Path of Evangelism III: More than Conviction | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Media Gratia and it's good to be back this week with John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and author of the

Behold Your God study series for the third episode in our series on evangelism.

So you'll notice if you're watching that I have my laptop in my in my lap here.

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And we look better on the audio. That's exactly right. I just it's it's I appreciate you guys watching these on YouTube but we want to direct you to iTunes from here on out for these.

So this week we're picking up with where we left off in our last in our last episode talking about Samuel Walker's pattern beginning with the issue of conviction.

So where do we where do we go from here? Yeah, you know that the wonderful statement in the

Proverbs that the one that wins souls is wise. We we took that kind of as a as an overarching basic principle.

There is a wisdom involved in evangelism. It's not just boldness. It's certainly not just for type -a personalities who find it easy to connect with people.

It is for every believer to be an ambassador on behalf of the King. But there is a wisdom that he gives us and and there's a wisdom we ought to ask for and a wisdom we ought to pursue.

And I think that we could sum it up in this sense. If we want to be wise ambassadors then we need to know two things.

We need to know the depth of man's need. That's not as easy as it sounds because sin is a sin is an expert advertiser that continues to mask every aspect of its influence on us so that when we look at someone and and they're people we work with every day, people we live with every day, we love them and they have a lot of strengths.

It's hard to believe that what Paul says in Romans about every person outside of Christ is really true of that person.

And so we need to know how deep the stain, the impact of sin goes. We also need to know, of course, the gospel.

What does Christ do to rectify that, to make things right, to bring us to God?

But there is an aspect where we tend to forget things and that's what we've been talking about and that is if God is the great evangelist, which he is, how does

God do evangelism? How does the Holy Spirit work in a soul to bring them to Christ?

And is it possible for us to understand enough of that to, in a general way, work in harmony with him?

And that's, I think, where we haven't given enough thought. Yes, so we've been looking at Samuel Walker's pattern and the fact that he began with the issue of conviction because he felt that clearly the

Spirit was sent to convict of sin. Because he understood that only the sick will seek out a doctor,

Walker felt that it was right for him to start there. In fact, a lot of the men in the evangelical revival or the

Great Awakening felt that that was the right place to start in their evangelism. But I think the first question that we have to ask in order to get into this issue is, were they right?

Was it really, is it really biblical to begin there? Or were these men just following a model that they inherited from the

Puritans a generation before them? Yeah, I think the simple answer to that is, yes.

I think they were right. But that does need some clarification. First of all, you know, we talked last in our last session about the fact that, and we've mentioned this before, that Christ dealt with souls in different ways.

You know, you find him speaking to the rich young ruler in one way. You find him talking to Nicodemus in an entirely different way.

And it seems to us as if, I mean, when when Jesus says to Nicodemus, you must be born again, we say, you know,

Jesus knows the gospel. He's one of us. You got to be born again. He's an evangelical.

But then when he goes to the rich young ruler and he says, well, you need to keep all the rules, we think, whoa, that's not the gospel.

So there must be a reason for Christ starting at two different starting places, you know.

And there is. Seeing where they're at, he applies the right truth to that point.

And those men were at very different places. So we talked about that. I do believe that these men were right to start with conviction.

And we're going to show that in a minute from Scripture. But I do think we have to give this caveat. If you're talking with a person and you see that their heart is already broken over sin, it's not, it's not that they think

I've done a few bad things, okay. And if you got a Jesus that can patch this up, I'd be glad to have him.

It's this kind of a statement. You don't understand. I appreciate you talking to me like this and telling me that there's hope in Christ, but I'm the kind of sinner that nobody could love.

I've done things that I wouldn't tell anybody and it's too late. It's too deep. It's gone on so long.

I mean, I've talked with people that have done that. I mean, one man was in his 60s and he just, you know, he began to weep and he said to me, that's fine for you.

You're young. I was younger back then. But he said this. He said, the people that I've hurt terribly have all passed away.

I can't make it right. And so the person that's heart's already plowed up over sin and they feel the weight of the words of Scripture.

When you share what the Scripture says about a sinner, they're already there, man. It's true. Yeah. Then you don't plow the ground again.

It's like a farmer who plows the ground and it's plowed and the furrows are there and you look at, you know, you drive past the field and you know it's time to plant.

What if as soon as someone went to throw seed on there, he plows it up all again. I mean, you would never get a crop that way.

So we don't just keep plowing plowed lives. With that kind of person, we would immediately want to move to the person and work of the

Lord Jesus Christ to bring them the only hope that there is. But if we're talking with the person and as you mentioned

Jesus Christ and what he did for sinners, they let it be known by body language, maybe by some very bold language, openly saying to you, look, my life is pretty much together and I don't need your

Jesus. If I do, I'll tell you. Or I already got Jesus. I said a prayer when I was five or my parents baptized me into the church or I was christened and I got all the

Jesus I want. So you can go ahead and talk to the next guy. Then you realize that that's the kind of a person whose heart has never been broken up and that is the person you begin where the

Spirit begins with conviction. Oh man, I mean, it's the pattern of the Lord's. We have the pattern of Christ and so clearly we see that.

I mean, I think of the woman at the well and the rich young ruler that you mentioned. So the rich young ruler comes and says, what do

I have to do to gain eternal life? And you can sort of hear

Christ thinking, well, son of Adam, just keep the moral law perfectly and you'll attain eschatological life.

Keep the law, keep the covenant of works perfectly because he kind of thought that he already had.

And he answers, well, I've already done all of that. But then when there's a ruined life, he instantly says, look,

I've got water that you can drink and you'll never thirst again. Yeah, for her, no rules. Just drink.

Amazing. But one thing that we've talked about and not just for the podcast, but through the years as you and I spent time together, why in our culture in particular, but it's not just the

Mid -South culture, but why don't we see people being more careful with evangelism?

So I mean, you've grown up in a culture that's not as careful with evangelism as it could be or should be.

So, I mean, what have you observed? Yeah, I think for the most part, and you mentioned this already a little bit, people don't think that the situation is as bad as it is.

So nice people all around us here in the South. Sometimes they're our own children or our neighbors or our family members or our fellow church members.

Is this doctrine, you know, are we, is really every area of our humanity totally depraved?

Is it every aspect of us? Do we really need that much of a cure or do we just kind of need a little help?

I mean, these are pretty good people already. So they're, you know, we're kind of dealing, we're more in a culture of rich young rulers than we are women at the well.

Yeah, I remember reading in this, in the 18th century, George Whitefield. So he goes in his, you know, his early sermons immediately, you must be born again.

Problem is, he preaches it to Anglicans and in the Anglican Church, the view that baptism does have the effect of uniting a child.

Different Anglicans have different views, of course, but in Whitefield's day, pretty popular for the Anglican Church, according to its liturgy, to say the

Holy Spirit has joined with these waters and this child is born again. Now, this child needs to obey. This child needs to believe.

This child will need to repent. But this child actually is born again, George. And so you need to take that message to the colonies and preach it to Indians, but not

Englishmen. And Whitefield said, no, you must be born again.

Right. And so, yeah, you know, even here, these are pretty good people.

You know, do we really need to drop the plow that deep? And yes. I think of another reason, you know, that we've noticed is that there is the feeling that if you don't immediately call a person to close with Christ, in a sense, if you don't invite them to, you know, in our culture, if you don't invite them to ask

Jesus into their heart right now, there tends to be the situation that, you know, you're accused of not having an urgency about evangelism, which could be true, or that they're going to get away from Jesus.

Like, man, you didn't seal the deal. You didn't set the hook. Right. The fish got off. Yeah. So, which we talked about last week is a really bad application of fishers of men.

They threw a net. We set a hook. You know, we get a shiny thing. We get the lost person interested in the gospel with the shiny thing, and we don't let them know there's a hook.

But then we get them with the hook later. So, that's not our approach to evangelism. But, you know, that's a really small view of God.

We're not saying that if you only get one opportunity to talk to a person, you just say, look, I'm not allowed to tell you about the hope in Christ.

I just want to tell you how bad you are. No, if this is the kind of a situation where you think, you know, I may never get to talk to this person again, bring the full gamut of truth to them.

Lay it out. The need, the provision, the response. Okay. But, if this is a chance where, like a co -worker, where you've already told them about Christ and they've made it clear they're not interested, then

I do think that that's where we don't need to be afraid. We need to carefully be laying the truths before them that God will use the law, the bigness of God, the purity of God.

Truths that make a man or a woman feel, you know what, I knew there was a gap between me and God, but the gap is so much bigger than I ever thought.

So, I've got a question for you. You know, it's almost as if you want them to interrupt you like the people did Peter at Pentecost.

Stop. Stop the sermon. Stop the witness. Stop the evangelism. Stop talking to me about this. I got a question.

How in the world am I going to be okay with God then? And say, well, actually that there's a wonderful answer to that.

Yeah. Well, let's make sure that we're clear about one thing before we go any further with this talk about conviction.

Our great goal is not to bring people under conviction. The great and ultimate goal is to point people to Christ and His work on their behalf and to direct them to believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ. Stripping people of false righteousness with conviction, with the law, with large views of God, those are tools that I think

God gives us to use toward that goal. And sometimes they're incredibly necessary.

I mean, Christ Himself uses them, but they aren't the goal. We're not just trying to get everybody under conviction.

Yeah. Conviction itself is not a stopping place. And that is hard to remember.

Especially, so you think of a young believer who may be in a culture like ours has seen that perhaps conviction has not even been considered as a part of the work of bringing the soul to Christ.

So maybe it's even viewed as a negative thing. Like if you focus on those things, you're going to drive a man away from Christ.

So it's easy to overreact and say, well, you know what? Conviction is what the

Holy Spirit does in beginning that wonderful drawing. So conviction is legitimate.

And so I'm going to become like centered on conviction. So I think a couple things to help with that.

One is what you just said. Conviction is always a means to an end. We are wanting to drive a man away from the emptiness of sin and away from the bankruptcy of his very best deeds, his most sacrificial, most morally upright, most religiously laudable deed is trash.

And that man's got to see that or he will not turn from it. He will just hold it tighter.

So that's kind of in our minds. Okay. If we don't help this man to see that through scripture, he'll never leave alone.

So what we end up having is this. A man simply adds Jesus, a good thing to a life that already has good things.

So, you know, if you think of the scales, you know, I know we, we know that God doesn't have a pair of scales, but it's, it's tempting to think this way.

You're talking to a man about Jesus and he's running in his mind while you're talking. He's thinking, I've been pretty good.

Oh yeah. I did blow it there. Well, okay. My first wife might've said differently. Uh, my kids may not, but I was good here.

And then he thinks I could use a little extra good. And, uh, that Jesus you're talking about, he's, he's good.

I mean, he'll tip the scales. I'll definitely be, you know, in the good. So I'll add your

Jesus to my already pretty good life. And so we end up with an unrepentant, uh, really unbelieving man claiming now that he's a

Christian or a person that's so full of the world. And you say to them, Jesus has come to give you so many wonderful things and they're running through their mind.

I already got a lot of nice things. I got really good friends. I got a great, a great marriage. I got kids that I love.

I got a job that's good, but Hey, who wouldn't want more good? So I'll take your Jesus and add him like icing on top of my cake.

And we have an unrepentant, unbelieving Christian. Uh, and we see this throughout our, our culture.

Yeah. And there are air quotes around that Christian for those of you guys. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. So, so conviction is necessary, but conviction in itself is not meritorious.

So we never want a person to think this, you've just passed through a really miserable period in your life where God has had to strip away every false hope you've had.

And it hurts. And we know as humans that when you go through hard times and things hurt, well, we naturally think, well, what have

I earned from it? What did I get from this? Okay. What's my door prized? Well, um, actually there's no value in that if it doesn't drive you to Christ, because the only reason you had to even go through that.

And the only reason it was so painful is because you are so dead set in not believing what

God says about you, that he had to actually strip it away until you could see yourself as you really are.

Yeah. So important. And I know we're going to talk about this in a little while, but so important for us to understand that conviction is not a part like a little meritorious part of salvation that everybody has to pass through before they can actually come to Christ.

Right. Um, but we'll, we'll talk about that some more in just a little while. Well, think of it this way. And we've said this before. It's, it's an

MRI. You're passing under the scriptures and your life is being scanned.

And then you look at the screen and you go, man, I knew I had some chest pains or I knew I had some stomach pain. I didn't know this was,

I didn't know it went through my whole system. Uh, and then hopefully if it's bad and you see how bad it is, hopefully your next statement to the doctor is

I need some real help here. Tell me what to do. I'm not here to bargain with you anymore. You know, I'm done with my holistic remedies.

I can eat all the cabbage I want. It's not going to cure this one. Uh, so that's what conviction is. It shows a man or a woman, it shows a child that the need is so great that only someone the size of Jesus of Nazareth, the

God man could in any way give us hope. And they throw everything else down and say to Jesus, what do you say?

Yeah. And this is the work of God. And it's not often the work of 60 seconds or one conversation or even, you know, a month or two of conversations.

Uh, it's God's work and it takes God, God's timing for that work to, to, to happen in a person.

Uh, the truth is if we go much faster, sometimes we, it might kill the person. I mean, there's only so much that we can handle at one given time.

Um, yeah. I mean, imagine if God showed you the truth about yourself all at once, can you bear that?

Can you bear, I mean, truth is a beautiful and terrible thing. And for Adam's fallen race,

I find it hard as a believer to look in the mirror and tell myself the truth about myself, you know, and, and then immediately

I have to return to the mercy seat and say, Christ, you knew this when you saved me. So I know you're not dumping me, but I so desperately need to be reminded, you know, that, that you're sufficient.

Um, you know, we, we have a lady in our church, um, that, and I think this is an example.

Okay. This is not everybody. Um, but I do think this shows a principle that is a general principle that the more good, you know, air quotes good, the more religious, the more morally upright a person has been sometimes the longer it takes for them to come to an end of themselves.

And so we, we have a really wonderful lady in our church that before she was a Christian, by all earthly measures is about as wonderful as you could hope for.

And, um, after, uh, about a year, actually it was going through the

Sermon on the Mount, I believe she became convinced that all of her righteousness was just a self -righteousness, just using the works of church to make herself right with God.

And she realized that that was insufficient. And so the conviction began. It lasted six months.

I had so many conversations with her, her, her husband, who was a believer had so many conversations with her. My wife had conversations with her.

We gave her good books to read. We gave her books that we gave other people to read. And that book led that other person to the

Lord. And it didn't lead her Lord. And she would become so frustrated. Like, why am I not getting better? And, uh, even one time she said that she told her husband,

I need a day where you don't need me. Okay. I'm just, I'm going to get alone and I'm going to pray and seek the Lord for eight hours.

She cried out the Lord to save her. And at the end of the eight hours, she was madder and worse off, she said, than when she started.

And I was, look, as a pastor, I was kind of at the end of my answers. Like I've said everything I know to say.

Yeah. I've said it. Yeah. Yeah. Every way I know how to say it. I've said it. We've explained the details. There's nothing lacking.

I don't understand what's wrong. And then when she said, I prayed eight hours and he still didn't save me, I realized,

Oh, you did an eight hours sinners prayer. Didn't you like the kind of prayer that you say, if I say this prayer,

I've earned my hope. And so we talked again. And then within a few weeks, she came back to me and she said,

I believe he has heard my prayer for mercy. And she has never slowed down, man.

You know, it's been wonderful to see now about a couple of years later, somebody who was under conviction and, and they were under the conviction, let's say for three or four months and then profess faith.

And this dear lady said to me kind of quick, I'm not so sure about that one. And I said, well, not everybody takes six months.

That's right. Um, so, but again, it's so important that we realize that, you know, okay, maybe you're reading the

Puritans and maybe you've, you know, you're hearing some more careful stuff. So you think I need to pray a Puritan strength, uh, sinner's prayer.

And then that will be really meritorious with God, or maybe just a little merit. And until you empty your hands of that, whatever it is, you're never going to lay hold of Christ.

Yeah. Let me give you an example that we had one fella in the church who came to me and was feeling pretty bad about his life.

Now he wasn't a very religious man. And so, um, so he didn't have a lot of self -righteousness, but guess what?

He, he found some and his version of self -righteousness was feeling bad about myself.

So I would talk to him about the gospel numerous times over months. And, uh, he would just never cast himself on Christ.

And one time I asked him, what, what are you waiting on? What is the one thing that you think? Well, if I had this, then

I I'd go to Christ. He said, well, I don't feel bad enough for my sins. And I said, well, how bad do you have to feel?

He didn't have an answer. I said, I know the answer to that. How bad do you think you have to feel?

And he didn't have an answer. I said, you know what? You're coming to Jesus and you're saying this. I got one really big bag full of feel bad.

I know I'm bad. I feel bad about that. I'm, I'm, I feel pretty sorrowful about it. But if I had both hands full of sorrow, would, then would that earn me salvation?

I said, you're thinking that feeling bad is earning you a right to the gospel, but it doesn't.

I said, um, here's how bad you have to feel. You have to feel bad enough so that you look at yourself in the mirror and say, man, there's no hope within that guy.

And you run to the Savior. So really that's all. Now, another illustration, um, quite a different one.

I had a friend in seminary who was talking to the rest of us. You know, we're all preachers.

So he's talking to us about an evangelistic effort he had made that week. He was at the barbershop. And this friend is a, is a sweet Christian.

He's on the mission field now. Wonderful guy. I really admire him. But this was a long time ago. And I think that this shows a weakness in the system that we grew up in.

He said, I was talking to a guy and he happened to be a very, uh, he was an intellectual, wealthy businessman.

He was a Jewish man, but he, he had no interest in God. He was Jewish, but not Orthodox. He didn't even believe in the

God that his parents told him he's supposed to believe in, much less the Savior. So my friend started to try to, at a barbershop, struck up the conversation.

And the guy just let him know, I don't believe in God. I don't believe in what you're talking about. And so my friend said, well, would you give me 60 seconds?

And then, uh, then, so the guy was kind of exasperated. I mean, he's stuck in the barber's chair. So he was like, fine, 60 seconds, not a second later, longer.

And so he goes on and my friend gives 60 seconds of the gospel. Now I think that's the right thing to do. Yeah. So far, so good. Yeah. So far, so good.

You, you talk to him. He told you he doesn't care. You said, well, can I have 60 seconds? And you're going to give him 60 seconds of truth.

And he did that. Here's where I think the mistake happened. At the end of the 60 seconds, that man was clearly not one bit more interested, not one bit more convinced.

He's still a self -satisfied atheist. He doesn't believe a word he just said. And my friend said, would you like to ask

Jesus in your heart right now? You can be a Christian if you just do that. And that man looked at him like, are you crazy? I just told you,

I don't believe anything you say. And I think to myself, thank

God that that guy wasn't so pestered by a preacher that he said, fine, if I pray this prayer, will you shut up?

If I pray this prayer, can I get my haircut and you go away? Or, or worse. Okay. So maybe there's maybe like 3 % of my brain says something that you say might be true.

So I can take care of that right now. I can put that little, you know, yet yipping dog in my brain to bed by saying, well, remember that guy prayed me through that prayer in the barbershop way back then.

Yeah. Yeah. So he didn't do that because if he would have done that as an unbelieving, unrepentant man, if he'd have said his sinner's prayer, then when nothing changes, the man doesn't say to himself, you know, that young man probably didn't present the gospel carefully to me.

What he would say is I tried that Jesus thing, doesn't work. And I knew it didn't work. I'm, I'm embarrassed.

I even tried it, you know? So. All right. This is a great place for us to stop and deal with a criticism, um, or a question that may be forming in people's minds as we talk about this.

Someone, we would understand if someone thought, look, I would just be happy if people did evangelism.

At least these people are out doing evangelism. They're talking to people about Jesus. And here you guys are, you're picking it apart and saying, well, you, you know, you're not doing it right.

And, and are you doing your, your, your, are you splitting hairs over this? Why are you making such a big deal about it?

So I think it's fair to ask that question, but we need to deal with whether, are we just talking about preferences here?

Does all this really matter? As long as people are doing evangelism, if they're doing it in the ways that we've talked about and we've characterized as being bad, or, or should we just be happy that they're doing it at all?

I think the question is, aren't there real consequences for refusing to rethink this aspect of evangelism in light of God's character?

I think that's a valid question. It's one that I get sometimes from folks, and I think the answer is, there is, there is so much at stake here.

You know, nothing. You, we just can't think of anything in scripture, in the Christian life that, where we would want to be more careful.

So think of the law of love, love to the soul sitting in front of you, to the person.

Would love say to them, look, I've got a cure, but I'm just going to give it to you in the shabbiest, I don't care what dose you need.

I don't know how many milligrams you need. You know, I just got some medicine. Let me just throw a bunch of medicine from the pharmacist at you. One of them is going to fix you.

I mean, if it's a person you love, if it's a child, you know, that has a terrible disease, and you're afraid they're not going to make it, do you, would you want a doctor that treated that?

You'd say, look, please get me a doctor that cares enough to give the right thing. So love to the soul in front of us.

We know by sad experience, as well as by scripture, that if, that if we offer a person a type of counterfeit

Christianity that requires no real belief in the facts of Christ and no real repentance, that that's not real conversion, and if we present it to them in a way that promotes an unrepentant, foggy idea of, well,

I guess I'll join the church now. I guess I'll say your prayer now, then we may be promoting a false conversion.

We may be, again, what we may have is people who are simply adding a little bit of Christ's righteousness onto a life full of their own righteousness, a little bit of Christ's benefits onto a life already stuffed full of everything the world is offering them, and that's not a

Christian. It doesn't, those decisions, the decision of a self -righteous man to add a little more righteousness to what he already has, of a full man to add a little more benefits to what he already has from sin, that has nothing in common with the command of Jesus Christ to repent and believe.

So it may look like you're asking people to repent and believe, and you're pressing that on them immediately, and that look, that's very biblical, but in truth, you're not, you know, and so on the surface, it looks good.

It's dangerous. Not only is it dangerous to the soul, but the law of love includes there's another person.

There is our King, the King that rescued us, the King that we innately love now.

We cannot but love Him, and so while our love can go up and down, we love the King, and as we're talking to the person, and we want to love that person, we also want to love the

King, and I'm very happy to say that they don't conflict. Loving the

King means I say what He wants me to say in a way that's in harmony with the way He would say it, so that I don't misrepresent

Him, so I don't dishonor Him. Nothing is more dishonoring than the false conversion, where we say to a person, well, look, you can just kind of have any

Jesus you want, and I'll put a stamp of approval on that, and I'll lead you through a prayer, or I'll let you join the church as a pastor, and then they don't live any differently, so everybody they know now hears this statement, hey,

I'm a Christian now, and then no change. What an amazing amount of dishonor is done to our

God every day in the world from false conversion. I think the dishonor done to God through false conversion, through careless evangelism, is much greater than the dishonor done to God by open atheism.

You know, I mean, you look at the atheist, fine, you're an atheist. You're a miserable, wretched, self -puffed up, you know, man, and here's a true

Christian, very different, but when it's a false Christian, when it's a false conversion that we've promoted to build our church, whatever, it's a sad thing.

You know, if you also think of the words of Christ, He said to the Jews, you travel the world to make one convert to Judaism.

Well, that's good. Like you said, well, at least they're doing evangelism. No, no,

Jesus said, you've made them twice the son of perdition, twice the son of a devil than they were before.

Okay, before they were lost, but now they're doubly lost. How can that be? Because you came to them, you said you had the cure, you have the right

Bible, you gave them a bunch of Bible words, you gave them an inadequate cure, and now when they're not changed, they're gonna say,

I already tried the Jewish God, and He didn't work any more than any other God. Yeah, so yeah, and I just I think we just have to emphasize that we aren't saying that the biggest issue is, the biggest issue with bad evangelism is that it doesn't work, you know, and so what we're suggesting works better because it's the way that God made it.

Look, sometimes people get saved at Billy Graham rallies, you know what I mean, and they're changed forever, and they never look back, and they then go on to, you know, to learn the gospel, and live the gospel, and want to share the gospel.

We're not talking about effectiveness, we're talking about the honor of the King, and the way that His work and His person is presented, and that really has to be what drives our willingness to rethink this whole issue of evangelism.

Yeah, we want to never knowingly offer the person of the Son of God and His labors,

His death, the mountain range of truths that surround this one great, incomprehensible

God -man. We never want to present Him and His work as an add -on to a man that's already righteous, as an add -on to a man who's already full of sin and pretty satisfied, you know.

One wonderful example of what we've been saying is a friend of ours, Mr. Richard Owen Roberts, and Mr.

Roberts told me that there was a time where he had been preaching to a group of people near his home, and a man,

I believe that's how the man came under conviction, but a man came under conviction. So this is a grown man, this isn't a kid, and he comes to Mr.

Roberts house. Now Mr. Roberts goes to bed pretty early, and he wakes up much earlier, and so it's about 10 o 'clock at night, and Mr.

Roberts getting ready for bed, and he hears a knock at the door, and so he goes to the door, and he's surprised to find this man there, and the man says, basically,

I need to talk to you about my soul. I'm concerned about my soul, and Mr. Roberts says, well it's pretty late, and I imagine this can wait till tomorrow, and shuts the door on the man.

A terrible evangelist. Yeah, what kind of evangelist is that? He could have sealed the deal. So he does it for a reason, not because he's tired, and he's like,

I don't, why are you coming at this time of night? He does it because he wants to test the guy. Second later, he hears a door, and the door gets knocked on again, and then he opens it up again, and the man says, it can't wait till tomorrow, and Mr.

Roberts says, that's good news, come in, and he leads the man to Christ, you know, but he knows that if a man is desperate, he won't let you tell him, well let's try it another day.

You know, when we look at how we do evangelism within the worship service here, we don't have an altar call, so to speak.

I prefer what Charles Spurgeon said, that the whole sermon becomes the net, but there are times, in particularly evangelistic sermons, you know, a person is stirred, and we often have this question from folks in our town.

It's an honest question. How do people get saved at your church if you don't have an altar call? Well, my honest answer is, when the

Lord bothers them, they will not leave me alone. I have adults, or kids, teenagers, who will come to me, and they will say, can

I talk with you? And I go, well, and they go, look, I know you're busy, can I talk with you? And I say, sure, and they, you know, one time a doctor in our church said to me,

I can't eat, I can't sleep, and I said, well, what's wrong? And he said,

I have realized that I am not a follower of Christ. I'm just a self -righteous man all my life, and I said, man,

I know it hurts, but it's the best news you could tell me, and I gave him the gospel again.

We prayed together, and I said, go home and cry out to the Lord, and if you, if you're confused, if you're getting stuck, you come talk to me, but otherwise, you go deal with the

Lord, and when He hears your cry for mercy, tell me, and about three weeks later,

He handed me this envelope. He's a very quiet fella. He handed me the envelope, and there was like a seven -page letter handwritten in it, and I thought, where did this come from?

I didn't know that this guy never talks, and he's a quiet guy. It sounded like a Puritan book, you know. It was so beautiful.

It was so clear. It was so full. It was so real how

God, it was just an explanation of what God did to strip him, and then to turn him to Christ, and then fill him, and again, he's been a wonderful believer ever since.

Yeah, so we leave it to the Lord. It's the Lord's work. Salvation is of the Lord, and we're here as guides, you know, as a pastor, or as a church member, or as a friend, or as a family member.

I mean, we're here as guides to Christ. Yeah, we're not inactive, not even during a long period of waiting.

We're praying. We're walking alongside them. We're looking for opportunities to say, you are crying out to Him.

You are seeking Him, right? You know, we don't just back off and say, we'll just see what God does. Right, yeah.

Well, let's get back to the principle, this principle that God always empties before He fills, and okay, that makes sense.

It's logical, but is it really biblical? Where do we see examples of that? I mean, I immediately,

I think of the Beatitudes preceding the Sermon on the Mount. You know, the great flaw of the modern sort of liberal

Christian light is to believe, look, the Sermon on the Mount is just all about, if we would just follow this thing, then we'd have a better world, and I think it was

Lloyd -Jones who, you know, first showed me, you know, that the door to this

Sermon on the Mount is the Beatitudes. Before you ever get to what you do, you need to be something that only

God can make you, and that's where I instantly think of, you know, this principle of God emptying before then where He fills a life full of these things that we read about in the

Sermon on the Mount. Yeah, and for me it wasn't Lloyd -Jones. He was the second one.

For me, it was Richard Owen Roberts. I remember hearing him preach a sermon on the Sermon on the Mount, and he talked about the interconnectivity of these

Beatitudes, and I thought, those aren't connected. Those are just a string of pearls. I mean, they're just kind of nice things that are all supposed to be in a

Christian, so you're a Christian, you're gonna have these good things. These are virtues of a Christian, and he started talking about, do you see an order in these, and I thought, that's amazing.

Like, where have I been? Has Matthew 5 always been in my Bible? Yeah, like I'm just checked out, so he helped, and if, you know, for the sake of our podcast, in a quick way, we'd say this.

The only person that is a Christian is a person who is a righteous person. I don't mean a person that's worked for righteousness, but like Paul in Philippians 3,

I counted everything. Everything is lost, if only I can have the righteousness that comes through faith in the work of Christ.

So, we're talking about a righteousness that God provides, far superior to the Pharisees' righteousness, which was external, which was just a show.

It wasn't real, and not only was it external, even the external was flawed. They just adjusted the Bible to fit their personal preferences.

So, we're looking for, in a Christian, we're looking for a righteousness that is a perfect righteousness provided from someone outside of them, the imputed righteousness of Christ, the obedience of Christ, the death of Christ, washing me, clothing me.

But we're also looking for the kind of change that is so real and significant that suddenly that person wants to live under the rule of a king.

And so, you know, as you mentioned, the Sermon on the Mount, all those moral codes, this is what it looks like to live under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

So, how do we become a person? How do we receive that kind of a righteousness?

Well, you know, in the Beatitudes, it's pretty clear. God gives, verse 6, says this,

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. God actually gives a righteousness to a person.

Well, what kind of person? Well, here it's described in this wonderful picture, hungry and thirsty for righteousness.

Well, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness? Not a person that's still full because, you know, it's like after eating a meal, you say, look, you know,

I love lemon meringue pie. I don't have room for lemon meringue pie. I can't breathe. You know, I'm out to go get my sweatpants on because I can't move.

I got no room for any more food. And we come to people in our culture all the time that are already so self -satisfied.

And you say, I want to talk to you about a righteousness that God provides. And they say, that's good for somebody else.

I got a lot of righteousness. So, how does God do that stripping, that emptying? And so, let's look at those verses that preceded.

Verse 3, Blessed are the poor in spirit. And we're not talking about physically poor, spiritually poor, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

When God begins to show a person the great distance between a holy

God and an unholy person, an infinite God, a limited person, you know, a sovereign

God, a rebellious person. When God shows us that we are really spiritually bankrupt, and the

Greek word here is interesting. There's Greek words for poor that mean, I only got a couple pennies left in my pocket.

And then there's a Greek word that says, I got a hole in my pocket. I got no pennies left. I'm destitute.

I'm bankrupt. I'm humiliatingly poor. When a person comes to the place where their poverty is so clearly seen that they don't care who knows, you know, they're honest with themselves,

I'm not what I thought I was. Second. Well, let me just make sure I understand. I mean, we're talking about someone who realizes that they don't have any spiritual money to bargain with God with.

They cannot purchase. They can't even put their two cents in. I mean,

I have nothing to purchase God's favor, to purchase salvation. And those two cents are hard to let go of.

That's what we've been talking about. Even feeling bad enough for my sin, that can be your spiritual two cents that you put in.

And if you're going to be the blessed man, whose is the kingdom of heaven, you're going to have to let go of those two cents.

You're going to have to be poor in spirit, destitute. I have nothing. I'm bringing nothing to this transaction.

Yeah. And why? Because being willing to be poor earned you God's look of favor?

No, but because you would never hunger for a foreign righteousness. You would never thirst like a dehydrated man for a foreign righteousness outside of yourself if you still got two pennies.

So what happens when you realize my two pennies that I used to think they were a hundred dollar bills, then

I realized, well, maybe they're pennies. And then I realized they're nothing. What does a person do when they realize?

Yeah. And the next passage talks about a person, the response to that. And that is blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

Now we're not talking about mourning at a funeral. God does comfort his people at a funeral. And a funeral as sad as it is, can be a great time for an

American to stop and to think about what's real. But that's not what it's talking about.

In the context, you've seen that you're poverty stricken. And if you've seen it, then this is the next thing you'll notice.

You're honest with God. You break your heart in front of God. You mourn. It hurts.

It's unbearable. All my religion doesn't spend in heaven.

You know, you talk about two pennies and then no pennies. I often think of monopoly money. It's like a person working for the church like pastor.

What should I do? Oh, this church loves people like you. I've got 20 things to plug you into.

Did you plug them in in a way that made them think they were earning some money with Jesus? So after a lifetime of that, they bring all this piles of monopoly money, so to speak, and they, they want to lay it before God and say, well,

I, this may not be quite enough, but it's a lot. No, but actually that's monopoly money. It doesn't spend here at all.

You know, and so they mourn. And then there's another thing though. It's not enough just to say, you know,

I, I realize I'm, I'm not perfect. Yeah. You know, I feel bad about myself. You know, a person's really that God's really stripping their righteousness away and they're responding when the, when they're honest with the people around them.

And that's hard because we don't like, we don't mind telling God we're not perfect. We don't like telling the person that thinks they're better than us, that we're not, that actually, you know,

I'm actually a lot worse than you think. So blessed are the gentle or the humble.

Happy is the person who having felt the poverty and broken their heart before God, they can, they don't care what anybody thinks.

It doesn't matter anymore. And they turn to the people next to them and they're even humble toward the people around them.

They're emptied. They've got nothing. And it's not just that I'm not as good as I thought

I was. I am undone and I have to come to God and say

I have nothing, but who could bear that? I mean, nobody can bear that. So the next thing is what we just started with.

I hunger, I thirst for something, some righteousness that only

God could provide. And He gives it. Yeah. Even the gentleness and the humility, there's always somebody that we can find that's worse than us.

You know, I mean, okay, so I see my sin. I'm poor. I don't have anything. I begin to mourn over that.

And there's a temptation then that's unique to that situation to find somebody that's worse than you.

And then you can at least point out, well, I know, I mean, okay, okay, but at least I'm not. And that's, you know, that's not humility.

That's not that the gentleness that Christ is describing. I mean, even that, that's a false hope that has to be let go of.

Yeah. And you can tell that a person has been filled with righteousness because some of the things that follow,

I mean, these are results. Yeah. Blessed are the merciful. Who's merciful? The person that's passed through this process and they've received mercy.

Who is pure in heart? We're not talking about sinless perfection, but pure as in like a bottle of water, we say, well, that's pure water.

It's 100 % one substance. So another way of translating that is the single hearted, a man whose affections have come under the magnetic pull of Jesus Christ and every area of life is being pulled toward one thing now, or even persecution, those, and peacemakers, of course, evangelism is a wonderful example of that, but there are other examples, those that are persecuted for Christ's sake.

I mean, all of those flow out of that wonderful change that we call being filled with righteousness.

So the Beatitudes very helpful and positive example of this principle that we're talking about being found in the scriptures.

There are other places in the scriptures that would show us the negative example of this.

I think of false prophets who the scriptures say heal falsely.

So what does that mean? Yeah. So bad examples, negative examples that we can learn from.

We want to be like Christ. We don't want to be like the false teachers. You know, I don't know anybody that reads the old

Testament and reads those false prophet passages and goes, you know, that's me guys. I mean,

I always think that they wear black hats and every passage like, wow, you know, they must wear black bath robes because they're in the

Bible times, you know, they're bad guys. They're sinister. No, they, they, they look great.

They sound great. The one that's saying they're not great is God. So what's not great about them?

And so let's look at Jeremiah chapter six is where I was referring to.

Yeah. Let me, let me read this passage. Okay. And then we'll just kind of hit some high points. Jeremiah six, verse 13, for from the least of them, even to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for gain.

All right. Now this is comes right in the middle of God exposing the sin of his own people. He's not talking about pagans.

He's talking about his own people. And he's saying the root problem is you're so greedy for gain.

And then he's going to explain how this shows itself from the prophet, even to the priest, everyone deals falsely.

So here we have the, the, the charges being laid and the case is being explained. You are greedy for gain, prophets, priests, common people.

How is it? I'm greedy for gain. You're dealing falsely with my people. Well, how am

I dealing falsely? The next verse, 14, they have healed the brokenness of my people superficially.

How would we heal the people superficially? Well, he goes on and says this, they say, or saying peace, peace, but there is no peace.

In other words, they're going to the people and say, man, you're all right. You know, don't sweat it. You're okay. You're going to be fine.

Life's going to be okay. You'll make it. But God looks at a people who are in rebellion against him and says, there is no peace between me and you.

No matter what that man says to you, no matter what mom and dad say to you, no matter what your coworker says to you, no matter what the

TV preacher says to you, no matter what your pastor says to you. So there's a superficial, it's like putting a bandaid on a man who has cancer and saying you're fine now.

And God says, no, you're not fine. The next verse, God talks about how serious this is. Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done?

What abomination? You know, are they worshiping idols? Are they sacrificing children? No, they're just going up to people and they're putting band -aids on them instead of really dealing with the problem.

No, he says they were not even ashamed at all. They did not even know how to blush.

Therefore they shall fall among those who fall. At the time that I punish them, they shall be cast down, says the

Lord. And then he gives this wonderful statement, thus says the Lord, stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is and walk in it.

And you will find rest for your souls. But they said, we will not walk in it. Yeah, so very serious charge there for us to be willing to rethink how we do our evangelism.

It's not just a matter of preference. It's very, we can see how the

Lord feels about people who in his name, I mean, we could say in Jesus name, go and offer peace to those who have not been reconciled truly to the

God who is. And what better application for our day than those who engage in evangelism, so -called, giving people assurance that they, because they repeated a prayer or because they,

I don't know where they're plugged in in church or whatever it is, anything short of really emptying themselves into emptying their hands and laying hold of Christ, that they're okay.

I mean, that is a perfect modern day example of healing my people falsely. And God says to us, if we engage in that, they will fall.

So I think we have to take that very serious. And in light of that, there are some hard questions just to sort of bring this podcast to a close, very sober ending, but some very sober and good questions that I want all of us to ask.

Yeah. These are questions I ask myself, right? I mean, you know, when we prepare for the podcast, we think of somebody other than us, but I have to start with me and, you know, we have to start with our church, people we love, my family.

But I look in the mirror and I, and these are the kinds of questions that come to me. How might

I be motivated by a greed for gain that would cause me to be less careful with the gospel than God requires me to be?

I mean, He's just called these men, men who are involved in abomination. I don't want to be a man who, because of a lack of care or a greed of gain,

I don't want to be a man who's good efforts at evangelism. At the end of time, God looks at me and says, that was an abomination.

I know you thought you were doing well. You weren't. So how could

I be greedy for gain? Well, there are ways. I mean, as a pastor, simple way is this. People tend to look at a pastor as if he's like a

CEO. So, okay, you're the CEO. You've been hired to make the business grow, to make it effective.

And so if you don't, you're out. And the church where we're at is wonderfully different than that.

They don't want that. They want me to walk with the Lord. They want us to walk with the Lord together.

But there's the natural temptation in the heart of a man to get his worth from his work.

So, when someone comes to me and says, Pastor John, like, you know, I want to be a

Christian. It's tempting to just rush them through a process of church membership and baptism, because it'll really be encouraging to the church right now to hear some, here's a man, here's a woman, here's a child.

They got saved, you know. And so I think you can be greedy for gain in that way, but that's pretty crass.

I want to build a big church so that I can be a big man. There's, there are much more subtle ways. What about this?

A husband goes home. His wife is not a believer. He comes home from work again. She's angry at him.

He tries to respond in the right way. Maybe he gets angry and he just thinks, Jesus, if you would just save my wife, my life would be a lot better.

So why don't you just fix her? And so, you know, he's ready to just give her a kind of a truncated form of the gospel.

Look, honey, just do this and we'll be okay. Parents with kids. God, just do something here, you know.

And so there are many ways. A person who comes to a church and they say, I'm an evangelist. That's my gift.

And, you know, I'm bold. And a person goes about doing a type of evangelism in order to get kind of notches in their belt so that they can feel that I have worth in the kingdom.

And this is what makes me lovely to God. This is what impresses people. And, you know, so those are all different ways to be greedy of gain.

There's another question I ask myself other than that, though. Have I ever, am

I now healing people superficially? I mean, there are people who are so damaged by their sin and sometimes by the sin of others on top of that.

But it's a lifelong, it's a lifelong commitment to walk alongside them, you know.

And you think, look, it's just, it'd be a lot easier just if you just want to pray this prayer and we'll make you a member of the church.

And if it doesn't stick, you'll leave and you won't be a problem here anyway. And, you know, all those selfish things.

Have I healed people superficially? Have I baptized people on suspicion without looking in the way that love would look?

Do they understand what they're saying? Is there real evidence of the work of God in their souls?

We're not looking for perfection. If it's a 10 -year -old, I look for the evidence of God's work in the life on a 10 -year -old level rather than a 50 -year -old level.

But a 10 -year -old who's come to Christ will have a different desire for Scripture, a different relationship with their parents.

I mean, things do change even in a child. And am I going to be willing to go against the grain of culture where people say, look, if someone asked to be baptized, someone asked to join your church, you just let them.

Like, why would you ever turn anybody away? Well, love sometimes requires not to. I'll give you an example.

A young lady in our church a few years ago came to me and said, and she was, you know, around 14, 15 if I remember rightly, and said that, you know,

I have cast myself on Christ, so to speak, and I'd like to be baptized.

I'd like to become a member of the church. And so I said, well, wonderful. Let me talk with your parents. I mean, she still lived at home.

And that's really normally where I would start. Do mom and dad, do brothers and sisters see any change?

So I talked with them, and both parents said, no, no. Other than a little religious talk, no.

So I had to go back to this young lady, and in a culture which this would be anathema in, you know, and you feel like I'm risking my friendship with this person.

They're going to hate my guts, you know, and then they're going to tell everybody in the town what a mean church we are, you know, what a horrible pastor that is.

I had to say, I can't baptize you. Your parents are concerned. They don't see any changes.

So here's what we will do. Let's, you know, let me find an older Christian lady to kind of help, and we'll see.

I'm not saying you aren't a Christian, but I'm saying that with such little fruit that even your family say,

I don't see any fruit, you wouldn't want to be baptized under that cloud. You want it to be clear. When you say,

I'm a follower of Christ, you want people that know you best to say, yes, she is. A year passed. She came back.

Same thing. I go to the parents, and they said, we wish we could say differently, but no, no difference.

So I went back and said, no. Another year passed. Another year. Third time she comes to me.

It was either the third or the fourth, and she said, and I was really shocked that she would humble herself and return.

I just figured she'd throw up her hands and say that, you know, her parents and I were cruel. She came again and said,

I really want to be baptized, and I really believe I am a believer, and I asked her parents that time, and they said, yes, there are changes.

It's wonderful to see. So we baptized her. Now, some of her friends got angry at me.

I didn't know that at the time. Years later, they wrote and said, I was so angry at you for years because you wouldn't baptize her. I'm thinking, well, you weren't in the process.

You didn't know that her parents, you know, so they just thought it was me. So that happens sometimes, but this young lady, we both know her, has been such an encouraging

Christian ever since, you know, just made all through college, we've watched her make hard decisions that are careful and good, and she loves the

Lord, and I don't regret doing that. Yeah, there's such a thing as a judgment of charity. So you wouldn't tell her, look, you're not a

Christian. What are you talking about? You're a Christian, but there's, so you wouldn't want to swing way over and have the judgment of meanness, you know, so like, oh, you know what you're getting.

Yeah, we don't have a thing saying, well, I'm sorry, the scale is on a one to 10, and if you're not at an eight, we don't believe you.

But if a person's closest friends say, I don't see any difference, love would say to them, maybe you are a believer, but let's wait, like John the

Baptist said, let's wait till there's some fruit that's brought out so that when you make this statement in front of people about Christ and you, it has weight to it.

You know, your friends hear that and they think, man, I want to be a Christian. Yeah, yeah, and we can say as a church, as a body, here is someone, if you want to know what a

Christian looks like, watch this person. Right, right, yeah, that's so important, and if just the evangelicals in America would do that,

I cannot imagine the shift in our religious culture that would happen. You know, another example of this, not me, but a parent, we have many parents in our church who come, and after a while, they'll basically say to me, you know, when my child was four, five, six, you know, they heard about hell in church, and they say,

I don't want to go to hell, obviously, and so they come to the parent and say, I want to be a Christian, and the parent said, well, that's wonderful, and they led him through a sinner's prayer.

Child doesn't understand anything really, I mean, I'm not saying a child can't be converted, but they would say by their own testimony, our kid didn't really understand, and what followed after that was not a

Christian's life, so that's pretty common. Here's what's uncommon. After the parents spend some time in Scripture, they come to me, and they say, okay, this is what

I did, and I'm so ashamed. I meant well. I did the best I knew how to do, but it was not right.

It was not Scripture. I didn't pay attention to the Bible. I just listened to what my preacher or this person said, so I did that.

What do I do now, and what I found them to do without really even having to be encouraged is they go back to their children, who are now are adults, usually not even living at home, and they say to them,

I need to say something to you, and they break down crying and say, I misled you.

I told you to repeat a prayer, and at age five, you were a Christian. You're never to doubt that, and look, in love,

I have to say to you, Mom and I, we've never seen you love Jesus or follow Jesus since then, but because of us, you've called yourself a

Christian, and that's our fault, so please forgive us, and I want to tell you the true gospel, and I mean there is nothing.

I know that's hard, but there's nothing that I can imagine that would be more worthwhile than that.

It's one thing for the preacher to say that to them, but it's different when Mom comes and sits down with you and says,

I'm so sorry. I was wrong, and now you have got this idea that's really not biblical, and I mean you just, a kid can't forget that.

Like, why did they do that? Like, you know, my life is pretty good. I'm not, you know, I'm not drunk.

I mean, I got a good job, got a family. We've got kids, grandkids for Mom and Dad, and they love us.

Why would they talk to me that way? Well, because they care. Because of the honor of God, and you know, you said it earlier.

Just think how different our religious landscape would be in the

Mid -South, in America, all over if we quit telling people to ask

Jesus into their hearts, and we stopped thinking that that was the end all and be all of evangelism and the gospel, and if instead we rethought who is

God, and what has He done was the gospel, and how do we communicate that to people, and in ways that mimic how

He works, how do we become co -workers, co -laborers with Him and His work that He does?

Just what a different world that would be. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm not really waiting on the world to become religious.

You know, I'm praying that the church, you know, will see the magnificence of our

King in such a light that we would say, I never want to handle the gospel carelessly again.

Well, gratefully, there are many in our day who are rethinking this issue, and in God's providence, we're amazed when we go to conferences like the

G3 Conference, and we have conversations with people, and we find out that, you know, going through the

Behold Your God study, going through maybe listening to different sermons from some of our friends that, you know, that are preaching out there, how that has been used in their life to help them re -evaluate a lot of these things, and it is encouraging just how

God is using common Christians to call people to Himself, and we pray that that, you know, is just the beginning, the first couple of sparks of a flame that God will fan up, and, you know, that He'll remember

His zeal for His name, and that He will do that work in the church in our day.

Yeah, and we are encouraged anytime we hear that anything, you know, our efforts are helpful, but I know you're encouraged also when you meet someone at a conference that says,

I never heard of Behold Your God. I never heard of your podcast, but the things you're saying, man, the

Lord taught me, you know, through the Scripture, and so it is encouraging to see those bright spots all throughout

Christ's church. Amen. Well, next week, we'll pick up with the next stage, so to speak, in evangelism, which is pointing people to the hope that there is in Christ, and I can't wait.

That'll sure be a sweet... Well, thanks, John. Thanks for taking time, and thank you for listening.

We're going to start a little conversation about William Grimshaw and his conversion for our

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If you're interested in becoming a supporter, you can find out how to do that at mediagrazie .org, or if you prefer

English, that's themeansofgrace .org. Just look for a form that says donate.

There's information there. We want to say, as always, with everything that we do, we never want finances to be a legitimate burden or a legitimate barrier between someone who wants to access the material and the material, so if you are not able to give to your local church and support your family and support the work that Media Grazie does, we have great news for you.

Our Father owns the on a thousand hills, and we don't have to have that, so we'll give you access to it.

Just reach out to us at infoatmediagrazie .org, or there's a contact form there on our website.

We'll be glad to put you in touch with the material. Thanks again for listening, and God bless you.