How's Evangelism Going? | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. If you want to make Christians feel pretty badly about themselves, ask them one of two questions.

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One, how's your prayer life? Two, how's evangelism going? Well, in today's podcast, we're going to talk about that second piece.

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For many of us, we tend to think that the only way to do evangelism is maybe through things like street preaching or handing out tracts or sharing the gospel with somebody we're sitting next to on the airplane.

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And while those are all legitimate things to do, that might not actually be the main way we do evangelism, according to the

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New Testament. So John and I are going to try to encourage us all in our love of neighbor and in living in such a way that we would have opportunity to share the hope of Christ that we have within us.

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And then we're also going to think about, all right, when the opportunity arises to engage a nonbeliever, what do I say?

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So all that and more in today's episode. We hope you're encouraged. Stay tuned. If you'd like to help support

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You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

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Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast.

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John's trying to pressure me into talking. We're kind of silly.

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As you guys know, we take the gospel pretty seriously. So I'm welcoming you to Theocast, where we encourage weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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We have conversations about the Christian life from a confessional, reformed, and pastoral perspective.

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And if you're wondering what we try to do here at Theocast other than just act a fool, we are aiming to clarify the gospel and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom of Christ.

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And so we're going to aim to do that yet again today by having another conversation about a topic that I think is going to be interesting to many.

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But before we get to that, I want to introduce you to your hosts today. One of the hosts is

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John Moffitt. He is the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And I'm Justin Perdue.

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I'm the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. If this is your first time listening to Theocast, God bless you.

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Go with him and be blessed. It might be your first and last time listening to this podcast,

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Shane. We talk about Jesus? Nothing else here, Shane. Okay. That's how we talk. So John, on the reel.

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Tell everybody what we're going to talk about. Yes. Well, before we do, a couple of announcements. If you're new and you'd like to be a part of more of what we do, we have a whole community based on this.

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And I'm hoping it's out by now. And if it's not, well, we're introducing it anyways. It's called Theocast Community, and it's a great way.

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Which obviously, after listening to the two of us banter, you want to be a part of that, right? That's right. If you want to go ask questions, be a part of great book recommendations, sermon recommendations, just a part of a community that loves resting in Christ, confessionalism, law, gospel, distinction.

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If you have a question about the law and the gospel, the community is a place to do it. Just go to our website. You'll learn more about it.

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And there's a bunch of stuff there. Book recommendations, church finder, all that good stuff. Justin, let's talk about what we came here to talk about.

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You know what? This was a listener recommended. Someone reached out and said, could you guys please talk about evangelism?

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And I thought about it. Yeah. So, I thought about it, and I put it on my to -do list, and I thought, I'll talk to Justin about it.

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So, as I started thinking about it, though, I've been teaching on, over the last couple of years, I've been teaching on the

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Kingdom of God, which is why we also started the Kingdom podcast. And we're just now about to do some work on the spiritual nature of the

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Kingdom, like Kingdom of Light, Kingdom of Darkness, Unseen Rome. And as I started thinking about all of that, and Jesus, when he, you know, 40 days, he spent 40 days after his resurrection.

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And do you know what he did for 40 days? Acts 1 -3 tells us he taught them the

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Kingdom of God, which is interesting. It's all about the Kingdom of God. And, you know,

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I grew up in a Baptist, very fundamentalist Baptist, aggressive evangelistic background, where,

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I mean, I couldn't do sports on Saturdays because we were out door knocking, is what we called it. We'd go door to door, passing out tracks every

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Saturday. And then I went to a college that you would get kicked out of the school if you didn't at least share the gospel with one unbeliever once a week on a

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Saturday. And, you know, I understand they had a massive passion for sharing the gospel.

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The motivations we trust are good. But even that carries over to today. And there's a lot of street evangelism and street preaching and what

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I would call a very aggressive style of evangelism where you're going in to get a decision kind of immediately within a few minutes of the conversation getting started.

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You know, Ray Comfort's probably a good example of the most famous of this. I remember when I was early, you know, in my early 20s, it was

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Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron had a show about that where they had gotten street evangelized and things like that.

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And if you're anyone who is remotely shy or quiet, it seems like you would rather, you know, do anything else.

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And it makes you feel like you're a lesser Christian. Like, oh, I guess I really don't care about the lost because I'm not willing to go out and do a street evangelism or, you know, hand out tracks or start conversations with strangers that I've never met before.

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And in your mind then, well, I guess I'm never going to really understand what it feels like to evangelize.

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And so this conversation is more about evangelism that is and can be, and as a lot of people have come to Christ using that method, but it's not the only method.

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And I would argue, and Justin and I are going to argue from the Bible, it may not be the primary method. We do hear from Jesus to go out into all the world and preach the gospels, making disciples, right, and baptizing them in the name of the

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Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. So that's a very popular passage. But Justin, I'll ask you this question. Where else in Scripture is the concept of evangelism in that way given to us?

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I'll just save you some time. It's not. We don't really have any other than the title evangelist.

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We don't have any other door -to -door style street preaching instructions given to us in the early church.

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But that doesn't mean we don't have instructions on evangelism because we do. We're going to talk about it. Effectively, our premise today is that contact evangelism, of which like street preaching is a variety, is the first time that I'm making contact with a person and for the sole purpose of I'm just going to go in on the gospel.

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So this could be street preaching. It could be handing out tracts. It could be you're sitting next to the person on the airplane or whatever.

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That's contact evangelism. It's one encounter, and it's one and done, and I'm going to trust the

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Lord with it. Like you said, the Lord does a ton of good work through that kind of thing, and there are some individuals who are very gifted at that, and we praise the

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Lord for all of it. So the point of our conversation today is not to dismiss that in any regard, but it's actually to encourage the church holistically that contact evangelism, street preaching, handing out tracts, etc.,

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is not the only way of evangelism. Like John said, it actually may not be the primary way of evangelism based upon the witness of the

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New Testament. So that's kind of part one of our conversation, and then when we get to part two, we're going to maybe kick around.

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Okay, well, you guys have made a compelling case for this, but when I am around an unbeliever, what do I say?

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When I have an opportunity through the building of a relationship or whatever, how do

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I think about engaging? So that's kind of part two. Anyway, John, let's look at the scriptures. Before we do, let me set it up a little bit.

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What's been helpful for me is that every day I'm trying to live. We talk a lot about two kingdoms.

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I naturally live in the one kingdom I was born into. The second kingdom that Christ tells me about that I'm supposed to seek first every single day,

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I'm trying to learn how to do that. What's interesting about when you start having a kingdom mindset that, okay,

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I'm a part of this spiritual kingdom and that those who are influenced by that kingdom are not only influenced by it and through it through the means of using a gospel tract or the proclamation of the gospel.

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So we're going to make some arguments here that God is very concerned, Jesus is very concerned, and the apostles are very concerned with how we conduct ourselves, believing that our conduct can and should be a light, be an aroma, be a means by which those who are around us are drawn towards the gospel message.

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I'm going to say this now. No one has ever said my lifestyle evangelism. Justin Perdue I was about to say, it's sadly attributed to St.

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Francis of Assisi. I'm loath to think that he would have ever said it. The urban legend quote that share the gospel, use words if necessary, that is not at all what

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John and I believe. We understand that the gospel inherently is the message of what

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Christ has accomplished, and so don't misunderstand us in that regard either. What we're going to be discussing is how we live in the common kingdom and how we love our neighbor.

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How we conduct ourselves is a significant piece of how we do evangelism. Justin Perdue probably a very famous verse.

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Justin, if you want to start us with John 13, 34, and 35. Justin Perdue John, I would be delighted to. This is probably one of the most famous passages of Scripture.

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I use it often, but I'm sorry, I thought you already had it open. I was going to hand it over to you. Justin Perdue No, I'm good. I mean,

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Bible drill. It's always good to get a little bit of that in. John 13,

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I'm going to read verses 34 and 35. This is Jesus to His disciples last night that He's on earth for His crucifixion.

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He says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

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Justin Perdue Key phrase. The one you just read is the key phrase. John 13, 35 Oh yeah, as I've loved you.

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What does that mean? Well, He gave Himself for them. Justin Perdue Laid His life down. John 13, 35 Laid His life down. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples.

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If you have love for the world. Oh, no, that's not what it says. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples.

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If you have love for one another. We're starting here because what a significant observation to make that the world will know that we are

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Christ's, not by how we love the world directly, but actually by how we love one another in the church.

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As outsiders maybe come in to our communities, our local churches, as we get to know people in our communities, as we make friends, develop relationships, as we maybe go as groups of believers and hang out places, and people get,

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Oh, you guys go to church together. Oh, okay. And they watch the way we live together. They watch the way we love one another, where we live lives of sacrifice, where we value our brothers and sisters even above ourselves in these ways, and we lay ourselves down for each other.

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We take care of each other. That's a compelling witness to the gospel to the watching world. That's right.

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It's saying disciple love, meaning that I live underneath the teaching of Jesus.

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And so he's saying the world will see the application of my teaching by your love.

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And I'll even say this to everyone who's married, wife to husband, husband to wife, the way you love each other becomes a light to the world.

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But it's sad. And listen, Jesus never intended that to be a painful verse to hear.

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He's saying, look to my love as I have loved you. If you love in return, the world will be influenced by it.

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To me, I can take rest in that. I'm going to work hard at loving my brother and my wife and my children so that the world will know that Jesus is significant.

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I sometimes tell our people to try to encourage them. It's like, lives are changed one cup of coffee at a time. I say that to say this, like what you just said.

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How liberating is it to think that I can, for God's honor and the good of my neighbor,

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I can make an impact where I live by loving my spouse and my kids even start if I'm married and I have children.

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Like your primary neighbor, if you're married, is your spouse. Your next primary neighbors, if you have kids, are your kids.

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We can just start here. It's very simple. We tend to so overcomplicate and codify this thing.

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If I'm a loving spouse and a loving parent and there's just some stability in my marriage and in my household, that's a compelling witness in and of itself.

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Then as we move out from there in spheres of moral proximity to our local churches, the ways that we love one another within the church is also a witness to people that would look on.

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May we be, like you said, rather than feeling that there's some kind of burden, may that liberate us and free us and encourage us that these things that we do on a regular basis anyway are used of the

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Lord to save His people. Justin Perdue knows this verse because sometimes we act like he hasn't read the

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Bible. He's read it. You know what the phrase is. He does quote scripture to Jesus in the

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Temptation. He misquotes it too. Well, he twists it. Justin, you've heard it.

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I've heard it. It seems like people outside the church treat people nicer than people inside the church do. Satan, knowing that love for one another, what does he get us to do?

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He gets us to bicker and fight. He gets us to turn on each other. This is why Paul says these things should not be named among you guys.

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This is the opposite of what Christ has called us to be. I have a little anecdote that I'll tell later in the second half regarding what you're just pointing out.

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Right. Another way Jesus said this was in Matthew chapter five. Peter picks up on it as well. Matthew 5 .16,

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in the same way, let your light shine before others. We'll have to explain maybe in a minute what light means.

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So that they may see your good works and give glory to your

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Father who is in heaven. Peter says the same thing in his own way this way.

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First Peter 2 .12, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify

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God in the day of visitation. Going back to what Jesus has said, let your light shine before others.

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The way that the Bible contrasts the two kingdoms, you have the kingdom of darkness, which is under the rule of Lucifer, Satan.

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He's the god of this world. First John 5 says the whole world is under the power of the evil one. It's called darkness.

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It's also Colossians 1, the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son. What are we described as?

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The kingdom of light. If we're a part of it, which means when we reflect our king and his kingdom, we become light in the kingdom of darkness.

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He's saying your conduct, the way in which you act. Justin, I think it's highly important right now that we explain what the kingdom of light and darkness is here.

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At times people think the pressure now is to live perfect, so I would rather live imperfect and evangelize than try and live perfect and think that's how

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God's going to save. No. People of the kingdom of light are people of grace and mercy.

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We're the first to forgive. We're the first to ask for forgiveness. We're the first to show mercy. We're the first to ask for mercy.

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I am a failure. I'm a wretch. The light is, hey, you're a sinner. I'm a sinner.

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You're feeling guilty and shamed. So am I. You're a debtor to mercy. So am

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I. You're a debtor to grace. So am I. But the difference is, and I'm just going to go ahead and tie this in later, because it's already, well,

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I'll save it for later. But 1 Peter 3 .15 explains, when you show the light, what is it you have to be ready to do?

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That'll be a beautiful segue. There is an essence to me where I get excited going, oh, okay, when

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I'm gracious to people, God says that that's a light. When I am patient with people,

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God says, well, that's a light. When I ask for forgiveness, when I confess to someone

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I've done wrong, when I've gone to them and said, hey, I've done wrong to you, and I want to make that right. God says that's a light in that I am pointing people to God by the way in which

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I'm conducting myself. Justin Perdue No, amen. And we should be encouraged, like you just said, by that reality.

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That as we go about in the community, we go to the establishments that we frequent.

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We shop at the store. We do all the things as much as you're able.

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As you generate relationships, as you remember somebody's name, as you go to restaurants and you're kind to servers, and you tip well, and you do all these things, and you just ask thoughtful questions like, how are you doing?

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You live that way over the course of years and decades. It bears a lot of fruit. When people find out, oh, you're a

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Christian, or I know for you and I, we have that unique thing where somebody finds out, oh, you're a pastor?

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Really? I receive it as a compliment often when people are like, you're a pastor, really?

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Because their perception, at least in the city where I am, the perception of Christians and certainly of pastors is that we are to be feared, and we're bigoted, mean people, mean -spirited, uncharitable people.

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You've been kind to me, and I like you. You're all your friends from your church. You guys are normal, and you're kind.

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People are kind of struck by that. It wins a hearing, which we're going to speak to in a minute, but it also glorifies and honors

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God. It adorns our profession of faith in Christ. Why don't we look to 2

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Corinthians 2 now? I love this verse. I quote it all the time. 2 Corinthians 2 .15

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-17. I'm just going to read them real quick, and then we can comment. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.

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Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.

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Really good stuff. Jon, go ahead. Because of who we represent, we wear

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Christ. We are in Christ. I said this in last week's podcast. His name is

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Spirit, Son, Father, spoken over us as accepted. We accept you. You're in our name.

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That means that we carry that. To the ones who are being saved, God is drawing them to Himself.

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Our life becomes this aroma that draws people in. It's like when you walk through the door at home and you're drawn to the kitchen because you can smell the pot roast on Sunday afternoon.

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What comes out of our mouth, what comes out of our life is this drawing aroma towards people.

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For those who reject Christ and those who don't want Christ, it says it's from death unto death, but that's not up to us at all.

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That is not our responsibility because sometimes we can feel the responsibility. It's our fault people are going to hell.

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Well, not necessarily, because Jesus Himself preached the gospel to people who never believed, and so did

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Paul. Our responsibility is to reflect Christ in every way that we can and we allow

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God's work to do His work. For me, I gain so much confidence because there are times

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I really do long to share the gospel. I really do. I want to sit down and be the person who plants the first seed.

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You know what this tells me? In all of these verses so far, seeds are planted by what people smell coming from us.

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This aroma of Christ might be what fertilizes the ground first before the seed is planted.

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If you're new to Theocast, we have a free e -book available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest.

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If you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

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slash primer. I agree completely on the aroma part.

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I'm not going to add to what you just said. I love verse 17 too, the way he wraps it up. It's like, we're not peddlers of God's Word.

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There's no ulterior motive here or anything like that, but we're sincerely as commissioned by God.

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We speak in Christ, and I would add to it based on things that Paul writes elsewhere. We speak in Him and we speak of Him.

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Not only is there the aroma of Christ about us, but Christ is on our lips and He is what we say when it comes to this question of how we engage sinners, which is where we're going to go now in 1

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Peter 3, 15 and 16. We can look to that, and then we're going to talk more pointedly about when we do encounter the non -Christian, how do we talk?

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John, why don't you look to 1 Peter 3. Jon Moffitt Yeah. It's a very famous verse. Most of you may have already known this, but we'll read it.

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Know that it's on the heels of keep your conduct among the Gentiles, honorable. 1 Peter 2 .12.

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The next chapter, 1 Peter 3 .15. In your hearts, honor

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Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.

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I love this. Do it with gentleness and respect. Having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile you, your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

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I think there's a couple of applications. I'll make one and I'll throw it back over to you. First of all, he's saying that your life will draw the question.

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What hope is that? You live in a way, like even Paul says, we don't mourn like other people mourn when someone dies.

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There's a hope that we have beyond the grave. So people will look at your life. If Christ is your hope and Christ is your life and you're living for the kingdom and his king and the king, they're going to go, you got to tell me about that.

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You got to tell me about what you're doing there. To me, that brings a lot of encouragement saying, hey, listen,

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I love this. We didn't put this verse in here. I'll let you talk to us and I'll go find it.

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But Paul says, don't be discouraged that your life that you suffer for the sake of Christ is in vain because it's not.

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Well, that's first Corinthians 15. Your labor is not in vain. Your labor is not in vain. So as we labor to love and to be charitable and to be kind and care for those around us,

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God says it's kind of like the word of God does not return void. He's saying your good acts are not in vain.

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That's all tethered to the promise of the resurrection. Jesus got up from the dead, we will one day too, and death is going to be conquered.

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So remember that all of your toil and your labor is not in vain. I agree with you.

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It's interesting, too, the context for going back to 1 Peter 3. The context there is suffering for righteousness' sake or suffering unjustly too, like most immediately.

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So there's something about, like you said, I think it's appropriate to apply this to our conduct in general. There's a way in which we can live and conduct ourselves amongst unbelievers in the common kingdom of the world that would cause them to ask us, tell me about that hope you have because it's different.

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But in particular, it seems that when we are suffering and when we encounter harm and hatred for the sake of Christ's name, that is a pointed opportunity for us.

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I think your illustration of not grieving like the world grieves is a good opportunity.

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But think about America. I could riff about this, and I probably will say more about this later. I'm trying not to just get us shot at from every angle, but it's funny how it seems like the project of Christians in America right now is to seek to have power in such a way that we would never encounter this kind of thing.

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But yet it seems that in the Scriptures, the church is a counterculture. That's an assumption.

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And that when we are persecuted, when we're mocked, when we're ridiculed because of Christ and because of what we believe about Him and what we believe about His law, etc.,

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there is a great opportunity there for us to demonstrate and give a reason for our hope that we have in Jesus.

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And yet may that be a lesson to us all as we live in a society that is increasingly hostile to us.

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We've got opportunities left and right to live in a way that adorns our profession of faith, that is a compelling witness to the gospel and the power of Christ to save, and then we have opportunity to give a reason for the hope that we have in Jesus.

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Jon Moffitt Yeah. I mean, why he says, you're going to need to do this with gentleness and respect because you're being persecuted.

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If you're being attacked and they're like, hey, so why are you not reviling? Why are you doing this?

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Why are you responding with kindness? And so he's like, listen, give the answer of your hope.

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You do it with gentleness and respect. And man, you know, I've seen a lot of apologetic ministries that are out there, and at times

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I just feel like that's the part that's gone, the gentleness side of it. Justin Perdue Read the blogs, get on Christian social media, and it isn't gentle and respectful.

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Jon Moffitt Well, and that's the other thing. Listen, I think a good healthy debate and disagreement is iron sharpening iron.

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Man, some of the stuff that happens on there, I'm like, well, unbelievers don't look at what happens on Twitter and go, wow, you guys are

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Jesus' disciples. They go, right. Justin Perdue Again, not only are we not loving each other because we're just like an intramural food fight, but then in addition, there is the way that Christians, and again,

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I'm thinking about a lot of the folks that are advocates of a kind of Christian nationalism or something, like the way that those saints,

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I trust they're brothers and sisters in the Lord, the way that they write about the world and about unbelievers is anything but gentle and respectful.

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It's reviling. It's punchy. It's almost kind of like a mocking and a ridiculing in return, and that's not winsome.

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Again, there's much that could be said, and it's a huge conversation, I understand, but this is instructive for us. I've said this before,

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John. Sometimes people, especially guys, I'm saying guys, guys in discernment ministries that just stand on the wall types, and we're just going to mow everything down that's not orthodox or that's not sound, and we're going to expose the errors of the society and the civil government and the culture, and then they wear it as a badge of honor that they're hated.

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It's like, people hate me because I'm standing for the truth. It's like, well, bro, that may be possible, but they might hate you because you are an abject jerk.

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Have you thought about that? Maybe you are just an absolute jerk of a human being in the way that you conduct yourself and the way that you write and speak of other people, and maybe that has something to do with why they don't like you.

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It's not just what you're saying. We should be reviled for what we're standing for, not how we stood for it.

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Very good. Very good. And I say that all the time. If someone, my wife and I have this conversation with each other and our children, and I'll tell my kids,

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I'm like, guys, listen, what you said is not wrong. It's how you said it to each other.

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It's the attitude. It was the condescending snark that put in there that wasn't helpful.

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No one felt loved and corrected. No one's able to receive that. No. And this is why it's like, we don't like this verse, but speaking the truth in love wasn't an option.

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It was a command. We talk about obeying the law. That's not optional.

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You are to speak the truth of what liberates people from their sin, but you always do it in love.

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If you don't do it in love, you know what you're doing it in self -righteousness. Total condemnation in self -righteousness.

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And so when it says gentleness, it literally means thinking about how the other person is going to hear this.

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Now, Justin, sometimes when people hear me say this, man, the stuff that people say about us on YouTube and blogs, it's really weird.

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Gentleness doesn't mean you back down. I preached this

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Sunday. I said, listen, the world treats truth like it's mutable and that it's subjective and that it's based on consensus.

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And because of that, abortion and homosexuality and changing people's way they were born, that's true.

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They're like, live your truth. And I look at that and I said with as much compassion as I can is that Satan has blinded 1

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John 5. He's blinded the eyes of the unbeliever and truth is not mutable. It is not subjective and it's not based on consensus.

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This is why Romans 1, 22 through 26 exist because God is saying, I gave them over to their own truth.

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He calls it their own wisdom. I gave them over to their own truth and look what it produced. I mean, now

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I stood for God fully. I did not back down. I am not saying abortion is okay.

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I'm not waffling on that, but you can say it in such a way where the person hearing it is saying, hey, you may have been taught a lie.

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Live your truth is actually a lie. It's not truth. We've said it many times.

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I mean, the religion of our day is effectively this. Look within. Find the truth that exists there.

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Run as hard after that as you can and let anybody tell you no. That's the ethos and the methodology.

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It's your truth that you find inside of you. Let's pivot slightly. We've got a little bit of time left. 1

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Peter 3 is a good segue because we're having conversations with unbelieving people who want to know the reason for the hope we have.

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What do we say when we actually have gained the hearing, when we are given the opportunity by God to speak to a person, to a friend, to a co -worker, to an acquaintance, and they don't trust

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Christ? We had a good conversation after an elders meeting recently. We were smoking cigars together, and one of our elders was like, hey guys, how do you engage unbelievers when you have opportunity?

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What do you say? What are the things in your mind that you want to be sure to communicate? I thought it was a wonderful question, and we had a sweet time interacting over it.

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The way that we began to talk about it was the conversation we have there is sort of how we welcome people to church every

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Sunday. What do we do? We explode any notion of our own righteousness, any confidence that we would have in our own goodness or our own virtue as though we could offer something to God on the basis of which

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He would show us His favor. This is how we understand our condition as fallen humans, and this is how we understand the standard of the law spiritually.

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We start with that, and then we herald and extol Christ as our only hope, as the one who has stood in our place and took our punishment, made satisfaction for our sins, as the one who represented us and is our righteousness.

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We're completely hoping in Him. It actually has nothing to do with anything that we contribute, anything that we do, anything that we might be able to do, anything that we have done.

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None of that. It's Christ only, and that's what it means to be a Christian. I begin with that,

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John, because just to illustrate this, I occasionally have opportunities to speak to groups of high school students here in the region.

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Typically, I'm speaking to groups of high school students who are believers. It's like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes or something, because I used to be an athlete, so I'll get asked to come speak.

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I'll go to some high school FCA thing. Most of these kids mean to trust Christ. They go to church.

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If I've not spoken to this group of kids before, I usually will begin with something like this.

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Friends, how is it amongst your peers that you think Christianity is most misunderstood?

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To a person, it's pretty much. Ninety -five plus percent of the answers are something like this.

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Well, they think that Christianity is about what we do, or Christianity is about your stance on moral issues.

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Those are the two things that I always hear. In my mind, I've got that there, and I'm thinking,

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I want to explode that. When I have the conversation with the non -believer in my area,

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I know that for whatever reason, I want to blow up any idea that being a

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Christian has anything to do with what I do in order to gain favor with God or even my stance on issues so that God might approve of me.

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I'm going to blow it up, and then I'm going to herald the fact that what makes me a believer is that I understand

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I'm not worthy, never could be, and that Christ alone is. He's all I've got. I'm casting myself on Him completely, and that's what it means to be a believer.

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Let's talk about that. That's where we start. Justin, I think this is a hard transition for people, but I wake up with a lot of confidence.

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Justin, you and I just don't get to talk to a lot of unbelievers. That's one of the hard things about being a pastor. You've actually been pulled back from the front lines, and you're equipping people who live on the front lines.

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That's what you do as a pastor. I try and find ways to engage through sports, golf, activities.

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I got invited to a Spring Hill group of men. It's just a group of guys that get together, 250 of them.

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I'm going to be going to that because I just don't have opportunities to build relationships with unbelievers.

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I know that some of your men have been doing the same thing. The whole

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Jesus friend of sinners thing is often used. I know we had talked about this beforehand as if somehow Jesus just approved of the debauchery that was in the culture.

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That's not what we're saying. Sinners were drawn to Him. Actually, sinners wouldn't be drawn to Jesus if He didn't put

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Himself in a position where they could see Him and do that. The sinners who were drawn to Him were the ones who knew they didn't have righteousness.

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That's right. I gain a lot of confidence thinking about if we've been wrecked by the gospel, we understand our position as the man in the temple who's beating his chest saying,

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Lord, have mercy on me. If that's our position around sinners, then it's different.

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There's not going to be a judgmentalism. There's a sweet aroma.

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It's like there's something about you that intrigues me. I need to know more about that.

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It's your affection for something that is different. This is why the gathered church, for me, is so powerful.

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Justin, we come and we're renewed and refreshed in what we're here for.

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Man, Justin, what does he say? Lay up treasures where? Not here. Anything you pursue here, the world pursues everything here.

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Their motto is, you only live once, so live it hard. Which makes sense, man, if you don't believe.

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That's right. They lay up all their treasures. Jesus says, no, you only die once and then you live.

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Death is going to be inevitable, but then you live. You live. He says, store up treasures in heaven where it can't be destroyed.

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Everything we own becomes expendable. Our life becomes expendable. We live that way around people.

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We're just generous. We just give away because we have nothing to lose. If you've gained everything and it's all stored away for you and that's where your heart is, you can wake up every day going, yes, as crazy as it may sound, a smile may be what

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God uses to draw someone into the kingdom. A sacrificial gesture, giving a parking spot.

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Oh man, you guys are being so weak. This isn't being weak. It's taking every opportunity

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God puts in front of me and says, I'm going to express what love for Christ looks like in every way

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I can. When I don't do it, I'm going to ask them to forgive me. I should have loved you better. I agree wholeheartedly,

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John. For the sake of time, I'm going to tell an anecdote that I mentioned I would earlier. You were talking about how, sadly, this is the case.

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Many people who maybe have gone to church at some point in their lives but they're not believers.

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One of the things that they may raise is, well, I've been in the church and it's kind of a dumpster fire.

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It's a food fight in there and it's just a pit of vipers. Right?

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This is not my own anecdote. I'm not going to take credit for it. Mark Dever used to tell this regularly, but I think it's very apt for what we're talking about right now.

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Mark came to faith as a teenager. He'd been an agnostic. He had a lot of unbelieving family.

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He was around people who were intellectuals in ways, thoughtful, whatever. He tells a story about engaging.

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He was a family friend or a family member. It doesn't matter because he'd become a Christian. He did not accrue social capital with this person by becoming a believer.

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The conversation is something like, yeah, this other individual was saying to Mark, man, the church is just a pit of vipers.

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I got no interest in this. Mark was like, well, actually, I agree with you. He said, the difference between the world and the church is not that the church is not a pit of vipers and the world is safe.

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It's not that the world's a pit of vipers and the church isn't. He said, the difference between the church and the world is that we actually know that we're vipers, so slither on in anytime and join us.

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That's what he said. I was like, that's beautiful, but that's the posture. Even in thinking about engaging nonbelievers, it's like, yeah, the difference between believers and unbelievers is that we know what we are.

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We've agreed with God. We know that we're vipers. We know that we've got nothing to contribute, so slither on in and join us anytime because mercy and forgiveness and absolution and righteousness are to be found here, and we have life here.

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It's not us. It's Christ for us, and we would love to talk to you about that and tell you more about Him.

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Sadly, that's not how many Christians engage. Jon Moffitt It's not. There's the opposite side of that of the people who see themselves on the other end of that.

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Well, I can't go to church because I'm so bad. I would be embarrassed.

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The answer to that is, oh, I think you'd be far more surprised how worse people are than you, and I think you're far worse than you actually think you are.

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People kind of look at you. I remember when I worked for Apple, this guy comes up and he's like, yeah, man,

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Jon, I just have so much respect for you. I was like, okay, why? He goes, you're just a good guy, and I just laughed.

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He's like, why are you laughing? I said, brother, you have no idea how bad I am. He goes, why do you say that? I said, how about you and I grab lunch?

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We're selling computers right now, but when we're done, and I got done and I explained to him, he goes, you really think that way about yourself?

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I said, well, that's the way God thinks about me, and it's more important what he thinks about me than what you think about me because you don't actually see my heart.

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Can you see my heart? He's like, no. I said, but God does, and you could see it all over his face. He wasn't losing respect, but he was very interested in going, well, tell me about this perspective of God because I've not heard this perspective of God before.

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It was a really refreshing moment where the first time it was like someone who thought I was a good person realized I wasn't a good person.

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I think that's what the aroma comes out. We don't want people to be like, oh, he's good people. That's not what

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I'm trying to say. He's good people. It's he treats people differently. That's what

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I'm interested in knowing. Why do you treat people differently than other people? Justin Perdue Or even when he's treated poorly, maybe because he's a

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Christian, he meets sin. He meets wrong with kindness. What's going on with that?

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It's a good conversation, brother. We're going to wrap this thing up. Normally, we pivot to SR.

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I don't even know what to do with myself right now. Just a reminder to everyone. Go ahead, or questions, come on over to the community.

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That's what it's for. It's an online community. Everyone is invited. Come on over. If you like what we're doing, there's an opportunity for you to support us.

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Everyone's invited. Come on over. You'll have access to other content, teaching that we've done, etc. We hope this has been an encouraging conversation for you in thinking about how you as an ordinary

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Christian can be used of God and evangelism in the area where you live. I know it's been a helpful conversation for me,

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John. I've enjoyed it. I am encouraged to think that I'm just going to continue loving my neighbor.

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To encourage us all out there, evangelism is simply a subset of loving your neighbor. Look to the love of God.

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We love because he first loved us. Justin Perdue Amen. We'll talk again next week. Welcome to Theocast.