Today on Real Life Radio. If you have the gift of evangelism, you will be unusually burdened for the souls of people. Strangers. You'll be moved with compassion. in an unusual way.
This is real life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David Jay, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's Word, the Bible. Looking for an inspiring way to pass some time? Or maybe just need some help to get through your workday.
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So discover a world of knowledge, laughter, and connection. The Jack Hibbs podcast and so much more are available on our website at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com, where faith meets real life. On today's edition of Real Life Radio. Pastor Jack continues his series called 1 Samuel and a message titled Church Growth 101, Part 5.
Samuel of the Old Testament was the last judge of Israel, and he was the first of its prophets.
So here in chapter 16, we'll continue to see that just as the Spirit of the Lord came upon King David, God wants to do the same thing for us. You see, for the church to grow in a healthy way, there's got to be a dependency upon the Holy Spirit's anointing rather than simply human effort.
So when a church aligns itself with the Holy Spirit, the growth that follows is both productive and meaningful.
So today, Pastor Jack teaches that the gift of evangelism, it's twofold. It's not a talent, but it's led by the Spirit. But whether or not we think we have the gift, we really should all be sharing about our faith and excitement for the gospel.
Now, with his message called Church Growth 101, Part 5. Here's Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.
Now, first thing we look at tonight, the gift of evangelism, it's not given to everybody, as we see, but to some. How can you know if you have the gift of evangelism? That's a great question. And I think it'd be safe for us to all ask. That question before us in the Lord is: Lord, you know, how do I know if I have that gift?
Do I have that gift?
Well, first of all There's a couple of signs, a couple of indicators. You'll be concerned for the souls of people. You say, Well, I'm concerned about the souls of the people anyway. Yes, but if you have the gift of evangelism, you will be unusually burdened for the souls of people, strangers. You'll be moved with compassion.
In an unusual way, if you have been standing in line at the market. If you have been somewhere. And it doesn't matter where you're at, doesn't matter what time it is. It doesn't matter what's going on in your life. You have this.
Almost Irresistible. Drive to walk up to that person. and to begin pleading for their soul.
Now, let me explain what that means. That doesn't mean you throw yourself at their feet and tackle them and say, oh, you know, you've got. you know, scared them to death. But there's the Spirit of God. He's moving on you.
It's almost like your life is placed for a moment into a vice. And they're the only person you can see. And you hear perhaps this thought in your head, go tell them. Tell them. I've got to tell you that when that has happened in my life, never, not once, ever have I ever obeyed God and He.
Embarrass me, or let me down, or hurt me, or whatever, made me look like an idiot. Never. Every time that unction, that drive, that push has been as it is, That person that God led me to will always be open to the gospel. It's amazing. And the great thing is, they're happy to be hearing about the Word of God, and you're sharing, and in your mind, you're going, I can't believe they're still standing there.
I can't believe they're loosening. You're blown away. But it all starts with an unusual burden for someone's soul. And if that's a person that you see on a repeated basis, There is Life, their face, their name will be on your lips and prayer and God begins to cook that person.
Now listen, if you've read books on missionary ventures and Lives of, like, say, Hudson Taylor and others, God not only burdened them with people, God burdens some of these great evangelists with nations. Where they were completely burdened for nations. The moment they walked into a country, As Hudson Taylor did for China. He was consumed with the salvation of the Chinese people. God gave him a burden for a country.
Now, I don't know if God will give you a burden for the country, but here's the thing: if you have the gift of an evangelist, you will be hungering for people's souls. It's amazing. It's often been called a burden. I don't usually like to use that term. burden, but I'll perhaps now call it a deep concern or a A load.
That is deposited upon your heart by God. It's as though He's sharing a part of His heart with your heart. Another thing is that you'll want them to know about Jesus. This is an amazing thing. You will want a person to know about Jesus.
You may find yourself saying things like this off your lips or in your mind. If they only knew the truth about Jesus, they would receive him. They knew the truth. And you have this concern. You want to learn more about Jesus.
And your whole desire is that you might tell others. Because you're so in love with that Person's soul, that Jesus, you know, is the only remedy, and you will, as it were, run to them as an ambulance. driver or an ENT to give them aid, but it's for their soul. You're so concerned about their soul. It's amazing to me.
A person who has this gift, they'll be more burdened or concerned for a person's soul. Then that person is. their own soul. They'll care more for their destiny than that particular individual himself. Isn't it amazing?
Look, that's not normal, you guys. That's not normal. That's from God. He begins to cook that in the heart. of one who must tell people about Jesus.
Now, again, I'm going to be inserting this, I trust, throughout the evening, but if you don't have that, That doesn't mean you're a sub-base Christian. It just means you don't have that gift. And thank God not everybody has that gift. Can you imagine? What are.
God knows best. All these people would get saved, but then nobody would teach them. They'd just be saved, and that's all they would know. John 3:16. That's all they would know forever.
But I think you know what I'm saying. God will do this. Puts it in their hearts. In Mark 6.34, it says in Sane. That is, Jesus seeing a great multitude, Jesus was moved with compassion for them because they were like sheep not having a shepherd.
He began to teach them many things. Do you hear that? He looked at the people in his heart. The word in the Greek is that his bowels were moved or shaken with concern. Have you noticed when you're really concerned about something, you feel it in the midsection of your body?
You don't feel it in your heart, do you? In your chest? You don't feel it there. You feel it in. What the Greek word is, in your bowels of a man, in the bowels of a person, deep.
The seat of emotion.
Well, you have a concern for souls. You want them to know about Jesus and. Also, you'll desire to tell them yourself. This is great. You can always find an evangelist.
An embryo or an evangelist that is growing. Yeah. They'll be in a setting, and I've seen this many times firsthand. They'll be in a group of people, and they're all Christians, and they're loving the Lord, and they're talking. Oh man, we should tell that guy about Jesus.
And the guy who has the gift of evangelism, he'll spot the person. Oh, we should tell that person about Jesus. They say that out of a sense of being timid. We should tell that person about Jesus. And if somebody in the grill goes and tells them?
The evangelist, though he's glad that someone's telling them, he's chewing at the bit. He's like, I wanted to tell them.
Well, then, why didn't you go tell them?
Well, I was afraid to.
Well, your loss, too bad. I got to them.
Well, I want to tell them next time they just can't handle it. They've got to tell people About Jesus themselves And many people, I see this happen, we'll be talking. And this brother or this sister's over here, they start, you can see their gears going. And all of a sudden they can't handle it, and they just cut that other Christian off, and they go, and Jesus this, and Jesus that, and Jesus, and they're gone, and they're going, and you just back away and you let them go. They want to tell people about Jesus themselves.
It's beautiful.
Now, look, again, if you don't have that gift, you're hoping and praying somebody shows up to tell them about Jesus. Oh man, I wish there was an evangelist around here. If there's not, do the work of an evangelist yourself. But you want to tell them yourself if you have that gift. And you'll risk it, by the way.
Oh, I'm nervous, but I'm gonna do it. Those of you who have the gift of evangelism, Again, you'll be so concerned for that person, you won't care the cost. Uh Okay. You're listening to real life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. You know, to hear more episodes and maybe catch up in the series, just go to jackhibbs.com.
That's jackhibbs.com. And for now, let's get back to our teaching. Once again, here's Pastor Jack. Years ago, many years ago. Probably nineteen 80, 81.
Richard Semino and I, he pastors coverage up of Grass Valley in Oregon now. I mean, Grass Valley in Northern California, Northern California. Yeah. It's close enough to Oregon. Um We were walking along the boardwalk in Newport Beach.
And there's a chopper ding. There. And I don't know if they even have do they even have choppers anymore?
Well, us old guys, they got choppers, the big forks out there. Remember that? The guys have leather on and It's pretty scary looking people. And so we're walking along, it's really late at night. And we're sharing the Lord with people.
And there's this guy, he's loud, and he's the leader of the pack guy. He's big and hairy and. Scary, hairy and scary. And Rich and I were telling people and telling people and telling people, and then we saw this chopper gang and this leader, and we shut our lips and we walked right by with our Bibles. And it was great, and as we walked by, we were still silent.
And we both look at each other at exactly the same time. And the Spirit of God convicted us inside at the same time. And we turned and looked at each other, and we just said, you know what? This is wrong.
Well, I don't want to talk to him. I don't want to talk to him either. And I don't know how it happened. If we flip or what a coin, I honestly don't remember, but somehow it fell on me. And when we walk back.
We walked right up to that guy, and I said, and I had my Bible, and I said, Excuse me. I'm a Christian. Before you kill me, can I tell you about Jesus? And that guy goes, That's funny. And the guy goes, Hey, this guy wants to tell us about Jesus.
And everybody starts laughing, and the guy goes, Shut up! And everybody showed up. And We told him about Jesus and everybody had to listen and the whole gang. He made them listen? And the guy goes, No, it was very sad though, because we gave him the gospel and he goes, God wouldn't want me.
I'm so bad, you have no idea. If you ask these guys how bad I am, God would never want me. And if I were there, it wouldn't be heaven. I'm so bad of a person. There's no way Jesus would ever want me.
And we were pleading with the guy. Yes, it's you. In fact, listen, look at this scripture. To whom much forgiven, he loves much. That's you, man.
That's you. No, I'd like to believe that. He was so swallowed up with condemnation, he wouldn't believe it. And we wound up having to go away, and it was very sad, but we prayed for that guy. Who knows?
You know, who knows whatever happened to him. You know, he's probably passionate about Cowboy Chapel somewhere. That's what probably happens. But That's the way it goes.
Okay. But you'll uh you'll run the risk. Uh the Your protection logic goes out the window. God will overshadow that. Uh They've called.
upon to do so in 1 Corinthians n nine sixteen 1 Corinthians 9:16, Paul says, For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for of necessity is laid upon me. Yes, woe unto me if I preach not. The Gospel Paul says There's this desire to tell them yourself. One of the greatest examples of this, in fact, one of the. if not the greatest example of an evangelist.
in all of the Bible. Is Philip in Acts chapter 21? Uh verse 8. Philip the Evangelist. It calls him right there, Philip the Evangelist.
But listen, in Acts chapter 8, let me read it to you. It starts at verse 26. Acts 8, 26. Says, now an angel of the Lord spoke unto Philip, saying, Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. Boy, that's in the news tonight.
This is desert.
So he arose and went, and behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch. Of great authority under Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge over all of her treasury. And he had come to Jerusalem to worship. And he was returning. And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet.
Then the Spirit of the Lord said to Philip, Go near and overtake this chariot.
So Philip ran to him. And he heard the man reading the prophet Isaiah. And said, Do you understand what you're reading? And he said, How can I unless someone guide me? And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him in the chariot.
And the place in the scripture which he read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation his justice was taken away, and who will declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth.
So the eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you, of whom does the prophet say this of, himself or some other man? Then fill it. Listen everyone, this is beautiful. Then Philip opened his mouth and said And beginning at this scripture, that is The prophet Isaiah concerning the suffering of the Messiah. preached unto him Jesus.
Now as they went down the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, Behold, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized? Listen then Philip said, If you believe with all your heart, You may. Notice, belief comes before baptism. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
So he commanded the chariot to stand still, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and baptized him. Isn't that a great story?
Now here's the amazing thing about it. Philip was preaching in Samaria, and there was a huge awakening, spiritual awakening taking place.
Okay, imagine the church, so to speak, the church in Samaria is exploding, it's booming, it's going great, and Philip is preaching, and God says, leave this place. That doesn't make sense. God says, leave this place, go down to Gaza.
So, as Philip's going down to Gaza, the man's going by in the chariot. An Ethiopian, a black man going down back to North Africa. He went up to worship. And eunuch, it says. Why does it say a eunuch?
This is important. Evangelism. It's all by divine appointment. Don't ever underestimate God. Philip doesn't know what's going on.
All God says was: leave this place, go to Gaza, it's desert. That's all he knows. You and I, we have some insight presented to us by the Word of God. Philip is just going down, and there's an Ethiopian unit going by in the chariot, and that's when God says, Go, join yourself to that man in the chariot. Yeah.
Okay. And the guys in the chariot and Philip comes running up there. Hey. He's listening to the guy, read the prophet. Hey, I recognize that He's reading Isaiah You understand what you're reading?
In evangelism, if you have that gift, that's what God will do too. In fact, even if you don't have the gift, God will still give you confidence. Should I say anything? And the person will say, well, what are you thinking about? Oh, do you have anything to say?
Who, me? Uh yeah. It's a miracle. It is a miracle.
So Philip, watch, Philip made himself available. God confirmed it. When he hears the prophet Isaiah being read, Hey, Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament. That's my Smart people. And the evangelist, Philip, knows exactly what to ask.
Hey, you understand what you're reading? What a great line. Think about it. We could do that today. Hey, is that a cross around your neck?
Or what does that cross stand for? What does that mean? What, Taylor? You asked that question today, you don't know what kind of answer you're going to get, but it is an open door.
Okay. It's amazing. Second thing we want to look at tonight is this. The gift of evangelism. It's a gift.
It's not a talent. It's not human ability. This is something. Uh I have Seeing people destroyed. Um This way For example, I've seen a person's life get all messed up because they were a really, really.
Talented speaker. They really had the gift of Gab, or what do you want to call it? They could talk, they could sell you anything. And This person got saved. This person got excited about Jesus.
And everybody began to tell this person. You know what? You should be an evangelist. You should be an evangelist. You have the gift of evangelism.
They had never heard him evangelize ever. But he was excited about Jesus. And he was an excellent Uh salesman. And so they put human concept and human idea with human talent. And they tried to spiritualize it.
And they sent this guy off on his way. Great guy. Listening to the encouragement of people, Christians. Launches out in his talons God was not in it. And crash and burn.
Just because you can talk or you have a great vocabulary or whatever, it doesn't mean you have to get the evangelism. It's a gift from God, it's divine. It uh Often is used in people who are Very aware of their insecurities and of their weaknesses, and would not normally ever go up and approach someone.
So that they themselves would know that it's of God. Are you with me? Do you understand? That's very important. You would never, and how many times has God even ever used the head of the Harvard debate class in the ways of pastoring or?
Evangelism?
Well, everybody would think it's from his degrees of honor. God doesn't do that. It's very important. It's not of human talent. And then, thirdly, we'll have to wrap this up for time's sake.
The gift of evangelism, it advances the kingdom of Christ. In three ways. I'll say these quickly. And church growth. Church growth happens when there's evangelists in the body of Christ.
Church growth happens. You know what? I don't know. If you found this church. By The Advertisements in any newspaper, you're one of the rare few.
We have the most. Yeah. minuscule announcements in the local papers. Um You know how this church has grown? It's grown by you telling somebody.
We don't have billboards along the freeway or It's been by you telling people.
Well Church growth happens that way. Evangelists begin to speak and talk and share and People begin to respond. We know this is true in s throughout Scripture when As we see with Philip, but many times you see Peter, who probably, you look at the life of Peter, he probably had many gifts, but Peter was preaching. And Yeah. On one message on the southern steps of the temple.
Peter preaches one message. And over 3,000 people get saved. In one message, that's, I tell you, that's efficient preaching. Ha that's of God. When the gift of evangelism is in operation, the kingdom will expand because, number one, the Holy Spirit will see to it that church growth takes place and actual numbers.
Now, I got to tell you, when this church was about 250 people, to me it was the perfect church. Because when we signed up to go to Riley's Farm to go on a On a hay ride, remember those days, anybody? Man, if when we had 250 people, we'd get 300 people signed up. We had so many people involved in children's ministry, we didn't need any more people. We said, we don't need any more people.
Helping the children's ministry. We have too many ushras. It was like, and I thought, this is perfect. God will never have the church grow more than this.
So it's obvious. This is what God's going to do. 250 people, that's it. No. Since the 251st person has come, And beyond.
It's like Lord, what are you doing? You're messing up our little thing here. He's not concerned about our little comfort zone. He wants the church to expand and he does it in numbers. And we have to deal with that.
It's a blessing of God. He blesses ministry, you know, the Lord blesses ministry with more ministry. Meta vacation. Uh Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on Real Life Radio with his message called Church Growth 101 Part 5. Thanks for being with us today.
You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called 1 Samuel. It's a series that highlights the prophet Samuel, who was called by God during one of Israel's darkest times to bring the people back to a heart of true worship. and will continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio. This December, Pastor Jack Hibbs is doing something a little different and a lot special. All month long, he's offering a double feature Book of the Month.
Two very powerful resources to help you finish the year strong and step into the next year spiritually grounded. First, Pastor Jack's annual favorite, the One Year Bible. Every year, lives are changed as people discover how simple and doable it is to read through the entire Word of God within just a few minutes a day. Also, Pastor Jack's going to include his brand new devotional, Watching Waiting. It's a 40-day journey designed to help you slow down, look up, and recognize what God is doing in your life.
So this December, why would you choose one when you can get both and grow deeper? Visit jackhibbs.com to get your December Book of the Month double feature, The One Year Bible, and Pastor Jack's brand new devotional, Watching Waiting. They're available for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com. Again, that's jackhibbs.com. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners.
Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
