Jewish Evangelism and the Church - Life of Paul Part 80

Okay, if you brought a Bible, open it with me, if you would, to Acts chapter 21. Welcome to all you guys in overflow out in the lobby.

Hey, you know what? Six weeks, God willing. Maybe seven at the most. And we're in that new auditorium, so I hope you'll keep praying for us.

I mean, we're coming down to home stretch. It's a pretty exciting time here. Acts chapter 21, and we're going to be continuing in our study of the life of the great man, the Apostle Paul. Now, back in April of 1981, I had two children, my wife and Brendan and I did. We had a four-year-old son named Jamie and a brand new second son named Justin.

He was three months old, and we decided in April of 81 to take a little vacation. And so the two of us, we took the two boys and we decided to go to Williamsburg for a couple of days. And while we were there, Brenda said, well, I want to go to the pottery factory and shop. Well, I was like, yeah, all right, whatever. So we went there and she said, you want to come in and shop with me?

And I said, no, no, got no interest in that at all. But I'll sit outside one of these big old buildings on the benches with the boys. Justin was in a little stroller. Jamie was four. He kind of tootled around. I said, I'll sit outside with them. You go on in.

Well, Brenda was gone for what seemed like an eternity. And so I got real impatient and I said to Jamie, my four-year-old, I said, now, look, I'm going inside to look for your mom. You stay right here and you stay with your brother and you just stay right here. I'll be back. Just sit right here with your brother. So I went inside looking around for Brenda.

These buildings are enormous. Took me about 10, maybe 12 minutes to find her. And when I finally found her, she said to me, where are the boys? I said, well, I left Jamie outside watching Justin. And she said, you did what?

And right at that moment, little four-year-old Jamie came walking up inside the building. And I said, what are you doing in here? And he said, Daddy, I got scared.

So I came in looking for you. And I said, where's Justin? He said, I left him outside. Well, as soon as he said that, Brenda took off running. I mean, running for the front door. We were running, Jamie and I were running behind her.

We come flying out the front door of this building and sitting on this bench is this sweet elderly old lady, just rocking the stroller back and forth with Justin in it. And we ran up to her and she said, you know, I was walking by and I saw this little kid just screaming his head off in the stroller. And I figured if I sit here long enough, somebody come back for him.

Well, it was a bad day in River City for long. I mean, my wife was so mad at me that for hours she wouldn't speak to me. I was telling this to my children, this story this last week, and my youngest son, John, said, you know, Dad, it's funny. A lot of your stories end that way. I say, well, yeah, that's actually true.

Now, you ever made anybody that mad at you? I mean, we're going to look at a story today in the Bible where the apostle Paul made some people even madder at him than Brenda was at me. And we're going to talk about how that happened and then more importantly, so like what difference does that make to our life today as followers of Christ?

So that's the plan. Now, a little bit of background here in Acts chapter 21. Remember, the apostle Paul has finished his third missionary journey.

It's the summer of 57, 57 AD, and he's in Jerusalem. And the leaders of the Jerusalem church came to Paul and said, Paul, we got a problem here in the town. Everybody's heard that you're out there teaching Jewish people around the world to violate the laws of Moses, violate our Jewish customs. They all know you're a believer in Jesus, and that's making it really hard for us to reach Jewish people in this town. We need you to do us a favor, Paul. We need you to go to the temple and to pay the expenses of four men here in our community that are finishing their Nazarite bow. And by doing so, it'll send a message to all of Jerusalem that you're not against the Old Testament law.

You're not against the Jewish customs. So Paul said, okay, I'll do that. But what you need to know is that since Paul had been away in Gentile country for years, there was a seven-day purification process, ritually, that Paul had to go through before he was allowed to go into the temple and pay for these guys. So that's where we left off.

Let's pick up the story. Acts 21 verse 27. When the seven days for Paul's purification were almost over, some Jews from the Roman province of Asia, where Ephesus is, saw Paul in the temple. They seized him and shouted, men of Israel, help us.

This is the man who teaches everywhere against our people and against our law. And now he has brought a Gentile into the temple and defiled this place. So they had previously seen Trophimus, an Ephesian, a Gentile, in the city with Paul. And they assumed that Paul had brought him in the temple. Paul had not brought him in the temple, but they thought he had. And the people rushed together, took hold of Paul, and dragged him from the temple. Now these Jews who recognized Paul were from Ephesus.

If you remember, they had tried to kill Paul in Ephesus a couple of years before and failed. And now they saw another opportunity to get him by accusing him of bringing a Gentile into the temple. Now you should know that Gentiles were permitted into the temple complex.

Let me show you a map. Into the outer temple complex, the court of the Gentiles, Gentiles were allowed there. But in the inner recesses of the temple, where all the offerings were done, where the holy of holies were, where the priests did their duties, no Gentile was permitted in there, only Jewish people. As a matter of fact, there was actually a barricade wall that separated these two sections of the temple that went around the inner part of the temple, warning Gentiles not to come in there. Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us that there were signs posted in both Greek and Latin on this barrier wall.

Here's one of them. Archaeologists have actually found two of those signs. And if you could read Greek, here's what this sign says, and I quote, No Gentile may enter this barricade that surrounds the temple. Anyone caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death. And folks, this was no idle threat. The Roman government had given the Jewish authorities permission to enforce this even on Roman citizens who violated the temple.

No trial was required. They just dragged you out and beat you to death. And it was just that simple. And that's what they were in the process of doing to the Apostle Paul. Verse 31. While the mob was trying to kill Paul, news reached the tribune of the Roman garrison, the commander of the Roman army there in Jerusalem, that the whole city was in an uproar. So he took some centurions and soldiers and ran down to the temple.

And when the rioters saw the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. Now let's go back to our map. And in the upper right hand corner of our map, you'll see the Antonio fortress. This was the headquarters for the Roman garrison there in Jerusalem.

It had tall towers from which the Roman soldiers could look down onto the temple mount and see everything that was going on down on the temple mount. And what they saw was this riot developing. And so the Roman army rushed onto the temple mount. And friends, had they not come at the exact moment they did, there is no doubt this mob would have beaten Paul to death.

Verse 33. And the tribune came up and arrested Paul and put him in irons. Then he asked the crowd who this man was and what he had done.

Some were shouting one thing and others another. So the tribune ordered Paul to be taken to the Antonio fortress. When the soldiers got to the steps of the fortress, they had to carry Paul above their heads because the violence of the mob was so great. Do you get the picture here? These people wanted to kill Paul so badly that the only way the Roman soldiers could guarantee his safety and get him out of their clutches and into the fortress is they had to pick him up and carry him over their head.

Folks, this was the original mosh pit in history that you see right here. Now verse 37. And as the soldiers were about to take Paul into the fortress, Paul asked the tribune, the commander, may I say something to you? The commander said, do you speak Greek? Aren't you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led 4,000 terrorists out in the desert some time ago? And Paul said, no, I'm a Jew from Tarsus.

Please let me speak to the people. And having received the tribune's permission, Paul stood on the steps of the Antonio fortress with the crowd down below on the temple mount and he motioned to the crowd and when there was a great hush, Paul began to speak to them in Hebrew. Now folks, you've got to love this guy. You've got to love this guy. Here he is, he's in chains, he's bruised, he's bleeding, he's exhausted and yet the only thing he wants to do is share Jesus with the people who just have beaten him to death and they would have finished the job if the Roman army hadn't shown up and yet all he wants to do is share the Lord with them.

You've got to love this guy. And Paul's speech here in Acts 22 breaks into three little sections. We're going to look at it now. Let me tell you what the sections are. Number one, he talks about his Jewish credentials. Number two, he talks about his conversion and then number three, he talks about the calling God gave him to the Gentiles. Watch, section one, verse three, Acts 22. Then Paul said to the crowd, I am a Jew, born in Tarsus but brought up in this city. Under Gamaliel, I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and I was just as zealous for God as you are today.

And how can I prove that to you? Well, I persecuted the followers of this way, Christianity, to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them in prison. I even got permission from the high priest to go to Damascus and bring them back to Jerusalem, these people as prisoners, from there to be punished.

Paul said, hey, you want to know my credentials out there? I was born Jewish. I was raised in Jerusalem.

I was trained by the most imminent rabbi in Israel of the time, Rabbi Gamaliel. I was so jealous and zealous for the Jewish laws and the Jewish customs that I was willing to imprison followers of Christ and even kill followers of Christ. In fact, Paul says, when we ran out of followers of Christ to imprison in Jerusalem, I went all the way to Damascus to find some more of them. Paul said, hey, look, guys, when it comes, he says to the crowd, to being Jewish and when it comes to being zealous for Jewish law and tradition, I am as kosher as they come.

Do you all understand that? Then number two, he goes on to say, about noon, verse 6, as I neared Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Well, who are you, Lord?

I asked. And he replied, I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you are persecuting. I said, Lord, what should I do? And the Lord said, get up and go to Damascus and there you will be told what you've been assigned to do. And Paul goes on to tell him that he went into Damascus. A guy named Ananias, a follower of Christ, came to see him and told him, verse 15, God has chosen you to be his witness to all men about Jesus Christ. Now, why did Paul say this to the crowd? Because he wanted the crowd to understand that his change in behavior from persecuting Christians to preaching Jesus Christ, that change in behavior came not because he made a decision to deny Judaism or to defect against Judaism.

It came because of God's supernatural intervention in his life. Finally, he goes on to say that he was called to the Gentiles. He says, verse 17, when I returned to Jerusalem and I was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance and I saw the Lord speaking to me. Make haste, the Lord said, and get out of Jerusalem because they will not accept your testimony about me. Now, Paul pushes back a little and he says, but Lord, these men in Jerusalem, they know me. They know how I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, Acts chapter 7, I stood there giving my personal approval, watching the clothes of the people who were killing him. And then the Lord said, no, they're not going to listen to you, Paul. Go, for I'm going to send you far away to the Gentiles.

Now, in Romans chapter 11, Paul calls himself the apostle to the Gentiles. Right here, he tells us how he got that calling. He wasn't looking for it. He didn't volunteer for it.

I don't even know if he wanted it. The point is, he planned to come back to Jerusalem, which is what he had done, and I think his plan was to reach Jewish people for Christ the rest of his life. But God stepped in and said, no, Paul, that's not what you're doing. What I want you to do is go reach Gentiles.

You're my emissary to them. Verse 22, and the crowd listened up to this point, until Paul said this, that is, go, I'm going to send you to the Gentiles. Then they raised their voices and shouted, rid the earth of this guy.

He's not fit to live. And since the crowd was shouting and throwing their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the tribute ordered Paul to be taken into the fortress for his own protection. This was the end of the speech. They heard the word Gentiles. The speech was over. Now, I'm convinced there was going to be part four to the speech. I think Paul intended to go on and talk about how he wasn't teaching against the Jewish law, how he wasn't undermining Jewish customs. Friends, he never got there. He said, Gentiles, speech was over. And that's where we're going to stop for today, because we need to ask the most important question of the morning, and you know what that question is, so are you ready? I want to hear you guys in the lobby and down at overflow. Here we go.

One, two, three. So what? Yeah.

You say, Lon, so what? You say, honestly, really, I'm proud of you. You covered a lot of ground today. You know, I'm getting tired of this Paul thing, and this is good. You know, you covered a lot of ground.

Maybe we're actually going to finish this. But other than the fact that you covered a lot of ground, what else? I mean, what does this mean to my life at all? I don't understand it.

Well, let me see if I can make that connection. You know, I think we should ask the question, why did the mention of the words Gentiles set this crowd off so badly? Why, when Paul said, God sent me to the Gentiles, why did it send this mob into such a frenzy?

Well, we've got to understand, to answer this question, we've got to understand how the Jewish people felt about Gentiles at the time of Paul, at the time of Christ. Matthew chapter 15 tells us the answer. Here in Matthew 15, a lady comes to Jesus asking him to heal her child.

She's a Gentile. And here's what Jesus said. He said, it is not good to take the children's bread, that is the Jewish people's bread, meaning himself, and to toss it to the dogs, meaning her, as a Gentile. And she replied, yes, Lord, but even the dogs can eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.

And Jesus said, woman, great is your faith, your request is granted, and her daughter was healed from that very moment. But the important thing we want to notice here is that at the time of Jesus, the Jewish people called Gentiles dogs. They considered Gentiles to be subhuman almost, to barely even be human beings. They had absolutely no interest in relating to Gentiles. The Jewish people at the time of Paul had no desire to reach Gentiles for God, teach Gentiles the Bible, bring them into the community of faith.

Gentiles were dogs. And you know, just because you became a believer in Jesus didn't necessarily change that bigotry. We find this even in the early Jewish believers. I'm sure you know that for many years after the resurrection of Jesus, the Jewish believers, Peter, James, John, all these guys, they never shared Jesus with anybody but Jewish people. In fact, in Acts chapter 10, when Peter led the very first Gentile ever to Christ, a fellow named Cornelius, a Roman soldier, it was such a scandal in the early church that they actually called Peter in and put him on trial and said, what have you done? Now the person who changed all of this was the apostle Paul. God revealed to him that things were different now after the death of Christ and he went around teaching that when a person comes to Jesus Christ, whether you're a Jew or whether you're a Gentile, that person joins a brand new entity called the church. And in this new entity, Jews and Gentiles are equal members of the family of God with equal access to God and with equal standing before God.

Look what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2. He says, therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth, you were excluded from citizenship in Israel, you were foreigners to the covenants of promise, and you were without hope and without God in the world. But now in Jesus Christ, you who were once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he, Jesus, has made the two groups, Jews and Gentiles one, and has destroyed the dividing wall between us. Now I can't prove it, but I'm convinced the dividing wall between us that Paul's talking about here is the wall in the Jerusalem temple, that that's what he's thinking about. This barrier wall that kept Gentiles from getting close to God, that kept Gentiles from approaching near to God, that kept Gentiles from being intimate to God. And what Paul is saying here is when you give your life to Jesus Christ as a Gentile, that wall is gone. You can get as close to God as you want to get.

You can approach as near to God as you want to get. Friends, that was a revolutionary concept in the time of the Apostle Paul. That was a brand new theological truth. And let me say, if you're here today and you're a Gentile, that if you'd have lived before the time of Jesus Christ, you couldn't have drawn near to God like that.

You couldn't have gone inside of that barrier wall. But Jesus Christ tore all that down. And now as a Gentile living today, you can get as close to God as you want to get.

Hey, what a wonderful piece of news, huh? And if you're here today and you haven't taken advantage of that by embracing Jesus as your personal Savior, I'm here to ask you, why not? Why wouldn't you want to embrace this and be as close to God as possible?

Let me tell you something. The Gentiles in the first century, when Paul shared this with them, they embraced it by the boatload, so much so that by the end of the first century, the church had completely switched. It had gone from being almost exclusively Jewish to being almost exclusively Gentile, which is the way it's been for the last 1900 years. And let me tell you that today it's kind of sad that we have the exact same problem in the modern church that we had in the early church, except in reverse.

You say, what are you talking about? Well, friends, in the early church, the early church was exclusively Jewish and had very little interest in reaching Gentiles for Christ. Today, the modern church is almost exclusively Gentile and with few exceptions has little interest in reaching Jewish people for Christ. We've just flipped it. That's all we've done. You say, oh, no, no, no, I don't think that's really true. I think we've got an interest, you know, the Protestant Church, the Catholic Church reaching Jewish people.

Really, you do? Okay, well, listen to this. The Christian Scholars Group on Jewish-Christian Relations. These are leaders from the Lutheran Church, the Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, and a variety of other Protestant churches. They released a statement in September of 2002 and I quote, we renounce all missionary efforts aimed at converting Jews, end of quote. The U.S. Catholic bishops in an article entitled Reflections on Covenant and Mission released in August of 2002 said and I quote, targeting Jews for conversion to Christianity is no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church, end of quote.

What in the world is going on out there? You know, I'm on the board of Jews for Jesus, as most of you know. I've been on the board for over 15 years and we're involved right now in Jews for Jesus in a five-year outreach program called Behold Your God. What we did is we identified every city in the world that has at least 25,000 Jewish people living in it and our goal during those five years is to send a team to every one of those cities to spend four weeks in that city handing out tracts on the street, interacting with the Jewish community, telling Jewish people that Jesus is the Messiah, telling Jewish people he died on the cross so they could go to heaven and we've been to a bunch of cities overseas but here in America, we've been so far to cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta.

We've been to Boston, to Chicago, to Dallas, to West Palm Beach, Florida. You know Little Israel, you know down there? And let me tell you a sad fact. Listen to this. In almost every single one of these cities here in America, we have had trouble getting even one or two Protestant churches willing to stand with us publicly and say that they are going to ally with us as we try to reach the Jewish people in their town.

It's a struggle to get one or two. You say, Lon, I find that hard to believe. I'm telling you the truth. You say, well, why is that? Well, sometimes I think it's because of their theology. Some of these churches are not sure Jewish people really need Jesus in order to go to heaven so they figure, well, why go to the trouble then? Friends, if you have any doubt whether Jewish people need Jesus to go to heaven, you go pick up my CD by the same title in the bookstore and I'll straighten you out.

You go get it. Now, sometimes the reason these churches don't want to be involved is because they don't want to do the hard work it takes to reach Jewish people. And it is hard work. You know, where there's two Jews, there's three opinions.

You know what I'm saying? And it is hard work to reach Jewish people. But the real reason, I think the major reason most of the time is that these churches are afraid of offending the Jewish community in that town and afraid of taking the heat that's going to come when they try to reach Jewish people for Christ. You know, in Denver, we had one church in the main city of Denver who was willing to stand with Jews for Jesus. And after they had committed to do so, they backed out because they got so many calls from the Jewish leaders in that town asking them to back out that they did. The Jewish leaders told them that if they supported Jews for Jesus that it would damage the dialogue in that town between Jews and Christians, that it would hurt their mutual understanding, and that it would inhibit the Christians and the Jews in Denver from moving forward. Well, my question is, moving forward to what? Moving forward to the point that every Jew in Denver goes to hell because there's no churches and no followers of Christ willing to share Jesus with them?

Is that what moving forward is? Listen, reaching Jewish people is hard work, no doubt about it. Any church that decides to reach the Jewish people in its community, they are going to offend that Jewish community. Not because they're trying to be offensive, but the message of the cross offends. And any church that does this, dude, you are going to feel the heat.

That's just the way it is. But listen, in the days of the apostle Paul, all three of these things were still true. And Paul, he reached out to Jewish people anyway. Remember when Paul went to any city, even though he was the apostle of the Gentiles, the first people he went to see was never the Gentiles.

He always went to the synagogue first to see Jewish people. Remember what Paul said, Romans chapter 1, I am not ashamed of the message of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Look to the Jew first and then to the Gentile. And finally, in Romans 9 through 11, if you read those chapters, you'll find Paul crying out to us as followers of Christ to love his Jewish people and have a heart to reach his Jewish people. And Paul even says, Romans 9 through 3, For if it were possible, I would be willing to be cursed and cut off from Christ if it would mean the salvation of those of my own Jewish race.

Now that is an unbelievable statement. Folks, a Christian who knows and believes the Bible knows that Jewish people need Jesus. A Christian who knows the Bible understands how near and dear to the heart of God Jewish evangelism is. And a church that has been well taught in the Word of God is a church that will have a zeal for reaching Jewish people in their community as well as non-Jewish people in their community. And that's why I say, where a church stands when it comes to Jewish evangelism and where an individual follower of Christ stands when it comes to Jewish evangelism is a huge spiritual barometer of where they stand in their knowledge of the Word of God and their commitment to Jesus Christ. Now when Jews for Jesus, they're coming here to Washington, D.C. to do Behold Your God from the 18th of August to the 18th of September this year. We, McLean Bible Church, are the sponsoring and host church in Washington, D.C. And friends, I'm here to tell you that if there's not one other church in Washington, D.C. that stands for Jews for Jesus when they come for town, we are going to stand with Jews for Jesus.

Not only that, okay, not only that, but I'm going to stand with them personally. I'm going to put on a Jews for Jesus t-shirt and I'm going to put my track bag on and I'm going down on the streets of Washington, D.C. as many days as I can and I'm going to hand out tracks and talk to Jewish people and try to tell them Jesus is the Messiah who died on the cross for their sin and He's necessary for them to go to heaven. I can't wait to do this. I'm jazzed about this. I'm excited about this. And I want you to be excited. I want you to get jazzed. I want you to have a part of this. I want you to have a piece of the action. Do you understand there are 250,000 Jewish people in this town?

Your doctor, your dentist, your lawyer and your jeweler. These people. They are in this town. And they have never seen in this town a targeted attempt to reach the Jewish community like they're going to see the end of August and the beginning of September.

It's never happened in this town. You know what? We're just not going to reach Jewish people either. I remember Moishe Rosen, the founder of Jews for Jesus said to me once, he said, you know Lon, it's interesting, every time we go out on the streets and try to reach Jewish people, we end up reaching a whole bunch of Gentiles too.

And that's true. We're not only going to lead Jewish people to Christ in this town. You watch, we're going to lead hundreds and thousands of Gentiles to Christ in this town. And I wouldn't be a bit surprised to have pickets outside of our church. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to be vilified in the Jewish newspapers of this town.

I wouldn't be surprised to have articles written against us in the Post. And let me just tell you, some of our worst opposition and some of the nastiest stuff that's going to be said about us as a church in this town is not going to come from the Jewish community. You watch. It's going to come from the Christian community in this town, which is really sad.

Watch what happens. But you know what? We don't care. We don't care. Because we're not here serving the Christian community or the Jewish community or the Washington Post, thank God. We're not here serving those people. We're here serving Jesus Christ in this town. As long as He's happy with us, friends, we're not worried about what the rest of people think. And we're excited about what's going to happen in this town.

This is the most significant outreach, public outreach to hit this town in a decade. You know, I got that little boy in the stroller. You remember him that we left outside the pottery factory?

Yeah. Well, he grew up, survived, and he's a first-year law student at the University of Michigan. And he wrote me an email. I want to read it to you, part of it.

He said, Dad, so I have a question. I have a Jewish friend here at Michigan that I met several months ago. Several times the issue of religion has come up, and I try not to waste those opportunities. One thing about this girl is that she has no idea why she believes what she believes, which I'm beginning to learn is very common among Jewish people my age. Another thing that I found really troubling is how entrenched in tradition this girl is. Like our faith, Judaism, as I've seen it displayed in this girl's life, has no effect on her everyday activities. She made a comment to me that she just wants to be Jewish so she can have a Jewish home and see her children bar mitzvahed. To me, this is really sad. Anyway, I know the verse in 2 Corinthians about how Satan has blinded the hearts of the Jews, and I really see that to be true. This is so sad for me, though.

I've never had this much interaction with a Jewish person about Jesus, and what I see depresses me. I'm trying to witness to this girl, but I'm not sure how to get her to listen, because she's so defensive, even though she has no clue what she's defending. So advice, please, that's your forte. Yeah. Well, I wrote him back, and I gave him some advice about how to talk to this girl, and I also said to him, don't you dare fall for this woman.

That's part of my advice. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Now, this was a wonderful email, and let me tell you, if the apostle Paul were alive today, the email he would have sent back to this young man. He would have sent back to an email that said, right on, Justin, you're starting to get it, son. Right on, Justin, you're starting to understand how terribly lost Jewish people and everybody is, apart from Jesus Christ. Right on, Justin, you're starting to understand the sadness that I felt in Romans chapter 9 that caused me to say what I did. Right on, Justin, you're starting to understand the heart of God for lost people, and right on, Justin, you're starting to do something about it.

Right on, son, good for you. Now, Paul wasn't here, but that's what I wrote back and in part told him, because that's what Paul would have said. And friends, that's what Paul would say to you and me if he were here today. He'd say, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ and you live in this town, there are 250,000 people in this town who don't know how to get to heaven, and nobody's going to tell them if we don't tell them.

That is the truth, that is the way it is. And he would say, you know what, God wants you to have the heart He has for people outside of Christ, and He wants you to go tell them. When they come to town, He wants you to be a part of this. And they say, well, you know, but Lon, you've got to understand, I'm not the kind of person that puts on a bright red t-shirt, puts a track bag over my shoulder and goes down on the streets of Washington.

Okay, all right, fair enough. There are lots of other ways you can help. We need help with music, help with drama, help with our media campaign. We need people to stand at kiosks in the malls around Washington and give out printed material. Friends, we need people to pray. If there's nothing else you'll commit to do but for a month, be serious in prayer about this outreach, that's critical. And you say, all right, what do you want me to do?

What I want you to do is take this little insert at E-Bulletin. It has Jews for Jesus on the front, and we're going to train you. Nobody's going to throw you out there without training. I want you to turn it on the back, and on the back, it has a place for you to check which of the two days of training you're going to come to. And then we want you to come. We'll figure out at the training what you're good at, what you want to do.

There's nothing you're good at that we can't use. And then we want you to go in the lobby, hand this into our Jews for Jesus reps that are out there in the lobby, and then I want you to start getting excited about being a part of this. I want you to start praying now about the Jewish people who are going to be walking down the street minding their own business, but they have no idea that they have an appointment with eternity.

Wait and form on the street corner. I want you to start praying. Their heart's going to be ready and open. And I want you to start praying for the success of this campaign that we're going to lead hundreds and thousands of Jewish people and Gentile people to Jesus Christ the end of this summer, the beginning of this fall here in Washington. Friends, this is the most exciting evangelism opportunity to hit this town. Well, maybe since I've been here, we want to be a part of it. I want you to be a part of it. I want you to have the joy of being a part of seeing us do this in this town.

So if you fill out the form, you go turn it in, we'll do that. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thanks for the opportunity to talk today about our role here in Washington as ambassadors for Christ. And remind us today that here in this town, we have a job to do. Our job is to represent Jesus and tell people the truth about how they can get to heaven. And it doesn't matter whether they're Jewish, whether they're Muslim, whether they're Gentile, whether they're animal, vegetable, or mineral.

It doesn't make a bit of difference. That's our task. That's our target. And so, Lord, I pray that you would excite us as a church family and mobilize us to be part of this wonderful outreach. And I pray we would see hundreds and thousands of people in this town come to Jesus Christ this summer because of our willingness to get out there and do something about people's lost estate. God, use us in this town to make a difference for Jesus Christ one life at a time. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.