Confident Evangelism #2B

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time.

So let's get right to it. Open your Bible as we join Don now in the Truth Pulpit. So beloved, just speak the cross.

Just speak Christ in those opportunities. Make that the focus of the discussion and trust God to do what he wants to do with his Word, even if you feel completely weak and inadequate in the process. Speaking of which, continue on just a little bit in 1 Corinthians to chapter 2. And see how this power and this confidence of Paul's fleshed out in his own experience. It's not that Paul was a bombastic witness, an arrogant, condescending man speaking down, full of himself. Chapter 2, verse 1, he says, I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. He was with them in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. I won't ask for a show of hands here, but I know that many of you feel that way, just like I do, when it comes time to share the gospel.

You feel your hands getting clammy and your throat starts to dry up and all of that. Don't let that hinder you. Look back to this example of Paul, where in the midst of much weakness and fear and trembling, he spoke forth the gospel and showed that his confidence was in the gospel, not in himself. And when that happens, and when God works and saves someone through that kind of witness, the only conclusion that anyone can draw is that was the power of God. And better to have someone saved with a demonstration of the power of God. And you say, man, I was so weak in that, I couldn't possibly have had anything to do with that. That's great.

Because then God gets all of the glory. The point being that when your throat goes dry and your hands start to tremble, you start to stammer a little bit. Don't let that hinder you. Don't step back from that. Just remember the power of the saving gospel and speak.

Now let me give you just a little bit of help on this. I want to suggest to you that there's four themes that you want to dwell upon as you're sharing the gospel with an unbeliever. I'm not going to support these with scriptures.

This isn't exhaustive. These are the kinds of talking points that you want to just have generally in your mind to know that you're making the right kind of emphasis. First of all, you want an unbeliever to recognize that the Bible is the only authority. We are wanting to make disciples, not just get someone to say a prayer. The command is to make disciples, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. We want an unbeliever to understand that what we're saying is that you have to shift your allegiance to a different authority. The Bible is that authority.

As God has spoken in His Word. Secondly, you want to be able to communicate, friend, you are a sinner. The Bible is the only authority and you are a sinner.

You've broken the law of God and His judgment is upon you, just like it was on me. Thirdly, Jesus Christ is the only Savior. And fourthly, friend, you must repent and believe in Christ to have your sins forgiven. Now, I hesitated to simplify it that much because I understand that there are themes and other matters that need to be said. But what I'm trying to do is just help you have like a train track in your mind that this is what the train needs to run on. You're going to have to flesh out those themes. But what I want to say to you here in Grace Life, if you come to Grace Community Church and you pay attention at all to the various teaching that goes on here, you can take those four themes and expand on them and expand on them when the opportunity comes as your discussion progresses in that involvement with the unbeliever. What I'm trying to do here just by putting it that way is help you to step back and see the forest for the trees, as it were.

See the big picture so that the right themes get emphasized. If you communicated in a conversation to someone who had no prior exposure to the Bible, if you communicated to him that the Bible is the only authority, that he is a sinner, that Christ is the only Savior and he needs to repent and believe in Christ in order to have his sins forgiven, you've communicated an awful lot. And so don't try to be too overly technical. Don't let the fear of being technical keep you from saying basic things that may be complete news to that unbeliever. Someone might say, but can it really be that basic?

I would say you bet it can. Did you read the biographies of men that were converted in the past? Dwight L. Moody was converted when his Sunday school teacher came to his place of work at a shoe store and spoke to him privately.

Both of them said later it was one of the weakest gospel presentations that they had ever heard. Charles Spurgeon was converted by a simple gospel message by an unknown pastor in a virtually empty chapel. John Wesley was converted when someone read a preface from Martin Luther's commentary on the book of Romans in a small group gathering.

Martin Luther himself was converted as he studied Romans 1, 16, and 17 in the privacy of his own room. Great men of God, ultimately greatly used by God, converted to Christ, here's my point in all of that, converted to Christ under circumstances that would not have seemed very impressive at the time. The same kind of unimpressive circumstances that surround most of us when we share the gospel. Don't underestimate the power of the gospel, even when outwardly it doesn't look like it's going to go anywhere.

Forget outward appearances. Beloved, I say this in love, but say it with conviction, and hopefully with some measure of penetration by the Spirit of God into your heart, your wit and your clever arguments will not save anyone. But over time, God will save souls as we focus on the gospel, even if we don't see immediate results from that conversation. Even when they walk away, you don't have to say, well, that didn't work.

That's not true. God honors His Word. Well, we've looked at the sufficiency of Scripture, we've looked at the seriousness of sin, we've looked at the saving gospel. Here's the fourth point that I want you to remember to encourage you to be faithful in your evangelism.

Everything we've looked at so far has been kind of outward focused. I want to bring it down to your own heart and your own attitudes now. Point number four, remember the spirit of gentleness. Remember the spirit of gentleness.

What kind of man, what kind of woman are you going to be in the midst of that conversation? So far, we've focused a lot on the predicament of the unbeliever. We understand that God has to change his heart before that person can be saved. But I want to turn your attention now to your own heart as you share your faith. For some of you, not all of you, you like the debate of spiritual discussions. Yeah, it gets your juices flowing. You like the give and take and the argument of the discussion.

And you like to win. Others of you, maybe when the conversation doesn't go your way, when it looks like you're not getting the upper hand here, maybe you're being embarrassed by someone as you're trying to carry out this discussion. Maybe you get withdrawn. Maybe you get angry.

Maybe you get frustrated. Get your dander up when the unbeliever insults you. Beloved, can I remind you that your attitude is part of a proper approach to evangelism, and God speaks very specifically to what you are to be like in the midst of those discussions. 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 24.

I'd invite you to turn there. Where Paul said, The Lord's bondservant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will. One other verse, you don't need to turn there. In 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 15, where Peter said, Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. We don't proclaim the gospel with the spirit of anger. We don't proclaim it with that spirit of force and intimidation.

That's the wrong approach. There is a personal spiritual dimension to this which you have your own responsibility to fulfill. God calls you to a gentle, patient attitude with the unbeliever as you go through these truths with him. How, beloved, can you proclaim the gospel of peace with a quarrelsome, bitter spirit? How can you represent the prince of peace with antagonism toward the lost? They are not the enemy. They are not the enemy.

They are the mission field. They are where you used to be. You used to be the one who was lost. You used to be the one who was hardened to the gospel.

Some of you used to be the blasphemer who cursed the name of Christ. And so, you remember where you used to be and you take that into the discussion. You say to yourself, he's just like I used to be. I don't want to be harsh with him.

I don't want to deal with him that way. I want him to know what God has given to me. God commands that gentle spirit as we witness. Firm, unyielding on the matters of the truth but presented with a gentle spirit. That in itself is supernatural. I want to encourage you, beloved, never to underestimate the power of that gentle spirit even if your words are few, even if your words are weak, even if your whole mind goes blank.

Because it was the power of a gentle spirit that pushed me on the first steps toward Christ. I was about 20 years old. I was working at a cash register at a drug store in my college days. It was late at night. It was around 9 o'clock.

It was time for us to close. And in walks this young girl, I don't even remember if she bought anything or not. I think she did. She was probably in her teens someplace. Very modestly dressed in a long skirt.

Her hair was in a long ponytail. She smiled at me, handed me a little gospel tract, one that a lot of people would make fun of these days, and said, I'd like you to read this. I gave her a condescending smile, kind of shooed her off on her way.

And I never saw her again. But, beloved, her gentle spirit completely disarmed me. I read that tract, and I was exposed to the gospel. There was something about that gentle spirit that spoke to my heart, that God used to work on my mind to cause me to read something that I otherwise would have thrown away. It was a year or two later before I actually became a Christian.

But her gentleness made such an impression on me that here I am 25 years later, and I can't get it out of my mind. Beloved, what I want you to see is, what I want to encourage your heart in, what I want you to be confident in, is that if you are just godly, you manifest the kind of gentle spirit that manifested Christ himself when he was here on earth, toward people that were lost, the kind of spirit that knows what it's like to weep over Jerusalem, the kind of spirit that Paul could express in Romans 10 and say, I could almost wish myself accursed if it would save the Jews. That kind of broken-hearted love for the lost expresses itself in a spirit of gentleness, beloved. That is part of the work of the Spirit of God in your life, and what I want you to see is, that's the kind of standard that you have to hold yourself to. You cultivate a gentle spirit in your witness that is informed by the fact that you yourself have been delivered from sin, you yourself deserve the judgment of God, you yourself are overwhelmed by the grace of God that he would save someone like you, that you yourself are overwhelmed by the glories of heaven that will one day be yours, and that you will see the face of the Son of God in person, and you're so overwhelmed by that, and humbled by that, that it affects the way that you view those who are not in that position. And you say in your heart, and you say as a prayer, oh God, if only they would too receive the mercy that you have bestowed upon me.

God, would you do that? God, surely you didn't exhaust your mercy when you saved me. Surely the fountain of redeeming grace didn't stop to flow when you saved me from my sins.

God, spread that fountain on them, spread that grace on this person that's in front of me, oh God. And with the passage that Bob read for us earlier this morning, you're able to say, oh, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to Christ. I wonder, beloved, if we're really as close with God as we think we are in terms of walking with Him and being sanctified with Him, until something of that comes out of our hearts. We cannot be satisfied to be filled up with knowledge, biblical knowledge, good biblical theological knowledge, we can't be satisfied with that unless it has transformed us to a point that we want to weep over the lost and have that affect the way we talk with them. You serve, beloved, a Savior who described Himself in Matthew 11 29 this way, when He said, I am gentle and humble in heart.

You are supremely to be like Him. And that gentle spirit testifies to the reality of Christ without saying a word. When you find your anger flaring up in the midst of a witnessing opportunity, something's wrong with you, first of all. There's sin in your heart there that you've got to deal with. And understand that. But I say this not so much in the way of any kind of rebuke, but simply as an encouragement to you to realize that that gentle spirit is an important part of being a witness.

And for many of you, you are not quick on your feet with an answer when the debate is going on. Maybe you don't know all the ins and outs of the arguments for the existence of God. Or can define words like reconciliation and propitiation just off the top of your head. Beloved, what I want to say to you is, and I want your heart to take great encouragement if you're like that, do not think for a moment that that hinders you from being an effective witness for Christ.

Throw that thought out. You can be a kind and sympathetic witness on behalf of a kind and sympathetic Savior. Don't underestimate the power of that. Because for many people, as God is working in their heart, that may be more effective than a brilliantly argued 300-page book on apologetics. One day, maybe when I'm in heaven, I'll glance briefly off of the glory of Christ and see that girl whose gentle spirit handed me a gospel tract. There's no way, there's no way she could have engaged a theological discussion with many of you. And yet, she was an instrument in God's hands.

And you can be used that same way. And even if you are quick with an answer, you are good in debate, the Scriptures still call you to that spirit of gentleness. And so, confident evangelism springs from one who has examined his heart before the Lord, and he makes sure that his spirit, his heart, is right.

God forbid. God forbid that any of us in this room could look condescendingly upon an unbeliever with coldness in our hearts toward him. God forbid, that's unthinkable for someone who has been saved from their sins to think. We're to be conduits of the same mercy that we received.

And if you're conscious of that, it's going to affect your heart. Well, we've said that you have to remember the sufficiency of Scriptures, the seriousness of sin, the saving gospel, the spirit of gentleness. Final point, point number five, remember the Savior's presence. Remember the Savior's presence.

The encouragement of this should launch you, as it were. In light of all of the things that we've said, the lostness of the believer, the struggles that we face with our own heart, our own courage, we could say with the Apostle Paul, who is adequate for this? Who is adequate to stand, as it were, between heaven and hell talking to an unbeliever who is opposed to everything you say?

Who's adequate for that? How can I be effective before men who are hostile to the truth? How am I supposed to maintain a gentle spirit in the face of insults and opposition? Beloved, praise be to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. The provision has been made. In Matthew 28, verse 19, in the midst of his great commission, Jesus says, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations. Matthew 28, verse 19. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.

Man, is that a lot of responsibility. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. In the midst of his command to send us out, this Jesus to whom all authority has been given in heaven and on earth, this Jesus says, I am with you always. As you go and you share in that way, the presence of Christ himself is with you. Jesus Christ himself is there to comfort you in the midst of hostility. He is there to give you power and wisdom for your witness. He is there through the person of the Holy Spirit to work in the heart of that unbeliever.

This one, this uncreated Son of God, to whom all authority has been given is in the midst of those discussions. It's an unseen reality that you have to remember. And when you remember that, and when you remember these principles, you can have confidence that God will bless your evangelism over time. Maybe it's not right now, maybe there's not an instant conversion. Remember what Jesus said about the seeds that sprout up real quickly. He didn't have a whole lot of good things to say about that.

So if the results seem slow, that's okay. So with the Apostle Paul, settle it in your heart that you will never be ashamed of the Gospel. Let unbelievers insult us. Let atheists mock us. Let scientists scorn us. Let liberals attack us with their books. Let the Pope condemn us.

Let governments try to silence us. And giving voice to our persecuted brethren around the world, let radical Muslims burn our houses and slit our throats, we will still preach Christ crucified. They may silence us individually, but they will never silence Christ. They will never silence the Gospel. The Bible promises it, and history confirms it. Colossians 1 says, The Gospel has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth. Whatever comes, beloved, for most of us it's not going to be persecution.

At least not these days. I don't know that we can assume that too much into the future. But even if that came, proclaim Christ with confidence, knowing that He will use your witness to deliver others from the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of His glorious light. Let's pray. Father, what an awesome privilege is ours in Christ. To have our sins forgiven through His work on the cross, through His resurrection. What a privilege is ours to know that a place in heaven is secured for us, reserved in heaven. To know that no one can erase our name from the Lamb's Book of Life. To know that no one can snatch us out of the hand of Christ. God, what awesome privileges you have bestowed upon us in our Savior. We thank you for that. And Father, we simultaneously embrace the responsibility of that to take the saving gospel to people who do not yet know Christ. Help us to that end, Father. We are weak, we are frail, we are trembling. Our minds are thick and slow.

And we are easily intimidated. Father, help us by your grace to take our eyes off of our own resources, which are bankrupt anyway, and to put them on the great sufficiency of the Scriptures, the great sufficiency of the Savior, the great sufficiency of the gospel. And Father, once more we ask you for every Christian in this room that you would give us the privilege of witnessing for Christ. Bring up opportunities, unexpected opportunities, even this week, Father, for us. And give us the satisfaction of seeing you use us as instruments in the salvation of other souls. Because we know, Father, that will go to your glory. It will be to their eternal good. We don't want to keep this to ourselves.

That would be unthinkable. Father, continue to give power to your gospel that the name of Christ might be glorified and that sinners would come to a saving knowledge of Him. Help us that we would never be ashamed of the gospel.

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, my friends, before we go at the end of today's podcast, I wanted to let you know that I'm very excited to announce the upcoming release of my latest book. It's an evangelistic book titled An Easy Guide to Missing Heaven. And I think you're going to want to get a copy for yourself and also to have copies to give to others. It's a short book. It's about the size of my hand and with very short, brief chapters that make it easy for people to read. You know, I'm not a great evangelist on a one-to-one basis.

And I understand that sometimes it's hard to get a conversation started with someone you know, a friend, or even more with a person that you love within your family or the circle of your household. Well, this is a perfect book if you are like me. You can give this book easily to anyone.

They can read it in an hour, and that will set the stage for further conversations down the road. Again, the book is titled An Easy Guide to Missing Heaven, and you can find it at our website, thetruthpulpit.com. Just look for the link Books on our website, thetruthpulpit.com. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.