Understanding God's Sovereignty in Election (Part 4)

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Understanding God's Sovereignty in Election (Part 5)

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Tonight, we are starting or continuing on rather our study of the book of Romans.
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We have been looking at Romans chapter eight, verses 28 through 30.
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We are now, I guess, in the fourth week of doing that.
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And we're going to begin by reading that again to remind us of what it says.
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And then we're going to pray and ask that God lead us in our lesson this evening.
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So let's go to Romans 8, verses 28 through 30.
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Verse 28 says, And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.
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For those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.
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In order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
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And those whom he predestined, he also called.
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Those whom he called, he also justified.
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And those whom he justified, he also glorified.
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Our Father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity to be in your house and to study your word.
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I pray that right now, Lord, you would open up our hearts to a better understanding.
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That you would use me, Lord, as a mouthpiece for your truth.
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And that, oh, God, you would keep me from error.
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This is the constant prayer, oh, Lord.
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And Lord, as we look forward to the future in our church and we examine the need to separate ourselves from a denomination and to move on to demonstrate who we are in Christ.
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I pray for our church.
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I pray for a heart that is desiring to be led forward by your word and by those leaders whom you have ordained.
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We love you.
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We praise you.
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And we ask all these things in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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Close that door and turn the A.C.
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on.
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I don't know if you are cold or hot or not.
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I feel somewhat like the air is kind of not moving.
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Huh? Is it 76? Just put the temperature down much lower, but just with the fan on might help get some of the stuffy air moving around.
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All right.
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Over the last few weeks, we have examined Romans 8, 28.
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We have looked at some very specific and important words.
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We have talked about the concept of what it means when it says God foreknew an individual.
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We said that that does not mean that God simply looked down the corridor of time, saw what an individual was going to do, and then as a result, God responded in kind to their actions.
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We said foreknowing on God's part is an action wherein God is making a choice.
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It is a setting of affection upon an individual.
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And so we talked about the word foreknew.
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We've also talked about the word predestination and the word predestined.
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And we talked about the the foundation of that word, the Greek word prohorizo, which means to mark out the end from the beginning.
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And with the word horizo, we get the word horizon, which is the farthest point that you can see the end.
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And when it says prohorizon or prohorizo, it's to mark out the end from the beginning.
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That's what that word in plain English, even though it's Greek, that's what that word means.
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We talked about the word calling.
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And last week we distinguished between what we would call the universal or general call, which is simply the proclamation of the gospel.
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And we distinguish that from what we would call the internal or effectual call, the call of God, whereby he opens the heart of an individual to believe.
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And we made it very clear from the text of Scripture and even from our own experiences that it is God who opens up our heart before we would ever even desire to come.
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And really, that is the crux of the entire debate.
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If it is God who must act on us first, if the Bible clearly teaches that we love him because he first loved us, if that is the truth, then all of the rest is merely just side discussion, because if that's true, then that says the entire amount that it's God's initiation that causes our salvation and not our own.
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So tonight I want to go over the concept of election.
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Now, we are going to really get into divine election in Romans chapter nine.
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And I could go on into Romans chapter nine and I could plow through it and we could get through it.
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And then I would have to go back in the midst of that and answer a ton of questions that relate to the doctrine of election.
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So what I've decided to do is, like my hero, the Apostle Paul, I want to preempt some questions and I want to do that tonight by answering some of the most common objections to the doctrine of divine election.
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So the title I put on the board, I said, if the election is true, then what about? And then I left it blank because we're going to deal with a few different questions.
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But that's usually how the debate will go.
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If I say that as a preacher, I preach and teach the doctrines of grace, sometimes some of what is the doctrines of grace? The doctrines of grace are the total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints.
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Those five things are sometimes called the five points of Calvinism, which is unfair because they were written long after he died.
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Much better to refer to them as the doctrines of grace, because what those five things teach are that salvation is wholly of grace and not at all of myself.
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And when I tell people, well, I teach or preach the doctrines of grace or if I tell people that I teach or preach divine election or or sometimes I will throw out the P word if I'm just in a mood to have a discussion, because you never throw out the P word unless you're in a mood to have a discussion.
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Sometimes I will throw out the big predestination word.
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And in doing so, I am already ready.
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For the questions that are going to inevitably come.
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And the reason why I'm already ready is because when I was first brought to view of these, when I was first had these scriptures brought to my attention, when I was first forced to deal with the doctrines of divine election and predestination, I know what my questions were.
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And doggone it, if every time I've ever taught it, I haven't had the same questions that I asked, asked of me.
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And it just seems to be somewhat of a vicious cycle is that, you know, in the old adages, you know, I've heard that question a million times.
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And that doesn't mean that it's not a legitimate question, because that's what we need to do.
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We need to understand how to answer the common questions, because if this is something we are going to teach, it's something if it's something I'm going to teach and believe, then I have to understand that every new person I come across that has never heard this before.
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They're going to have the same six or eight questions that I had immediately upon hearing it the first time I heard it.
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So that's what we're going to do with tonight.
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And I want to just say these questions may not be worded the exact same way that you would word them.
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But the the spirit of the question is there and that I want to just mention that to you.
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Please understand that when I ask these questions, there's a spirit in the question that is is almost universally asked.
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And the first question is, if divine election is true or if God predestines, then what about evangelism? OK, I always like to start with this one because of all the questions that I'm asked, this one is the first almost every time.
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If what you are saying is true, Pastor Foskey, then that means that evangelism is unnecessary because God has already determined whom he will save.
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And if God has already determined in eternity past whom he will save, then your evangelistic efforts are either unnecessary because God's already chosen a person or they're uneffectual because if God hasn't chosen them, then there's no reason to minister the gospel to them.
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So it's a two a double edged sword.
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It either is it's either unnecessary because they're saved no matter what, or it's uneffectual because they're not going to be saved no matter what.
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As I said, I've dealt with these questions so much.
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I've heard the objections so much I can almost enunciate them in my sleep.
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So tonight we're going to start with the subject of if we believe in election, what about evangelism? Well, let's begin by simply addressing one thing first.
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And that is if somebody ever asks, why do you evangelize? The first answer and really you could stop here, but the first answer is because Jesus told me to.
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I mean, and honestly, if you need more than that to evangelize, if you need more than the command of Christ to evangelize, then you really might need to search your own heart on that, because if God commanded it and Christ commanded it, when he said to his disciples, he says, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit.
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If Christ gave that command, then it doesn't matter if I understand why.
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Now, I do believe I can understand why.
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And we're going to get to that in a moment.
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That's I'm just simply saying, even if I did not understand why, for instance, Jonah was given a command by God and he didn't understand why.
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He says, go into Nineveh and preach repentance.
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In 40 days you will be destroyed.
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And what didn't Jonah do? He said, no way.
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And he went and hopped on a ship to go to Tarshish.
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And what did God do? God said, no way.
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I'm sovereign.
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You're not.
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And he gave him the first submarine ride.
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Love that story.
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It's real quick.
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That's the way it kind of happened.
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And he ended up on the shores of Nineveh and he preached repentance anyway.
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Why? Because God had given the command.
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Jonah did not do what God said and he was effectively shown I'm more sovereign or I'm sovereign and you're not by God.
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So if the question is from the.
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Person who believes in divine election, if a person believes in divine election and does not believe in evangelism, then they have truly.
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Become what we would call a hyper Calvinist.
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Now, some of you have never heard that word before, but I do want to differentiate now very quickly.
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There are people who we would call hyper Calvinist, and that's not a Calvinist who eats too much sugar in the morning.
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A hyper Calvinist is a person who says that because God is sovereign, he will save whom he will.
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I have no responsibility to proclaim the gospel.
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Now, some of you have heard of the primitive, primitive Baptist movement.
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The primitive Baptist movement was historically a hyper Calvinistic movement to the extreme.
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And I've never seen a church like this, but I've heard of a church.
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I've heard of churches like this.
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So you may challenge me later and say, well, what are you talking about? I'm only telling you what I've heard through various people to the extreme that the preacher would not even preach to unbelievers, that they wouldn't allow them to come.
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Now, I've never heard of a church.
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I've never been to a church that ever taught that or talked to anybody.
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But again, you hear these things and I can imagine there are people that go to such extremes.
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OK, we would call them hyper Calvinists, meaning that they have taken a beautiful truth, the truth of divine election, and they have they have changed it, distorted it and they have destroyed its real meaning.
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OK, but there are people like that.
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We need to understand that they are there.
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All right.
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The concept of evangelism.
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Is not something that anyone who believes in divine election should ever negate or give up, because if you believe in divine election, then you believe that God ordained the end of all things.
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That's what predestination is.
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God has ordained the end of all things.
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The destination.
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And there's a root word to destination.
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What is it? Destiny.
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What is what is what did you say? No, no, no, no, no.
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I'm sorry.
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The root word is destiny.
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OK, so when we talk about destination, we also could be talking about destiny.
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And when you talk about the end, you're talking about the final destiny of an individual, their destination, where they're going.
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But what we have to understand is that God does not only ordain the end, God also ordains.
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What we call.
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The means to the end, all right, there are things that must take place in time for this to result.
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And if God has ordained this, then it flows by logic that he has also ordained this.
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OK, now let's just break it down to the easiest way I know how to break it down.
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And some of you heard this before.
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But for those of you who haven't, it's my favorite illustration ever, because I've never met a Christian ever who would say that the birth of a child.
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Was not ordained by God.
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Ever.
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I've never met a Christian, Arminian, Calvinist, anything who would not say, yes, I believe that the birth of a child is ordained by God.
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Now, I guess there are some out there, but personally, I've never met one because most know that Psalm 139 talks about God forming us in the womb, that God bringing our very parts together to form us and that he established our days for us before we ever were.
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I mean, we read that.
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And those people who've read that passage, there's no doubt, whatever you believe about divine election, there's no doubt birth is ordained by God.
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So in this case, birth would be an end.
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Right.
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If God has ordained birth, that would be an end.
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Now, nine months before the birth, there was an activity of interaction between two parties.
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There was an interaction between two parties that brought about the birth.
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If this is ordained by God, then the necessary means also must be ordained by God.
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And some people say, well, I don't know, because what if this was, you know, I don't know about this.
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This is this starts getting into the idea of will and human will and free will and things like that.
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The issue is if this is the end that has been ordained, this was a necessary.
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Nobody's ever been born without that except one person.
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So we understand one being necessary for the other.
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Thus, all must be ordained.
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All right.
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Now, having said that, let's look at it without the issue of human birth in mind.
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Let's look at it by spiritual birth, what we would call rebirth or born again.
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Right.
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If God's purpose is that the elect be born again and the necessary means of the elect.
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If that they hear the gospel and believe, then the gospel is the means by which the rebirth comes.
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So evangelism is a necessary means to bringing about the end of God's ordained rebirth.
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OK, no one just like no one has ever been born apart from that mutual physical interaction.
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Likewise, no one has ever been reborn apart from the preaching of the gospel.
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So now you understand we have a part in God's ordained plan.
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We play a role as gospel preachers, and I'm not the only gospel preacher here.
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Every one of you is a gospel preacher.
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If you are a believer, God has called you to share the faith, to share the gospel.
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Even if all you know is that Jesus is alive and he saved your soul, then that's what you're supposed to proclaim.
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And that's our job.
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We share the gospel and we must negate that simply because we believe that God has ordained the ends.
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Here's the beauty of it.
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This is the part I said I did say I thought about it, but I said I might end up doing the whole thing on evangelism.
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So if I do, that puts another week of answering questions, but I ain't going anywhere.
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Yeah, well, good.
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I don't have to hurt because there's a few other things that I really want to say on this particular subject.
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When we talk about evangelism.
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I want to ask you and I don't want necessarily I don't want to embarrass anybody.
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I know a few of you would talk, but I know some of you wouldn't want to talk or so I will never ask people to raise their hand because I don't want to embarrass anybody.
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Let me ask this question.
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We just said evangelism is the means to the end.
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The end is the rebirth.
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Evangelism is the means to the end.
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So if somebody asks you, because the first question is, why do you evangelize the answer to that is what, because Jesus commanded me to evangelize, that's not that's the easy one at the softball, knock it right out of the park.
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Second question, why did he command it? Now, now, now you're now we say because evangelism is the necessary means for someone to hear the gospel and that God would open their heart to believe the gospel.
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That's a necessary means.
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Now, the question is, how should you do evangelism? Because let me tell you what evangelism has become.
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Evangelism has become in our day and age.
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A sales pitch, evangelism has become a sales pitch.
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I know because I have gone to the sales classes.
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I've been encouraged to go and listen to these great evangelists who could prove that they could save anybody as long as they had enough time.
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Rick Warren wrote in his book.
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I'm not a fan of Warren.
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I read his book a long time ago, and at the time I thought it was all right.
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But the further I the further I go down the rabbit hole of what he taught.
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The more I'm less impressed with, huh? Yeah, absolutely.
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But one of the things that he said, and it never struck me so hard until later after thinking about it, one of the things that Warren says in his book, he says, he says, I can win anyone to Christ as long as I find the key to their felt needs.
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As long as I find the key to their felt needs, I can win anyone to Jesus Christ.
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Well, there's an ancient Greek word for that baloney.
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And so we know it was Greek because it's pronounced baloney, but it's spelled with a G.
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Um, it's it's such a arrogant thing to say that I could win anyone to Christ because, you know why I think it's an arrogant statement, because Jesus couldn't win everyone to Christ.
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OK, I wanted you to I wanted you to think about it before I went back and redacted what I just said.
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I wanted you to think about what I was saying.
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Could Jesus save everyone? Absolutely.
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We've gone through this.
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God, at the beginning of the world, he made a decision.
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I he had he really if you think about it, logically, there were three choices God had.
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He could make a choice to save no one.
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Right, he could make a choice, save no one.
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And had he made that choice, he would have been just in doing so.
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If God would have just said, hey, they said, I'm going to take my hands off of them, let them all go to hell.
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God would have been absolutely just in doing that.
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He didn't do that.
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Thank the Lord.
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God could have said, I'm going to save everyone, no matter how bad, good or indifferent, everyone's going to be saved.
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He didn't do that, did he? No, because we know a lot of people that are going to hell.
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And the two what we just looked at is is what we would call total annihilationism or total universalism, neither of which does the Bible teach.
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Then you have the final one, and that is what we call particularism.
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People don't like the word particular because it tends to make you think that some people are left out.
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But if you think about the particularism is just to simply say that God made a decision to save some.
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And if you believe in hell, you have to believe in that statement, he did not make a decision to save all.
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And when Jesus came into the world and preached the gospel, he said, he said he was asked, Jesus, why do you teach in parables? He said, so that seeing they will not see and hearing they shall not understand.
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He said, I explained to you the meaning of the parables, but to them or he says to you, I explain the truth.
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But to them, I give parables so that seeing they may not see and hearing they will not understand.
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And.
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Wait a minute, I thought parables were divine analogies of kingdom truths.
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Worthy, well, in a way, they were.
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But the only reason we know what parables mean is because Jesus told us.
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If Jesus hadn't given us the definition of the parables, we could have run wild, particularly with the parable of the sower.
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You come up fifteen hundred meanings of the parable of the sower if Jesus didn't come right behind it and say this is what the meaning is.
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The sower is the or the seed is the word of God and the birds are the are the devil and the and the thorns of the cares of the world and the rocks are the hard, stony hearts of men.
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You know, I mean, he goes to the explanation of what it means.
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We understand what it means because he told us.
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Have you ever heard some wild things people come up with from Jesus's parables? Absolutely.
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All right.
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I'm getting well kind of way off course, but I do want to I just going back to the subject of evangelism, this is important because the question is.
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How should we do evangelism? Should we be Jesus salesman? And obviously your answer is no, because I don't think anyone would ask.
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I don't think even the Armenian would answer yes to that because they would say, oh, well, obviously we're not being just seven.
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But the question is, does our methodology mirror our theology? Ask that question.
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Write that down.
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Does our methodology mirror our theology? Does the way that we proclaim the gospel mirror our belief that God is sovereign? Number one, I'll show you how it often does not.
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Number one.
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Oh, well, I can't share the gospel with him.
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He's already got his religion and he won't listen.
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How many times have you heard that? How many times have you heard people say, well, you know, he's a Muslim and Muslims are hard to reach or he's a Mormon and Mormons are hard to reach.
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I'm not going to answer the door.
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I'm not going to talk to them because they're difficult people.
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They've already established their faith.
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I don't really want to rock the boat for them.
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What have you just done in saying that you've judged, you've denied God's sovereignty.
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And you've established the idea that somehow you're the one that's going to say Jehovah Witness comes to my house and then realizes he messed up.
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No, I mean, Jehovah Witnesses come to my house and and I have two choices.
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I can say, you know what? He's already fed.
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He's already bought into his religion.
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I'm not going to say anything to him.
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I'm just going to say thank you for the Watchtower book.
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Have a good day.
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Go on about your business.
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Or I can proclaim the gospel to him, knowing, knowing that it will never be me, but it will be the spirit of God that opens his heart.
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However, how will they believe unless someone preaches to them? Absolutely.
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And that's what we have to remember.
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And that, again, goes back to why do you think Dr.
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James White goes to other countries and goes on Islamic television and preaches the gospel because he has a death wish? No, because he believes in divine election.
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He believes that God has people in those Islamic countries.
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He believes God has people in those African countries.
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He believes God has people in China, in Germany, in England and in all of the other places.
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And because God has people in every tribe, tongue and nation, we can proclaim the gospel to all men knowing that God's people are there.
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He used to go one of the things that fascinated me about Dr.
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White is that Dr.
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White used to go to and I know I build him up a lot, but he's he really I consider him a friend.
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And I talk to him a couple of times a week on the computer.
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And it's on it's honestly an amazing thing to get to talk to somebody who's so well known because he opens himself up and allows for that.
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It gives me an opportunity to ask questions to somebody who is, I would consider, a wonderful teacher of the faith.
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And one of the things he did for 18 years, he went out to Mesa, Arizona.
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He lives in Phoenix.
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Mesa is where they have the conference for the Mormons, the big national conference they do.
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And he would stand out there for 18 years, not in a row, but he went 18 years every year.
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And he stood out with tracts and books that he and the ministry had written and would give out these tracts and would continue to preach the gospel to them.
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And he saw people that even today I talk to these people who were saved out of Mormonism because of his preaching of the gospel.
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Not because of him, not because he's an articulate gospel teacher, not because he's smarter, not because he can parse the Greek language better than anybody I've ever heard.
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Not because of that, but because he obeyed Jesus's command to go into the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
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I see.
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Absolutely.
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I mean, it may it may take a while for it to germinate.
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It may take something else to to to water it, to nurture it.
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Yeah, we have that responsibility.
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Go and preach the gospel.
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Anybody who says that somebody who believes in election can't believe in evangelism is ignorant or lying.
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They're either ignorant or they're lying.
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I've had that said about me.
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I had a guy one time, I'm going to mention there's a person in church, he said, you know, I get upset because Keith doesn't give an altar call at the end of his sermons.
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No, my answer was I said, number one, I said, show me in the Bible the concept of the altar call.
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We see when they proclaim the gospel.
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The people would ask, how can we be safe? And then they answer.
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Yeah, I changed it to him of introspection.
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And the reason for that is because, number one, oh, oh, this is a good question.
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Be careful, because I go on.
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Let me ask you this question before I even go to what I was about to say.
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Let me ask you this question.
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What is Sunday morning for? It's for worship.
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It's Sunday morning worship service designed.
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And before you answer, think Sunday morning worship service for believers or unbelievers.
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An unbeliever will come in, an unbeliever will see the believers doing what believers do, and that is worshiping God.
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And they hear the proclamation of the gospel.
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But I've heard people say, well, we design our services around unbelievers.
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That is not biblical.
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It is not biblical to design a service for unbelievers because unbelievers cannot worship God.
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If you're designing a worship service for unbelievers, what you're designing is a rock concert to get people excited about the rock concert.
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And then when the rock concert is over, guess what else is over? Then they're gone.
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If you went on a hot dog party, you better keep them with a hot dog party, because as soon as the hot dog party is over, they're gone.
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Creating a dynamic, huh? You're creating a dynamic Satanism.
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And again, I'm only saying this.
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I'm not saying that it's wrong to at the end of the service say if there is someone here whose heart has been pricked and you want to come forward and you want to pray right now, that's fine.
35:41
But let me tell you something.
35:41
Let me tell you where I think the failure comes.
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It's where I think the failure comes.
35:46
When I was in seminary and I love my seminary, I love the guys that taught me and I respect them to the end.
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But I will say this, there's one place where I deviate greatly from what I was taught in many places.
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But this is one particular.
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I was taught, number one, that sermons should be 30 minutes long.
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Mine can only take what the seat can endure.
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And if you haven't struck oil in 30 minutes, stop boring.
36:14
I remember those two statements.
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The other thing I was told was that 10 of those 30 minutes are to be dedicated to the evangelistic appeal.
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Beloved, I don't know about you, but I can't exegete one word in 20 minutes.
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Y'all know that it takes time to look at the text of Scripture and to open it up and to understand what it's saying.
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Now, it's not true.
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There's some passages you can go through a little quicker than others.
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If you if you understand the text in the context of what you're doing.
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But but, you know, there are times we've stopped at one word and stuck with it in this one verse for weeks.
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The point of the matter is this.
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What is my job? Is my job to feed the sheep or is my job to go out and bring the sheep in? Well, it's both.
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But when do I go out and bring the sheep in on Sunday morning only? Or is that what I'm supposed to be doing the other six days? Is that what my life is supposed to be about? Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice.
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So when an unbeliever comes in and God is calling their heart and they hear the gospel preached, his sheep will hear his voice and will respond.
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Remember what he said to the Pharisees, though, great passage on election, by the way, this is I think it's in John 8.
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He said to the Pharisees, he says, you don't believe because you're not my sheep.
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He didn't say you're not my sheep because you don't believe.
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He said, you don't believe because you're not my sheep.
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That's a wonderful passage on divine election because it says what comes first.
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They were already the sheep or they weren't.
38:13
Anyhow, getting back to the issue of evangelism, I knew I was going to spend time on this tonight.
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I hope I'm not.
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I hope I'm not boring you tonight because there is a there's a guy once I knew, Roy Hargrave.
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I know, you know, Roy Hargrave is a tremendous teacher of the gospel.
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He he's pastor of River Bend Community Church in Ormond Beach.
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I thought it was Daytona.
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OK, it's Ormond Beach.
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River Bend Community Church in Ormond Beach.
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Roy Hargrave taught a sermon one time and he got ripped apart by his fellow Baptists because they're Baptists.
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He's reformed, but he's still a Baptist.
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You can be both.
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Ergin Cantor, if you're watching, you can be both.
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I'm sorry.
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No other subject.
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He's not watching, but the point is.
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He was a Baptist and he taught a sermon and the sermon was called The Idol.
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Call evangelism, the idol called evangelism.
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And right away, people got offended by the title, as some of you may be offended by the title.
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You may see that and say, wait a minute, that sounds hyper Calvinistic.
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That sounds dangerous.
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That's saying evangelism is a bad thing.
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Now, what Roy was saying, and I believe this absolute truth.
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Is that in so many churches, evangelism has taken the place of work and really all evangelism is for, as John Piper that said, all evangelism is for is to create worshipers.
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The ultimate goal is to worship God.
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Evangelism is to create people to worship God, not create them, but to to to share the gospel so that they become worshipers of God.
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That's what evangelism is for.
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And evangelism doesn't create the elect of God.
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Evangelism reveals the elect of God.
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It shows who they are.
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Alex, you have a question, buddy? I'm yes.
40:22
Evangelism is sharing the gospel.
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That's a very good question.
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It means telling people about Jesus.
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Very good.
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The word evangel means good news.
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So when we share the good news about Jesus, OK, you're welcome.
40:36
Thanks.
40:36
That was a good question.
40:39
But this Roy said it's an idol called evangelism.
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What he was saying was he was saying that worship has gotten lost.
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And so many other things have gotten lost and it's been replaced with this salesman approach and that it's all about.
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It's all about seeing how many people we can put in our churches.
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And now what do we see? We see churches not with hundreds.
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We see churches with tens of thousands.
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Should that excite us or should that worry us that there are so many people who say they believe in Jesus that have really no commitment to the.
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These huge evangelistic crusades that go out and they see 20,000 people say, how many of those 20,000 people have a genuine heart conversion? And how many of those people simply went down because the other people around them went down and they felt like it was the right thing to do.
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I've said this before.
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I know you all heard this, but when they have those big evangelistic crusades, they take the people that they train as counselors and they make them sit all out in the audience so that when it's time for the evangelistic appeal and the pastor comes up and gives the appeal, they will stand up first and start walking down because they say their logic is, well, this will help someone whose heart is right on the edge and they just they don't have enough in them to take a step forward and you standing up next to them might be the impetus to step them forward.
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Beloved.
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Is our eternal destiny based on our standing on a preface and leaning back and forth? Is that really what we think? Yeah, and that's what they say.
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I've heard that they say God voted for you and the devil voted against you and you get to break the tie.
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I say, what kind of what kind of gospel is that? Well, it certainly puts the emphasis or certainly puts the responsibility back on you, and that's what we want.
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We want it all to be our responsibility.
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We want it all to be our choice.
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We want it all to be up to us.
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And that's why evangelism is so popular in that style, because it makes it very much man centered, not about God.
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I am not afraid to preach the gospel to anyone, Muslim, Mormon.
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It doesn't matter.
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Why am I not afraid to preach the gospel to anyone? Because, number one, it's not my gospel.
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I'm not preaching Keith Foskey's opinion about the truth.
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I'm just preaching what Jesus Christ said was the truth.
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So I stand on a foundation that's not my own.
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And two, I'm not going to change their heart.
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What did I say on Sunday? Remember what I said on Sunday about creation and evidence? I don't know how many of you listen to the sermon.
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How many of you were here Sunday? But what did I say about the evidence? I said evidence never convinces.
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Now, it gives us who are believers something to be encouraged by.
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But you can lay all the evidence at the feet of Richard Dawkins that Jesus Christ lived.
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He resurrected and he's at the right hand of the father right now.
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You can give all the evidence in the world.
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There are 500 people saw Jesus alive after he came back from the grave.
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There was no reason why they shouldn't have been able to just produce the body and show that he was still dead.
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If he was still dead, there's no reason why any of that should have taken place if Jesus Christ didn't come out of the grave.
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But he did come out of the grave.
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And because he came out of the grave, he's alive.
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And all the evidence in the world points to that.
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But when you take that and lay that at the feet of somebody whose heart is as cold and as unbelieving as Richard Dawkins, you know that apart from a supernatural work of God where he removes that heart of stone and gives him a heart of flesh until that happens.
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All you can do is proclaim the truth and leave the results to God.
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And you see, that's what we believe about evangelism.
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We proclaim the truth.
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God gives the results.
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We plant, we water and God gives the increase, which is the verse you quoted earlier.
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Yes, that's a good question.
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No, that's a great question because you're asking the question of methodology.
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And I did say earlier that our theology affects our methodology.
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And I think that people do ask sometimes, well, how do we then if we're not Jesus salesman, how do we proclaim the gospel? Because because really the way that it's been proclaimed for so long is is it's an emotional appeal and it's a it's a sales pitch.
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And I've even heard a guy heard a guy on radio one time.
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He said, if you just if you just take Jesus, even if you don't like him, you still got it.
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I almost ran my truck off the road because my heart almost failed.
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By the way, I'm not going to get to that thing I said tonight, Kim.
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That's we're going to talk next week about primary causation and secondary causation.
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But thank you.
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I'm not going to get to that tonight.
46:26
So I just want to let you know, I'm sorry about that.
46:27
I thought I was going to get to that, but let me talk about the method of evangelism, because really and truly.
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I think we make evangelism much harder than it needs to be a lot of times.
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I think we really do.
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I think, number one, that oftentimes we worry too much about convincing and not enough about just proclaiming.
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If I say to a person who's standing on the edge of a roof.
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If you take a step forward, you're going to fall.
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Whether or not I convinced them.
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They've heard the truth.
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That may not be the best analogy, I'm kind of coming up with that on the fly, but what I'm trying to say is this.
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If I said a person's down on the roof, if I walk up next to him and I say, if you take a step forward, you're going to fall.
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I proclaim the truth.
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I didn't try to convince them.
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I didn't say, man, you're right on the edge.
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Well, your toes are hanging off and you know, really worried, you know.
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You need to take a step back, man, you know, I proclaim the truth to them.
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Now, would I? Potentially, I might sit there and focus on the fact that they're not recognizing that their toes are right there on the edge.
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But first and foremost, my responsibility is to tell them the truth.
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You're in a precarious position.
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And I like that word precarious because that's where everyone is who's outside of Christ.
47:53
If you think about Jonathan Edwards sermon when he preached sinners in the hands of an angry God.
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There was no evangelistic appeal in the sense of him saying, he says, now you all need to come to the altar and pray over this.
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No, he just said, here's the condition every one of you is in.
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You are all right now standing at the precipice of hell, and the only thing that's holding you back is the grace of God.
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You stand now with an opportunity.
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You've heard that the only way to be saved from that is to repent and trust in Christ.
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Now, you might say, well, is that enough? That's the gospel.
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It's simple and it's the truth.
48:48
How do yes, sir.
48:50
Lewis Barrett tapered their faith, but if you think about what he's trying to say, if I say to somebody what you need to do right now is pray and ask Jesus into your heart, totally bogus statement, not anywhere in the Bible, asking Jesus in your heart.
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Really? Where? It's not a biblical statement.
49:52
Now, somebody says, well, that's why, you know, that's what I've used forever.
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Think on it.
49:58
It's something that we take in as a tradition, asking Jesus into our heart.
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It's not a it's not, you know, and like you said, people focus on that or walking an aisle or praying a prayer or whatever.
51:43
Well, that's that's another issue sort of.
51:46
I don't mean to cut you off, but that is somewhat of an issue into it in and of itself.
51:50
When I preach the gospel, the bringing up of the concept of divine election is while it is central to belief in the fact that it is God who saves and not us who save ourselves, it is not necessarily a part of my presentation, because the presentation of the gospel is, number one, that everyone is a sinner and by nature opposed to God.
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Sometimes people don't even believe that sometimes it takes getting them to believe just that they're sinners.
52:27
Yeah.
52:27
The second thing is that the only the only thing that can save a person from the penalty of sin, the penalty of sin is death.
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The only thing that can save a person from that is the work of Jesus Christ alone.
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And then you ask the question, do you believe in the work of Jesus Christ and having been done on your behalf? And if the person says yes or the person says no, they're there and lies where you are.
52:57
Do you believe that this work has been done for you? But the question of, you know, have you accepted Jesus in your heart? Things like that.
53:06
Those questions are are really just roundabout ways of going to that, of asking, do you believe that Jesus has done this work and that this work has been done for you? One hundred percent God's grace alone.
53:25
Oh, absolutely.
53:26
And, you know, there's more to it.
53:28
I've kind of veered a little bit.
53:30
I'm trying to get to Mike.
53:32
I'm sorry, Mike.
53:33
The only verb here comes by hearing.
53:46
Yeah.
53:48
And they hear the and they hear that.
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And then they either believe or they don't believe what they've heard.
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And that, of course, is God opening the heart to believe or not to believe.
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And it's not necessarily, you know, people associate all kinds of things with salvation.
54:01
They start praying a prayer.
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They associate saying a sinner's prayer.
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The sinner's prayer is the big thing they associate going down an aisle.
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They associate baptism with salvation, specifically that you're saved when you go in the water or you're saved when you come out of the water.
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Rather, all these things become acts that we've done rather than just trusting in the act that Christ has done.
54:24
I actually do do sort of a somewhat of a course on evangelism.
54:28
I haven't done in a long time, but there there there somebody asked me one time, you know, well, how do you witness to a Mormon? How do you witness to a Muslim? How do you witness to Jehovah's Witness? How do you witness to a to a somebody in a far out faith like Hinduism? I said same way I show them their sin.
54:48
I show them that based upon their sin, they are condemned and that the only salvation is by Christ alone.
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Once that's been proclaimed.
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It will then be God who either opens their heart to believe that or not.
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But that's the gospel.
55:04
The gospel does not include my emotional appeal.
55:08
My gospel includes or the gospel includes my proclamation of the truth.
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Like I said before.
55:14
Yes, ma'am.
55:27
Oh, absolutely.
55:28
Absolutely.
55:29
And, you know, better than anybody, probably how long I can talk.
55:37
But, but, but seriously, though, I remember one night my mom, we had a we were having a fall festival.
55:51
My mom brought these two girls here.
55:53
They were dressed as devils and they did it on purpose because they were atheistic.
56:00
And they were teenagers dressed like little devils and they did it for the shock value.
56:07
And instead of just turning my nose up at them and walking the other way, I I sort of made a beeline for them because I kind of like to address that kind of stuff.
56:16
Huh? Well, it's not necessarily a challenge.
56:20
I like I like to have an opportunity to speak to people like that, because generally they are doing that, not because necessarily they're really smart.
56:28
And very keen on their unbelief.
56:31
I'm not saying they're not smart.
56:32
I'm saying they don't they know this is not an act of great intelligence.
56:36
It's an act of shock when somebody dresses with when somebody dresses with their hair all crazy in their clothes, all crazy.
56:44
They're not doing that because they they're doing it because they know it elicits a response.
56:49
And what I hate to hear is somebody who does all that and says, what you looking at? I'm like, you're dressed like a rooster.
56:55
What am I supposed to look at? No, but you know, your hair is ten foot above your head.
57:04
But same thing.
57:05
These girls had had that had that come up here.
57:10
And I my mom brought him for that reason.
57:14
You know, they wanted to come, but she like got him here because she knew that part of my passion is to talk to people about.
57:20
But the first thing that I made sure that I did before going to their objections and their questions was I made sure that there was a clear enunciation of the gospel.
57:35
Do you understand that everybody, no matter how good they may seem? Is condemned to hell apart from Jesus Christ, because no matter how good we may seem.
57:49
We are all sinners that in itself get some people, well, well, my grandmother is a very sweet lady without Jesus, she's going to hell, man, I get people's attention quick.
58:03
I don't really get people's attention quick, but like I said, I know I know we've got to go and some of you guys ready to go.
58:07
But the quick I want to say I ended up spending an hour and a half with those girls.
58:11
We ended up talking about everything from where the Bible came from to Noah's Ark, to everything I can imagine that she had a problem with the Bible about.
58:21
And at the end, I had him writing down Bible verses and things like that, because not because I'm just the best Jesus tells in the world, because I don't think that's what I was doing.
58:30
I did take the opportunity to deal with their objections.
58:33
But you see, I moved out of the area of evangelism and into an area that we call apologetics.
58:44
OK, evangelism is the proclamation of the gospel.
58:47
Apologetics comes from the Greek word Apologeo, and it's in 2nd Peter 315, I believe, where it says that we ought to sanctify Jesus in our hearts and always be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.
58:59
And the word give a defense is Apologeo.
59:03
1st Peter 315, that verse strikes my heart is very important because it reminds me that I don't just have the responsibility to share the gospel, but I have the responsibility to tell people why I believe it, to give a defense for the hope that is within me.
59:18
But I cannot ever confuse the two, because like I said, Sunday, all the evidence in the world is going to change that girl's heart.
59:25
But what it will do is if God does open her heart to believe something I've said, all of the things that I've said to her might come back to her and at that moment be an aid to her.
59:38
I love apologetics.
59:41
I love to give a defense for the hope that is within me, but I never, ever fool myself into thinking that's what saves souls.
59:48
That's not it is the power of God and the salvation for all who believe to the Jew first and also to the Greek father.
01:00:12
As we have examined tonight, the concept of evangelism, I do pray that every one of us would understand the absolute responsibility that we hold as believers to never be afraid to share the gospel.
01:00:29
And Lord, remind us that sometimes we may only have a few sentences and sometimes we may have hours, but no matter how much time you give us.
01:00:39
In the discussion of the gospel, someone let us never shrink back from proclaiming the truth.
01:00:47
For God, you have given us the responsibility, your word tells us we are ambassadors for Christ.
01:00:57
Let it God, let it be that we never forget that responsibility in Jesus name.
01:01:06
Amen.
01:01:08
One thing, and I know you got to go one last quick story.
01:01:13
Jehovah's Witnesses came to my house and some of you hold this service, but I really think this is one of the best ways that you can enter into a conversation with them.
01:01:22
It's ridiculous, but it gives you an opportunity.
01:01:26
Come to my door, knock, knock.
01:01:28
Actually, I went and got him because they knocked on the door and left.
01:01:30
I went out and got him and brought him back.
01:01:36
Yeah, well, and I said, tell me what it is you're talking about.
01:01:42
And they and they had their awake magazine.
01:01:44
They had their Watchtower magazine.
01:01:48
And I said, tell me what it is you're talking about.
01:01:50
I knew I wanted to hear from them.
01:01:52
So they started saying, don't you think the world is in a really bad way? And they started they want you to agree with them.
01:01:59
So they start that asking these kind of these open ended questions, but the opportunity for you to say, yes, the world is so bad.
01:02:05
Don't state the economy's horrible.
01:02:07
Yeah, don't say because they're trying to build up the idea that, yes, you know, God is judging us and we need to go back to worshiping him and all these things.
01:02:14
They're they're they're in this mode to get you to answer.
01:02:17
Yes.
01:02:18
Finally, I just stopped her.
01:02:19
I said, hey, you guys are Jehovah's Witnesses, aren't you? And then they were like, yeah, I said, I said, let me ask you a question real quick.
01:02:29
I said, if you did not know my door today and I would have come to the door and I had a knife sticking out of my back because I had just gotten stabbed and I was dying and the life was literally oozing from my body and at any moment I'm going to pass away.
01:02:44
And you had two minutes to share with me how I might be saved.
01:02:48
Go.
01:02:52
And they said literally he stopped and he goes, well, what kind of life have you lived? I said, apparently not a good one.
01:03:00
I got a knife in my back.
01:03:02
Go.
01:03:03
And he and he and he says, he says, well, well, the Bible says he who endures to the end shall be saved.
01:03:09
I said, it is the end.
01:03:10
I got two minutes.
01:03:12
Let's go.
01:03:14
I mean, he kind of just looked at me funny.
01:03:16
I said, what I'm trying to do is demonstrate for you that you are going to all of my neighbors and you are proclaiming a gospel of works.
01:03:25
I would like to proclaim to you a gospel of justification by faith alone in Christ.
01:03:32
He left mad.
01:03:34
He said to his wife, this man knows what he believes and we don't need to talk to him.
01:03:38
She stayed for about five minutes.
01:03:40
He left, went down the road, came back, yelled at her from the end of my driveway because she was listening and he didn't want her to.
01:03:48
The point is, however you engage whoever the gospel is, the gospel, you don't have to edit it.
01:03:56
All you have to do is proclaim.
01:03:58
Hey, God bless you.