PreachingPal

If you’ve never come across the word “evangelism” in the wild before, there’s a super simple definition:

The bible talks about Jesus’ followers as “messangers” sent by Jesus with a message. The message is the good news about Jesus’ death burial and resurrection.

Evangelism is the act of sharing that message – it really is that simple.

Quick question

Have you ever heard someone say something like the following?

“I’m okay with you having your beliefs, I just don’t want them rammed down my throat“

Whatever anyone else thinks, Jesus commands us to “speak” the words of the gospel to others.

And, as humans, we’re programmed to tell good news.

On the 10th August 2016 my wife and I welcomed our first born into the world.

I’ll give you 1 guess what the first thing I did was?

I told my dad.

Immediately. Weeping as I spoke.

Then I called my mum.

Then the inlaws.

And so on…

The idea of keeping it to myself didn’t cross my mind for a second. It was the best news ever, everyone needed to know.

I didn’t need prompting to do that. I didn’t need the words written on paper to help me. It came completely naturally to me.

And I think this experience isn’t unique to me. We all do this kind of thing – and not just when babies are born.

We do it with everything.

• A new highly-bingeable series hits Netflix – we tell everyone we know
• Your team wins the league – you tell anyone who will listen
• You get back from your hollywobbles – everyone hears the anecdotes

We’re built to share good news.

Riddle me this:

Why is it that I can phone my whole family to tell them the news of my daughters’ birth but I go all clammy and quiet when it comes to speaking about Jesus?

We’re quick to share every piece of good news in our lives.

But we’re painfully slow to share the best news in the world.

I think it boils down to two reasons: Fear and SEP.

An SEP is Someone Elses’ Problem fyi (10 points if you know the reference).

So, with that in mind,

I want us to consider three things as we look at evangelism this morning:

Thing one: Evangelism isn’t the job of one key gifted person

Thing two: Evangelism is the job of all in the church

Thing three: No need for fear – God does the hard bit

Scripture

Let’s quickly look at 3 passages to underpin all this:

Matthew 28:18-20

Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Ephesians 4:11-16

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants… Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

2 Corinthians 5:18-21

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.

It’s Not Down to One Key Evangelist

I think a huge problem with the church in general is that we tend to defer evangelism to someone else.

We all know someone who can talk about Jesus in any situation confidently and always find new ways to bring up their faith in conversations with non-believers.

And the danger is we write of our own evangelism and defer to people like that instead. “That’s their ministry, not mine”.

This comes from a bad understanding of passages like Ephesians 4.

Look at verse 11 again. Paul lists the gifted roles in the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers.

Then, look at what comes next. Verse 12: “to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.”

So two quick points there:

1. Most translations say Christ gave “some” to be apostles, prophets etc. – not just one or two.
2. Even if it was just one or two – the gift is to equip the church for evangelism, not be a master evangelist themselves.

The evangelist gift in Ephesians 4 is a training gift not a replacement gift.

It’s like suggesting the job of a football coach is to play the match themselves. No, that’s ridiculous. The job of the coach is to coach the team to play the match.

In Ephesians 4:16 Paul puts it like this when it comes to these gifts living out in the church:

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Not the evangelist on their own. The whole body.

The church grows when every single member plays their role. And part of that role, for all of us, is sharing the good news about Jesus.

John Stott puts it across like this in his commentary on Ephesians 4, he says:

“Here is incontrovertible evidence that the New Testament envisages ministry not as the prerogative of a clerical elite but as the privileged calling of all the people of God.”

One of my HEROES of the Christian faith, Charles Spurgeon puts it more bluntly when he writes:

“Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” — Charles Spurgeon

That sounds harsh I know but he makes a fair point – A Christian who has genuinely encountered Jesus, who has truly been saved from sin and death, can’t help but want to share that news.

So here’s my question….

Have you been outsourcing your evangelism?

Hear this as the truth spoken in love: that’s not Jesus’ vision for you.

We Are All Ambassadors

Read 2 Corinthians 5:20 for a minute.

Do you think he’s referring to a select few here? Are only some of us ambassadors for Jesus?

The answer is, of course, no. We are all ambassadors. The criteria isn’t that you’re naturally good at this sort of thing. It’s not about how much theology you know, how much you’ve read or how good you are at speaking.

Now think about what an ambassador actually is.

An ambassador is an official representative of a government in a foreign land.

An ambassador carries a message.

An ambassador has been sent with authority.

When the British ambassador speaks in another country, they’re not sharing personal opinions over a cup of tea.

They’re representing the crown.

That’s you!

Jesus, the king of heaven – sends you as His ambassador.

• To your neighbours
• To your friends
• To your family
• To your gym
• To school
• To work

And you carry the gospel message that Jesus has dealt with their brokenness, their sin and their shame. The message that they can be reconciled to God once and for all simply by believing the news you share, that Jesus did it for them.

That’s the logic Paul drives home in Romans 10:14-15

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?

People need to hear the gospel to believe ->

They need someone to tell them ->

And that someone has been sent ->

You’ve been sent.

You know people that will most-likely never set foot in a church, read a bible, listen to a christian podcast or speak to another christian.

They’re not people I know. They’re people only you know.

You might be the only Bible they ever read.

That doesn’t mean you don’t need words to preach the gospel by the way as some have mistakenly said.

You are a walking testimony. But what are you a walking testimony of? It will ultimately take more than actions to be an ambassador for Christ.

Tim Keller puts it like this in his book Center Church:

If the gospel were primarily about what we must do to be saved, it could be communicated as well by action (to be imitated) as by words. But if the gospel is primarily about what God has done to save us, and how we can receive it through faith,

it can only be expressed through words.

People don’t get saved by proximity to Christians – they get saved by proximity to Christ. And they need to hear about him.

That’s what Paul declares in the opening to the book of Romans: The Gospel – the MESSAGE has the power of God to save.

That’s a scary charge on us, to be the mouthpiece by which people hear the good news. It requires action and it’s much easier to choose a quiet life.

There’s a lot of fear in us about talking about Jesus in this day and age:

I really understand the fear. I experience this too.

Elliot Clarke, in his book Evangelism as Exiles, writes something that absolutely convicted me when I first read it:

Fear of the future isn’t necessarily the problem. We actually don’t seem fearful enough, not nearly as exasperated or concerned about the certain and dreadful end of our unbelieving neighbours as we should be.”

Hell is a terrifying outcome. We don’t talk about it much these days.

We’re talking about eternal separation from God, the source of love and joy. We’re talking about a cold, scary, lonely, painful eternity.

I shudder when I think about it too long.

We might talk about loving our neighbour but when was the last time you felt the weight of what’s at stake?

People we love, our friends, our family, our colleagues, without Christ, they’re heading toward an eternity separated from God.

And we’re worried about whether it might be a bit awkward to mention Jesus over coffee.

Fear should not come between us and Christ.

In the great commission we read earlier in Matthew’s gospel – Jesus promises to be present with us when we go in His name.

Of course Spurgeon understood this urgency.

Let me share with you something I read recently in one of Spurgeons’ sermon notes that I found really helpful.

He said:

“If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervour at a white heat, it is concerning missions.

If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world.”

A dying world.

And here we are with the words of life.

Our Job Is Simply to Share — God Does the Rest

The good news for the ill-equipped is this – the pressure is off.

Because your job isn’t to do the converting. Your work is actually really easy if you don’t overthink it.

Yes, we can fall into the trap of doubting as I wrote earlier:

• What if I say it wrong?
• What if I make it worse?
• What if they ask me something I can’t answer?
• What if they reject the gospel and it’s my fault?

So we end up freezing or saying nothing.

But listen to what J.I. Packer writes in his brilliant book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God it hits the nail on the head when it comes to the truth of it:

“Evangelism is man’s work, but the giving of the faith is God’s.”

Let that sink in.

“Evangelism is man’s work, but the giving of the faith is God’s.”

Your job is to share the message – That’s it.

• You don’t save anyone
• You don’t convert anyone
• You don’t need to have all the answers

You share the message and the Holy Spirit does the work that only He can do.

Paul uses this exact picture in 1 Corinthians 3.

I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.”

This is amazingly freeing. It means we don’t need to follow a script, read a tonne of books (although the one’s recommended in this post are well worth it if you’re a nerd).

No theology degree required.

Just you, being honest about who Jesus is and how he’s changed your life.

I think about my own journey.

Before I became a Christian in 2011, it wasn’t one slick gospel presentation that did it.

There wasn’t one single moment and one single person who did all the heavy lifting.

Lots of people spoke into my life. Some (like my father in law) I remember. Others I don’t.

Together, those conversations, those seeds, worked as God was drawing me to Himself.

That’s you for someone else.

But, don’t sweat because, wether they’re saved or not – it’s not on you. That’s on God.

The Real Problem

So if we know all this, if we know it’s not one person’s job, if we know we’ve all been sent, if we know God does the converting, then why are we still so quiet?

I keep coming back to this question and I think Elliot Clark who I’ve already quoted this morning absolutely nails the diagnosis.

He writes:

Praise is the most natural thing in the world for us, and we do it all the time.
We brag about our favourite sports team. We rave about restaurants.
We shamelessly tell others about the deals we find online.
We can’t stop talking about the latest Netflix series or our last vacation…

While we demonstrate an incredible ability to proclaim the glories of endless earthly trivialities, we somehow stutter and stammer at the opportunity to speak with others about our heavenly hope.

So it’s obvious our gospel silence isn’t because our mouths are broken; it’s because our hearts are.”

“Our gospel silence isn’t because our mouths are broken; it’s because our hearts are.”

Ouch.

When my daughter was born, my heart was so full I couldn’t contain it.

The news came out of me almost automatically. Sharing this news was the most natural thing to do.

So the question isn’t:

“How do I get better at evangelism?”

The question is:

“Is the gospel as real and as precious to me as I say it is?”

If we genuinely believe that Jesus died in our place, taking our sin and shame to death. If we then believe that Jesus rose from the grave, defeating the death we deserve and rising to the permanent relationship with God.

If we believe this then sharing should be as natural as phoning home to break the news of your first born’s birth.

Our mouths aren’t the problem. Our hearts are.

A Challenge

So what do we do?

I want to leave you with three things.

Thing one: Ask God for a heart that burns for the lost.

Ask God to break your heart for the people around you who don’t know Jesus.

Name people in your life who don’t know Jesus, pray for them by name – daily.

Ask God to give you the kind of urgency that Spurgeon felt when he talked about a dying world. Ask Him to align your heart with His.

Thing two: Start with one person.

Not everyone.

Someone you interact with regularly who doesn’t know Jesus.

Commit to praying for that person specifically every day for the next month.

And look for one natural opportunity, to share something about your faith.

It doesn’t need to be a full gospel presentation.

Just one honest conversation. God can use that.

Thing three: You are sent

You’re not a random person with a personal opinion about religion.

You’re an ambassador of the King of Kings.

You’ve been sent.

You carry a message of reconciliation powered by the Holy Spirit.

The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in you and through you.

Just open your mouth.