Romans 10:1-13 (The Heart of The Evangelist, Pastor Jeff Kliewer)

I'd like to say thank you to the Christmas community, which is a group of people that helped decorate this church today.

Didn't they do a wonderful job? Just a thank you. Looks beautiful in here.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer, then we'll open the word together. Gracious Father, thank you so much for the gift you have given us in Christ Jesus, the

Lord, that we can take this bread and cup to be reminded of his body and blood for our sins, given for our sins.

Help us now as we open your word, that we would be changed into the likeness of Christ, that we would, our hearts would have more love for the lost, more love for God, that we would desire to make known the name that is above every name.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. As a youth pastor kind of guy in Kensington, we would often have students come into our teen ministry who were troubled.

One in particular I will call Toby, although I'm changing his name to protect privacy. But he came into the group and he was clearly troubled in many ways.

Economically his family was destitute. He was fatherless. His dad had left very early in his life such that he never knew him.

And socially Toby was very awkward. When he came to teen club he couldn't relate to the other teens.

The person who brought him had kind of run off with his other friends and Toby was sort of isolated.

When people would try to talk to him, you would always hear him talking under his breath and laughing, constantly laughing.

But it was clearly masking an inner pain. And when you began to interact with him, he would almost always turn everything that someone said into an inappropriate joke, something sexual in nature.

And it turned out as we got to know him and months went by, he confided in some of the teen leaders that those who were supposed to love him the most, that is his family, had been abusing him and turning him over to degradation.

He had been exploited by some uncles who were making money off of him when he was a child. And his mind by this had been very perverted and broken.

I wanna ask you church, what would you say to Toby? What could you bring to him to fix his problem?

Even if you gave him money, you might be able to lift him out of poverty, but would that really change the scars that were put on his soul by his own family?

You might be able to counsel him and help him somewhat, but could you really erase the memories of the things that he has been through?

Is there anything that we can do for someone like this young man?

We in ourselves are just jars of clay, nothing to offer.

But to show that the all surpassing power comes from God and not from us, he has deposited in us a treasure.

And that treasure is Jesus Christ. The most loving thing that we could do for this young man, and that was done for this young man, is to introduce him to the

Lord Jesus Christ. When he began to hear about how Jesus had the greatest love, such a love that laid down his life for his friends, greater love has no one than this, the one who lays down his life for his friends.

And when he heard about the purity of Jesus, who never sinned, never had it in his heart to sin, and he heard about how

Jesus rose from the dead, this young man, without performing any rituals, who seemed to be the farthest from the kingdom of God, confessed that Jesus Christ is

Lord. And he went down under the waters of baptism, and he proclaimed his faith in Jesus.

And over time, his mind began to be purified. He memorized the scripture, Romans 12, nine, love must be genuine.

And coming from a family where they said that he loved, that they loved him, but he never knew love as it should be, that verse became the treasure of his heart.

And instead of saying inappropriate things, he learned to quote that scripture whenever those thoughts came into his mind.

Love must be genuine, love must be genuine. He began to be conformed in the image of Christ.

And so it is in the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that there is a treasure.

There is something that can change the most abused and discarded, those who hurt the most.

There is a balm in Gilead, there is hope for the hopeless, there is life for the lifeless.

There is good news that is not a mountain away, that you would have to go climb this mountain, or perform this ritual, or go on this pilgrimage, or perform any kind of religious duties.

This gospel is as near as your own heart. It's in your mouth, that if you confess with your mouth,

Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart, that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Isn't that beautiful? That there is hope, no matter what a person has been through, no matter what you've done, there is good news for sinners like us.

I wanna tell you, church, the most loving thing that you can do is evangelize.

Evangelism, telling people about Jesus Christ, is the most loving thing that you can do.

If a person gains the whole world, but loses their soul, they've gained nothing.

Evangelism concerns eternal things. It tells people the way to be saved, the way to be forgiven.

This morning, my goal is singular. It is to stir up in each of you, and again in myself, a heart of an evangelist.

The desire for other people to be saved. The heart of the evangelist bleeds for the lost, and it burns for the glory of Jesus Christ.

This is our motivation. Love for the lost, and love for the

Lord Jesus Christ. The twin commands, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

This is most perfectly and clearly expressed when you go tell the message of Jesus to those who are perishing.

Turn with me to Romans chapter 10. There's coming a day when the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the

Lord as the waters cover the sea. The evangelist desires to see the world worshiping

Jesus Christ. For every idol and false religion to be trampled underfoot, and for the name of Jesus to be known and exalted.

The heart of the evangelist desires for no one to go to hell. We even love our enemies.

This is our place as Christians in the world. God is judge, and here are we on earth.

We ought to love our enemies and desire their salvation. Now, one of the things

I try to do in preaching is to show the flow of the text, rather than to just grab a verse here and there and use that as a springboard to say something.

I try to show how the flow of thought develops in the passage. And so you can't really understand chapter 10 and where Paul goes here without following chapter nine.

Let's quickly review. In chapter nine, verses two and three,

Paul expresses unceasing anguish in his heart. And the thing that breaks his heart, why his heart is bleeding, is that his own countrymen that he loves, the

Jewish people, are by and large going to hell. This breaks him because he loves them.

And so he has anguish for them. But he begins in chapter nine to answer an intellectual problem.

And here's what it is. This is the subject. Has God's word failed?

If most of the Jewish people who are the chosen people are not believing in their own

Messiah, then doesn't that mean that God is a failure? He can't save his own people.

Has God's word failed? Because most Jewish people are not getting saved.

Meanwhile, some Gentiles are coming to faith. How do we reconcile this? And Paul's answer is in the form of the deepest intellectual chapter in the

New Testament. In other words, if you're still here after chapter nine, which you are, thank

God, you can endure any intellectual challenge in the

New Testament. Chapter nine is the deepest. And what Paul will say is that God has not made a promise to save every

Jewish person head for head. He never promised that. It's not as if God's word has failed, verse six.

But he answers by saying that God is glorifying himself by electing some people to save, selecting them out of all of humanity, not just Jews, but of Jews and Gentiles alike.

He says in verse 13, as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.

Well, what did Jacob and Esau do to deserve that? Love or hatred? Nothing.

They weren't even born. Now that should blow your mind. God selected

Jacob and passed over Esau before they did anything?

This seems unjust. And then he voices that objection, which means you're tracking with what he's saying in verse 14.

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means.

Why? Because all people in this room and all people in the world, Jew and Gentile alike, are sinners who deserve

God's wrath. If God saved none of us, but caused all of us to go into eternal judgment, would

God be just? To condemn sinners who are in rebellion against him?

Of course he would. But God mercifully shows compassion on some and grants them this salvation.

That's what he says. Verse 15, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom

I have compassion. He even says it doesn't depend on him who wills or runs, but on God who has mercy.

He then says he even hardens hearts like that of Pharaoh. Now, how is that fair?

That God would harden the heart of Pharaoh? Well, he answers that in verses 19 through 24.

And his answer is that God sees the wickedness of the lump, this lump of clay, each one deserving wrath.

And out of that lump of clay, he has chosen to display his kindness and mercy by fashioning some for honorable purposes.

And he displays other aspects of his glory by fashioning some for judgment.

God displays mercy on those who believe by softening their hearts, by opening their hearts, by enlivening them to believe the gospel.

But upon others, he displays his justice and his wrath.

Now, that's not something we often think about, that God would display his justice and wrath and so glorify himself.

But the glory of God is displayed in the full range of God's attributes.

That he is merciful, as Phil read from Exodus 34. He is the

Lord compassionate and mercy, and yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.

He will display his wrath in some.

His justice is upheld because his wrath is poured out on Jesus Christ on our behalf.

And so he satisfies justice in the death of Jesus on the cross. And so the cross is a perfect picture of both mercy and wrath.

Did you ever think about how bloody and painful and wrathful is the cross of Christ?

It not only displays the love of God, but also, listen, the wrath of God.

This is how God regards sin so seriously that Jesus was punished this way.

The punishment that we deserve poured out upon him. And so the cross displays both the love of God because he took our place, and the wrath of God because this is how sin is dealt with.

Now, this is a very difficult chapter, but he helps us by leading us back into the deep teachings of the

Old Testament. In verses 25 through 33. Chapter nine, verses 25 to 33.

Quoting from Hosea, he shows the prophecy that God would in fact regard some of the

Jewish people as not his people in order to call out some as his people. God has a plan.

And then in verses 27 and 28, he teaches us from Isaiah 10 that saying

God has a plan of salvation does not eliminate man's real will.

And here's how he does it. In Assyria, the king of Assyria had his own willful intent.

What was the king's plan? To crush every nation, not a few. To exalt himself as the king over the world.

That's his real choice, and he's responsible for that. He's doing that, he's not a puppet. He has a real motivation of prideful, ignorant arrogance.

But God behind the scenes is wielding that wicked king as his instrument of judgment to judge his own people.

So when the Assyrians overrun Israel, it was actually God doing that. Both things are true.

This is called compatibilism. God having a plan, overarching everything that happens, and man having a real will.

Each one of you will choose to obey God or to reject him.

There is real choice in us. We are not puppets, automatons. This is called compatibilism.

Next in verse 29, we're taught the principle of restraint. If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, meaning a remnant that he graces with mercy, we are told we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.

The total depravity of a human heart is much more wicked than what we realize.

God is restraining the evil of this world and calling forth a remnant and protecting that remnant in the world, which is why the world goes on as it does.

People don't look as bad as the Bible says that they are. It's because God is restraining wickedness for the sake of this offspring, this remnant.

Lastly, verses 30 to 33, what shall we say then?

The Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is a righteousness that is by faith.

And he goes on to say that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will not be put to shame.

Verse 33, whoever, a real offer of the gospel. So now we've come through chapter nine and our heads are spinning.

All of this deep thinking, all of this theology of how God is saving whom he will, glorifying himself, judging the lost, and we come into chapter 10 and the transition happens now from the head, the intellectual ideas of the

Old Testament, to the heart. To the heart, let's read it.

Romans 10 one, brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.

Chapter nine was about Israel's salvation. It was not about them as a nation as such, but the fact that many of them, most of them are not being saved.

And this verse here proves that fact because he's still talking about Jewish people getting saved.

Here's a Jewish person that just got saved. God says my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.

Salvation is the issue. Notice that word heart. In the Greek, it is cardia.

Recognize that word? Cardiac, like if you had a cardiac arrest, you have a heart attack, right?

Well, this word heart appears five times in the next 10 verses.

Just glance with your eyes, you'll see it in verse one, verse six, verse eight, nine, 10, heart.

The issue here is the heart. And my question to you is where is your heart this morning?

Somebody here is enduring this sermon because their wife told them they had to be here, but their heart is in the

Eagles game at 425 and they're counting down the moments. Somebody else, their heart is with a person they're attracted to.

They can't stop thinking about that person. Somebody else's heart is on Christmas and the kids coming home.

What is the nearest and dearest thing to your heart this morning? I'm here to tell you that Paul lays his heart on the line.

He shows you what every Christian should value and care about most deeply.

Look what he says, my heart's desire. Feel that, it's the desire of his heart. It's what he thinks about and what he prays about.

What he stays up late at night thinking about when he can't sleep, he's praying to God for the

Israelites, the Jewish people, that they may be saved. This is the bleeding heart of the evangelist.

How many of y 'all have heard of Mother Teresa? Everybody in this room. And all of us would say, wow, that's a loving person.

She went to Calcutta and she held the dying in her arms and she bandaged the wounds of the lepers.

She cared. And from that, we say, wow, our heart should be so loving.

But did you know that Mother Teresa also said she never evangelizes? Instead, she tells

Muslims to be better Muslims, Jews to be better Jews, Hindus to be better Hindus, and Christians to be better Christians.

You see, Mother Teresa had a natural human compassion for people, which is commendable.

And we should try to care more about the sick and the hurting, which is why we just cared for the handicap last week with that special vote we took and the orphanage that we're building and continuing to build in Malawi.

But what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?

If you bandage the wound of a dying man and he passes into an eternal flame of suffering, what love have you shown him?

I would say to you, church, listen, Mother Teresa was not loving enough.

She loved only as far as this world was concerned, deceived by Roman Catholic theology, especially since Vatican II, that all these different roads lead to God, as the

Pope has been saying recently to the Muslims, that all religion gets you there.

That is not what Paul thinks. This is not what the Bible says. Read it with your own eyes.

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. This is a man who understands that these

Jewish people, apart from faith in Jesus Christ, their Messiah, will pass into eternal flame.

When I was a young evangelist, I used to go out sharing the gospel, and I would kind of warm up my mind and my heart by reaching into the icebox, and I would grab some ice cubes.

And before going out, I would just clench those ice cubes until they melted in my hand, because it's painful to grip ice cubes.

And then it would melt out and drip down my hands, and I would be reminded of physical pain, this light and momentary affliction in my hand, nothing compared to what a lost soul will endure for all eternity.

Your neighbor, your family member, apart from Christ, they will suffer so much more than any suffering of this world apart from Jesus Christ.

It is one of the hardest thoughts for us to grapple with. Yes, the election passage of chapter nine is hard, but it compares nothing to the doctrine of hell.

Now, that idea is deeper than any of us can swim.

As a pastor, I've never been able to wrap my mind around an eternal conscious punishment, a flame that does not end, where the worm is not burned.

To contemplate and think about it should stir compassion in the soul, that we would want none of us, no one in this room, and none of the people that we know to ever go there.

I think when we get to heaven, we will see it differently. We will see the righteous wrath of God and his justice and fully understand the horror that is sin and the just deserts of sin.

We'll see from his perspective. But on earth, we can never wrap our minds around it. We only know what we're told.

And Paul's heart is breaking, it's his desire and prayer, as he said in chapter nine, verse two.

Now, verses two and three say, for I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

The Jewish people were zealous for the law of God. So zealous were the

Jews that they thought they were keeping the law and fought for their religion.

Pontius Pilate is famous because Jesus stood trial before Pilate, remember? But Pilate was also recorded in secular history.

Josephus tells us that he resided in Caesarea, and he gave an order that statues of the emperor were to be erected in Jerusalem, near the temple.

Do you know what the Jews did? They all rallied to Caesarea until the

Roman guard came out, Pilate tried to disperse them, and every one of them was willing to put their neck out and said, cut my head off before we let that statue in Jerusalem.

The 10 commandments said, you cannot make images. Caligula, the emperor, even wanted a statue of himself in the temple.

These Jews were willing to put their neck on the line, and Pilate eventually had to relent.

He would have had to kill them before they would let that happen. This is a people with zeal.

They were passionate for what they taught, obey the law, and they believed they were doing it.

But all that zeal, all of that passion and energy could not save their souls because their zeal was not according to knowledge.

They thought they could establish their own righteousness, be good enough to earn

God's acceptance. And so, while striving to attain perfection, they fell short of the glory of God, and they were all destined for hell apart from salvation.

But here's good news. Verse five brings it about with a, sets us up. Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.

The Jews read Leviticus 18 five, and they thought, okay, if I just obey the holiness code, read

Leviticus 18, it's about sexual relationships. And it describes homosexuality as an abomination and incest in the same way, and all manners of sexual sin are described in Romans, I'm sorry, in Leviticus 18.

So what did the Jew think? We are not like these filthy Romans who do these things.

We are the Jewish people. We are pure. We've never done any of that, and so we're good.

We obey the 10 commandments. We're the children of God. And by this, they thought they were living.

But what they failed to see is that only Adam and Eve were sinless before they fell into sin.

This covenant of works, do this and you will live, did apply in the garden, Genesis chapter two, verse 17.

You can eat of any tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eat of that and you will die.

Obey and you live, disobey, you die. Well, here's the problem, Adam and Eve disobeyed, and so death came into them, sin into them, and everyone from Adam and Eve is born into that sin.

What Moses referred to in Leviticus 18 .5 was the covenant which included faith.

Abraham believed God, it was credited to him as righteousness. Moses gave animal sacrifices as a placeholder to point them to Christ.

Listen, every Jew who was saved was saved on account of genuine faith in the grace of God, just like we're saved.

But most of the Jewish people did not understand that. They thought they were earning it. They were doing enough to live.

And so in verse six and seven, Paul will destroy that folly.

He will enlighten the ignorant. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring

Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring

Christ up from the dead. John Gill wrote a commentary that explains what

Paul is referring to here. It comes from the Old Testament, but this had become a proverb in the first century.

When someone wanted to marry or divorce, they would include this conditional clause.

In the marriage contract, the husband giving that contract would say, this is dissolved only on condition that you go to heaven or that you descend into the bottom of the sea or that you walk over the sea by foot.

And what does that mean? Why would you give it in a condition like that?

Can you do that, Lisa? Can you walk over the sea by foot? And that's the point.

The condition was given as an impossible thing. Nobody can go to heaven or go to the very bottom of the sea.

Nobody can walk across the sea on foot. So they would declare an impossible thing to show that there's no one who can do it.

And that's what Paul is saying here. He uses that proverb to say, look, your righteousness that you're trying to establish, it's impossible.

You can't reach heaven. You can't descend, you can't walk on water, but there's one who can.

He's showing the impossibility of earning salvation.

How is a person saved? It is entirely the work of God that Jesus came into the world.

Did you help him do that? Did you go fetch him from heaven? Jesus died and was put in a grave.

Was it you that rolled that stone away? Was it you that took his lifeless body and gave him

CPR? What did you do to save yourself?

What can you do to save yourself? Is this an impossible thing? That's the idea.

But what does it say? Now, here's the contrast, verses eight and nine. The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.

That is the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is

Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

I want you to let those words wash over you and think about what this means. The Jewish evangelists, and they did cross land and sea to make converts as they still do today, preaching

Judaism. Obey the rabbinic traditions and God will accept you. Muslims trying to establish

Sharia on earth. Every religious system with all the works they prescribe, they have nothing to offer to the little boy who was abused as a child, whose mind is tormented and disturbed, who can't jump through their hoops, who can't perform their rituals.

But you, church, hear me right now. If you've been dozing off and you haven't heard what I've said, listen to this.

You have good news for anyone. And it is as near as their breath and as their heart that if they confess with their mouth,

Jesus is Lord, believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead, they will be saved.

You have the only good news that can change a broken man and make him whole.

You have the only news that can bring someone from the dead back to life again. All of us here have grieved the loss of loved ones.

Only Jesus raises the dead. When it says here that God raised him from the dead, it's not saying that that one part of the gospel is all that you need to be saved.

That God raised him from the dead presupposes that he died and the reason for his death and that he came to earth in the first place.

This whole message of Jesus Christ is summarized here in the phrase,

God raised him from the dead. But you must proclaim with your mouth,

Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord.

That declaration proclaims who he is and with your mouth, you confess with what's in your heart.

It's not a matter of jumping through hoops or doing any works that would save yourself.

It's not a pilgrimage to Mexico City. It's only in the confession,

Jesus is Lord. Do you believe that? Do you confess? If the heart genuinely believes the mouth out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

When you're confessing Christ, the first time someone told you about Jesus and you confess

Jesus is Lord, you became an evangelist.

Your confession was the first time you spoke of the Lordship of Christ. Acts 21 verse eight talks about Philip the evangelist.

And we've often delighted that we have our own Philip the evangelist who goes out telling people about Jesus. But every person as you sit here in this building, believing in your heart, you are an evangelist.

Some have a gift of evangelism where they'll be especially effective. Others will help to train people to evangelize.

Ephesians 4 11. But every Christian is commanded, do the work of an evangelist.

Lastly, verses 11 through 13. And we close there.

The heart of the evangelist calls everyone to call on the name of the Lord. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same

Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

It is an amen, but doesn't it sound like a bit of a contradiction to Romans chapter nine? Romans 9 11 and 24 about God being the one who calls and those whom he calls, he also justifies and glorifies.

What Paul does here in verse 13 is quote from Joel 2 32.

This promise, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. The end of that verse, if you have time to study it later,

Joel 32, Joel 2 32 ends with that very call that we talked about in Romans nine.

Meaning the two are not opposed. They go together in the very same verse,

Joel 2 32. But here we're being quoted the first part of the verse because this is where our hearts need to be.

Going into the world and telling everybody that whosoever calls on the name of the

Lord will be saved. So there's three calls. You the evangelist issue the call to anybody and everybody.

Do you discriminate between Jew and Gentile? Slave and free? Barbarian, Scythian or Mede?

No, you tell this gospel to anybody and everybody that will listen to you.

You proclaim it, you broadcast it. God by his sovereignty will work inside the heart to call people unto faith.

Only he can do that Romans 9 11 24 call. But here's how someone gets saved.

They call on the name of the Lord. You call them to faith, God calls their heart and when they confess

Jesus is Lord, that's how they know that they're saved. So we're not to worry about who's elect and who's not.

It's not our part. Paul puts his heart on the line. He prays and intercedes and he preaches calling all to repent and believe and whosoever calls on the name of the

Lord will be saved. You see what Paul has done here? You can't understand Romans 10 unless you've been swimming in Romans 9.

And you come out of this and Paul now is just bearing his heart as an evangelist and he's showing us how we ought to be.

So in closing, this is the application. Each of us who believe in Jesus Christ became evangelists when we first confessed

Jesus is Lord. You are an evangelist.

You're either an inactive one right now because you're not doing what you were made to do or you're actively proclaiming

Jesus Christ as an evangelist. So what do you do? This morning, stoke the fires of your heart.

Listen, we are not passive in this Christian life. We are not robots.

We're responsible. Yes, God will save whom he will save but Paul tells

Timothy, fan into flame the gift that is in you. God, but we are to fan it into flame.

How do you do that? By this scripture, there are two ways. One is to consider the destiny of the lost.

Paul had said in chapter 10, verse one, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.

Saved from what? The eternal wrath of God.

We are to pray for them and to intercede in prayer meetings and in the quiet of our own heart for those who do not yet know

Jesus Christ. Secondly, we are to consider and think about the glory of Jesus.

To think about all of the zeal, the misplaced zeal of those around us.

If you go to a college campus, you'll find all of the zeal in the hearts of the young crusading for whatever it is they've been taught.

That zeal is without knowledge. But where is the zeal of the

Christian to see Jesus honored as Lord?

When we confess Jesus as Lord, we say he is King of kings, Lord of lords.

And we look for him to return, this robe dipped in blood and the sword from his mouth and on his thigh tattooed or written on that flowing robe,

King of kings and Lord of lords. Where is the passion in us to tell the world that they have a king?

Where are those who desire to see the lies, the deceptive lies of Islam trampled under the feet in the name of Jesus Christ?

The God of peace will soon crush Satan underneath our feet. Where are the evangelists?

How beautiful are the feet of them who bring good news? So my singular desire this morning is to stir you up to think, think about the lost.

They'll go to a Christless eternity and burn in eternal conscious torment.

And to think about the glory of Jesus Christ and what he deserves. The Moravians used to travel over land and sea to proclaim the name of Jesus.

And their motto was to return to the lamb the reward of his suffering.

They wanted to see Jesus lifted up and exalted. So here's the specific challenge for today.

Go online and buy a box of Bibles. Maybe some gospels of John, gospel of Mark, and put a note in each one.

Put it in a Ziploc bag and canvas your neighborhood as an evangelist.

I have a box of these life books. They're the gospel of Mark and they have little notes written in it by teenagers.

Little ways to make the person reading the gospel of Mark resonate. So I'm gonna give those out with a note saying, hey, use this as a stocking stuffer for a teenager.

And we'll canvas the neighborhood. What if every person in here did the same thing?

Invite them to church, write a little note, print it on your computer, and go tell it on the mountains.

Church, the point of this message is to say Paul's heart is on display here and we need to have a love like he, let's pray for it.

Father God, thank you so much for showing us what our hearts ought to look like.

Thank you for showing us the example of Paul.

He said, imitate me as I imitate Christ. He said, join with others in following my example and take note of those who live according to the pattern that I gave you.

So Father, we pray that you would change our hearts, help us to be less distracted by the things of this earth, what we will eat or what we will hear or what we will do, and give us hearts for the lost, cause our hearts to break for those who don't know

Christ, and give us passion that the name of Jesus would be lifted up.

Give us hearts as evangelists and send us out to tell the good news, we pray.