Election and Evangelism #1

The Bible's presentation and picture of election is this. God does not randomly zap people with salvation, as if they were just walking down the street and then boom! Whoa, I'm saved!

It doesn't happen that way. We're glad you've joined us on The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. We're continuing our series, Chosen by God, looking at the often contentious issues of election and predestination. Today we turn our attention to the role of evangelism in God's plan of salvation. And Don, you've shown us that the work of salvation belongs entirely to God and that free will is not really free until He first extricates us from spiritual bondage. So you've heard the question that usually follows, why bother evangelizing then?

Well, scripture gives a very clear answer to that question, my friend. It says that evangelism is the means that God uses in order to bring someone to Christ. Romans chapter 10 verse 14 says, How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? You must speak the gospel. You must proclaim Christ so that someone can hear and know that they need to believe in Him for salvation. It's a privilege for us as Christians to tell others about Christ. We're going to see more today on The Truth Pulpit.

Thanks Don. And friend, we'll again be in Ephesians chapter 1, so turn there in your Bible as Don continues teaching God's people God's word from The Truth Pulpit. We're going to see four aspects of evangelism that will help us understand the relationship between the preaching of the gospel to God's electing purposes and saving men. And this applies to the way the pulpit preaches the gospel. This applies directly, it is the same principles in terms of you speaking to someone privately about the condition of their soul. There's a unifying thread, a unifying principle through all of it.

The things that give me confidence in the pulpit when I preach, the things that help me not to be intimidated by the opposition or hostility of sinners to the message of Scripture are the same things that should give you confidence, that should give you an animated spirit, an optimistic spirit when you speak to the lost. Because ultimately it's about the power of God and the purpose of God, and we're instruments in implementing that. It doesn't ultimately depend on our wisdom, our strength, our cleverness. We rely on the purpose of God to accomplish it and we just want to be obedient to his plan. Here's the bottom line of all of it.

Here's the bottom line of all of it. This simple crystallization will help you understand where your theology is really at. We believe, and the Bible teaches, that the power of God is greater than the will of man.

People who believe that God can be successfully resisted in the proclamation of the gospel, that it depends on the sinner's choice, they say that we believe that the will of man is stronger than the power of God. It boils down to that, ultimately. And so we believe that Scripture teaches that God has a purpose, he has a plan, and he has the power to carry it out.

It comes down to that simple summary of it. We as Christians, when we're evangelizing, where do we fit between the power of God and the sinful will of man? The first thing that we're going to see is we just deal with the text as it's come to us. We want to see, first of all, we want to see the conversion of the Ephesians, the conversion of the Ephesians. And what we mean by that is Paul, as he is just unfolding this prayer of praise to God for his work and salvation, Paul eventually turns to the experience of his readers and addresses them. In verse 13, Paul had just been praising God for choosing us, for adopting us, and for redeeming us in Christ, praising the Lord Jesus Christ for shedding his blood for the cleansing of sin on the cross, praising God for his mercy, his goodness, his kindness for saving unworthy men.

And so his heart is just bursting in vertical as it goes. Now, so important for you to understand, so critical in forming a proper view of this passage, so essential for forming a proper theology. Paul, when he turns his attention to the conversion of the Ephesians in verse 13, he didn't suddenly forget everything that he had just said in the prior 10 verses.

The prior 10 verses, 3 through 12, are informing everything that he's saying in verse 13. Stated differently, we should not separate in our minds God's electing purposes from the way and the manner and the effectiveness of evangelism. Those two are related and connected. They are not meant to be separate and kept in separate rooms like you didn't want witnesses to taint their testimony before they got into court. These things are joined together. They are interrelated.

They are linked to one another. And so Paul, having just praised God, now turns his attention to the experience of his own readers. And what we see is that they heard the message as real men in real time from a real human communicator of one sort or another.

Look at verse 13 with me. He says, in Him you also. Speaking to the readers, you also. Remember, you were engaged in this.

You are part of the outworking of the plan of this. And what does he say about these people, about you also? He said, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation.

We'll stop it right there. Understand that in that little phrase there, Paul is describing something that happened in time in the experience of his readers. Someone came and spoke to them. They listened with their ears, and they responded to that message. And so in a very, very simple sense, we need to see that Paul is saying, someone came to you and spoke to you about the message of truth. Someone came and spoke to you about the gospel of salvation. And in response to hearing that message, you believed.

We'll talk about that aspect of it more next week. But just in that little bit of phrase here, I want you to notice something really important so that we would not be misled by distortions and misrepresentations and straw men of the doctrine of election. Biblically speaking, despite how our teaching might be represented by deceitful men, the Bible's presentation and picture of election is this. God does not randomly zap people with salvation, as if they were just walking down the street and then boom!

Whoa, I'm saved! It doesn't happen that way. The implementation of election does not happen in a random vacuum with God arbitrarily doing things in which human communication is divorced from and is unrelated to. We are not entries on an accounting ledger in the matter of salvation. And we don't treat people, we don't speak to people as though they were blocks of granite to be shaped according to our will.

No, no. What we see from what is said here in verse 13 is that the gospel addresses real men who actually think and hear and respond. Real men with their emotions, real men with their will involved. The gospel addresses men as intelligent thinking beings. Stated differently, God uses human messengers and he uses human communication to bring the truth, to bring the gospel, to bear upon those whom he intends to save. This is not a matter of engineering.

It's not a matter of accounting or anything like that. It is real people engaging real other people with real truth, with real communication. That is how God implements his purposes of election. Paul says, you heard the message of truth. A man, someone came and preached the gospel to them. Someone explained somewhere to them that Christ had shed his blood for sinners and called them to put their faith in Christ. That's what Paul is describing in a very summary form.

Look at verse 13 with me again. He says, you listened to the message of the truth, the gospel of your salvation. Someone spoke, someone listened, these people believed. And so, they heard the message of truth about Christ and God's saving purpose. It was the gospel of their salvation. In other words, Paul says that they recognized that their spiritual deliverance from sin and judgment was found in the words that were being spoken to them. This is what was true in the lives of the Ephesians who received this letter. And so, beloved, just as a matter of simple Bible reading and simple Bible interpretation, I want you to notice what's happening here. Remember, and I'm not going to repeat everything that I said about this, verse 3 to verse 14 is all one long sentence in the original text.

It is a single, very complex, multifaceted, but ultimately one unit of thought. That's so important to understand. And so, Paul, as he is expressing in verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He chose us, verse 4, in him. Verse 5, he predestined us to adoption.

Verse 7, in him we have redemption. Verse 9, the mystery of his will, the kind intention of his purpose, and on it goes. Verse 11, we obtained an inheritance, predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will.

All of that is flowing into and informing and building what he describes in verse 13, when salvation has been expressed for 10 verses as God's purpose, then in verse 13 what we're seeing is the way in which God implemented his purpose in the lives of the readers of this epistle. And so, the evangelism was not divorced from the electing purposes of God. No, the electing purposes of God gave birth to the evangelism. Stated differently, the evangelism, even in the flow of the text, the evangelism that took place flowed out of God's saving purposes. It was not contrary to it.

Election did not sever or silence evangelism. It gave rise to it. It was the soil from which evangelism grew. It was the womb from which evangelism was born. These things are not separate from one another.

You must see that. That these are not in contradiction, they are perfectly consistent with one another. And so even in this text, you cannot separate the human activity of evangelism from the divine activity of election.

All right? Now, let's say it one other way. God brings his saving purpose to humanity through human teachers who explain the gospel and call on men to turn from sin to Christ. That is how God implements and carries out his saving purposes. Turn over to the book of 1 Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 1. 1 Thessalonians 1, you're going to see the same principles interacting, interplaying in the letter to the Thessalonians as well.

Verse 2, 1 Thessalonians 1, verse 2. Paul says, we give thanks to God always for all of you. He's thanking God for them. It's not that he credits them and he's thankful to them, he's thankful to God for them, which means that the spiritual result that is manifested in their lives is attributed to the saving activity of God. You thank the one who did it, not the one who didn't do it.

Okay? So we give thanks to God always for you. Verse 4, knowing brethren beloved by God, his choice of you. We're thankful for you because we know that God chose you. Now look at what he says. He goes in and gives a description of past evangelism that resulted in the salvation of the Thessalonians. He says, verse 5, for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction, just as you know what kind of man we proved to be among you for your sake.

Vertically he thanks God, God thank you. You chose them. And so I'm grateful to you. Now, oh yeah, I'm talking to you guys. Let me remind you of how the gospel came to you. There was us and there was you and we spoke words to you and communicated to you. And it came not just in human power, but it came with the power of the Holy Spirit because God was blessing our proclamation of the gospel to you and that's what resulted in your conversion. Look at it there, verse 5. Our gospel, we, preached the gospel and it came to you.

It came in word, yes, but not in word only. It came in the power of the Holy Spirit with full conviction. So God chose them and Paul says the reason that it activated power in your life was because the gospel was preached to you.

We did it and we did it with power. I remember the Holy Spirit was animating my preaching. It was animating my discussions with you Thessalonians and because of the power that was at work in me, I know that it was at work in you as well. And so Paul preached the gospel.

He didn't sit on the sidelines and wait for the Thessalonians to get zapped. He went to them, he spoke to them, and God blessed the preaching to them. And look at the results in verse 9. For those of you who are not Christians here today, right here in verse 9 and 10 is what I would have imprinted upon your mind. People had come and told Paul what had happened in the lives of the Thessalonians in subsequent days.

They themselves report about us, what kind of reception we had with you. We were with you, we spoke to you, you received us. And what was the result of the evangelism? Well, just like in Ephesus where they turned and believed in the gospel, they believed in Christ, so in Thessalonians Paul says, you, middle of verse 9 here, you turn to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven whom he raised from the dead. That is Jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come. And so there was a speaking that took place and the result that was manifested was the fact that they turned away from their idolatry and turned to Christ and put their trust in him to rescue them, to save them, to deliver them, to help them, because there is a coming wrath that is a threat to every man on earth. And so we see in the biblical pattern of the way that Paul spoke about his ministry, the gospel came, the gospel was spoken, it was spoken with power and there was a result of conversion that took place in some of those who heard. Some walked away, others believed, all reflecting the prior antecedent purpose of God that he determined before the foundation of the world.

God was carrying out his choice and he carried it out through evangelism. And so for those of you that are here, you're not a Christian. You need to turn your life to Christ. God is pleading with you even now right at this very moment through the proclamation of his word, turn to Christ and be saved. Turn from your sin, turn from your stubborn, selfish will, turn from your lying ways and turn to Christ for salvation because you are in danger.

You are threatened by the looming wrath of God and you need to be saved. That is the message of the gospel. And so when we say that election does not short-circuit evangelism, we see it right here in the text. Now, there's another reason that we evangelize. We've seen it flowing out of the text that we've been studying, but there's another reason that we evangelize that in its own would settle it for any Christian. If we knew nothing else, this reason alone would be enough to elicit our glad obedience, our glad sharing of the gospel, even if we had no understanding of what was happening in the invisible realm.

And it's this. Why do we evangelize? The command of Christ. The command of Christ.

Let's make it simple. Why evangelism? Why the proclamation of the gospel?

It's really, really simple at one level. We do this. We evangelize. We share the gospel. We preach scripture and call men to repent because Christ told us to. And he is our Lord and Master and we obey him. Turn over to the end of Matthew 28.

We don't need to spend much time here. I just want you to see it in this context. Why do we evangelize? We evangelize because Christ commanded us to do so. Matthew 28 in verse 18.

Jesus, the second member of the Godhead who came to earth in furtherance of the electing salvific purposes of God. Verse 18. Jesus, after his resurrection, shortly before he returned to heaven speaks to his disciples and we stand in their shoes now in the 21st century. This is still the command to the church. Why do we evangelize? Because, verse 18, Jesus came up and spoke to them saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.

It's a command. That's why we evangelize. He says, Baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to observe all that I commanded you and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.

The Great Commission implicitly, why implicitly, explicitly, involves human communication. You, my disciples, you have my teaching. You go, you use your mouth and tongue and speak and instruct and explain everything that I've commanded to those who have not heard. That is my command upon the church, Christ says in Matthew 28.

We are under the authority of this one to whom all authority was given. And he said, Go. He said, Teach. He said, Make disciples. Sometimes that's going to involve teaching those who are already converted.

Many times it's going to involve those who have not been yet converted. But we teach not because we want to be popular, not because we think that others are necessarily going to like it. Our primary motivation for teaching, for evangelism, for sharing the gospel is a vertical response to the Lord of the church who gladly laid down his life and shed his blood for our redemption and therefore we gladly respond and say, Yes, of course, Lord, after all that you've done, after shedding your blood, after telling me to go, what else can I do but go? It helps us understand why the church was not designed to be a variation of the Rotary Club. We're not the chamber of commerce.

We're not trying to please and market things to people so that they will like us. We teach, we evangelize, because as Christians we do what Christ says for us to do. He told us to go, he told us to teach, so we go and we teach.

For some of us it wouldn't be a bad epitaph to have written on our tombstone. He went, she went, he taught, she taught. They went and they taught. They went and they spoke.

It's what we would be remembered by as individuals and as a church. Not everyone's going to teach in the same way that a pastor teaches. But you teach your kids. You speak with your friends. You speak with fellow students.

You speak with your neighbors. And as you share these things, what I want you to see is, is that in those simple ways and those simple interactions in which you speak with them, you are carrying out what Christ said. Go and make disciples. Teach them. Show them the truth.

That's why we do it. Do you shy away from evangelizing because you fear you're just not up to the task, maybe not eloquent enough, not enough facts and verses right on the tip of your tongue? Well, take comfort, friend. It's the Holy Spirit who moves people's hearts. So just open your mouth and speak the truth winsomely and leave the rest to God. Pastor Don Green will continue his message, Election and Evangelism, next time here on The Truth Pulpit. And we do hope you'll join us then.

But right now, Don's back here in studio with some closing comments. I just encourage you, if you've just viewed Christianity as something kind of casual and not all that important, my friend, examine yourself. See if you're truly born again.

And let that work of God in your heart lead you to truth, lead you to the Scriptures, so that you would enter into the profound life that belongs only to those who are true Christians. Thanks, Don. And friend, we invite you to visit thetruthpulpit.com. There you'll find information about free CDs of all of Don's teaching and also a link to Don's Facebook page. Again, that's thetruthpulpit.com. And now for Don Green, I'm Bill Wright. And we'll see you next time as our teacher teaches God's people God's word from the Truth Pulpit.