Soul Winning-Part B

Churches feel like, well we got to be seeker friendly. I don't think we should be seeker unfriendly, don't get me wrong, but the whole concept of this approach is let's take out songs that offend people who don't know Christ.

Let's take out the... I had one worship leader say I'm not allowed to sing about Jesus too much in my worship song. He said I can't say anything about the blood of Jesus Christ and all these things were taboo in the name of being seeker friendly.

I say let's be saved friendly. When Neil Armstrong took man's first step on the moon, the whole world watched and his first words are well known. What is not common knowledge is that the first meal on the moon was the Last Supper. Here's Levi Lesko to discuss his new book, The Last Supper on the Moon.

The Last Supper on the Moon is an epic new hardcover book by Levi Lesko and it's our resource offer this month. Receive your copy when you give a gift of $35 or more to support this program. Just go to connectwithskip.com or call 1-800-922-1888.

That's connectwithskip.com or call 1-800-922-1888. The current series is called Church Who Needs It and if you'll mark your Bibles in Acts chapter 2, we'll join Skip Heise as he continues our study today. Ninety-five percent of American church members have never once led anyone to Christ. Now don't misunderstand that. It's not saying that people don't witness. In fact, I think people do witness. According to the Barna Research Group, 55 percent of people in America who claim to be born-again Christians over the last 12 months have shared their faith with an unbeliever. Fifty-five percent.

And that's sort of been the norm over the last decade. About 50, 55, 60 percent of those who claim to be born-again Christians share their faith. Most of them are evangelicals, people like you. The highest activity for evangelism in America is guess where? Here, the western United States. The western states per capita have more Christians that are actively sharing their faith than anywhere else in America. The place in America with the least amount of witness is the Midwest. So I say let's raise some people up and ship them out to the Midwest.

According to the same research, whites, Anglos, are less likely to share their faith than blacks or Hispanics who are more vocal and wanting to give a witness. But local church evangelism is the combination of me doing my part, you doing your part, and all of us together in any means possible. If we have church, throw out the net. If we have a rally, throw out the net. If you have a home group, throw out the net.

If you're at a gas station and you've got a lot of extra time and you're talking, throw out the net. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9, 22, for I become all things to all men that by all means we might save some. Now I want to give you an example of a church in the New Testament that I think embodied this beautifully. It's the church at Thessalonica.

And I want you to turn to a portion of Scripture, just a few verses, that helps us flesh that out. Turn over to 1 Thessalonians. I almost said 1 Thessalonians. 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. 1 Thessalonians 1.

This is a church that I have aspired to, to become like. 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 in verse 5. For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake. And you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became examples to all in Macedonia and Achaia who believe.

For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth, and not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone out so that we do not need to say anything. Now in that passage compare verse 5 with verse 8. Verse 5 says the word of the Lord came to them. Verse 8, the word of the Lord sounded forth from them.

So you see what happened? It came to them and then it went through them. It came to them and worked in them and then came through them. So they were both receivers as well as transmitters of the truth.

That is the norm. That is the pattern for all New Testament churches. Came to you and then through you. Also look at the word in verse 8, sounded forth. Sounded forth comes from the Greek word ekas or echo, to reverberate. And the picture that Paul paints with the word sounding forth is this. Hey you Thessalonians, when the gospel came to your town it made a huge noise, a big bang, and through your voice it has reverberated through all the hills and all the valleys all around.

It has echoed through your life and your words throughout the whole region. Now, if all churches were faithful to this, the world long ago would have been evangelized. John R. W. Stott, veteran churchman, pastor for a number of years at All Souls in London, he said, We urgently need to return to this eager expectation. I know some churches which haven't seen a convert for 10 years or more and if they got one they wouldn't know what to do with it.

So extraordinary would this phenomenon appear to be to them. So the first thing we learn in Acts 2.47 is it's a divine work. The Lord added. He used people, He used their testimony, He worked in people, but then the gospel went through His people. Second thing I want you to notice in verse 47, it's a double work. Not just a divine work, it is also a double work. It says the Lord added to the church those who were being saved.

Please get that. That is, He didn't add them to the church without saving them. And He didn't save them without adding them to the church. Both the Lord did. Saving them and adding them to the church.

Now I mentioned John Stott. In his book he said he was in South America years ago and he met a group of college students who had dropped out of church. And they called themselves Christianos Descogados, unhooked Christians. They had become they said so disillusioned with all of the churches in that city that they just bagged on church in general and they were now the disassociated unhooked Christians. But according to the New Testament, salvation and church membership go together. They go together.

The Lord added to the church those who were being saved. I want to show you something. Turn a couple pages to the right to Acts chapter 5. I want you to read this. It is actually mentioned three times in this book.

I'll only show you once. The same phrase. Acts chapter 5 verse 12. Verse 14, And believers were increasingly added to the Lord.

Multitudes of both men and women. Now first of all, who were being added? Believers. It says believers were increasingly added and it says they were added to what?

Added to the Lord. Now chapter 2 says the Lord added to the church. Here it says believers were added to the Lord. What does that mean?

If you put it all together, it's something like this. Believers were added to the Lord, but the Lord added them to the church. They're synonymous.

It's the same truth told from two different perspectives. So when a person is saved, he's God's. But God will place that person within a group that he calls the church. That's why Jesus said, upon this rock I will build my church. So another way of looking at this is that the church, the true church, is made up of saved people. That doesn't mean that everybody in the congregation at one time is going to be saved, but it is primarily made up of saved people.

All members of the true church are saved people. So, why then do people or churches try to mask that and hide that? Why is it that some churches feel like, well we've got to be seeker friendly?

Now, I don't think we should be seeker unfriendly, don't get me wrong. But the whole concept of this approach is, well let's take out songs that offend people who don't know Christ. Let's take out the, I had one worship leader say, I'm not allowed to sing about Jesus too much in my worship songs. I said, what are you worshiping then? He said, I can't say anything about the blood of Jesus Christ and all these things were taboo in the name of being seeker friendly. I say, let's be saved friendly.

Rather than the emphasis on seeker friendly. Listen, any group, any church that is more interested in entertaining the goats rather than feeding the sheep has it wrong. And this is how evangelism works. Evangelism helps goats become sheep. Once they're sheep, you disciple them, you feed them, you nurture them, you love them, you pray with them.

Those sheep will in turn go out and help other goats become sheep. That's how the cycle works. So, it is a divine work, it's a double work, and third, it's a daily work.

Notice the word. The Lord added to the church daily. Daily, or one translation puts it day by day.

Now this tells me this. The church in Jerusalem did not look at evangelism as some sporadic event. I don't think they had evangelism Sunday or missions week. Every day was evangelism day and every week was missions week.

It was part of the normal, natural outflow of their lives together and God was doing it through them on a daily, continual basis. Now some people, some church leaders believe that once their church reaches 500 or 1200 or 2000, whatever number they put up there, it should then stop reaching out. Well we're full.

Well get so full that you've got to spill out and start other things. Keep going. The early church in Jerusalem had 3000 converts the first day and they were just getting started. Then there were 5000, then there were others, then eventually just had multitudes and multitudes of people who had come to know them. I think it's wrong to be satisfied with growth because no matter how many believers are here, there's a whole lot more unbelievers out there.

But this is never going to work. This sermon will never do any good in motivating us until, here's the key, until we start caring. Until we start looking at crowds of people, unbelievers, not just as, well that's a nice dress or that's a cool car or I wonder what they make for a year's wage. But when we start seeing them as souls lost, lost, and do we ever think one day they could drop dead and fall into hell?

Now that will motivate us differently. Jesus, when he saw people, saw them differently. He didn't see them as an inconvenience. He didn't say, man there's so many people on this hill in Galilee.

Man, they're like a nuisance. You know how he saw them? Matthew 9, when he saw the multitudes he was moved with compassion for them because they were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd. And he said to his disciples, the harvest is truly ripe but the laborers are few. Therefore pray that the Lord of the harvest will send out laborers into his harvest.

Did you hear that? Laborers, not superintendents, not professionals. All God is looking for is day laborers. Somebody will say, here's a mouth, here's a life, use that. I care and I'm going to share because of it. Leading a person to Christ begins with loving a person who doesn't yet know Christ. Paul the Apostle wrote, I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart over his people, the Jewish people. It's been estimated that if we were to look at the number of people without Christ, whom the Bible calls lost people.

If we were to line them up side to side or back to front and form a line, that the line would go around the whole earth 30 times and the line is growing 20 miles longer every single day. So the question comes to us, do we care? Do we see crowds and people like Jesus? I think one of the reasons the church grew so rapidly in this first part of its season in the book of Acts is the gospel wasn't confined to church meetings or evangelistic events, but it was done by all. When Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, they internalized that, they took it personally, and they did it daily.

Now I've told you this before, but to me this is such a great perspective. Let's imagine that we had the financial capacity to do a crusade, and I don't know if you know about crusades, but they can run into the millions of dollars to do a week's crusade. Let's say we had the wherewithal to rent a stadium, and we could rent a stadium every night of the week, every week of the year for 35 straight years. And let's just imagine that in that stadium, every night were 50,000 new people. And every night of that crusade, 1,000 came to Christ.

Fresh commitments every night. So tonight 1,000 people, tomorrow night 1,000 people, the next night, and you did that every night for 35 years. At the end of one year, you've got 365,000 new believers, right? If you could continue that for 35 years, at the end of 35 years, you would be further behind the task of world evangelization than the day you started.

You go, I don't get it. Simply, when you figure the exponential birth rate, the number of people that are being born in the world by the end of 35 years, you will proportionally be further behind the task of world evangelization than the day you started filling a stadium every night for 35 years with 50,000 people and 1,000 people a night coming to Christ. But, but, if you were the only Christian on earth and you said, dear Lord, would you help me within the next 12 months to lead just one other person to Christ? And if God answered that prayer and at the end of 12 months, year one, you've led a person to Christ. So now there are two Christians on earth and two Christians only. And you both pray, Lord, at the end of this year, would you help each of us to lead just one person to Christ? In two years, you now have four Christians. In year three, you have eight.

And then 16, then 32, then 64. And you grow exponentially so that within a half a century, within a half a century, everyone on earth would be converted. Wow! Wow! So do you do mass evangelism or do you do personal?

You do them both. By all means, we might save some. I'll tell you what, there's nothing like holy gossip. That's evangelism, holy gossip.

Stay, have you heard what Jesus did for me? And you just spread it around. So we now have the complete picture of the church in the book of Acts.

And it only took us six weeks to get it. We saw they were related to the apostles. They continued in the apostles' doctrine. They were related to each other in fellowship. They were related to God in prayer and breaking of bread. They were related to the outside world. And the Lord added daily to the church those who were being saved.

So here's the whole picture. To be those who know God as well as those who make God known. To be a worshipping community as well as a witnessing community. To never say, well, you know, we've got a pretty active group and a pretty large church and we're done. Uh-uh.

True story. This is a news article I found in a newspaper called The Times Reporter of New Philadelphia, Ohio, put out a few years ago. In that news article, they reported about a municipal swimming pool in New Orleans, Louisiana. And there was a celebration at that pool.

They were celebrating the first summer in memory without a single drowning in the New Orleans city pool system. At the gathering were 200 people, including 100 lifeguards. 100 lifeguards. When the party was over and the four lifeguards on duty were clearing the scene, they discovered a body face down in the pool's deep end. They tried to revive 31-year-old Jerome Moody.

They were unsuccessful. And the irony of the article was that Jerome Moody drowned surrounded by lifeguards celebrating their success. There's people who are drowning all around us. There's people who need fishermen to rescue them.

Jesus said, I'll make you fishers of men. There's lost people everywhere we go. And we're on a mission from God. Now, it could be, no doubt, that there are some who are gathered here today. You've come with a friend. You've come because it's Father's Day. You've come for whatever reason, but honestly, in your own evaluation, you realize, I'm really not satisfied.

I'm not there yet. In fact, I'm so sick of singing, I did it my way. Not a good plan. Not a good plan to trust yourself or be a good person.

It's the best plan to trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ upon the cross. And if you want new life, this is where you start. You start by receiving Christ who's been knocking at the door of your heart. And you do it now. You do it right here. And if you'd like to talk with someone right now about what it means to give your life to Christ, we'd be happy to help you. Just call us at 1-800-922-1888.

That number again, 1-800-922-1888. You know, no one really knows what the future holds, so why put it off until later when you can secure your eternal future right now? That's all the time we have for today, but before we go, here's all the info about a trip to Israel Skip and Lenya are making later this year. Skip and his wife Lenya are taking a group to Israel in 2022, and you're invited on the journey. Visit places like Nazareth, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and the Garden Tomb. And that's just a quick look at the trip.

Find out more about the trip at inspirationcruises.com slash CABQ. You can also order a copy of today's teaching, Soul Winning, for just four dollars plus shipping. So give us a call, 1-800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com. You know, we live in a culture obsessed with appearance, so next time we'll learn how to build a beautiful body here in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, a presentation of Connection Communications. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, a connection, a connection. Connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.