Go Tell Them About Jesus — E.A. Johnston

The Church’s Mission Beyond Its Walls

Somehow, or somewhere, our churches have gotten things backwards on what we should be doing as believers and followers of Jesus Christ. We've gotten it into our heads that a church is a physical building where Christians meet once or twice a week for worship, fellowship, and some Bible teaching, and we've convinced ourselves that we are doing things the right way by hosting a Come and Hear Gospel each week and preaching to the same people every week, but listen, friends, Jesus never taught that.

Jesus never taught a Come and Hear Gospel, but rather, his was a go-and-tell gospel taking the message out to the masses and to the ends of the earth, instead of us fulfilling our marching orders of the Great Commission, who we have many today, who exercise the great omission of failing to have any kind of gospel outreach to their community at all.

The Sin of Excusing Evangelistic Inactivity

Some churches get by with the excuse that they support a missionary, and by that means they are fulfilling their duty of the Great Commission, but listen to me, friends, when a church ceases to penetrate their community by going out and sharing the gospel with folks and knocking on doors and telling them about Jesus and how it came down here so we can go up there, then that church is just making excuses not to witness and reach the community for Christ.

How on earth can we fool ourselves into believing we are being faithful believers if we fail to be faithful witnesses for Christ, and how can we as pastors fool ourselves into believing that we're doing all we can to spread the gospel by still preaching to the same crowd every week, how can we complain about the condition of this country if we're not willing to do something about it by sharing the gospel of Christ with the lost on a regular basis?

How can you call yourself a church if the carpet in your sanctuary isn't wet with the tears of broken-hearted believers who weep and pray over the lost souls in their community? We excuse ourselves by saying, well, we don't want to make any false converts, but the problem is we don't make any effort at all to share the gospel with poor lost sinners who need to hear about the message of God's mercy to sinners, so we gather week on end and preach to the same crowd over and over again, meanwhile the lost perish all around us for a lack of a gospel witness to them, and some of us are so hard-headed we'd even give a harsh rebuke to a William Carey today and tell him, young man, sit down, you are an enthusiast.

When God pleases to converse with heathen, He'll do it without consulting you or me. So we fail to converse with the heathen all around us that we pass on the street each day, and they never get to hear a true gospel message or witness, and they die in their sins and suffer in a burning hell.

How can we convince ourselves that we are a church if we fail to reach the community we live in with the gospel of Christ Jesus? How can souls be saved if we're just preaching to the same crowd every week?

They cannot. They'll be reached by the Mormons, or the Jehovah Witnesses, or someone else with a message quite different from the gospel of the Son of God. We should all be more like D .L. Moody. Moody wouldn't go to bed at night unless he spoke to someone about their soul that day.

D.L. Moody and Personal Witness

He got a reputation for it. He was known as Crazy Moody because he would stop anybody on the streets of Chicago and tell them about the mercy of God to sinners. But we don't want to be called Crazy Moody.

We'd rather be called Lazy Moody and do nothing. We refuse to be like some rash evangelist who would make a false convert so we don't make any effort to convert anyone at all. But we must, friends, we must.

George Whitfield’s Open-Air Evangelism

George Whitfield went out into the highways and hedges and hunted down poor lost sinners and told them the message of God's mercy to sinners. Whitfield would stand under the open air in a field or on a staircase of a courthouse or atop two barrel heads and he would proclaim the great message of the gospel of the Son of God.

He would cry out and say, you must be born again. The time is short, friends. The night is far spent and the day is at hand. We must go tell them about Jesus. And that's the title of my message tonight.

Go tell them about Jesus. And my text is found in the Gospel of Luke in chapter 14. You can turn in your Bibles there now. We'll be in verses 16 through 23. Let me read it to you. And may the Spirit of God attend his preached word.

The Great Supper and the Call to Go Out

Then he said unto him, a certain man made a great supper and bade many. And he sent his servant at supper time to say to them that we're bidding a come for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse.

The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground and I must needs go and see it. I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I go to prove them. I pray thee have me excused.

And another said, I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came and showed his Lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry, said to his servant, go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in hither the poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind.

And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded. And yet there is room. And the Lord said unto the servant, go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be filled.

Rolf Barnard and the New Testament Pattern of Outreach

When I was conducting research on my biography of the evangelist, Rolf Barnard, I was dumbstruck at the number of people who came to Christ under that man's 40 years of itinerant ministry. It was shocking.

I found out he was the means of bringing a hundred thousand souls to Christ. And as I studied his wonderful life, I realized he was doing some things which we refuse to do today. He believed that church should be like the one found in the book of Acts and that we should meet and pray and hold up with God until we too are endued with power from on high.

And then when we are endued with power from on high, we should not sit around in holy huddles, but we should go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. Rolf Barnard was never restricted to just a pulpit.

He preached in saloons. He preached in brothels. He preached on street corners. He preached in city mission halls. He knocked on doors in the dead of winter until his toes were frozen stiff. And he did all of this because although he was a Calvinist and believed in sovereign grace, his theology did not freeze him into inactivity, friends.

There was a big reason why so many came to Christ under his powerful preaching ministry. And it was because he went out after the lost and told them about a bloody cross and the Christ who hung there for sinful man.

Rolf Barnard was so eaten up with witnessing to the loss that when World War II came around, he put up a platform near an Air Force base and got him a bullhorn and a platform and preached the gospel to the men as they enlisted.

But when he was run off from that military campground, he decided the only way to reach those young men before they went out and died was to volunteer and join the army himself. So he did just that and became an army chaplain.

And during the time Barnard was an army chaplain, he got the privilege to preach over 50 ,000 men. He believed in shoe leather Christianity, and he took it to the streets. And some of the greatest spiritual harvest that man ever saw occurred when he was preaching under a tent.

And I want to take a portion of Rolf Barnard's ministry this evening, friends, and relate it to us for I believe we can sit at this man's feet and learn of him even though he's dead, yet he still speaketh.

Barnard’s Door-to-Door Ministry and a Prostitute’s Conversion

Like I said, his preaching ministry saw the fruit of over 100 ,000 souls come to Christ. I want to read us a brief chapter from my biography on Rolf Barnard entitled God's Hitchhike Evangelist. And in this chapter, it relates how Evangelist Barnard was not afraid to get out and knock on doors to bring the gospel to poor sinners.

And this particular incident in his life is a wonderful story about how he was the human instrument whom God used to save a prostitute. And it's a lesson for us today, friends, because the church he was visiting was a group of people who refused to get out and share the gospel with the lost in their community.

And they'd not seen a person come to Christ in nine years before Rolf Barnard showed up at their church door. But things changed when Rolf Barnard came to town. He showed them the New Testament pattern and got them to do as all Christians should, and that is to be regular witnesses of the gospel to poor lost sinners.

Let me read you this passage from his life right now. I hear now are his words. I'll never forget a poor fallen woman in Canada. I was up there preaching in a church where no one had been converted in nine years.

They were mighty orthodox, mighty separated, and mighty dead. I said to them, you ought to get acquainted with folks. And they took me seriously. So we went out ringing doorbells up there and inviting people to come hear me preach.

It was 20 below zero, and I was going around with a deacon from house to house, and we came to a wicked gate. I unlatched the gate, going up to the house, and started going. The deacon said, Brother Barnard, don't go in there.

I said, why not? The deacon said, I don't want to say, but don't go in there. I said, why not? Oh, I couldn't tell you, but please don't go in there. I said, I'm going. He said, why, it will ruin the meeting.

I said, why? Well, preacher, that is the most notorious woman in this section of Canada. Oh, if you went in there, it would be terrible. I said, I'm going. And I went and knocked on the door, and a nice looking woman, not yet betrayed by her sinful life, came to the door and said, hello, big boy.

I said, howdy. I am a preacher, and I'm holding meetings down here at the church. I have come to invite you to come and hear me preach tonight. She began to laugh, and I said, it's no joke. She said, are you really a preacher?

I said, yes. She said, I believe you are. I said, yes, I'm from the South, and I'm preaching here. Oh, she said, I heard about that fellow from the South, and you're him. I said, yes. She said, do you know who I am?

I said, yes. I've been told that you're the most notorious woman in this section of Canada. She said, I guess that's right. Do you mean you want me to come up to that church building tonight? Yes, I want you to come because I want to preach to you.

She said, why, if I come up there, it would shock them to death. I answered, well, they need a good shock, and I want you to promise me that you will come, and I double dog dare you to come. Promise me you will.

And bless God she did. I've never seen the Holy Spirit challenged when he didn't work. I preached that night, and before we could get started singing, here she came, just running down to the front, and fell down there, and sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed.

And after a while, she stood up, tears running down her cheeks, the glory of God on her countenance, and she witnessed a mighty good confession. The congregation was a singing people, so they began to quietly sing, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see. They had an eight-year-old woman there, and she was the mother of Israel of all that section. A fine woman. I wondered what that nice gang of church members were going to do.

There was that ex-prostitute standing there, claiming the grace of God had done its work of Christ in her life. Tears running down her cheeks. She just stood there while they were singing. Nobody moved.

I looked back and saw that mother of Israel pull her glasses up and wipe her eyes. Then, pretty soon, she pulled them off and took her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. Pretty soon, she came down to the front, put her arms around that ex-magdalena, kissed her on both cheeks, and loudly, enough so the congregation could hear her, she said, Welcome, sister.

Welcome, sister. Praise God, at the foot of the cross, objects of the mercy of God, the best and the worst woman in town in the same crowd, the difference, the mercy of God, which, because His blessed Son hung on a cross, He's able and willing to show mercy, God's sovereign mercy, to the worst sinner that ever stayed out of hell a little while.

And when that woman did that, the people's hearts were broken, and sinners all over the congregation began to cry, and they cried out, and once again, we saw the glory and the wonder of that simple scripture, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Repentance from Sins of Omission

Now listen, friends, there are several lessons for us this evening from this story about Ralph Barnard. He came to town, and he got that church to begin to do what they should have been doing all along, and that was to reach the lost in their community with the gospel.

He got them behaving like a New Testament church again, and in the process, God sent a revival to that church, and during that time, that poor prostitute got saved, so how can we sit and soak and make excuses and preach to the same crowd every Sunday and not go out and do what the Bible commands us to do, which is go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be filled?

Oh, friends, let's repent of our great sins of omission and not witnessing like we should, and let us go out, let us go tell them about Jesus.