times than not feeling like you've just spent two hours on the sidewalk and accomplished nothing.
48:07
Don't think that way. Let me give you one story, and we'll close. Years ago, at the
48:14
General Conference in Salt Lake City, we were having a particularly good year in the sense that we were really getting a lot of tracts out and having good conversations, and we don't know who specifically this was, but I remember what had happened.
48:31
Eventually, when we first started talking to Mormons, even the kids knew what Mormonism believed. So you didn't have to carry a bunch of books with you to demonstrate, well, actually, this is what you believe, but that started changing in the late 90s.
48:45
And so I would have a pack with me, not really a backpack, but something on my side, and I had already given away my copy of Letters to a
48:55
Mormon Elder to some Mormon, and for some reason, I don't know why,
49:00
I had stuck a copy of a book that I had written on the doctrines of grace, on Calvinism, called
49:05
God's Sovereign Grace, in my little pack. And I had this conversation with this person,
49:11
I don't remember the details of it, but I do remember saying, well, I don't have my book on Mormonism, but since I think we had been talking about salvation,
49:20
I offered them my little book. Decades later, you know you're getting old when you can tell stories where decades later, decades later,
49:36
I get a call from Utah, and a dear pastor friend up there of an
49:42
Orthodox Presbyterian church tells me the story of how he's gotten a call from a woman up north of Salt Lake City, and she's telling him that she's trying to find a church to go to, and she says, my husband went to General Conference decades ago, and he came back with this book that he says he got from someone staying outside the conference.
50:14
He never read it. Stuck it on the shelf. And I picked that book up, and I started reading it.
50:26
And I realized what it was saying was true. Realized this is not a book for Mormons. This is a book on the doctrines of grace.
50:33
That's all it was intended to be. She says, I read it, but I can't find any churches around here that believe what it says.
50:42
And somebody told me, you might be able to help me. There is a church in that city today because that woman was converted through that method, and it took years for it to happen.
50:59
Took years for it to happen. One night after we were passing out tracts to the
51:06
Mormons in Mesa, and there had been some pretty strong conversations that night, a cop came up to us.
51:16
So we were a little worried. A cop came up to us, and he said, I just want to tell you something.
51:23
I'm very thankful for the way that you've represented our Lord out here. You've really glorified him in how you've given responses.
51:30
He was a Christian, and he was standing far, far away. And there were many times I'd be sitting there, and I'd have this group around me, and I'd sort of look past them, and there'd be somebody under a tree, somebody in the shadows listening.
51:44
You never know. You never know. Do not become weary in well -doing.
51:51
As long as you are speaking the truth clearly, God will honor that proclamation.
52:03
So go out. Be Apollos'. Be prepared. Be prepared.
52:09
There's nothing wrong with preparation. Some people think that's unspiritual. No. Be prepared. Go out, and bless this city with the message of light.
52:21
It's God's choice what he's going to do with that message. It's our blessing to be the ones to deliver that message.