How to Witness

Our responsibility is to go out there and be obedient and preach the gospel and not try to get into all kinds of rational arguments about it. We're commanded to go out there right now and do it, and we're responsible to do it because it isn't a matter of theological knowledge. It is first and foremost a matter of what we've seen and heard and felt, and our witness begins at that point. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Today John focuses on the single most important reason Christians are here on earth—to be witnesses for Christ. The question is, how do you know if you're really carrying out the Great Commission, if you're witnessing the right way? Do you need special training to give the gospel, and why evangelize when God chooses whom he's going to save?

Bring those questions to today's broadcast. It's an informal Q&A session with members of John's church. It's part of our current study, Spiritual Boot Camp.

Now, with a couple of introductory remarks before the questions start, here's John. We've talked about some very important things in terms of the Christian life. We've talked about prayer and the importance of prayer, the study of the Word of God, and we've talked about how important it is that we experience real fellowship. And that kind of thing works within the family of God, but there's one other thing we need to talk about, and that's witnessing to those who are outside the family of God.

Now, indirectly, if those other things are right, we're going to have an impact on other people. But we need to talk a little bit about the direct approach of communicating the saving gospel of Jesus Christ to other people. Just a couple of verses to get us thinking along that line. In John 15, Jesus says this, verse 26, When the Comforter has come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he shall testify of me. Now, the first thing you learn from that verse is that the Holy Spirit's in the business of witnessing. The Holy Spirit has come to testify of the truth concerning Christ. And then it says in the next verse, verse 27, And ye also shall bear witness, ye also shall bear witness. And he says to the disciples, because you've been with me from the beginning. The Holy Spirit then was sent into the world and into our hearts to bear witness to Christ. And he therefore bears witness through us, doesn't he? And we who have been with Christ are witnesses firsthand, firsthand to who he is and what he can do in a life. And the ministry of witnessing is committed to us. Acts 1-8 says, You shall be witnesses when the Spirit of God has come upon you.

Right? So we're all called then to communicate the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. Now we want to talk about what that means and how to do that effectively as we share together in our session today. So who wants to start with a question? John, do you have to be specially trained to witness or can just anyone do it?

I would say in answer to that question that it's good if you have some training, but anyone who knows Jesus Christ can do it. That's the condition. Let me give you an illustration. When I was an assistant pastor some years ago in a church where my father was a pastor, one day the secretary came running in the church door and she says, There is a fight on the parking lot. There's a fight on the parking lot. It was kind of a boring day, so I figured I'd go out and watch it.

Right? So I went out the door and here was a guy laying in the dirt. It was about 50 feet from where I came out the door of the church. And this fellow was kicking him, just pummeling his body. In fact, there were two of them doing it. And I realized this was very serious. So I came out the door and I thought, boy, I got to do something about this. So I said, Hey, you guys, break this up.

Nothing. I mean, they didn't even respond to me. And I thought, well, maybe they didn't hear me. So I yelled a little louder, Break it up.

And nothing. So I started toward them and as I got there, I heard them say, Kill him, kill him. And I realized this is not a fight. This is a murder.

And there I am saying, Break it up, break it up. You know, and they're paying no attention to me. Well, I finally walked out there and they saw me. And by that time, the guy was a bloodied mess. He couldn't even distinguish his face and he had been kicked literally senseless. And so this big guy turned toward me and, I mean, he was really big. It turned out he was about 6 foot 5, 250 pounds.

He was a professional doc worker and played rugby. Great big guy. And, you know, I'm not real small and I've always said I'd pick a fight with anybody smaller than me who's had a recent illness, you know.

But, I mean, I'm not going to. So I was kind of paralyzed for a minute, see, because he turned toward me. He says, What do you want? And I said, You better break it up and leave this guy alone. And he pulled back his fist. And my instinctive reaction was to back up, right? And I backed up and he kept coming after me. And I figured I'd just keep moving because it was drawing both of them away from this guy. And they kept moving and I kept moving. Finally, I got right back to the church door and I stepped in the door.

I figured, you know, they're not going to come in the church and I'll get somebody to call the police. Came right in the door. And my dad came out. He'd been studying and he says, What's going on here? And this guy took a shot at my dad.

So that kind of irritated me. So I called and said, Call the police. Well, they panicked. And the other guy had picked up this guy that was just senseless and smashed his head on the wall and then dropped him behind a bush and they ran for a getaway car. And so I ran out to get the license. And I'm running down the street, you know, with a pencil writing down the license. And the police got there. And I gave them all the information I could give them.

The guy was alive. But he said, I don't want to press charges. I don't want to see him again. I don't want to testify.

I don't want to do anything. He was literally scared to death. And so they went ahead and got those guys. They found them because they went to their apartment and found bloodied shoes and all that kind of stuff. And they called me to court. And I'll never forget as long as I live what happened when I went to court. I walked in there, you know, and I put my hand up and they said, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? And I said, I do. And the attorney walked up to me and he said this, Reverend MacArthur, you tell us what you saw, what you heard, and what you felt.

That was exactly what he asked me. And on those terms, I became instantly a witness. What I saw and what I heard and what I felt made me a viable witness, right?

I mean, I was there. Ever since that event, I've always thought of 1 John 1. Where John says the things that we have seen with our eyes and heard with our ears and handled with our hands declare we unto you concerning the word of life. So what is a witness? Somebody who's seen and heard and felt the power of Jesus Christ. So in answer to your question, who can be a witness?

Anybody who has been with Christ. And that's what we saw in John 15, didn't we? You shall witness of me because you have been with me from the beginning. So when you know Jesus Christ and when you have seen him and heard him and touched him in your life, you become one who can speak concerning Jesus Christ, right? I mean, you may not know all the doctrines of the Bible, and you may not know every in and out of theology, and you may not have all the little systems and all the little gimmicks and all the little methods and booklets and angles, but if you have walked with Jesus Christ, you've got something to say. And you can be a firsthand living testimony to the power of Jesus Christ. Let me tell you something. That is far more important than knowing a formula.

Far more important than knowing a formula. You know, I knew a preacher who got up in front of his church one time and said, I just want you to know that I've been the pastor of this church, I think it was 10 years, and he said, today I came to know Jesus Christ as my Savior. And from then on, he became for the first time in his life a witness to the power of Jesus Christ.

Before that, he knew the facts and the methods. He didn't know Christ. He didn't know Christ.

And that personal power wasn't there in the energy of the Spirit of God. So who can be a witness? Everybody who's a Christian.

Everybody who knows Jesus Christ. And I think we're mandated. I mean, didn't Jesus say to the disciples, go into all the world and preach the gospel, right? Make disciples of everyone? And all of us are mandated to go out and communicate the Christ that we have seen and heard and felt.

And I mean, it's obviously a terrible thing to defer from that. I mean, not to do that, to not tell the world what we have known of Jesus Christ, is to withhold from them the greatest thing they'll ever hear, right? So every one of us as Christians are a witness. Now, let me tell you something else. Even if you don't say anything, if people know you're a Christian, you're a witness.

You may not be a very good one, but you are one. Because they're reading the meaning of Christ in your life and the value of Christ in your life by your life. And if you don't say anything, then Christ isn't that valuable. Christ can't be that meaningful.

I mean, if you're a Christian and you can hide it for years, it can't really be that big of a deal, or else it's some secret society only for the initiated. So we are witnesses. I mean, He doesn't say we'd like you to be them.

He says, you are. Just be sure you're an effective one. And only a Christian can really be an effective witness.

Having said that, let me say this. The gospel is so powerful that even in the mouth of that preacher I mentioned who wasn't a Christian, the gospel itself could transcend his lack of experience. But in order to be a true and effective witness, you have to know Jesus Christ. And that's really all there is to it, at least to start.

How about another question? I've heard a variety of different definitions concerning witnessing. Now, what does the Bible actually define witnessing as?

Well, I think we've already gotten into that a little bit. And witnessing would be defined as this. A person communicating testimony about something they have experienced. I mean, when you have a court case, they don't want second-hand witnesses, right?

What's the term they use? Eyewitnesses, right? I mean, they want somebody who's there.

They don't want information passed down through several sources. Let me give you a perspective that will help, all right? The world is like the jury. Christ is on trial before the world, right? I mean, the world is trying to decide about Jesus Christ. And the Holy Spirit is the lawyer for the defense. The Holy Spirit has taken up Christ's case in the world. And His task is to convince the world that Christ is who He says He is. And the Holy Spirit calls into the courtroom witnesses.

That's us. So we become witnesses for the defense of Jesus Christ before the watching world. That's a great concept, isn't it? And we're called into the courtroom, as it were. And as we live in the world, we exist in the courtroom. And Jesus Christ is on trial. Now, that's the seriousness of our witnessing role.

I mean, this is a serious thing, right? If you, for example, were called into the Superior Court or the State Court or the Supreme Court of the United States of America and somebody said, Will you defend Jesus Christ? Would you?

Of course you would. If He were on trial actually there? I mean, I've often thought, if I was only there when He was before Caiaphas, I would have said some things. If I was there when He was before Annas, I would have said some things. I wouldn't let those guys get away with false judgments on Christ. He deserved better than that.

They lied about Him, etc. Listen, the world is making a judgment, and the whole environment that we exist in is a courtroom. And the Spirit of God, the lawyer for defense, calls us to give our witness. And there are some people who are going to make their conclusions about Jesus Christ based upon our testimony, right? So, as we begin to understand witnessing, we have to begin to understand that the Holy Spirit is calling us to be a witness for Christ.

Now, let's ask this question, too. What is the element that makes a person willing to be that witness? And I've got to be honest with you, right at the beginning, it's sacrifice. There is a price to pay, because when you name the name of Jesus Christ and step out, there's going to be some flack, right? I mean, you can't confront a godless, Christless world and not expect to get some reaction. You know, I had occasion to be on a college campus, a college of about 25,000 or 26,000 students. And they asked me to come and speak on Christianity and culture on the open forum, and several thousand students were gathered around. And I was to speak on Christianity and culture.

What am I going to say, right? So I could exhaust everything I know about Christianity and culture in about 10 minutes. And then I decided, since the predominant number of students didn't know Jesus Christ, that I would speak on the deity of Jesus Christ and how to know God through Him. And so I went 10 minutes on Christianity and culture, 40 minutes on the deity of Jesus Christ. And I just proclaimed salvation through Jesus Christ.

You could have heard a pin drop. I know the Spirit of God controlled things, because it was really just straight on gospel. And there are those times, you know, when you preach and you feel like you're just pushing and it's hard and there's resistance. And then there are those times when you're just flying. And I felt like I was just soaring. I mean, I was just freewheeling and stuff was coming and the power of God was there.

And I got all done, and it was incredible what happened. One guy walked up to me, he said, I need to know Jesus Christ. And I had the privilege of leading him to Christ. Another guy I had the privilege of seeing in my office a few days later came to Christ and went to seminary.

I mean, God really touched some lives. But the impact of it was they banned all Christians from the campus. They closed down the free speech platform. They took the Christian book table off the campus. And the next time I spoke at a near campus, the whole group of students from the other campus that protested came over and ringed the podium where I was speaking and shouted the whole time.

They called our home in the middle of the night with obscene phone calls, threatened the family, threatened my wife. And my first reaction was, I got to quit doing this. You know, this is creating problems. My second reaction was, I think I made a wave. I mean, I think I made a dent in the kingdom of darkness. And I began to realize what Peter said, that when you're persecuted for righteousness sake, the spirit of grace and glory rests on you. And it was a tremendous sense of identification. I felt sort of quasi-apostolic, you know?

I mean, I was knowing what some of those guys went through. So, I really believe that when you approach this responsibility of standing before the world to testify for the sake of Jesus Christ, you've got to realize that it's a hostile world. It's a hostile world. And if the gospel is truly preached, they're going to react. Now, I can also say this, that if you just talk about love and nice things and talk about God as a good guy and don't bring in sin and don't confront people with the fact that they live in violation of God, they may not react negatively.

But that isn't the true gospel either, is it? You've got to confront the truth of sin and righteousness and the truth about Jesus Christ. And when you do that, there's a sacrifice to be made. So, you need to decide in your life whether you're going to close up your mouth and be, as some people say, like the Arctic River frozen over at the mouth. You're just going to clam up and you're going to say, my own personal preservation, reputation, whatever, is worth more to me than testifying to Christ.

You have to make that decision. Or whether you're going to say, hey, I don't care really what happens to me. I'm expendable, right? I mean, if I die, Paul says, getting the gospel to you, he says, if I am offered on the sacrifice of your faith, I rejoice. I mean, if I die getting you saved, sweet death. And so that's the kind of sacrifice we're talking about. I always think about John Paton who went to the New Hebrides Islands to be a missionary.

They were inhabited by man-eating cannibals. And I mean, you know, that's a tough assignment. I mean, you go to... You know what I would have said? I would have said, Lord, look, don't send me there. They'll eat me, you know, and you'll waste a good one.

I mean, I graduated from seminary, right? I mean, send a guy who dropped out. They'll eat him, who'll know?

Maybe he never would have made it anyway. Why send a good one? But Paton went and took his wife and they dropped him off and he rode to the shore and they built a little lean-to on the shore. And how do you reach natives like that? They're cannibals. They don't speak your language. I mean, what do you do?

You don't put up a sign in the sand that says, VBS starts Saturday, bring your children, you know. Well, what do you do? Well, you pray a lot, right? And night after night, they stayed in that little lean-to and prayed. And after he'd been there a couple of months, his wife gave birth to a baby and the baby died. And a few days later, his wife died.

And Paton said he buried their bodies and slept on the graves to keep the natives from digging them up and eating them. Now he's all alone. That's really coming to the end, isn't it?

I mean, that's when the bottom line is drawn. Do you stay or do you go? Well, he stayed. And the miracle of his life is he stayed 35 years. And he said at the end of those 35 years, I do not know of one single native on these islands who has not made at least a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. And he said when I came here, I heard the cry of cannibals. As I leave, I hear the ringing of church bells.

Is that incredible? But see, that's what can happen if you're willing to make the sacrifice. Now, not everybody will be a John Paton, but everybody can do the thing that God's called them to do if they're willing to pay the price.

So being a testimony in the world, anybody can be a testimony. And you have to realize that there's a price to pay. If you're a Christian and you're really sold out to Christ, you're willing to pay that price.

And it's not necessarily a one-time deal. Well, from now on, I'll do it. You fight that battle all along, don't you? Whether you're willing to speak for Christ. Another question.

Yeah, Dan. John, with all the sacrifice and the commitment that you talk about and witnessing and even the frustration when people don't respond, isn't it, or why wouldn't someone just desire to pursue God and read His Word rather than witness when God promises to bring men to Himself anyway? Yeah, in other words, there's so much heartache involved in doing it, so much disappointment, wouldn't it be better to just retreat and commune with God and let God take care of the saving on His sovereignty? Well, again, we're back to something we talked about in one of our other discussions together. It's not for you to figure out those kind of things. You're not going to say, you know, God, you've got a good plan, but I've been thinking about it, and I think I've got a better one. I'd like to suggest it to you, you know, because what you're doing is you're doing the thing that man always wants to do, and that is to assume his mind is ultimate.

And if I can't figure it out, it certainly can't be reasonable. But the Bible says, here's why you witness. I told you so. I told you to.

That's enough. I mean, sometimes you've got a little child, and you say, now, I want you to do this, and you get this standard answer. Why?

Why, Daddy? And you know you can't explain why because they don't understand why. So you just say, because what?

I told you to. End of discussion. And that's the way we are. We are little children in terms of comparing ourselves with God's infinite mind. And so God says, do this, and we say, hey, I took in all the data available. Why? And He says, that's not for you to ask. Get on it.

Do it. And so we're commanded. You know, our Lord says, as we mentioned earlier in Matthew 28, go into all the world and make disciples.

And that's enough for me. I mean, somebody said to Spurgeon one time, they said, you know, Mr. Spurgeon, you believe in the election doctrine. You believe that certain people are elect for salvation. Why don't you just preach to the elect?

He said, well, if you'll go around and pull up their shirttails so I can see if they have an E stamped on their back, I will. And the point was, he doesn't know that. And so what his responsibility is, is to preach to everybody. God will take care of what His part of it is. It's our responsibility to preach the gospel to every creature. You know, if you follow that kind of logic, Dan, you could say this, if people who don't hear the gospel, and you hear sometimes people say this, if they don't hear the gospel, they're not lost, right? Because they haven't had an opportunity?

The best thing is not to ever tell them. But that's contrary to the command too, isn't it? So the fact that we're told to go preach to every creature means that even the ones who haven't heard are lost. So our responsibility is to go out there and be obedient and preach the gospel and not try to get into all kinds of rational arguments about it. Now, let me talk about another element of this. I believe we're commanded to go out there right now and do it, and we're responsible to do it because it isn't a matter of theological knowledge.

In other words, I think we all are responsible. Somebody could say, well, I mean, I'm not trained. I can't witness.

I've got to wait until I get my training. I've got to be built up so that I can answer all these arguments and all these questions and so forth. But I think we are all witnesses because we're commanded to be and because it isn't a matter of theological knowledge. It is first and foremost a matter of what we've seen and heard and felt. And our witness begins at that point. And I may know very little, right? I may only know that Jesus saved me, but that's enough. You know, we have baptismal services in our church all the time, and you've been there. I mean, the power of those testimonies is overwhelming, and nobody's in there giving this big discussion of the doctrine of omuzio, you know, the being of God, or distinguishing sublapsarianism, infralapsarianism, and a Labrador retriever.

You know, I mean, nobody's giving big theological treatises in seminary language. What they're doing is saying, I used to be a drug addict, or I used to be, I'll never forget the guy that came in there one night, and he was really rough, you know. His vocabulary wasn't very polished, and I'm sure a few of the older saints were having a little problem with the way he was talking. And he said, I was the head of the Hell's Angels in Houston. And he said, the last time I was in a church, I want you to know we rode our motorcycles up the front aisle and up the middle aisle, and we threw a rope around a pastor in the middle of his sermon, and we dragged him down the middle aisle, down the steps, out on the street, and down the block.

And he wound up in prison for, I think, a murder charge. It wasn't first degree, and so he was out of prison, but he said, I'm here to tell you that during the last few weeks of my time in prison, I came to know Jesus Christ, and I'm here now because I want to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, that kind of testimony, I mean, you don't have to have a whole lot of theology to handle that. I mean, that's powerful, and people are just sitting out there saying, wow, can Jesus Christ transform somebody like that? Or you have somebody come in there and say, you know, for years and years, I've been a homosexual or whatever, and Christ has changed my life. Or for years and years, I've been just your average good guy without fulfillment and meaning, and Christ has given me peace and joy. See, so that's where the witness begins, and you don't need to back off from that. You need to realize that we witness because we're commanded to and because we're fit to. We really are fit to if Christ has changed our life.

And it'll get better, and we'll be better able to answer questions later on but still we have the power of a transformed life, and that's so very, very important. Let's share an order of prayer. Thank you, our Father, for the great privilege of being ambassadors for Jesus Christ and being given the task of calling men to Him, giving testimony to Him. Father, we can't understand why you would want to have us be your witnesses who are so frail and failing, and yet we know that by the power of the Spirit of God, you can use us. We thank you for that privilege for the glory of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

and transformed by the gospel, and not sense your own duty to spread the gospel to others. So what do you think is the biggest hurdle people have to overcome in this area? It's intimidating. What is it that we struggle with that sets us back the most? Is it a lack of information, a lack of courage, or laziness? I think laziness certainly can be an issue. Indifference can be an issue. But I think if, for example, you knew that there was some place down the street, some store you could go into, and they were handing out $1,000 bills to anybody who came in, no strings attached, you'd be telling everybody, hey, you can go down there and get a $1,000 bill. Just walk in, they'll give it to you.

They're giving them away. That's such a positive situation that nobody hesitates to say that. But if you have to say to someone, oh, by the way, you're a sinner separated from God, headed for eternal judgment, that is the biggest barrier to communicating the gospel because that is in itself very offensive. I mean, they basically killed Jesus for saying that. You hate me because I say your deeds are evil. Even Jesus was confronted with hatred at such a level that they crucified him. So the message is extremely offensive. It is the most offensive message that can possibly be given. You're not telling someone, you know, you're a bad person.

You're saying to someone, you are under divine judgment and headed for eternal hell, conscious punishment forever. People just don't believe that about themselves. They don't believe they're evil. Their pride makes them think they're good. And most people don't believe that they have deserved eternal punishment in hell. They don't like the notion that there is a God who would do that to them.

I think that's the big issue. We want to help you to be effective in witnessing, so here's a little suggestion that might help you get through that kind of tough barrier at the front end, and it's this. We produced a booklet called Who Do You Think I Am? It's actually a tract, Who Do You Think I Am? We'll send 20 free copies of that gospel tract to anyone who asks us for them, free of charge. We've distributed more than two million of these tracts over the years. Again, it's just a little booklet that gets the gospel to the person who reads its title again, Who Do You Think I Am?

And it's driving at the question of who is Jesus Christ. Ask today for 20 free copies of our gospel tract, and we'll send them to you right away. Yes, friend, this tract is great for extending a witnessing opportunity beyond the initial conversation. It draws the reader in, and it explains the gospel thoroughly and biblically. Ask for 20 free copies when you contact us today.

Our number here, 855grace, and our website, gty.org. This tract, by the way, makes clear that man is sinful, God is holy, and Jesus is the only way to heaven. It's a perfect quick read for anyone who needs to understand his or her need for Christ. And again, we'll send you 20 copies of the tract called Who Do You Think I Am?

for free. Make your request at our website, gty.org, or when you call, 855grace. And when you get in touch, let us know how John's verse-by-verse teaching is ministering to you. Perhaps today's lesson on evangelism has helped you feel more confident about sharing the gospel.

And of course, we'd love to hear if you or someone you know has come to faith in Christ after listening to Grace to You. Email your story to letters at gty.org. That's our email address, letters at gty.org. Or you can also send your letter to Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, inviting you back tomorrow when John continues to look at how you can be an effective witness for Christ. Don't miss the next 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You. .