School Of Evangelism Session # 6

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Sunday School School Of Evangelism Session # 6 Date: 03/27/2022 Teacher: Pastor Brian Garcia

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And so, to recap, how do we honor Christ as holy?
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How do we honor Christ as holy? What scripture comes to mind? Yes, Gretchen, that's right.
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First Peter 3 .15. Honor, sanctify, set apart Christ as Lord in your hearts.
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Always bring prepared for a defense, the Greek word there being used, and that's what leads us to the next recap question.
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What does the Greek word apologia mean? Yes, defense.
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In what way does the Christian defend the gospel? There's a great
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C .S. Lewis quote, I think it is, that says, the truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it, you just have to let it loose.
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And so, in what way do we defend the gospel? In what way do we defend it?
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And what, anyone know what the, kind of the root meaning of the word apologia means? I know it means a defense, but anyone can go any deeper and elaborate on that word if they have that knowledge?
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What does that mean? A response in a legal setting, right?
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It's a response almost in a legal setting where you are making a case or a defense for your side and it's very similar to a court proceeding where you have two sides that are presenting an argument and you are to make your case, your apologia for the gospel, okay?
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So we don't defend it in that the gospel needs defending because it needs to be coddled or protected in a certain way, but instead we're defending it by making our case for it.
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And another understanding of, anyone have another understanding of apologia?
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Before I say it, anyone else?
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Conley? Yeah. So what's the connotation of that?
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Yeah, I don't know. Okay. From reason, yeah.
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Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well you're on the right track and I think one of the unique meanings of that word is to bring out the reasoning, to bring out the reason of something.
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And it's interesting that the apostle Paul in Acts 17, he reasoned from the scriptures. He reasoned from the scriptures with the
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Jews, showing that Jesus was the Christ. He was doing apologetics. He was reasoning with them.
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And so we can reason with individuals using the faith once and for all and trust it to the saints.
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And so by what authority do we use, what authority do we use to defend the faith?
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What authority do we use? Is it our own? Do you have an authority that I don't know about?
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Other than the authority of Christ. Christ is the one who has all authority.
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That's gonna be the topic of today's sermon. And Christ is the authoritative word. It is he who enables us to defend, to make an apologia for the
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Christian faith. Now in order to defend a faith, do we have to know every objection to the faith?
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That's a pretty easy one, right? What do you think? Do you need to know every objection that there is to the
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Christian faith in order to make an apologia? How many of you have ever studied
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Jehovah's Witnesses? Raise your hand. A few of us. How many of you have studied
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Mormonism? Raise your hand. Okay, it's always the same people. But the point is, right, that you don't need to know everything about everything in order to make a defense.
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Similarly to the Secret Service is the agency of government that actually investigates not just presidential threats, but they also investigate things like money laundering, and they also investigate things like counterfeiting money.
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And one of the trainings of a Secret Service agent who specializes in counterfeiting is they will look and they will examine and learn the ins and outs of a true dollar bill.
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They'll know everything that is supposed to be there. And so when they encounter a fake, it's just by process of elimination.
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This is not right, this is not there. They don't have to examine every single fake in order to understand which one is the genuine article.
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In the same way that we as Christians don't have to examine every single faith or every single worldview in order to understand what is true and what is right and what it is that we are to defend as Christians.
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Does that make sense? Yeah, amen. Any thoughts so far on the recap questions? That's a great point.
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That's a great point. And it is a divine obligation to honor the Lord by providing an apologia, stating not your case, but his case, defending his truth, not yours.
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That's right. Amen, that's right. And they were given the strength of the
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Holy Spirit to be able to know these truths and defend them. Now, how can we prevent falling into the trap of foolish questioning?
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First of all, let's think about that. What is a foolish question? Everyone says that there's no such thing as a bad question, but what is a foolish question or foolish questioning in the context of sharing the gospel?
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How do you know God exists, right? Now, that might seem to the normal person, well, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable question.
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But the truth is, Romans one, the word of God is true, is it not? And the Bible says everyone has a knowledge of God.
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Everyone knows there's a creator. And so all they do is they suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
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And so what we have to do as Christians is bring out the foolishness, the error. The Bible says in Psalm 14, one, the fool says in his heart, there is no
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God. So it is a foolish question coming from a fool who needs to be convicted of his sins and see the holiness of God.
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Any other example of a foolish question or foolish line of questioning? That's right, that's right.
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And so most atheists or agnostics, they'll borrow from a Christian worldview. Some of the buzzwords in our culture today is, for instance, especially during election season is universal healthcare, right?
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And when you ask someone, you push them, why do you support universal healthcare? It's because it's a basic, fundamental human right.
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Where does that come from? Is that granted by government? Because if that's the case, then it actually isn't a fundamental human right.
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So who's the one who's giving us this innate right based upon our humanity? And they're borrowing, they have to borrow from a
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Christian worldview in order to answer that question correctly. So how can we prevent falling into the trap of foolish questioning?
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How do we not fall into that trap? Gretchen? That's right, that's right.
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Amen. That's right, amen.
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That's right, well said. That's right, that's right.
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Yeah, so we don't wanna fall for their bait, which is usually some form of argumentation that brings them away from the seriousness of their condition before God.
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And then that will usually be the case is when you're going through the 10 Commandments, because we're using kind of the way of the master as a template.
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And when we're going through the way of the master, and we start to show them their conviction of sin, their need for the
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Savior, they'll start saying, well, I don't really trust the Bible. Or I don't really even know if there is a
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God. And then they'll start trying to get you into a tangent to get away from the issue which is at hand, which is the issue of sin.
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All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All are in need of a Savior. And so we bring them back to that point and say, those are great questions and I'd love to answer them.
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But right now, this is what's at hand, is your state before God.
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And granted, if these things are true, what would be your response to these things, right?
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And so, and you know what? And that's how the Holy Spirit convicts people of sin. He will convict them based upon bringing them to a knowledge of sin through the
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Word of God. And so that's what we wanna make sure our ministry's focused on. Our ministry ought to have an aspect of apologetics, but apologetics in and of itself is not what's gonna bring people to Christ, okay?
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So what I mean by that is your ability to use intellectual prowess in order to overwhelm them with data or information or historical events is not gonna bring them to a conviction of their sins, okay?
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I've never met an atheist turn Christian through debating William Lane Craig or something, you know what
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I'm saying? And so you need to bring them back to the heart of the matter, which is the matter of the heart and that's what the gospel addresses.
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What is the believer's presupposition? We've kind of touched on this already a little bit, but what is the believer's presupposition?
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Does anyone know what a presupposition is? Can someone define that?
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Right, mm -hmm. Correct, anyone else?
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Foundational assumptions, right? So everyone has some foundational assumptions about, first of all, themselves, the cosmos, the nature of the world, maybe even politics and things of that nature.
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Everyone has a preset foundation by which, or a lens by which they see the world.
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Another word for this in a theological sense is hermeneutics. It's the lens by which we interpret things.
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And so everyone has a hermeneutics. Everyone has a presupposition about the world. And the question is, is what is your presupposition as a
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Christian? So what is your presupposition? Yes, Gretchen?
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Amen. There is a God and he's revealed himself in the self -revelation of Holy Scripture.
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Yes? That's right, someone did have to make everything.
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It's clear, isn't it? Romans 1 .20 says it is clear by the things that were created.
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And so our presupposition is that the Bible is the word of God, amen?
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That's our presupposition. We start and we end with that presupposition that the Bible is true, that the
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Bible is the word of God, is inspired, profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for setting matters straight, for disciplining and righteousness, that the man of God may be fully competent in every good work, amen?
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And so that's our presupposition, that we believe the Bible is the word of God and it is able to lead us into all truth.
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Now how do you lead someone to Christ using apologetics? You kind of touched on it earlier,
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Ken. How do we use apologetics? If you look at the third to last paragraph of that lesson, it says while apologetics, arguments for God's existence, creation versus evolution, et cetera, are legitimate in evangelism, they should merely be baked with the law of God being the hook that brings the conviction of sin, right?
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So we could use this as a means to get someone's attention, to answer some of their questions, but ultimately it's not the heart of the matter that's gonna convict them of sin.
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Rather, we bring them to a knowledge of sin through the word of God and present the gospel. The gospel,
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Romans 116, is the power of God onto salvation, okay? It's not your intellectual prowess, it's not apologetics, it's not any, it's the gospel that saves.
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It's the gospel that's the power of God on salvation. So we have to be faithful in presenting the gospel in helping individuals come to see the knowledge of sin and the need for Jesus Christ.
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Any thoughts or questions on that? Excellent. All right, we're gonna continue into chapter five this week now.
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And there was no homework for chapter four. Technically, you guys are all good, you're up to date, you're caught up.
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And this chapter's gonna be an interesting one because I think it's one that has much application for us today as Christians, because oftentimes when
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I'm speaking to Christians, one of the objections that Christians give as to why they do not evangelize, why they do not do or partake in the work of evangelism, is fear.
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And so we're gonna address that problem today. I'm gonna read through some of these paragraphs and we'll have some discussions.
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One of the most common reasons Christians do not regularly and boldly proclaim their faith is because they either consciously or unconsciously have become afraid of people's response and ridicule.
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The fear of man is a common killer of Christian ministry, for it introduces fear and anxiety in the believer and steals the boldness of the proclaimer.
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It is very easy to get stuck in fear, that is why the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, who was a young pastor and church planner, for God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self -control, 2
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Timothy 1 .7. In many parts of the world, Christians face intense persecution, bodily harm for proclaiming
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Jesus. There are more Christian martyrs today than any point in church history. Yet in North America, Christians, although often ridiculed, endure unparalleled privilege and access than anywhere else in the world.
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As believers in Jesus living in North America, we seldom fear for our lives or physical safety, yet it is in the
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American church that is the most inactive and the least proclaiming part of the global church in terms of local gospel ministry.
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The good news is that we can overcome the fear of man by believing God's word in this area. Now this is very common in Christendom today in North America.
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We as Christians, we do a great job of exporting our missionary work, our doctrine, our beliefs, our practices.
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Amongst evidence of that, you'll find it in Africa, where the prosperity gospel, a deep charismatic
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Pentecostalism has infiltrated many parts of Africa. And so we've done a great job at exporting a lot of our stuff.
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And also what's being seen as well in missions today is this, if you've ever been part of a youth group, it's very common for youths to be organized to go to a youth retreat or a missions, like in Haiti or Mexico or somewhere around the world where they can do ministry for a week.
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And yet seldom do youth ministries or church ministries focus on doing intense evangelical outreach in their own backyards.
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Because the model that we have in North America is we build a building and we expect people to come.
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You know that phrase, if you build it, they will come. That is not a biblical mindset.
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We do not want just to inhabit a space or a building. We wanna be a church that is active in searching and seeking that which is lost, just like the ministry of Jesus Christ.
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That we're not a ministry that is insular, that we only look to each other within the four walls of the church, but that we're also actively looking for the lost sheep of Jesus Christ.
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And so that is part of the missionary heart that we all have to have. And we don't have to go across the world in order to express our missionary heart and desire.
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We can do it by starting right here in our own backyard. I would go as far as to say that there is probably no greater mission field in North America than here in Silicon Valley.
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Yeah, right, amen. This is one of the most unchurched areas in the entire
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North American continent. I mean, that's amazing. Yes. That's right, that's right.
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And so, you know, we're in the heart of Babylon. We need to, you know, I'm reminded of when Jeremiah, the prophet
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Jeremiah is receiving instruction for the people of God in exile. And he says in Jeremiah 29 to seek, the
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Lord says to the people of God, to seek the welfare of the city to which I have sent you.
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Because in its welfare, you will find your welfare. And so we are called to seek the welfare of our city.
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And we do so by proclaiming the gospel of life onto it. Amen. And so fear not, because we're gonna help you and show you from scripture, why we ought not to be afraid of partaking in this missionary work even here in Silicon Valley.
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Next paragraph says, we must not be afraid of the opinions of lost men. Instead, we must embrace the calling of the apostle
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Paul when he said, therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God.
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I hope it is known also to your conscience. The answer to the fear of man is the fear of the
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Lord. We fear God in the way that a child has a healthy fear of displeasing his father. Likewise, because we love the
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Lord and desire to keep his commandments, we do all that we can to persuade others of the hope of the good news of Jesus Christ.
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As Paul admonishes Timothy, this could only be done by the spirit that God gives, for it is a spirit that will lead us, empower us, and give us a sound mind to be able to share this gospel.
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And I love that mindset, that fear can be a motivating factor.
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You know, two of the most powerful emotions that humans can experience is love and fear. And we as Christians are called to have a fear, not of men, but of the
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Lord. We ought to fear the Lord in holiness and splendor. And it's a fear of God.
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I'm more afraid of displeasing God than upsetting lost men. You should have that same heart and desire.
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I am more afraid to displease my creator, my savior, than I am the opinions of lost men.
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Next part of that next paragraph, but it isn't merely the fear of the Lord that is the answer to getting over the fear of man or stage fright, but it's also his love.
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Paul wrote concerning the work of the ministry, for the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died.
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Christ's love compels us to be bold proclaimers of the gospel, for how could it not? The Lord Jesus demonstrated the greatest act of love and evangelism by his life, death, and resurrection.
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He demonstrated his love and kindness as we his disciples have the awesome privilege of making his love known to the world.
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Christ's love controls every aspect of our lives. We must let that light shine before man regardless of what they think or how they react.
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And so how, what's the other side of fear? It's love, right?
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And the Bible says the love of Christ compels us, controls us, motivates us to do this work.
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And so the love of Christ and the fear of Christ are two very healthy realities that the
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Christian must embrace. We wanna fear displeasing our Father in heaven, we must also be compelled by his love to act.
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And so it's the same way as a marriage relationship. You ought to fear displeasing the one you love in this world most.
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There ought to be some sort of fear there, a healthy fear. You also ought to be motivated not simply by fear in order to do that which is right, but by love because you love them.
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You're in covenant relationship with your spouse. You ought to be motivated by love in order to serve them and to minister to them best.
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And so both emotions, once biblically understood, can be great motivating factors to this principle of evangelism.
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And it says practically speaking with these biblical principles in mind, there are some things to consider when trying to overcome our fears of evangelism and sharing our faith.
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One thing we need to do in order to break the bondage of fear is practicing our overcoming of our fear.
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For instance, if a person has a fear of public speaking, they can begin by reciting or reciting a line, by reciting a reading or line in the mirror, then in front of a close family member or friend, then gradually with time practice prayer and discipline, we will be less inclined to fear.
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It takes strength and courage to share your faith. And the more you do share your faith, the more accustomed you will grow and the more skill you will develop.
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So here's some practical tips for you on how to overcome what's often called in the world stage fright, right?
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Well, there's a fear of public speaking. There's a fear of talking to people about controversial matters such as religion.
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And one of the easy ways of beginning to overcome that is by practice. You have to practice the overcoming of your fears, right?
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And so practical example would be again, standing before a mirror and just reciting a speech.
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When I first started to learn how to preach, I grew up Jehovah witness. And so my first public speech was when
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I was 12 years old, actually probably 11 years old, I was 11 or 12. And one of the things that I had to do in order to get things right is, for my first public speech,
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I never looked up once. I just stayed in the passage the whole time. I never looked at the people in the audience because that would have just freaked me out and I would have just gone running.
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And that was one of the feedback that I was given at the Kingdom Hall was, you gotta make eye contact, you gotta look at the audience.
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And so I had to start practicing that and I started to practice it with my mom and my siblings and reciting a speech and learning that eye contact, learning how to speak publicly.
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And so there's a lot of practical things in there that is for us to learn as well. Yes. Oh yeah.
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I've been knocking on doors since I was two years old. So yeah, that's right.
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That's right. I have very distinct memories of having a little bow tie and slipping pamphlets underneath people's doors in their apartments.
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Yeah. Oh yeah.
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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, we started evangelism very young.
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And again, Joel Winnison have a lot of false doctrines. They're not
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Christianity, they're Twistianity. They take everything that we believe and put a twist to it. But one of the things that I've come to appreciate and that you should too, is their consistency and methodology.
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I think they have a consistency in methodology that I think we can learn from. Same thing with the Mormons. This week,
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I put my evangelism stuff to practice. And one of the most terrible places you can place me is in a government agency like the
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DMV. And that's where I had to spend a couple of hours of my week was at the
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DMV trying to get my card registered and license and take this stinking test and everything. And I was not happy about that.
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But what I ended up doing is that there was a gentleman who was helping me there. He was really kind.
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So I started talking to him and I was like, I really appreciate you being so helpful and you're taking the time here to serve people.
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And then we started talking about the gospel. And he says that he was a Christian. I said, that's great.
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We started talking about the faith and then we got on the topic of Jehovah Witnesses. And he's like, yeah,
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I really appreciate the Jehovah Witness at least they're out there doing stuff. And I said, yeah, it's really funny you say that because I used to be one.
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And so God always just uses little conversations like that. And I got just to share the faith with him a little bit.
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And he says he was a Christian, so I rejoiced in that. And we had a great conversation and he took down the information of the church and also wanted to know what the name of my book was.
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And so really interesting stuff. And so we can have these little conversations, these little encounters every single day, every single week in our day -to -day life.
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And it doesn't have to be that hard. And what was cool is that in a place as evil as the DMV, there we were sharing the light of Jesus with each other.
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And so it doesn't matter where you are or where you find yourself at, you can have those gospel -centered conversations anywhere and overcome the fear of man.
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And one of the reasons I don't like the DMV is because, man, I don't like it when anyone holds power over you.
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And at DMV, man, if you don't have one paper right or correct, then it's straight to the back of the line.
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And I don't appreciate that. So, but even in those types of contexts, we can have some pretty fruitful discussions of individuals.
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Any questions so far on the material? Yes. Yeah, well, we have, actually, like yesterday on the food line, we were,
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I was talking to this family who was from Venezuela, and I wanted to give them information. So we do have a little pamphlet in the back of the church here about who we are as a church.
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And so what I do is I kind of just put my card with it. So I give them my card with my personal contact, and then, obviously, the church information, times of services, what are the ministries of the church.
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Those would be good things to just hand people if we're trying to invite someone to church. But in terms of having gospel tracts,
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I think we're working on getting some pretty good, effective gospel tracts that we can give because our first aim is, if they're a
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Christian, great, and they don't have a church home, we'd love for them to come. But if they don't know the Lord, we wanna share the gospel with them.
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So we wanna give them something gospel -centered that will give them answers, especially if we don't have a lot of time, we have a short window with them.
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That's why pamphlets come in great, are very handy. Yeah. Yeah, we have tracts here, and we have several tracts in the back, but we're still,
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I guess, looking at and working on if we're gonna do some in -house tracts or if we're gonna do orders from tracts from like Way of the
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Master, for instance. And we will have that soon because we're gonna be very soon going on our first evangelism outing.
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So, all right. Let's move on to the next part of this, teaching.
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It's also important to remember that you cannot control other people's reaction. That's really important. I wanna stress that for a moment.
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You're not responsible for other people's reactions. You're only responsible for how you share your faith and whether or not you are gracious in that context.
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Does that make sense? And so you can't control other people's reaction. And don't be afraid of that, okay?
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It's out of your hands, out of your control. Don't fret and worry about things that are outside of your control. That's where fear of man sinks in.
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And so, you know, there's a serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, okay?
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If you can't change it, accept God's peace in that situation. When we tell others about the loving kindness of God, we need to know that we are stepping into hostile territory.
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For the Bible says that the ungenerate are hostile toward God. We're not responsible for people's acceptance or rejection of the message in as so long as we are faithful in delivering it.
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We cannot force anyone to believe ultimately salvation is of the Lord and we must surrender control to him.
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We also must avoid taking offense at people when they reject or ridicule our message.
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We must do as Jesus said, and if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.
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The message of Jesus will always be offensive for it beckons sinners to forsake the sin they love and to turn themselves fully to Jesus Christ.
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Do not be surprised when the world is offended, but you must do your part not to add any further offense by the way you carry this message.
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Rather, the Apostle Paul admonishes, let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person, okay?
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Very important practical information here. We need to be aware of and be conscious of the way that we are sharing our most precious faith, right?
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So we ought not to add any offense, and that's what my problem is with a lot of the preachers with these huge offensive signs is, listen, the gospel in itself is offensive, right?
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It's offensive. It's assembling block. It's an offense to the Greeks and assembling block to the Jews, okay?
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And so we know that, but we don't have to add any further offense to the cross.
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The cross in itself is offensive enough. And so all we have to do, again, is be cognitive of our words and let our words be gracious, seasoned with salt so that we may know how you ought to answer each person.
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And what's the response if someone ridicules us or is hostile towards us?
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What should be the response? What, shake the dust off your feet.
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Now, that'll be a real odd scene if you just take your shoe off and go like that, but the reality is that what we're doing, what we're saying, and how we're reacting is that we're meeting opposition with grace.
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We're meeting adversity with strength, the strength that God provides.
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And so it can be really difficult when someone is rejecting you and your message, but remember not to take it personal.
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They're not rejecting you, per se, but it's actually a greater offense that they're rejecting the
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Lord who sent you. And so, but you can't take it personal. And ultimately, you have to be loving and gracious and filled with grace and respond to them in a graceful manner.
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And so, you know, smiling and saying, well, God bless you, I hope you have a great day, whatever the situation may be. You know,
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I've had a lot of really interesting times evangelism, I remember I was evangelizing once and there was an old lady that opened the door and when we said, good morning, ma 'am, she's like, good morning, what's so good about it?
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You know, she just was not in a good mood that morning. And especially that we were at her door, that didn't sit well with her.
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So, you know, you just graciously respond and the Bible says it's like keeping hot coals over your enemies when you respond with grace when you're met with adversity.
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And so, to continue on, we're gonna,
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I'm gonna just read through this real quickly because I think we can get to the end of it. Regardless of whether man takes offense or ridicules you, this message is too important not to share.
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When you realize the grandness of this gospel, the fears and anxieties accompanied with sharing it will begin to pale in comparison to the joy and privilege that is ours in sharing it.
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Do not forsake the grand ministry of reconciliation. You know, what a shame it would be if we forsook this great ministry out of fear.
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What a shame that would be. Certainly would not honor our God and Father and honor
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Christ as Lord in our hearts if we did that. Paul wrote, all this is from God who through Christ reconciled us himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
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That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespass against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
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Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.
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We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
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What a fantastic verse that is. It goes on to say, it is impossible, I mean, it is possible that believers may struggle most when sharing the gospel with relatives or close friends.
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As our faith may be a point of contention that strains the family bond. This is not strange at all and should be expected.
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Jesus reminds us of the great cost of being a disciple in this way. And a person's enemies would be those of his own household.
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Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
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Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. How many folks here, if you feel comfortable answering this, just by raising your hand, have the gospel be a point of contention in their family life?
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Amen. Most of us. That's most of us. And I want you to realize, it's not strange.
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This is not something unexpected. This is exactly what the Lord Jesus himself foretold would happen to those who would embrace the cost of discipleship.
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And know this, that following Jesus will cost you everything.
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Everything. And is he not worthy of serving and of knowing and of proclaiming even though it may cost us everything?
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Certainly it costed me much when I left the Jehovah Witnesses and I left all my friends and family and they had to abandon me in order for me to serve
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Jesus in the way that he desired. And so to overcome the fear of witnessing to family, we should realize that the strain on the relationship because of your faith or witness is not strange.
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It should be expected. It is also important to share your faith with conviction and love.
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As many can become overly emotional or animated when discussing faith with family, we want to be self -controlled, measured, and sympathetic.
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So here's one of the reasons why it's so difficult to talk to family members about our faith.
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It's because we are emotionally invested, right? In a way that we would not be so necessarily if we're just meeting someone on the street, right?
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Because we know this person, we know what their need is, and we have the answer, but they're just not getting it.
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They're just not listening. Or there are some other cultural or religious reasons that are confounding the situation even deeper like would be the case in my family, as most of them are
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Jehovah Witnesses. And it gets really difficult because we're so emotionally invested.
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Now, the answer to that is not that you become emotion -detached, obviously that would be the wrong course, but that you be measured in your use of emotion, okay?
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That you recognize that you cannot let your emotions get the best of you because ultimately, once it becomes overly emotional, you've lost them.
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And now there's wounding that could be at play. And so we have to be very measured in the way that we approach our evangelism, personal evangelism, to those whom we love most in our family.
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Any thoughts or questions on that so far? Moving on that same paragraph, one of the best witnessing tool you will have will be the evidence of a transformed life.
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If your relatives and friends can see a demonstrable difference in your character, coupled with a consistent and loving presentation of faith, that will make witnessing to loved ones far more fruitful.
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Never discount the power and testimony of a changed life, especially when it's seen by someone who knows you well, okay?
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So don't discount your testimony, right? Don't discount the power of a transformed life.
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There's a statement which I absolutely detest that is very popular within evangelicalism, and it goes somewhere around the lines of this.
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It says, share the gospel, and if necessary, use words.
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You ever heard of that before? Share the gospel, and if necessary, use words. You know what the implication of that is?
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The implication, they think it's a great one. They say, well, if you just live your faith, then that'll be good enough, okay?
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But here's the problem with that mindset. If you're using or living the faith, you'd be using your words, right?
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If you're living it, you would speak it, because you speak of the things that you believe, and you confess that which you believe.
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And so if we believe it, the gospel, then we must also speak it. It's like saying to someone, eat, and if necessary, use food.
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It just makes no sense. It makes zero sense. But at the flip side, it's not like we don't use our testimony to our advantage when we're sharing the gospel.
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Obviously, we want people to see the transformation of our lives. Obviously, we want to see people see the character and work of Christ in our lives.
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That's obvious, but we also want to faithfully present the gospel.
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You know, and I'll share with you quickly, that's one of the reasons my sister, a Jehovah Witness for 34 years, has become a
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Christian in the last two years, is because her and I reconnected, and she knew, just by seeing my family life, that, man, at that point in her life, she was going through a divorce, and she's like, man, something is different about you.
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Something has changed, because I knew you growing up, and I knew what you were like, and clearly something's happened.
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So what's, I know you say you're a Christian, but what's the deal, right? And that opened an opportunity for me to share the gospel with her, and then she eventually made a confession of faith in Jesus, and is following the
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Lord today. And so, that is an example of someone close to me who I love, you know,
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I love my sister so much, and she came to know the Lord Jesus, not just by my proclamation of the gospel, but it was the changed life that she saw that opened a door for me to have that gospel conversation so that she could be receptive to it, right?
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Any thoughts or questions so far? Yes. Amen. Amen.
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Anyone else have a thought or word, or? That's right.
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That's right. Yeah, and one of the good points of that, too, is that we don't wanna be overly badgering people, right?
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To the point where then our words lose meaning to those to whom we're trying to reach. And so, again, the power and testimony of a changed life is so valuable when ministering in that close connection context, right?
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Yeah. And the text that I referenced is Revelation 12, 11. It says that we overcame, or we overcome, by the word of our testimony, okay?
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So our testimonies are so valuable in the kingdom work. Jesus? Yeah, I met a friend, a group of friends, and they continued to share the gospel for two years.
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We were the same group of friends, we were faithful to preaching the gospel.
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Yes, my testimony, I wasn't able to see it or hear it. Yeah. But it was good, they continued.
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Amen. And I wanna thank God for that. Amen. Praise God for that. Question? I feel like.
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That's a better way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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I'm interested in authority. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think, understood in that balance,
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I think that'd be the right way of pursuing that statement. But I'm also reminded of the scripture,
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I can't remember where it is. I believe, therefore I spoke. And so, if you believe, you'll speak of the things that you believe in.
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You'll speak of the overflow of the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Yes. Yes.
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Yeah. That's right.
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Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
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That's right. Absolutely.
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Absolutely. Yeah, and that's where the authenticity aspect comes in. I mean, if, and that's my grub with some of the street preachers, is that they really present themselves as Pharisees sometimes.
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And they're like, holier than thou. That's not the methodology that we wanna implore. We wanna meet people.
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We ourselves are but poor, humble beggars before God. And we're begging people.
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We're imploring them to be reconciled to God. It's not like, oh, well, I want you to be on my level, so therefore you need to come up to me.
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It's meeting people where they're at. So, and that actually, I addressed in the next part. Jesus? Yeah, I mean,
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I totally get that. It was like, one for sure, we're accountable for our actions. That's right. That's right.
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Yeah, one for sure, like, we're accountable. Yeah, and you're still going back. Sure. Like, because he doesn't like to basically stay.
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Mm -hmm. Go ahead. Yeah, that's right.
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That's right. Amen. That's right.
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That's right, amen. Let's continue reading, and actually address some of these points.
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Some may feel, however, that it isn't the, that it isn't other humans they are afraid of. Rather, it is themselves that they worry about.
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Many Christians have convinced themselves that they are not qualified or competent enough to tell others about Jesus and teach the
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Bible. What does God say about this? We need to believe what God says about who we are and what he is doing in our lives.
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God did not create us to be what we are. He did not give us a spirit of doubt or fear, but power, love, and self -control. The Christian must walk in the confidence that is ours through the blood of Christ, such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God, not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything that's coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.
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And so I wanna just address something there. So here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that every single Christian is qualified to preach the gospel, because some
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Christians aren't. Some Christians aren't. And what I mean by that is some Christians are not walking in obedience.
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They're not walking the light. Maybe they've backslidden. There's a sinful course in their life that may disqualify them for at least a time from preaching or sharing the gospel.
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But those are things that are sorted out in the context of church discipline. But the reality is that for most
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Christians who are at least moderately obedient and at least going to church and doing the things that are required of them in that sense, they are able to share the gospel, even if they don't have a seminary degree, right?
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Like you don't have to be a seminary in order to share the faith. You don't have to have gone to Bible college or have done missions overseas in order to be qualified to do this work.
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The sufficiency for us to do the work comes from where? Comes from God. That's where it comes from.
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And so our sufficiency is from him. We went over this text at the home groups this past week as well, so you should have gotten some good illumination on that context.
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But our sufficiency, our ability to do anything comes from the Lord. And so our confidence and sufficiency, as we're closing, are from God.
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He has made us competent ministers of the new covenant. And so hallelujah. If you continue to believe that you are not worthy, if you continue to believe that you are not worthy, capable, or sufficient for this work, you are still surrendering yourself to the fear of man and not the fear of the
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Lord. Choose to believe what God says you are as a child of God by filling your mind with the word of God so that you have no room for Satan and his lies.
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Any thoughts or questions as we close on that? Yeah, great question.
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So if a person is in, the question was, in what condition would it be inappropriate for a
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Christian to share their faith if they're in a sinful course?
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And so, as I alluded to earlier. And so basically, there are times in which the testimony, so Satan cannot steal salvation from you, okay?
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If the Lord saved you, he keeps you onto that great day. But the truth is that there is one thing that the devil can try to do, and he can try to tarnish your testimony, okay?
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And he can tarnish a believer's testimony to such a degree, often through scandal or sexual sin and things of that nature that really bring a, the name of the
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Lord in disrepute. That could be a reason why a person should not preach the gospel, at least for a season, until they're restored if that person is not repentant.
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Ultimately, the gospel that we believe and proclaim is a gospel of restoration. So we believe that God, even in the midst of sinful courses in our lives, can restore us.
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And so I believe that it can be appropriate for a Christian who is backslidden to be restored and share the gospel again, of course.
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But if a person is in, if there's a church member that is in blatant sin, I would not permit them to preach the gospel in any context, bearing the name first and foremost of our
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Lord, and then secondly of our church. And so does that kind of make sense? And the
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Bible makes pretty clear what those sins would look like. First Corinthians chapter, it's chapter five, right?
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And so, anything you wanna add to that, Conley? Yeah, that is. That's right.
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That's right, yeah, that's right, that's right.
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And so what I want you to do for the homework, because now it's time for us to finish here, is
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I want you to do the recap on your own, and we'll recap this next week. And also there is homework at the bottom.
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It says the homework is write a short paragraph using scripture, answering how you can overcome the fear of man and make your resolve to make
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Christ known as a competent minister stronger. And so just write a short paragraph, and some of you,
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I'd like for you to share, and so be prepared to share what that is.
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Any thoughts or questions on the homework? So we're gonna do the recap and the homework for next week.
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And then we actually go into our last paragraph, or our last paragraph, last chapter.
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Our last chapter is next week. And we've got some exciting stuff to share with you, so we hope that you're here, and we're gonna be getting to work soon.
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And part of the thing to actually finish this course, I'll just share it with you briefly, is not just the completion of this final chapter, chapter six, but it will also be you coming alongside us, and we're gonna be taking a weekend, two weekends actually, two
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Saturdays in April, to share the gospel in our neighborhood community.
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So we're gonna be knocking on doors, and we're also gonna be doing another training session prior to that, so when we gather on that Saturday to do that work, we're gonna have about an hour 45 minutes on how to teach you how to present the gospel at the door in that particular context.
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And so we're looking forward to that. And if you have any questions or concerns about the lesson or about what we are planning to do in the future, let me know.
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Let me close in prayer. Father, we're just so thankful, Lord, that you're a God who, you've visited us in our weakest state, and you found us, and by your mercy, you transferred us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of your beloved son.
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Lord, we thank you so much, Lord, for such a great salvation, and we pray, God, that you'd help us, enable us by your good spirit to preach, proclaim, and to live out this incredible gospel, that our faith would not just be that which is a faith that simply sits down and pews and looks at these truths from afar, but rather,
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Lord, that we would take hold of these promises, take hold of these truths, and live them out day to day. Lord, we pray,
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God, for the strength that only you can provide, the strength that you give through the Holy Spirit to empower us to overcome the fear of man, that the fear of the
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Lord would be the beginning of knowledge and wisdom, and that the fear of the Lord would lead us to the love of the
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Lord, and that the love of the Lord would then lead us to share this good news of Jesus Christ to all creation, and we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.