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Well, I intend this morning to start off by teaching you something that most likely you've never heard of before, and that is,
I kid you not, the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. And it rates the stings of insects that carry venom.
It was put together by a man named Schmidt in 1984, and he rates the stings from zero, not really stinging too much, to four that sting like mad.
And for visitors, I've just been stung by wasps or hornets or bees four times in the last five weeks, maybe, and so I just did a little research, and if you get stung by a sweat bee, it's only 1 .0.
He describes it as just a light sting, a tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
Fire ants are 1 .2 on the scale, sharp and suddenly and mildly alarming, like walking across a shag carpet and reaching for the light switch.
A bullhorn ant has a sting of 1 .8 on the ratings, a rare piercing elevated sort of pain.
Someone has fired a staple into your cheek. A bald -faced hornet, 2 .0,
similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door. A yellow jacket, hot and smoky, almost irreverent, he says.
Imagine W .C. Fields extinguishing a cigar in your tongue. A honeybee,
I personally know this one, like a match head that flips off and burns on your skin.
And just a few others, I just like the way he describes these. The red harvester ant, 3 .0,
bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
Paper wasp, 3 .0, caustic and burning, distinctly bitter aftertaste, like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
Then my favorite one is a pepsis wasp, 4 .0, blinding, fierce, shockingly electric.
A running hair dryer has been dropped into your bubble bath. If you get stung by one, you might as well lie down and scream.
But none of these come close at all to the reaction
Isaiah had when he saw God. Let's turn to Isaiah chapter 6 for our final installment of this wonderful, awful call to ministry.
Isaiah chapter 6 found right in the middle of your Bible. If you're here for the first time, you'll need your Bibles today.
We want to study this. We believe that God has placed every book of the Bible for our profit, for our good, for our encouragement, for our confrontation so that God would work on our souls and we would be more like Christ.
And this passage here will not just show us the awfulness of God, it will show us the grace of God as well.
And so it is a passage that just exalts God's name. When I say God's name, God's name is the sum total of all
His attributes. When you say the name of God, it's just not a proper name like Mr. or Mrs. or Sir.
It's a word used back in the Bible days to denote all of a person, everything that He was, everything that He did.
And the focus here will be on the holiness and grace of God. And why don't we just bow our heads and ask
God's blessing on our message. Father, we would come to you this morning as needy people and,
Lord, all kinds of issues swirling around in our personal lives, and we would acknowledge this morning that you know of all of those.
You were not informed when they happened in time because you know them ahead of time. And you are in time with grace, mercifully allowing us to work through those issues and that you would produce perseverance in us and endurance.
And Lord, so today we would ask that your spirit might put blinders on our eyes that we might not consider our house, our lack of, our job, our lack of, or any other thing.
But Lord, that you would let us see with eyes of faith and with eyes to see the revelation of Scripture written thousands of years ago that you are holy and gracious.
And that, Lord, today it would be our desire to be more like you. We would ask that you'd help us to be more holy in our lives, at our work, at home.
We'd ask you that you would help us to be more gracious to others, and that by looking at this passage today, your spirit would see fit and to be pleased to do a work in our hearts so that we may never be the same.
For your son's sake, amen. Well, Isaiah is this book of visions, and we come to a vision in chapter 6 that is unlike almost any in the
Bible. And we've been working through this the last three weeks, and basically the outline has been this. If you would like to serve like Isaiah, like John the
Baptist, like Jesus, what would that take? How would you be able to say to yourself, you know,
I want to be a better servant. Shall I just work harder? Shall I sweat more? Shall I try harder?
Shall I sign up for everything? While some of those might be good and right to do, it all starts with your view of God.
And so Isaiah 6 is going to give us the right view of God, not only His holiness and His otherness, but also how merciful
He is to people like us. And so if you'd like to serve with more intensity, with more desire, with more enthusiasm, verve we might say, then we will look at five views from Isaiah 6 to help us along that road.
The first view we saw in verses 1, 2, 3, and 4. Not a whole lot of review this morning, but if you'd like to serve
God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, number one, found in the first four verses, you must see that God is holy.
You must know that God is holy. I'll just read the verses. In the year of King Uzziah's death,
I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted with the train of His robe filling the temple.
Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings. With two, He covered His face, and with two,
He covered His feet, and with two, He flew. And one called out to another and said, holy, holy, holy is
Yahweh of hosts. The Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. Everything about God is different.
He's holy. It's a fundamental aspect of God. And here they cry out, holy, holy, holy, the
Lord of the military warriors, of His strength, of His power, of His absolute conquering ability is this great
God. And when something like that happens, verse four, the foundations of the thresholds tremble at the voice of Him who called out while the temple was filling with smoke.
Everything about this picture is holy. It's one thing for us to say, wow, Isaiah saw
God as holy. The question for you this morning is, do you see God that way? Is He this great, exalted
God, or is He just some kind of God that you manipulate for your own choosing? You kind of keep
Him in the backseat once in a while, and at Christmas and Easter, you bring Him out. Secondly, not just seeing
God as holy, when you want to serve God with all your heart, we also need to see that we're not worthy to serve this
King, verse five. Isaiah knew that even though he was redeemed, even though he was holy compared to other people, compared to everyone else in Israel and Jude and Babylonian empires.
Of course, he was holy, but when he sees God, he sees the comparison, the bell curve is out the window, and he says, woe is me for I am ruined because I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among the people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the
King. There's lots of monarchs in those days, but I've seen Yahweh of hosts. I probably shouldn't admit it, but I was not saved when this all happened.
When I was probably 13, 14, 15, 16, I worked in haunted houses in Nebraska, and we just got a big thrill scaring people, and so we would put all kinds of makeup on and fangs and stuff, and kids do what
I say, not as I do. So we would hide in these corners of this house, and it would be all for charity, and I remember getting in certain spots where I was not able to be seen at all, and when unsuspecting people would come by,
I wouldn't scare them right away, I would pause. I would just delay a moment or two, and they would think it was just a scene over here with some kind of stupid
Halloween deal, and they would come over, and I would jump all the way out, try to make myself as big as possible.
If you want to scare a dog, you try to get big. So I would try to get... I'm not trying to say the people were dogs, but one plus one.
And so I would jump out, and I would make myself big, and I would scream as loud as I possibly could, and inevitably, about 20 % of the people would just fall flat down on their faces.
It was like a tire iron going down in a swimming pool. I mean, it was just coming straight down, and that's exactly what happened here, except it wasn't the fear of some kind of oaf guy from Nebraska with some kind of neon fangs in his mouth.
Here is the holiness of God. It's as if Isaiah runs to the back of the temple to try to get out.
He cannot escape this God. This sermon's not going to be about hell, but you can just imagine the terror of hell is
God Himself there with His holiness, and the sinner there with all their sin. It's this kind of nuclear disaster.
Isaiah knows. And if you would really like to serve the Lord like David Brainerd or Amy Carmichael, it's not an attack on our self -esteem.
It is not an attack on us as, you know, we're no good for anything, and we need to cut ourselves with glass, and we're just horrible people.
I'm just horrible. But it is a true and right assessment that if God is holy,
I'm sinful, and I don't deserve to serve you. It would be a pleasure to serve you, but I have no rights.
I have no way to press you to make me serve you. And then, thankfully, the third view is found in God's initiating grace.
Number one, you must see God's holiness. Number two, you must see your sinfulness. And number three, you must see that God initiates grace and forgiveness.
Look at verses six and seven. This is not potential grace. This is not possible grace.
This is not Isaiah asked for it, and then God responds. This is God causing, God initiating,
God alone doing the work. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, certainly sent by God, with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs.
Touched my mouth with it and said, behold, this has touched your lips.
And as far as God was concerned, his lips and his heart were combined, hooked together, connected, and your iniquity is taken away.
It's gone. And Isaiah, your sin is literally atoned for, covered.
Here's this holiness of God that sets God apart, but holiness also has this effect, and the effect is if there's unholiness, it wants to consume it.
It wants to attack it. One scholar said, that which is holy is not only distinct from the profane, but is in opposition to it as well.
Therefore, God hates and punishes sin. And yet, instead of sending the angel to kill
Isaiah, he covers his sins and redeems him, and that's exactly what's happened to us, yes?
It may not have been an angel, but it has been a messenger from God sent to proclaim to us the truth.
We've been forgiven. God has not counted our sins against us, because who could stand if we were counting our sins?
When you know God has forgiven you, you'll serve him to the ends of the earth. That's why the fourth view is found in verse 8.
God's holy. We're not worthy. God's gracious, and he forgives because he's a loving God who keeps his covenants.
And number four, you must see that if you have to be wrangled or coerced to serve, then go back to number one.
If you have to be forced to serve and say, you know, you better serve and we try to pressure you and force you, then revert back to one and remember
God's holiness, sin, and grace, because those lessons haven't been learned. If the lesson of holiness and sin and the bringing together of God and man through grace hasn't happened, then we don't respond well.
But if it has happened, we're ready, just like Isaiah. Look it, everything was a preparation, and now God speaks for the first time, then
I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us?
And with going to the front of the class enthusiasm, then Isaiah said, here am
I, send me. I love to read Puritans, but you know, one of the things about Puritans that can go too far is this introspection that becomes almost selfish, where you gaze at your navel so long and you examine your sins so much and you're kind of captivated by what we call worm theology
We should probably replace worm theology with insect theology and bee theology, but that would be a different illustration, and you're so consumed with yourself, you never go do anything for others.
There was a response here, holy, sin, grace, well, I've got to go. It's not going,
Isaiah's not like, well, you know, God, you asked for somebody to go, but I'm too sinful to go.
He's already acknowledged that. He's already acknowledged, I can't serve you, and God is giving the privilege of Isaiah to respond with,
God, I'll go for you. It's good to examine yourselves and then go serve the
Lord. Isaiah didn't feel led.
Isaiah was driven intellectually by grace. Preeminent Isaiah scholar
Young said, listen, beloved, here in this matchless passage, we find the reason why so few are willing to serve
God. They need above all the conviction of sin. Only when a man has been convicted of sin and has understood that the
Redeemer has borne the guilt of his sin, is he willfully and ready joyfully to serve
God, to go wherever God may call. In Hebrews 9, it says that God cleanses our conscience that we may serve the living
God. Let's go back to Romans. We did that last week, but I wanted to get to a part that I missed last week.
Romans chapter 12, if you would. And I think I can help us as a church desire to serve the
Lord with more excellence. I think this church beats the typical church. That is to say, most of the churches in the world, 20 % of the people do 80 % of the work.
I think it's greater in our church. I think 30 or 40 or 50 % of the people do most of the work.
And so if you're a worker bee around here, I want to encourage you to say, thank you for your service. And if you know you can serve better, then this should motivate you to do that.
And if you don't serve at all, there's no day like today than to say, God, you're right. I repent.
God, you're a forgiving God. Help me to do right. And here in Romans chapter 12, it's all about the mind.
While I could probably give you some emotional sob story, how does Paul motivate the church at Rome to serve?
He says, here's chapters one to 11 about the righteousness of God. People don't have righteousness. God gives righteousness through Christ Jesus.
This righteousness is a wonderful, it is great. And God has saved you even though you don't deserve it.
And nothing can separate you from this righteousness of Christ that you have. And by the way, here's the story with Israel and the
Gentiles. And after all that, he says, I want you to do something first, besides thinking about what we're going to have, what has already happened.
What should I do? Somebody teaches you a lesson about grace. What's the first thing you should do? And here we have it, verse three of chapter 12 of Romans.
I think it's strange almost, I wouldn't write things like this. I would say, have a quiet time.
I would say, read your Bibles. I would say, attend church services. I would say, evangelize your neighbor.
When you remember that God has saved you, his holiness has been, has confronted
Jesus in your place, and now God says, I want you to go serve me, I'd say, okay,
I need to preach the gospel to my neighbor. What does he say though, interestingly, the first thing that people should do?
And the answer is, think about using your spiritual gifts. Weird, counterintuitive, four times the word think is used, or a derivative in verse three.
Let me highlight those while I read this. After chapters one through 11, after chapter 12, verses one and two, in the renewing of your mind, and don't get put in the jello mold of the world, he says in verse three, for through the grace given to me,
I say to every man among you, here's your marching orders, not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think as to so have sound thinking, as God has allotted each a measure of faith.
The first exercise, the first lesson for Christians after realizing how God has saved you is, to think rightly about using your spiritual gifts, because that's what he goes on to talk about.
Let me put it on the converse side. It is insanity to be saved from your sins and not think about serving other people.
As the God -man who comes to earth to seek and save those who are lost.
Not to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many. To imitate this kind of God, the first reaction of imitation is, you know,
I want to serve, and anything less is, frankly, straitjacket worthy.
Do they still have straitjackets? I don't know. I've never seen one for a long time. I've never been in one for a long time.
I only visited one guy back in California who was in kind of this mental ward, and I just kept thinking, if we get our name tags messed up, they'll never believe me and I can't get out of here.
It is illogical. If it's logical to say, I will serve since God has saved me, it is illogical to say, you know what?
But God saved me, and I'm glad I got hell insurance, and off I go, because I got people to see and places to go to.
There's a lot of talk about mental illness today. If the response of the Christian based on Christ's perfect life, death, burial, and resurrection is not
God, here I am, send me, that is true mental illness. And Paul is saying,
I want you to be humble. I want you to think soberly. I want you to be humble.
One man said, pride says this, I like to serve, but don't treat me like a servant.
Why is it, do you think in your Bibles, that the majority of the time the word doulos, slave, is translated servant?
Why is doulos a word that obviously in the original language means slave is translated servant?
Servant means, you know, I can if I want, and I can minister if I'd like, and I'll check in when I want, and quit when
I'm done, and the word is slave. Not some kind of an idea of American slave in the
South, but a slave back in the old days where someone owned you, someone had rights to you, someone had acquired you.
We are people who have been acquired by God with a ransom price, the death of Christ. He owns us.
We are His slaves, have no rights, and we are given the privilege to serve other people.
It's like the man who was disobeying Romans 12 .3 and thinking he was pretty good and didn't want to serve those lowly ministries, and so he said to his friend, you know, would you please pray for me that I might not become more than I should, and that I might become nothing.
And his friend said, you are nothing, brother, take it by faith. I like that. We've been given gifts.
You see it in verse 4 and 5 of Romans 12, just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another.
God saves us, Romans 1 to 11, and then He says, you know, I want you to think properly. I don't want you the world to control your mind.
I want you to think about using your spiritual gifts right and you're all one body. Nobody's better, nobody's preeminent, nobody is unneeded, no one is independent of each other.
This kind of language just destroys those who have home church and just it's, you know, the dad and the kids and the wife.
It's the body of believers that need to get together. No lone ranger Christians, no solo Christians. We are a body together.
All serving the same Lord, all having the same goal, all wanting to be good stewards. Verse 6, since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and the spiritual gift, which is above and beyond that, let us exercise them accordingly, or as Peter would say, be good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
We've been given the privilege to serve and that should be our gut reaction, serve. I asked myself the question this week, if we're supposed to serve and we don't, what happens?
Well, a couple of things could happen. Number one, we serve and pursue something else. We are made to pursue
God, but if we don't pursue God through serving people, then we pursue things like education, work, sports, fun, and in the environment.
Now, those things are good, but when they become above God in preeminence, they become idols.
We need to serve God's people to show that we're serving God and then everything falls into place.
If I could really push the envelope, I'll try to push it. The focus, friends of ministry, is not on the family.
The focus is the family serving the Lord together. It's the wrong focus. If your focus is on the family, you've got the wrong focus.
The focus is having your family come together to serve the Lord and his people. If you don't serve the
Lord and his people, then you serve someone else or you become idol. Listen to J .C. Ryle. Idleness is the devil's best friend.
It is the surest way to give him an opportunity of doing us harm. An idle mind is like an open door, and if Satan does not enter in himself by it, it is certain he will throw in something to raise bad thoughts in your soul.
We're not meant to be idle. Why is it so important for men who don't have employment to go get jobs?
Because idleness is not good. Spiritual gifts idleness isn't good either.
One thing that the text doesn't say in Romans or in Isaiah, but the Lord gives us privilege to serve on earth and we get rewards in heaven for our work on earth that we would pay to do.
Ever think about that? John Gershner used to say, besides sin, what can you do, what cannot be done in heaven that you can do on earth?
Answer, well, evangelism,
I guess that would be one, but don't bother me with that. I'm trying to get to the answer I want. All right.
There's a couple exceptions. But what is one of the things? Keeping up more rewards.
Because you'll have the rewards given to you. Whatever way you want to think of rewards in heaven, I think it's a greater capacity to enjoy the greatness of God.
But whoever it might be, you can't do that in heaven. So work now while you can. Not to make yourself a
Christian, but because you are not to make yourself holy, but because you are. I love the church bulletin board that said, work for the
Lord. The pay is not much, but the retirement plan is out of this world. My brother, stand firm.
Let nothing move you. Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord because that you know your labor in the
Lord is not in what? Vain. First Corinthians 5 .58. This week,
I don't know why it came to my mind, but I thought, you know, I'm going to die one day. We all realize that.
But I really thought, you know, I'm going to die one day and what kind of legacy will I leave behind? And I thought about that.
What will my kids remember me for? What will the church remember me for? Just all kinds of thoughts flooding into my mind.
And then I began to think of an old quote that I heard once from Spurgeon about when you're laying on your deathbed, how can you be comfortable knowing you can't get up and serve like you used to, but you wish you could.
You're so much wiser towards the end of your life. And you'd say, if I could only do it over again, Spurgeon said, if I have any message to give you from my own bed of sickness, it would be this.
If you do not wish to be full of regrets when you are obliged to lie still, work while you can.
If you desire to make a sick bed, be as soft as it can be, do not stuff it with mournful reflections that you wasted time when you were in health and strength.
People said to me years ago, you'll break your constitution down preaching 10 times a week. Well, if I have done so,
Spurgeon said, I'm glad of it. I would do the same again. If I had 50 constitutions, I would rejoice to break them down in the service of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Young men, you that are strong, overcome the wicked one and fight for the
Lord while you can. You will never regret having done all that lies in you for our blessed
Lord. Crowd as much as you can into every day and postpone no work till tomorrow.
What a good example. That is a man who has been graced by God to see his holiness, the man's own sin,
God's graciousness and then Spurgeon said, to the day I die and that's exactly what happened. I'm glad to know some of you listen to my sermons.
This morning I received this sheet of paper and said, I listened to your sermon from last week and here's the paper and the person signed their name on the bottom.
I'll flip it around so you can't see the person's name and they said, here's a blank piece of paper and you write on there whatever you want me to do around the church and I'm willing to do it.
I said, that's it. That's Isaiah like, that's Romans like and I asked him how small the font could be and instead of drudge work, we are able to rejoice in the
Lord while we work for him. It is a privilege. It is a pleasure. Number five, let's go back to Isaiah chapter six, the fifth transforming view that inspires
God's people for every generation in every place.
When people see God's holiness and their own sin and God's initiating grace and they want to respond with service and then they realize
God's sovereign and in verses nine to 13, they realize and you must realize that God gets to choose your ministry.
That God gets to choose your ministry. Let's look at the historical context and then we'll make some practical comments as well.
Question, why do missionary sending services stop at verse eight?
Why do they stop in verse eight? Because nine, 10, 11, and 12 are what we call in the
Midwest kind of dicey, kind of tough. We stop at verse eight, yet six times in the new
Testament, nine through 13 or a portion of it would be found six times in the new
Testament. God saw fit to place this section of scripture.
John 12, Matthew 13, Mark four, acts 28, Luke eight and Romans 11.
So what happens here? Verse nine, and God said, go and tell this people. Do you notice your quotation marks there?
Go and tell this people that's God speaking and here's what God tells Isaiah to tell the people. Isaiah, here's your message.
It's a two point sermon. Keep on listening and do not perceive. Keep on looking, but do not understand.
Oh, I think that was for Ezekiel, God, or didn't you already do that for Jeremiah?
Jeremiah, you want to give me the callusing ministry. You want me to go tell people to listen, but you're never going to get it and to hear, but you'll never understand it.
Do I get that right? By the way, does God call his people, this people are my people.
You see there in verse nine, they're disobedient. He says, you tell this people. You tell this obstinate, stiff necked group of people in a way that expresses emphasis.
Listen but don't perceive. Look, but do not understand. Isaiah, you've just said to me,
I've seen your holiness. I've seen my sin. I've seen your grace, God, and I'm ready to serve. Okay. You get the stiff neck ministry.
It's right there in the bulletin under opportunities to serve. All right,
God. You can just imagine Isaiah saying, I'll do whatever it takes. God, I'm your man, send me.
And you know, the good news is, God, when I preach, there's going to be revival. There's going to be salvation.
There's going to be sanctification. There's going to be people throwing their trinkets away. They're going to not be yearning for Egypt anymore.
And God, you're going to start a revival and people will shout to me, bring the book.
God, your word doesn't come back void. God says to Isaiah, well, my word doesn't come back void and it either softens or hardens.
And in this particular case, Isaiah, your word's going to harden them. It's going to be harder for people to believe after you're done.
He says in verse 10, render the hearts of this people insensitive through preaching friends, their ears dull, their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears and understand with their hearts.
You see that? Their ears dull, lest they see with, with their ears dull, lest they hear, lest they understand.
So here with their ears, eyes dim, lest they see and return and be healed.
God says to Isaiah, you begin to rub them, their souls so long and so hard with the word of God that calluses appear.
And I will hide my truth to this people by your preaching. They like an inoculation will become vaccinated to the word of God.
You just give them enough in the right way and inoculate them so that they will be impervious to my message.
Very, very interesting. It says, I want you to make the heart of my people literally in the
Hebrew fat. You make them fat. When there's a lot of fat, there's less susceptibility of feeling.
Make them fat when you preach. Judicial blindness, blinding people by preaching.
And Isaiah said in verse 11, what would you say? And I said, Lord, how long?
And he answered until it's gone, until the cities are devastated and without inhabitants, houses are without people and the land is utterly desolate.
How long? I'm sorry about this, God. Mercy. Can there be mercy in time?
God goes on to say in verse 12, the Lord has removed men far away and forsaken places are many in the land, in the midst of the land.
There's going to be destruction. And yet with God and his mercy and his goodness in verse 13, gives hope there's going to be a remnant.
And there's a key word in here in verse 13. If you had to pick one word out of verse 13, as strangely placed, as different, as one word to highlight, see if you can find it when
I read the verse. Yet there will be a 10th portion in it. Yes, most will reject, but there'll be a stump, a remnant.
It will be again subject to burning like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains when it is felled.
The holy seed is its stump. What's the key word? What's the word that seems strange? God says,
I'm going to use you Isaiah to preach and it's going to callous them over and it's going to be a message of judgment to them that they have deserved and earned and merited.
Yet in the midst of all the judgment and preaching as God is so often condescending to do, he says there's going to be something and he calls it what?
What's the key word? The word that's out of place. Well, you couldn't say stump, but I think it's the word holy.
Here's holy, holy, holy is this great God. The angels are singing and God says, by the way,
Isaiah, you preached of this people. They're not my people and you harden their hearts. And yet I'm a
God who keeps my promises to Abraham. I'm a covenant keeping God. My name is Yahweh and I have a love for my people and I'm going to save a holy outstanding that he would call them.
You know what this reminds me of? Isaiah's mandate. It reminds me of our job of evangelizing.
It reminds me of our charge to go preach the gospel to other people.
And at the time we have left, let me give you just several charges so you could honor your salvation as you preach the gospel to your friends and family.
Just some implications from Isaiah six, nine to 13. By the way, there are 25 people
I think signed up for the grace evangelism class. If you're signed up, raise your hand. I think that is awesome.
But you know, if they've been dropped, there's always a comma, but I hope there's going to be a hundred more, 25 of you signed up.
What could you do to the world with 25 people who can preach the gospel more confidently and more accurately? I wonder what you could do with 12 apostles and one's even a son of perdition.
I am so glad. A free class on how to tell others about the greatness of Christ Jesus.
See, as a matter of fact, maybe we should change something. I think the 25 who have signed up and all who will sign up in the future should pay us for such a class.
You should pay us to have us teach you how to extol Christ. I'll never forget back in the day when
VCRs first came out and there was a little slow motion button.
You remember those? And then, of course, you know, your buddy always has something better than you do.
And so then he had the frame by frame slow -mo. And I remember
Magic Johnson, the basketball player for the Lakers, and I remember Michael Jordan, the
Chicago Bull Great, would go up and do some kind of death defying slam dunk over some
Boston Celtics face. Oh, sorry. Where was that? Oh, I just want to see if you're listening.
Hey, I'm here. I try to root for the Celtics. And then we got Patino and then look, but maybe this year, bloom where you're planted.
At least the Patriots and the Red Sox are good. I get a root for them. But anyway, back to the story.
They would do some kind of unbelievable dunk. They would do something that was so amazing that we would get that slow motion out.
I'd call my buddies over, we'd be there in West Los Angeles, and I'd say partly to brag about my new
VCR, but partly just to show them in slow motion. I can remember one time Julius Irving coming up to dunk, matter of fact, over a
Laker player, Michael Cooper. And he just swung the ball around and dunked. All of us guys, you can hear with the collective, oh, high five, and trying to, you know.
We didn't know about hugging each other at church and stuff back then, so it couldn't be too close. But it was just this kind of masculine kind of bumping and grunting and stuff, and oh.
And when I think about my own praise life, I often think about how excited
I was over two or three unregenerate, ungodly, licentious men taking a rubber basketball and jamming it through a hoop, and I would praise them.
I would worship them, and I would just, you know, what do you think of praise and ascribing worth, and ascribing how great they were, and how high they could jump in vertical leaps.
And friend, that's nothing but worship. And here in evangelism, we need to see it as exalting
Christ in His name, His work, His death, burial, and resurrection. The grave couldn't hold
Him as we preach the gospel to others. Let me tell you about the greatness of God. That's exactly what that evangelism class will help you do.
But I want to give you some exhortations when it comes to that. Number one, derived from my thinking in Isaiah 6, 9 to 13, friends, my first exhortation to you as you honor your salvation in evangelism is this.
Brace yourself because your family, friends, and co -workers will rarely embrace you or your message.
Brace yourself. Get ready because you think it's the best news ever. But just back in the day, like when
Isaiah, when he would preach, not everybody responds with, I want to know about God.
People don't want to stomach the bad news in order to get to the good. Jesus used
Isaiah 6, 9 to 13 often when He talked about His parables. The Bible actually says that the cross offends.
Why don't we turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 1, and let me remind you of that. I think it's just better knowing ahead of time that when we preach the gospel, it's the best thing going.
Our family and friends don't automatically go, yeah, that'll be great. And they don't think it's going to be great for many reasons.
But one is they like their sin. And God, when
He gets a hold of people and He calls people to salvation, there is what one liberal theologian called rightly, there is a great disturbance when
Jesus comes calling with the hound of heaven, the spirit of God. And here, we need to be ready that when we preach the gospel, not everyone is going to love it.
1 Corinthians 1, 18 should get us in a mindset so we forever get rid of the trendy myth that's in Christianity today.
It is cool to be a Christian. And you can keep your coolness and still be a Christian. Paul would have laughed.
For the word of the cross, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, 18. Is to those who are perishing.
Foolishness, Greek word, Moriah, moron, moronic, stupid, foolish, dumb, nonsensical.
When you preach this message, the cross of Christ, the sin bearer who would be raised from the dead, and you're all excited, and you think, you know,
I've got the words of life, the treasure of life, and I praise God for what He's done, and I want to tell you, they think the message and they think you are foolish, unless God's working in their hearts.
Can you imagine? I mean, we've heard the story. But just imagine, we have Jesus on a cross, and He's dying for the sins of all the people that the
Father has given to Him. That's pretty smart, huh? No, to the unbeliever, He doesn't see it as smart at all.
And we can send it to Madison Avenue, we can try to put a media blitz on it, we can put marketing in the four
Ps, and product, place, price, and promotion, and it's still moronic.
John MacArthur said that one man could die on a piece of wood, on a nondescript hill in a nondescript part of the world, and thereby determine the destiny of every person who has ever lived seems stupid.
I mean, it'd be one thing if Jesus was just a martyr, we could all say, you know, what a great death that was, and He was a martyr.
We admire that. Unbelievers admire martyrs, but they don't admire someone like this, because it's foolishness.
But to us who are being saved, you see, it's the power of God. It saves. Friends, don't forget, when you preach this message, you're preaching to an
Isaiah -like crowd. They're not going to want to hear it unless God is working, but that should not change the way we preach, or how we preach, or what we preach, because we are stewards.
Ask yourself the question, Steve read it today, and I didn't ask him to read it, but I'm glad he did for several reasons.
But why don't people love the light? Because they love the, what, darkness.
They like to sin, and if you present to them this God who knows everything about them, and requires holy living, requires the denial of self, and picking up your cross, and following Him, and being a slave to Him, who wants to follow that?
I've got freedom. I've manifest destiny. At least Aldous Huxley was right.
I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning. Listen to this. This is crucial, especially for those on college campuses, and it's
Foucault this, and philosopher that. Huxley said, I had motive for not wanting the world to have meaning, consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.
The world doesn't have any meaning, because I want to live the way I want to live, and by the way, there are plenty of preachers who hawk their wares regarding that finding.
Huxley said, the philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics.
He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power, and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves.
And if you haven't heard anything else, here's the final sentence punchline by Huxley. For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, both sexual and political.
In other words, if I acknowledge this king of king and lord of lords, he will lay claim on me as I live in his kingdom.
And you're telling the people, you have your own allegiance to the world, to Satan, to yourself, they don't probably know about Satan in the world, and now we want you to turn your back on that and pledge allegiance to the new
God, the only God. So friends, if you get negative responses, keep preaching, keep praying, do not run around and try to make foolishness wise by marketing, taking polls.
I mean, I think the motives are good when people stand in front of Walmart and say, I'm taking a spiritual survey, and then you kind of sneak in the gospel later.
I already know the survey. You hate God, you hate other people, you love your sin, and unless it's the grace of God through the preach message, you're going to hell.
What do I need to survey? I feel like, you know, family feud, survey says. No, it doesn't work.
Plus, I don't like family feud because Kim and I and my brother and others auditioned for it, and we beat the other two families, and they said, we'll call you and have you come in, and they called, they never called, and we never came in.
And I was glad because I didn't want to jump up and down acting like some pansy going, good answer. It's like, you know, for us, it's great news.
Grace evangelism class is going to remind you the other people aren't going to think it is until the God of the universe, who has ordained salvation and ordained the way salvation takes place, is pleased to take the word and make it run into the hearts of the people.
Look at verse 21, but since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know
God, God was well pleased to the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
Let the world run for as long as it wants to. Why hasn't God come back any sooner?
Well, maybe one of the reasons is so God can let the effects of sin and philosophy run to their nth degree, and man has not been able to solve the problems.
God's wisdom only allows for the solved problem by the cross of Christ. And when you go preaching to your friends, you are going to be trying to sell them a seat that's too hard, a wheel that doesn't spin, and carbonated soda that has no carbonation.
It's foolish. It doesn't make any sense. Lancelot Andrews said it very well.
It is not our task to tell people what they want to hear. We must tell them what in some sad future time they would wish they had heard.
Our moitior talks about a preacher's dilemma. It could be you, an evangelist, having the dilemma. If hearers are resistant to the truth, the only recourse is to tell them the truth yet again more clearly than before.
But to do this is to expose them to the risk of rejecting the truth yet again, and therefore of increased hardness of heart.
Number two, and we better close with this one. First of all, brace yourself, and second of all, would you remember and recall who
God used to preach the gospel to you? Who did God use to preach the gospel to you?
We might say led you to the Lord, but we know it's really God using the person. Let me give you some descriptions of that person.
I know that person. I've met them. And I have a little description of the person that preached the gospel to you, and here's my description of that person, frail, mortal, sinful, hypocritical, and weak.
And when I think about that, the good news is that's my description, and God has determined to use me and you with your description to preach to your friends.
Somehow we think, you know, well, I've got an unbelieving friend, and I'm going to call the pastor, and maybe the pastor can preach the gospel.
Listen, I've got weakness and frailty and sinfulness, you know, down pat better than you.
And so God is going to have to work through frail sinfulness, and so don't call the chief of frail sinfulness.
You might as well have somebody who's less frail and sinful, you go ahead and preach. I am so encouraged to know that God uses frail people to preach the gospel.
He alone will get the glory. That's why I try to see everybody
I meet as a potential target for the gospel. Why do I meet anyone?
Why did the person move in across the street? Why did I do this? Why do I go to that mailbox, that post office?
Why do I have this or that? Why do I need to find bee sting removers in the Yellow Pages to meet?
Why are all those things happening? Well, because I need to talk to those people. Everyone I think to myself,
I am frail and weak, but God, I want them to be saved. I don't want them to die in their sins, and God, whether it's over time or right now, let me have the opportunity to preach the gospel of them.
And then sometimes God rewards you when you're not even looking for it. Case in point, flying from LA to Boston just a few days ago, last week.
Sitting there, sitting down next to a guy, and his girlfriend sat in the middle seat behind him.
So they had two middles, and I said, you know, it's a long flight. You know, we kind of talked a little bit. I told him
I was a pastor. And he said, oh, that's interesting. I had already found out his girlfriend was from Puna, and I already found out he was a master's student at WPI.
So we had some things to talk about. I opened up my laptop and showed him pictures of Puna, India, and all this stuff, and so we're talking.
And I always tell people the same thing. I say, there's two people you don't want to sit next to in the airplane. Number one, insurance salesman, and number two,
Bible teaching pastors and preachers. He just kind of looked at me. And then he looked at me and he said, I've got a question for you.
I'm trying to study. I've got this 50 ,000 -word book project that's due in two weeks.
I've got to go to Germany and speak. I've got to do all these other things. You know, it's almost like, don't bother me. I'm busy, and, you know,
I like Diet Cokes, and let me put my iPod on and just hunker down. Here's what he said to me, could you please tell me the difference between Protestants and Catholics?
And I just kept thinking to myself, this underhand slow ball, wah, wah, wah, wah.
It's like, you know, I could just strike a million times. I thought, it's just time to hit this out of the ballpark. I've got six hours.
And so at the beginning, I just was kind of, you know, I wanted to address the facts. I didn't have to slam things or make up stories.
I just said, if your authority is tradition, the magisterium, and the Bible, you'll come up with this amalgamation of Roman Catholicism.
If your view is only from the Bible, you'll come up with this, and salvation by grace alone, and this and that.
And I just thought, Lord, you're so good. Lord, I'd love to see the guy in heaven someday.
And you think the guy's going to be in heaven because I'm sharp? I'm the guy.
I'm not the evangelist. Friends, and you don't know me. I want people to like me.
I know the second they know who I am and the words start coming out of my mouth, they look at me and go, hmm, stature?
You're one of those kooks. You're a freak. You're going to be put in jail someday for having antithetical black and white thinking in this postmodern world.
You're weird. I mean, I'm in the vet the other day and getting the checkup on the dog and stuff like that.
And I said, well, you know, I used to raise dogs and train them and stuff, and I just have to tell you, I don't really brush her teeth like I ought to.
She said, I'm so glad you're being honest with me. I thought, honest? Why would I lie about my dog's teeth?
I mean, it's so stupid. She said, well, you know, all this stuff. And then it got into global warming.
And I thought, I don't believe in global warming. I believe there'll be global warming when
Jesus comes back with that roar and the elements melt. But I thought, she thinks I'm a kook.
She said, well, you know, the dog was kind of up on her jetty no, and I thought, am I allowed to tell a dog no in front of a
DSS vet? I mean, am I allowed to do it? You know, I take a thing of newspaper and roll it up, and so when
I hit the ground or I hit her on the bottom, it doesn't really hurt, but it scares her because it's a loud thing. And I thought,
I'm going to get taken away to prison for DSS vet abuse. And she thinks
I'm crazy before I even tell her. Listen, God made you to worship
Him, and Adam and Eve fell, and God saw it in His wisdom to determine your destiny by what
Adam did. And Adam sinned, and therefore you're a sinner by nature and by deed.
And left to yourself, you're going to go to hell forever. But the good news is,
God in His love sent His Son. He sent a slave, a servant, Philippians 2 calls
Him a slave. And this slave was obedient to God, as slaves should be. He was obedient even to the point of death, so much so He died on a cross.
And if you'll look to Him and believe that He was your sin bearer, you'll be raised from the dead.
If God's working, then there's hope. If not, we have no other option besides to keep preaching, to not be concerned about ourselves and how people like us, and to continually give them what
Jesus said in the Great Commission, that Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations.
Your family and friends aren't going to like it, but you have the message. And the message that you have, even though it's in a frail case, you, it's still the message.
I said to Dave Ferrer when he came in today, a lot of people preach the gospel better than I do, but as a
Puritan said, nobody preaches a better gospel. There are a lot of better evangelists than you are, but nobody has a better gospel than you have.
And God has given you the people in your life for a reason, and it is time that we ask God to help us to love our neighbor in the most loving way we can, as ourselves, by giving them the gospel.
And God honors His word as people are shocked with the scriptures and then must run to Christ.
Let's bow in prayer. Lord, Isaiah was never the same.
You gave him strength and preservation to preach that message of hardening, and yet,
Lord, we have an opportunity to preach the gospel.
And some of us have even seen people come to faith through our feeble preaching. Feeble preachers preach the gospel to us, and we believe because of your son, not because of their preaching.
So, Lord, I'd encourage everyone here. I pray that you'd give them many opportunities this week to preach the gospel in part or in whole.
I pray that you'd give them opportunities like that man on the airplane. I pray, Lord, even for his soul today, that he would bow his knee and profess
Jesus as Lord to the saving of his soul. And Lord, I would pray as well that we would be fervent servers here at the church.
Lord, when we have things in the physical plant or things of the church that need to be done, Lord, may there be a line of people desiring to serve you by serving others.