The Message of Evangelism — Ernest C. Reisinger

Before we have our closing session, may I just call your attention to two more books. The books I called your attention to this morning were certainly relevant to evangelism and our theme this week. And there are at least two more, and I'm sure Mr. Edgman wants me to say something about this, and I think I will.

But Words to Winners of Souls by Charles Haddon Spurgeon is most helpful. You won't have to blink and apologize. I meant Soul Winner, excuse me. I'm holding this one up and talking about this one. Soul Winner by Spurgeon, not Words to Winners of Souls.

This is a little book that I referred to a while ago that I took with me to the mountain that day. This book, The Bible in a Tickle Pad, and I highly commend it to you. I try to read it every year myself.

It's very searching. And I'm sure if you're halfway on it with yourself, it will lead you to pray. It will lead you to cry out to God for help and assistance in your great, great work. And then another little book that Mr. Craig has published, the Presbyterian Reform Publishing Company.

Several years ago, now this is in its second printing. Several years ago, a preacher friend of mine in New Jersey called me on the phone. He said, Ernie, somebody brought me the pages. It's all falling apart of an old book by a great Presbyterian who was a minister at the same church, I think, for either 35 or 45 years.

It's been a while since I read the introduction. But he said it's so great, he said it ought to be reprinted. So I said, well, send it to me and we'll see what we can do. So I immediately read it, followed the pages, and the book is all falling apart.

And it was by Dr. Gardner Sprigg. It's a little brick church. It has to do with the distinguishing traits. And I want to emphasize the word distinguishing. A man can be moral by the world's standards.

There's a lot of people who do not commit adultery and do not steal and do not lie and don't even take the Lord's name in vain and live what we consider by the best standards a good moral life. He points out some of the things that a man can be moral and not be a Christian.

And he points out the fact that man can have a certain amount of knowledge of holy things without being a Christian. He can have a form of religion. He can have eminent gifts. He can even be a conviction of sin.

And then he goes into those distinguishing marks of a Christian. Al and I wrote a little introduction to this and left it as it was. And Mr. Craig printed it. You may be here today and wonder about your own experience with the Lord.

And it's a good book to read anyhow. I commend it to you very highly. Now, if you have your Bible, I'd like to turn in our closing time to 1 Thessalonians. To read the Scripture, may I again, since this is my last session with you, may I again express my deep gratitude for this invitation to be instructed with this holy task.

The Need for Lay Witnessing

I take this serious. I feel that when we open the Word of God and think about holy things that we are not on a fool's errand. And I'm not seeking your applause or approval but seeking to be a friend to your soul and also seeking to be honest to God and His Word as I see those things revealed in the Scripture.

But may I again express my deep gratitude for your invitation. And secondly, I express my gratitude for such a title because I believe it's one of the great weak links in the Church, and that is laymen who are really witnessing.

I heard a preacher not long ago who ministers to a lot of ministers, and he was speaking, it was accounts for his own evangelism, and he was speaking to some 400 ministers. And it was evangelism, and therefore they tried to be very honest with each other.

And at one point in that, they were taking an honest survey, and the question they were raising is, how many men in your Church, that was the ministers, how many men actually engage in any sort of systematic witnessing, not something they did once 50 years ago and haven't done since, but engage in a program or are conscious or are actively witnesses for Christ.

400 ministers, 5 ministers answered in the affirmative, that would be 395 that didn't have a man in their Church who was a witness. Together with 9, they come up with 9. I figure if there were 100 to 200 in that represented by each minister, congregations of 100 to 200, that would be some 40 ,000 or 80 ,000 Christians with 9 witnessing.

It is in the Bible. I think it's the clearest command of Christ in the New Testament. You can understand why I'm grateful for such a theme. And I hope it's not only the theme for this year, but I hope you pursue it in days to follow.

Prayer. Look to the God of the book before we look to the book. Holy Father, all men of like passion, our need of thy wisdom is great, therefore we confess our ignorance. We confess our impotence and plead for your power, especially today as we think of all the lives and the churches represented here.

We pray that you'd be pleased to grant, for Jesus' sake, a great measure of your spirit to not only speak, but to seal to hearts those eminent truths that we are considering these days together as men.

Therefore we plead for your help, for your spirit to come and do what we cannot do by tricks or gadgets or any other thing. Come, O Holy Dove, and take us to the Lamb and to His teachings and to His commands.

For His name's sake. Amen. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, I'd like to read verses, but I want to take particularly as the speaking portion, probably commonly known as a text, I want to take verse 4 particularly.

You yourselves, brethren, know our entrance in unto you, that it was not in vain. But even after that we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention or amid much opposition.

Sincerity and Trustworthiness in Evangelism

Our presentation was not of deceit. Every form of evangelism must bear this in mind. It cannot have any deceitful element in it whatsoever, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. This is our text. But as we are allowed of God or approved of God to be put in trust with the gospel, that's our trust.

Dear sir, that's your trust. Even so we speak, that's our task, to communicate it. Our trust to gospel, our task to communicate it. Not as pleasing men, but God which trieth or proveth our hearts. Neither at any time used we flattery words.

Good principle, very good principle for witnessing and preaching. Neither at any time used we flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloak of covetousness God is witness, nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ.

But we were gentle among you. And here we have that principle we saw this morning in 2 Timothy. Not to strive, to be gentle, not to teach patience and meekness. But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherishes her children.

So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only, but our own soul. It costs a little of that to spend time with people and witness and preach.

That's some of the cost, because ye were dear unto us. For ye remember, brethren, our labor and travail, for laboring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.

Ye are witnesses. And God also, how holy, and he appeals to his conduct again, is a strange mingling of our life and our labors in this gospel work, so peculiar that it's only peculiar to gospel work.

A man's life in other areas may have not anything to do with his labors. He may be a keen lawyer and a crooked and rotten at the core, but still may be a keen, prudent lawyer. A man may be a great surgeon, great in the medical profession, and be morally corrupt, and therefore his life does not necessarily have a great deal to do with his labors.

Not so in this work, gentlemen. Somehow that strange, almost mysterious mingling of our life and our labors. Here we have it again. That's why we talked about the power of a holy life. But the apostle appeals to it.

This he's talking about his conduct. You are witnesses. You know how I lived among you unblameably. We behaved ourselves among you that bleed. As you know how we exalted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father, thus his children, that you would walk worthy of God who has called you into his kingdom and glory.

A great apostle points out in verse 2 what courage and resolution he did this work. And it does take some God-given courage and boldness to do it. You see it in verse 2. He reminds us also in the same verse that it was against opposition, suffering.

Although it is, it was against opposition, this kind of suffering only sharpens the edge of our holy resolution. That's what opposition does to the man of God. It sharpens that edge of holy resolution.

He could appeal to that. And then he said in verse 3, covetousness. It was without that, against that, no deceit. Not to tell the hard side of some of the things of the gospel. In other words, he's appealing to his honesty and his sincerity, not deceitful.

Why was he honest and sincere? Well, I think we have it in this context here. He was a steward. That's what he said in verse 4. And the gospel was his trust. It was not Paul's gospel. It was the gospel of God.

And he was entrusted with it. He reminds us two or three times, verse 8 and verse 9, that this was God's gospel. And in verse 4 he said that's his trust. So the reason he was honest and sincere is because he had a trust.

Secondly, because of his design and desire to please God. Then, of course, another reason for his honesty and sincerity was he was honest and sincere because his labor was under God's omniscience. The sight of him who tries our hearts, he said.

We see the evidence of his sincerity in verse 5. That's why he avoids flattery. That's the evidence of his sincerity. We see, secondly, in verse 5, that's why he avoided covetousness. He did not make religion a cult nor a life like the false prophets did in 2 Peter 2, verse 3, where it says they were so covetous and with sane words made merchandise of the people.

Is there any water in this place? That's all right. I'll make out. This is the evidence of his sincerity. Proved in avoiding flattery. Proved in avoiding covetousness. And another reason, you'll see in verse 6, he avoided ambition and vainglory.

That's the proof of sincerity. Now today, I want to somehow try to bring this to a close. I said, I told you this morning, I was quite off schedule. And I'm not in any better shape today. Sometimes when I have these little missions, I feel like that bishop that's on the train who lost his ticket.

And the conductor knew the bishop very well. And as he came by, he said to the bishop, he said, you know, the bishop was kind of gone through his clothes about his ticket. And the conductor said, that's all right, bishop.

I've got the rest of this car to do. I'll be back. So he did that car and came back. And the bishop was quite a bit more exercised about it and was getting more extreme. And the conductor said, that's all right, bishop.

I have another car to do. I'll go collect the tickets in the other car. Finally came back, the poor bishop was all in sweat. He was really flattered. And the conductor said to the bishop, he said, that's all right.

If you don't find it, he says, we know you, you'll pay. The bishop said, that's not the problem. He says, I don't know where I'm going. Sometimes in these conferences, I wonder if I know where I'm going.

But I do, believe it or not, know where I'm going. I just don't always get there. I want to talk about our trust a little bit. We talked about the man two sessions. It's important. The man in evangelism and the man in, whether it's lay evangelism or other than lay evangelism, any kind of evangelism, the people doing the work are important.

And we spent two sessions on that. Today I'd like to talk a little bit about the message of evangelism and if we have time, the motive, the proper motive, too, principally, for evangelism. First of all, our trust, the gospel.

Defining the Gospel

It's important that we're clear on what the gospel is. Now, it don't look so that I could make a statement like that in a meeting like this. I had three women call on me some years ago. My secretary kept telling me to come down.

There's three young women there who want to see me. And I said, well, they could see Mr. Corman or somebody's office manager or somebody else. She said, no, they insist on seeing you. So finally she prevailed upon me and I went down.

There were three women from the church. They were selling a cookbook. Now, what a contractor wants with a cookbook, I don't know. But that's the point. The point was they heard that I was religious and I was a good touch for some money.

So I soon realized that I was duty-bound to buy a cookbook. And since I'm going to have to buy the cookbook, I thought I might at least ask and inquire what they're going to do with the money, since they said they're from the church.

And when I asked, what are you going to do with the money, they didn't seem to be too sure about that. So I said to them, they really didn't know. They knew they were doing it for the church. Now, these were serious, young, married women beating the streets to collect money.

And I said, well, it would be a good idea if you use it to propagate the gospel. And that seemed to solve everything and they all agreed, yes, that's right. And then I said, what is the gospel? And I asked the first one and she said, that's the Ten Commandments.

This is accurate. I asked the second one and she said, it's a symbol of Christ. I asked the third and she said, I said, do you all go to the same church? And I had a chance to tell them about it. I asked you this afternoon, what is the gospel?

Would you tell me, well, that's about Christ dying on the cross. But suppose I went into a situation over in New York City, where the New York Bible Society is from, our friends from there, and I went into that area with a group of Jewish children, somebody that never heard the name Jesus Christ.

And I say to them, oh, boys and girls, I want to tell you the good news, the glad tidings, the joyful announcement. Let me tell you, once upon a time some wicked men took an innocent man to the brow of a hill and there they put nails in his hands and a spear in his side and he died.

Isn't that wonderful? It is, though I had something wrong with me. Now, it's true that that has something to do with the gospel, but those facts by themselves are not good news. They've got to be related to some other facts.

I suggest to you the little book that many of you bought, the Packer's book on authority of God and evangelism. There's an outline of the gospel in there and he says this, and I agree with him. That the gospel is a divinely inspired message about God as our Creator who has absolute claims upon us as creatures.

He was in certain synagogues. He didn't start with the law of God or the creation because he was talking to people who were already theists. They had a theistic base. And he started talking about the Messiah.

But what did he do in what is probably the most unique gospel situation in the New Testament? On Mars Hill. Did he start with the Messiah? No, he started with God our Creator. And the gospel is a message about God.

It's a message about sin. You can't talk about sin and just run up to somebody and say, Oh, sin in control of the glory of God. That doesn't tell them what sin is. Everybody will agree with you mostly on that.

What is sin? We learn from 1 John 3 .4 that sin is the transgression of the law. So the law has something to do with the message too. We learn from Romans 3 .20 that by the law is the knowledge of sin.

No law, no sin. That's why three great truths of the Bible stand or fall together. And that's the law of God, the cross of Christ, and the righteous judgment of Almighty God. You touch one and you've touched them all.

Take away one, you've taken them all. Take away the law of God, there is no such thing as sin. That's our great problem on our campus. And not only on our campus, the homes from which those people came from.

No sin. No fixed standard. No objective standard as to what's right and wrong. And they don't care about Jesus. Because they don't know anything about God's law. So if you take away the law, you have no sin.

If you take away the cross, you have no answer to sin's problem. If you take away the righteous judgment of Almighty God, who cares about Jesus or the law? Who cares about Jesus or the law? So certainly when we talk about sin, we can't think of the divinely inspired message of the gospel without thinking about the creator-creature relationship.

Then comes, and then comes sin automatically as soon as you establish that. And then you're ready to talk about the redeemer relationship. The gospel's a message about God our creator, about sin, about Christ.

Who he was, what he did, why he did it, where he is now. There's something else, and I'll touch on this later. The message is a summon. The gospel really is a summon to faith and repentance. I said faith and repentance.

Now why did I say that? Because you cannot separate true Bible repentance, evangelical repentance from true Bible faith. So you better check over your evangelistic program and see if it includes repentance.

Because if it doesn't include repentance, it's not evangelistic. You can't separate the two. I'm glad for the old shorter catechism. I hope you don't mind if I catechize you a little. The catechism is very clear on this point.

Very clear, very clear. Question 87, thank you Jim. Question 87 in the shorter catechism is this. What is repentance? What is that? In the Confession it says, repentance is something that's to be preached by every minister of the gospel as well as faith in Christ.

That's almost a verbatim quote from the Westminster Confession. What is repentance? Listen to the answer. Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner out of the true sense of his sin, now notice this, this is what I want you to see, and the apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ.

Without the apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, repentance is what Judas did. Remorse, despair, and destruction. True repentance always includes faith. That's why the catechism was so concise, so biblically correct on that point.

Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby out of the sinner, out of the true sense of his sin, and the apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God with full purpose of and endeavor after.

I say the gospel is a summons to faith and repentance. I want to show you maybe later if I have time, how the Jesus preached it and Paul preached it, Peter preached it, the apostles preached it. I wonder if you know anything about it.

I wonder if you know anything about it, other than a definition. I wonder if you've experienced that thing that the catechism calls, it's a grace, repentance is a grace. Well, we must be sure of our message.

If we're thinking of lay evangelism, now I don't suggest that you run up to everybody and go through these four or five points that I'm giving you, but underneath all that you do, on the foundation, all that you do will stem from a right view of the gospel.

The gospel is a message, not some nebulous spirit. The gospel is a message definable in words, communicated in power. That's the unique thing about it. That's the difference between the gospel and other learning.

Other learning can be communicated to men's heads, their intellect, apart from power. The gospel is a message definable in words, but must be communicated in power. May I read it to you? Same epistle.

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power of the Holy Ghost. And much assured, as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake. Paul is saying, yes, it came to you in word, but not word only.

Faithful Methods and Proper Motives

It came in power. So it's bold, it's communicated. About witnessing today, what we're trying to do. A lot of times it's, boy, you don't know where I work. You ought to work where I work. Or some preacher wants to move out of this particular place because you ought to know where our church is located.

Down in among this people, down among this. They're all Roman Catholics in our area. And they give me all this. I think down inside of me when they say this. I think that Jerusalem was a pretty hard place to work in about the year 31, or 32, or 34.

That's where it started. The name Jesus was not very popular. Jerusalem was not very. Those people were pretty hard. Your situation, don't tell me that. Your situation is no different. We don't have all the drunks and tough people on construction, but we have our share.

But that's a tough place to witness this as well. So I'm talking about our message. Our task is to speak. Now we've got to have a motive for that. I want to be very careful here today. I don't want to be misunderstood on this.

There are two basic motives that I can find in the New Testament. With the saints. And I'd like to give them the order. And I believe the order is important. You know most evangelism is stirred up with the motive of man's need.

Now that is the motive. And that's the second. I remember when I was speaking at a missionary conference once. And I was late, late on the program. There were a lot of other speakers before me. I was like late in the weekend.

And they were trying to get drawn up a trip to go to Haiti. And almost, it became almost the conference jargon to talk about broken hearts. Go and see these people and get a broken heart. And I thought if somebody didn't say something else to them we were going to start a broken heart denomination.

You don't have to go to Haiti to get a broken heart. And I thought I was constrained to do something about it. But my problem was solved. Because before I spoke immediately there was a young missionary there, medical missionary, a doctor, a medical doctor who had just gotten back from the jungles of South America on his first term.

And he was so tired and weary that he was recommended not to take any speaking engagements or do anything but to just rest. And right before I spoke they did ask him if he would say a word. And I'll remember it very vividly.

He got up and he said he wished he could give some glory reports of how many people were converted. But he said, I can't do that. I have no such glory. And then he went on to say how he still had joy in obeying Christ.

And he said how day after day he would pray in the morning, Lord Jesus, you sent me here. Use me today. And he would exercise his medical ability to help Saul and tell the gospel. And he said at night I could come back by that same bed and kneel down and say, Lord Jesus, the best I know how, I have obeyed you today.

He says I had a measure of joy in obedience. I don't think you can separate these two motives too far. But I believe that your motive for witnessing ought to first be, God said you to do it. Stemming from the first table of the law.

When Jesus gave the summary of the first table of the law, he said to the lawyer who asked him what's the great commandment of the law, he says thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and so on and thy neighbor as thyself.

And then he summed up the second table of the law. That ought to be my first motive for witnessing. And I tell you, when people spit on you, and you're not successful, and you're discouraged, there's still a great deal of joy that comes from knowing that you have exercised your best efforts in obeying God.

First motive for witnessing is not the need of man. That's the second. And it comes from the second table of the law. Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. And if you love him in that sense, you'll not only be interested for the clothes he wears and where he lives and his physical things.

If you love him in that sense, you'll be interested in his soul as well. Our bonding company, they, I don't know, I haven't been in the office for four years, so I don't know what the status is now, but we used to, I used to talk to my bonding man for years.

And I'm sure, Stan, I think our premiums, we paid him about $75 ,000 or $100 ,000 a year so he'd listen to anything I had to say. And we used to meet in the morning for breakfast. And I would talk to him, not every time, about Christ.

In fact, there's been maybe a couple times I would. I've given, I guess if he had everything beside his bed that I've given him to read, he probably couldn't get in bed. He always seemed to listen. But I remember this one morning, we were meeting in a hotel for breakfast, and I, something came up about, I don't remember the details, but I do remember that this is one of the mornings I was talking to him about the claims of Christ.

And he looked across the breakfast table and he said to me, Ernie, why in the hell are you bothered about my soul? And I took my testament out of my pocket, and I said to him, Ken, I said, I could not believe what's in this book and claim to be your friend and not care about your soul.

That's impossible. I could not believe what's in this book and say I love my neighbor and not care about your soul. That's the second motive for witnessing. Now, I think there's something else about the message that I want to get into today a little bit.

I thought I'd better get into motive first. Our message is the gospel. It has two keys in it. It's not only trust rights, trust rights, trust rights, but turn from sin, faith and repentance. Not only that, our message must be addressed to the whole man.

The Whole-Person Call of the Gospel

I hinted at this this morning when I said the gospel must reach the whole man. It hasn't reached you savingly. If the gospel hasn't reached you in every area of your life, it has not efficaciously reached you.

If it doesn't reach you in every area of your life, you'll go to hell playing church. Man's intellect, because that's what he thinks, must open the mind. Read it in Luke 24, where it said he opened, in a few verses at the end of Luke 24, from about 45 on, it said he opened our understanding.

He opened the scriptures. Find it in Luke 16, Lydia. Her mind needed to be opened. So it must reach the intellect because that's what people think with. It must reach their emotions because that's what they feel with.

It must reach their will because that's what they discern with. Surely whatever else true religion is, it cannot be less than right thinking in relationship to God, right feeling in relationship to God, and right acting in relationship to God.

That's the least that true religion can be. And that's why it must reach the whole man. Not just one of these psychological upheavals. The reason I said this morning, and emphasized the fact that Christ sent us out to teach.

Now I don't want you to go away and think that I believe that God couldn't, somebody could come in this door lost and go out saved. I believe that's possible. I believe that's God's not His normal way of saving man.

I believe that we have in the scripture at least four ways, at least four ways, vividly set forth in the scripture that God calls men to Himself. So don't go away and say I'm talking about some kind of preparation doctrine.

That you gotta prepare yourself for grace. I'm not talking about that at all, but I will say if grace doesn't prepare you, you'll never be saved. I'm not talking about you preparing yourself for grace.

I'm talking about something that grace does for men. God called some from the womb. You have a vivid example in Luke chapter 1 with John the Baptist. He was filled with the spirit from the womb. So I got to allow that at least I have a record in holy writ that He called one that way.

I learned in the same connection that Jeremiah was ordained of God from the womb, Jeremiah 1 5. We have that record. We have the record of God calling at least one man on his deathbed. So we have to allow for that.

This day thou shalt be with me in paradise. We have what I would call a sovereign gospel call. Not in St. Paul. I don't think that represents a dramatic, it's a dramatic conversion, but I don't think it represents one of those instantaneous conversions where He was walking on the road to the Mass.

Yes, He was converted, but you must remember He heard Stephen's sermon. I don't know how long that was before. And you must remember that He was locking up Christians and putting them in jail. And He surely knew why He was doing it.

So I can allow for a period of conviction in St. Paul. I think the sovereign gospel call, the best illustration is Zacchaeus. Up in that tree. Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to thy house.

Now when I said all that, I believe that these are God's unusual way of calling men. I believe God's most common way of calling men and women is by prior work of the law. Convicting them of sin. Showing them the knee of the Savior.

And then revealing Christ by His Spirit to them. But the gospel must reach the whole man. And I say that if we would bear this in mind in all of our evangelism, some of the awful curses come upon the church.

In at least a couple areas. And this awful sentimental affection of the gospel. Just a sentimental affection. All sentimentalism. It would eliminate that. It had to reach the whole man. His mind, his emotions, and his will.

And it would eliminate antinomian abuse of the gospel if it reaches the will. It has something to do with how a man acts. He won't be an antinomian. He won't be against the law of Christ and the rule of Christ.

Eliminate that awful fruitless speculation about the gospel. All in his intellect, his head. He knows all the facts. He knows the doctrine. He can spit doctrine. Act like a machine gun shooting bullets.

Stranger to heart religion. Stranger to the power of the gospel in his life. If it just reaches his intellect. Let me tell you something. That's the danger in our circle. That's the danger in reformed circles.

The other danger is something just an appeal to the emotions. That's the danger in other circles. The danger in our circles is that intellectual comprehension of certain facts. But stranger to the power of religion.

That's why I say the least true religion can be is right thinking, right feeling, right acting in relationship to God. It must reach the whole man, our message. Another thing, our message must be a whole Christ.

Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King

It must be a whole Christ. This idea that's so prevalent, not in our circle, but it's creeped into some of your churches too. This wicked idea that you can trust Jesus as your personal savior, whatever that is.

I don't know. It's not in the Bible. It's not in any of the historical confessions. You won't find terminology like that in the Westminster Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, or the old London Confession.

You won't find language like that. You won't even find language where you trust Jesus as your savior in the Bible or any of those things. Now, don't misunderstand me. He's our savior. Want to know how the Westminster Confession does it?

You won't find that language. It's a whole... Now, don't go away and say I object to that language. I don't. I sing about Him as my savior. We just did it. You have to turn some theological switch to do that.

But who is the savior? Jesus Christ the Lord. When I say a whole Christ, I mean that kind of thing that's expressed in the catechism. May I catechize you again a little more? It must be a whole Christ.

I can't just embrace... I can't just embrace one aspect of Him and kind of use Jesus as a hell in church policy. Oh, no. Let me catechize you a little. This is question 23 in the shorter catechism. What office does Christ execute as our redeemer?

Christ as our redeemer executes the office of prophet, priest, and king, both in the estate of His humiliation and exaltation. How does Christ execute the office of a prophet? Christ executes the office of a prophet in revealing to us by His word and spirit the will of God for our salvation.