Evangelism is Telling People About Jesus

John the Baptist’s Witness to Jesus as the Lamb of God

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith.

Alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the first chapter. The next day John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is He of whom I said, After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.

I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel. And John bore witness, I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on.

Him.

I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and I have borne witness that this is the Son of God.

The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, Behold, the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him say this and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, What are you seeking?

And they said to him, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? He said to them, Come and you will see. So they came and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day for it was about the tenth hour.

One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah, which means the Christ. He brought him to Jesus, Jesus looked at him and said, You are Simon, the son of John.

You shall be called Cephas. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus, Amen. So have you ever heard the phrase, To obey is better than sacrifice? It's a biblical text by the way, that is an important thing.

And there's something that kind of goes along these lines, to obey is better than sacrifice. This is a text that is misused. But we'll talk about that in relation to our gospel text. But let me first kind of frame it.

To obey is better than sacrifice. Now we husbands know this to be true. And the reason I say that is because we husbands have this amazing ability as a result of our fall into sin to hurt our wives with no effort whatsoever.

We can just be ourselves and turn out to be a jerk and hurt the feelings of our wives. And early on in my marriage, it took me a while to kind of figure this out, you know, what was going on. You know, I was just being myself and then my wife would get hurt.

She would be upset and her countenance would change. And she would go from being herself to being upset. And I would say, Are you okay? And then she would say these terrible words, I'm fine. And so my inclination, my first thought was, Okay, I've done something wrong here.

And when it comes out what it is that I did wrong, that was so insensitive, that what I felt that I needed to do to make things right, was to offer some kind of a sacrifice to my wife. A lot of husbands do this.

Some of them buy flowers for their wives. My wife's not really into flowers. She's into chocolate. So, you know, a box of chocolates might be the proper sacrifice to earn my wife's favor.

Back.

Or back when we were really dirt poor, as you know, when we were first married, I would make a coupon page of coupons that were good for a free back rub or something like that. These were the sacrifices that were necessary in order to earn back my wife's favor.

And this is where you learn to obey is better than sacrifice. It's best if you not get yourself in trouble. And so we men oftentimes have to be trained, you know, domesticated, if you would, properly so that we learn how to behave in a way that is not hurtful.

And that takes some time, you know, bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit is never one of those things that happens overnight. But I want you to keep this this idea then in mind, you know, when you have hurt somebody, you feel that you need to atone by making a sacrifice.

This then oftentimes intuitively carries over into our understandings regarding God. And so if you were to travel the world, maybe to an eastern country, maybe to India, there's these concepts of, you know, the deities have some kind of a say in your life.

And maybe the pain, the misery, the suffering, the difficulty that you're going through is because one of the deities is unhappy with you. And so it's a matter of figuring out what you have done to fall into the bad graces of a particular deity, and then learning what the proper sacrifice is in order to assuage the wrath of that deity, and then get back into a favorable status so that things start going properly in your life.

And here's the thing. That idea about God oftentimes comes into our views of Christianity, but that's not how it works. And our gospel text today, you're going to note there's kind of two twin focuses as we work our way through our gospel text.

But we're going to start off with the gospel itself, and how the gospel that John the Baptist proclaimed regarding Jesus sets Christianity apart from every religion in the world. And every religion in the world would offer sacrifices in order to appease the wrath of God, but in Christianity something amazing happens.

And so here are the words of our gospel text from John chapter 1. The next day John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him, and he said, and these are amazing words, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

The Lamb of God. This is God's Lamb. This is God's sacrifice. In fact, the book of Hebrews makes it clear that Jesus Christ, true God, true man, is our great high priest and the sacrifice itself for our sins.

And it's in the book of Hebrews that we hear these important words, that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. And you'll note then that in John the Baptist proclamation of Jesus, Christianity stands out because God is not asking for your blood.

He has provided the blood of his own son, born of the Virgin Mary. He's provided the blood of his own son to atone for your sins and to make it so that you can again have God's favor. Everything needed, God has provided.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And you'll note here, there is nobody's sin that is not accounted for. There is no sin that has fallen through the cracks or maybe slid under the refrigerator and is having a dust bunny collect around it.

The sins of the whole world, every single one of them, God has laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all. You, me, the whole world. He has bled and died for us. And this is quite comforting. Because oftentimes, you know, when we rightly feel that we have transgressed God's holy law and we rightly feel guilt or shame as a result of it, it's very easy to say, well, that's the sin that God can't forgive.

That's the one he won't. That's the one that's going to send me to hell. But no, John the Baptist says he has taken away the sin of the world. Remember that while Christ is bleeding and dying for us, God has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

God made him to be sin who knew no sin. In fact, when God takes the sin of the world off of all of us, individually and collectively as the world and places them on Jesus, Jesus becomes the single sinner of humanity.

And his wrath is assuaged. Our sins are atoned for. The wrath of God propitiated. All of this is comfort. And so note then, this is really, really what?

Good news.

Right?

You see, you know, when we hear about good news, we expect it to be good, right? You know, so if my wife says, I've got great news, really, what's the good news? Oh, I had a coupon for that thing and I saved 35 cents.

It's just, yeah, that's great, honey. This is better than that. But you get the idea. This is truly, truly good news. And then John the Baptist, listen to this message that comes next. And as I read through this next portion, I just want you to note, who is John the Baptist preaching about?

Who is he talking about? Then he says this, this is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who ranks before me because he was before me. I myself did not know him, but for this purpose, I came baptizing with water that he might be revealed to Israel.

And John bore witness. I saw the spirit descend from heaven like a dove. It remained on him. I myself, I didn't know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, he on whom you see the spirit descend and remain.

This is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and I have borne witness that this is the son of God. You know who John the Baptist is preaching about? He ain't preaching about himself. He's preaching about Jesus.

Seems to be that it's all about Jesus. In fact, in another passage, John the Baptist, as his ministry starts to decline, now that Jesus has shown up on the scene, you know, you were to look at the graph of the growth of John the Baptist ministry and impact, and all of a sudden Jesus shows up and it goes starts to tank, right?

And people point this out to John and he says, he's got to increase. I've got to decrease. Or as the apostle Paul says in first Corinthians, I chose to know nothing among you except for Christ and him crucified.

You see, true evangelism, true evangelism is pointing people to Jesus, telling people the good news of what Jesus has done for them. There is a common misconception, and unfortunately it's deeply embedded in certain portions of the visible church today, that evangelism involves you telling everybody your personal testimony.

And so the better personal testimonies always have salacious details. So a really, really compelling personal testimony would be somebody who said, you know, I was a strung out drug user. I was doing these horrible, terrible, no good things.

And one morning I found myself awake in a gutter, you know, off in Skid Row, you know, in a pool of my own vomit. And somebody told me that God loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life. And so I asked Jesus into my heart.

And next thing you know, now I'm the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I've got three bright, shiny little children, and my life is just spectacular. So I'm going to just ask you this question. Who are you preaching about when you give your personal testimony?

You.

You're actually preaching about you. And I would note that as an evangelism technique goes, this is pretty sketchy. The reason I say it is, have you ever heard of a fellow who went by the name of Cassius Clay?

Cassius Clay. Yeah, he was a famous boxer, Cassius Clay. And if you know his life story, well, when he went by the name Cassius Clay, he was a little bit of a mess, if you would. His life was a little topsy-turvy, and he was engaging in immoral activity and was just not the best of fellows.

He was, in fact, kind of bottom of the barrel kind of fellow. But then he met God, and God changed his life, and so he changed his name. Yeah, the God he met was Allah, and he changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.

How is his testimony any less valid than somebody who claims that they met Jesus? You see, if you think the truth of a religion is based upon its therapeutic value, then you've got a problem. You see, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

True evangelism is telling people about Jesus. And unfortunately, because of this idea that evangelism is telling people about me and the life change I've experienced, because they think that's what evangelism is, as a result of that, what ends up happening is that there's pressure on people, pressure on people to embellish their boring testimonies.

I mean, what happens if you grow up in Oslo, Minnesota, or around Oslo, Minnesota, and you were taken to church as an infant, baptized as a child, catechized, and then you went to UND and got a degree in engineering or something like that.

And then after graduating from UND, you went into the workforce and got a job and got married and had three, four, six kids, and there's no period of your life that you can point to and say, that was the time when I sowed my wild oats.

If you have a boring testimony like that, what are you supposed to do? Because nobody would ever want to become a Christian because my life story is so boring. But John the Baptist, I would note, John the Baptist, there's nothing in scripture that tells us about the fact that when he had graduated from high school, he was smoking weed and joined a fraternity and became a debaucherous drunk.

In fact, John the Baptist was a fellow who was, well, a Nazarite from even before he was born in the womb. There's nothing in here about John the Baptist's life that would point to him having some period of being on the sinful skids, and then all of a sudden his life is improved.

Nope, not at all. In fact, Jesus says of John the Baptist that of men born of women, none are greater than.

Him.

If you were to line up all of sinful humanity in a line from greatest to the least, John the Baptist is at the head of the line. Out of all the human beings who have ever lived, sinful human beings that have ever lived, John the Baptist is the stellar example of what it means to be, well, a sinful human being.

And Jesus says none is greater than him. But listen to John the Baptist. John the Baptist says, listen, after me comes a man who ranks before me because he was before me. John the Baptist, the greatest of all human beings, says of Jesus, Jesus ranks me.

And his Christology is just on point because he notes the reason why he ranks me is because he was before me. It's as if John the Baptist knew that Jesus Christ is God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made.

And so John the Baptist, the greatest man born of woman, the only person he can talk about is Jesus and the good news that he is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of.

The world.

Tragically, when people think that their testimony equals evangelism, some people actually make stuff up. I remember years and years and years ago, two of my mentors, Bob and Gretchen Pasentino, very, very noted, you know, world-known Christian apologists, one of their specialties was the study of Satanism.

And I wouldn't say they were good friends with Anton LaVey, the author of the Satanic Bible, but they were acquainted with him and they would talk with him from time to time. And there was a fellow who came on the scenes in the late 70s, early 80s, in kind of the Christian comedy scene.

You know, Christianity, evangelicalism always has a Christian alternative to what's available in the secular world. And there was a Christian comedian by the name of Mike Warnke who was making the.

Rounds.

And Mike Warnke had this amazing testimony of his transformation from going from Satanist, who engaged in occultic sacrifices, he went from being a Satanist to being a Bible-believing, born-again Christian.

But here's the problem. The details of his experience as a Satanist didn't match up with the reality of what Satanism is. And as a result of that, my mentors, Bob and Gretchen Pasentino, decades ago wrote an article, I think it was published in Christianity Today, where they exposed Mike Warnke for a fraud and said that he's lying about his time in Satanism.

It's not true. And as a result of it, he pretty much, his Christian comedy career came to a crashing.

Halt.

And then not that long ago, you know, not that long ago, it's getting longer ago now than I care to imagine. After the 9 -11 attacks, in the years that followed, there was a fellow making the rounds in Christianity claiming that he had been trained by Al-Qaeda how to be a suicide bomber and a terrorist, and that he was radicalized by them, and grew up in Islam and spoke fluent Arabic and all this kind of stuff, and claimed that he had a radical encounter with Jesus, and he traded in the bomb on his back for a Bible.

That was his testimony. That fellow's name was Ergin Kanner. And the problem is this, is that he embellished that testimony. It's not true. He was not raised in an Arab country. He's the son of Swiss immigrants to the United States.

He grew up and went to high school in Ohio, and he was pretty much as radical as homogenized milk. And when Muslims started pointing out that he does not speak Arabic, the things that he's saying are incorrect, it kind of blew up in his face that it turns out he had completely embellished his life testimony.

He wasn't, you know, radicalized. He was never trained as, you know, as a terrorist or anything like that. He made the whole story up. All of that being said, you'll note John the Baptist has no great testimony like that, but his testimony is instead about Jesus.

He's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and that's what it means to evangelize. That's what it means. It's as simple as inviting somebody to church so that they can hear the gospel. It's as simple as telling somebody, Jesus has bled and died for your sins.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. And so you'll note John the Baptist, the greatest human being of all time that is born of a woman who is sinful, the only person he can talk about is Jesus.

And so as the text continues, then we see how evangelism works. John the Baptist keeps pointing to, talking about, exemplifying, megaphone. Every time Jesus shows up, it's as if this guy can't be quiet.

There he is, there he is, there's the Lamb of God, that's the guy, right?

So the next day it says, John was standing with two of his disciples. I mean, and see, here's the thing, guys who are in ministry, I mean, the success of a ministry is based upon the numbers that you have, right?

So there's John the Baptist, he's got two of his disciples with him, and no sooner are they having this conversation that Jesus is walking by and John goes, behold, the Lamb, the Lamb of God, the Lamb of God, and this has a serious negative impact on his ministry, because watch what happens.

The two disciples heard him say this, and so they followed Jesus. They stopped being disciples of John the Baptist and they became disciples of Jesus Christ. But see, that's the thing. In Christianity, there are only disciples of Jesus.

There are no disciples of Chris Roseborough. Don't, let's put that out there. There are no disciples of Chris Roseborough. There should be no disciples of Martin Luther. There should be no disciples of John Calvin or Augustine or Irenaeus or Polycarp or name the person.

In fact, you can always tell a false teacher because they draw away disciples after themselves. And here, John the Baptist, his ministry takes a hit. Jesus walks by and he can't help but do this, that's the Lamb of God.

And two of his guys go, great, see you later, I think, and they're off. And so they turned, they followed Jesus and Jesus said, what are you seeking? And they said, rabbi, where are you staying? And so he said, come, I'll show you, come, you'll see.

So they came and they saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day. It was about the 10th hour. And watch what happens next. So one of the two who heard John speak followed Jesus. This was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.

And when he first found his own brother, Simon, he said to him, we found the Messiah, man. And so watch what's happening here. John the Baptist, he preaches and tells everybody about Jesus. Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

That's the guy, that's the guy, that's the guy.

He's the son of God. So Andrew says, all right, I'll go check it out. He goes and checks it out. And next thing he's doing, he'd run off to tell his brother, Peter, Peter, Peter,.

Peter, Peter, dude, we found the Messiah.

Now this is bad theology, by the way, Jesus found them. Cause remember what Jesus said, you didn't choose me, I chose you. But still in his exuberance, you kind of get the idea here. And so what does he do?

He tells Peter about, and now Peter is a follower of Jesus. So let me put it this way. I understand that there is a lot of trepidation, a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear when it comes to evangelism. And part of that fear is created by the misinformation about it.

You don't need to tell anybody your personal life story. You just don't. In fact, preaching the good news means telling people that he's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It's not about the results of your sanctification.

In fact, evangelism is all about what Jesus Christ did for your justification. Big difference. So note then, brothers and sisters, take all the fear and anxiety away. All the fear and anxiety away. We have good news to proclaim to the world that Jesus is the Lamb of God, that he has forgiven my sins, that he has forgiven your sins, that he's bled and died for their sins.

This is the good news that we are to preach. Don't worry about whether or not your testimony is as bland as melbatos. Don't even worry about that at all. You don't need to tell your testimony. Just point people to Jesus, the true Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And you know what? That's how disciples are made, because Jesus says to his disciples in Matthew 28, you go and you make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching all that I have commanded and lo, I'm with you always, even until the end of the age.

He will never leave us nor forsake us. And so what did those disciples do? They went out and told everybody about Jesus. And in telling everybody about Jesus, what does God the Holy Spirit do? He makes people into Christians who then become disciples, who then go tell people about Jesus, and then when they tell people about Jesus, those people become Christians, they become disciples, and they go and tell people about Jesus.

So evangelism is a lot like being a broken record. Tell them about Jesus. Tell them about how he bled for you, died for you, how he bled for them, died for them, how he rose victorious from the grave so that we can be forgiven, justified, reconciled to God, and that we do not have to offer our own sacrifices of money, blood, sweat, or tears in order to assuage the wrath of God that we have earned, but that God has done it all for us and gives us eternal life as a free gift because of.

Jesus.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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