Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God #2

The fact that God achieves eternal salvation and fulfills a plan before eternity through us, the fact that He does that with utterly impotent human instruments shows how great His power is.

He is able to accomplish what He wants through the weakest of human vessels. Hello and welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Bill Wright, and we're continuing our series, Titus, God's Glorious Plan of Grace. Today you'll hear part two of a message titled, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God.

Last time Don discussed the reality of election. Today he'll be highlighting the requirement of evangelism and the resource for our effectiveness. We'll get started in just a moment, but first, here's Don with a few opening words. Well hello, my friend, and welcome to The Truth Pulpit. I realize this may be your first time in hearing our broadcast, and let me just encourage you to stick with us over the next 25 minutes. We love to teach the Bible in a clear and hopefully compelling way that is easy to understand and easy to apply to your life.

There won't be a lot of heavy promotion at the end of the broadcast. We just want to minister God's word to you. If that sounds like something you're interested in, stay with us as we study God's word together on The Truth Pulpit.

Have your Bible open to Titus chapter one as we join Pastor Don Green now in The Truth Pulpit. What we see as we continue on in this opening passage of Titus is the requirement of evangelism, the requirement of evangelism. We've seen the reality of election, and now we're going to look at the requirement of evangelism. And this will help clarify even more as we go along the justice and the righteousness and the goodness of God in all of these things. The requirement of evangelism.

Look, the elect are not automatically saved in the sense that they are not saved apart from human means. In order for someone to be saved, they must hear the gospel so that they can believe. This is the means. This is the road map that God has chosen. He has established the means of evangelism and preaching to be the means by which sinners would hear of their lost condition, be called to repentance and faith in Christ so that they can be saved. This is the way God has ordered the spiritual universe, as it were, so that people would hear the gospel and respond and believe. It pleases God to save people through the medium of preaching and evangelism. And people must hear the gospel so that they can believe. Look at verse 3 with me now of Titus chapter 1. Titus chapter 1 verse 3. Paul says, But at the proper time manifested even his word in the proclamation with which I was entrusted according to the commandment of God. Paul is talking about the preaching, the proclamation of Jesus Christ that he was entrusted. He was sent out to be a proclaimer of the truth of Christ.

Now go back up to verse 1 for just a moment as we try to keep all of these marbles in the same hat. Paul had said, I'm an apostle for the faith of those chosen of God. It's for the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness.

It's in the hope of eternal life. God promised this before the beginning of time. And then he goes on and says, side by side with that, his mind, he had just spoken about eternity before time began and says, This is brought to pass in the proclamation which I am preaching now at the present time.

This God entrusted the message of eternal life to Paul and then commanded him to go preach it. You see, the way that God brings about, watch this, the way that God brings about the salvation of the elect, which he determined before the beginning of time, is through the preaching of the gospel in the midst of time. That is how God brings it to pass.

It's not done apart from human means. God works concurrently. God works alongside. God works through human instruments in order to achieve his eternal purposes in the salvation of the elect. And so, what we see here in verse 3 is that right alongside God's sovereign prerogative and election is the human responsibility of proclamation. This is a requirement of God upon his people. And if you think about it, just in practical terms, if you think about it in terms of your own life experience, you realize how profoundly true this is. Every one of you that is a Christian here today, in one sense, has a human obligation to someone who shared the gospel with you beforehand.

You did not come up with it on your own. Perhaps it was a parent who raised you in the things of God. Perhaps, as in my case, it was a newspaper column that I read for a period of weeks that said you need to repent and believe in Christ. Repent and believe in Christ. As this human pastor was counseling people in a newspaper column, he was repent and believe in Christ.

Perhaps it was a friend in college or something like that. You look back on your own life experience and you realize that someone brought the gospel to you in a human way and it was through that that God accomplished his eternal purposes of saving you. He did it in time through a human instrument. Well, it's the same way. That's the way that it works. We teach and preach here Sunday by Sunday so that we can hear, so that we can communicate it to a next group of believers, or that we can be equipped individually and we can go out and we can share it in a sphere of influence of people who will never darken the doors of this place.

It's a requirement. This is the way that God does his work of salvation. He's chosen to do it.

His roadmap to do this was through human instruments. Here in chapter 9, verse 16 of 1 Corinthians, Paul describes the responsibility that he feels as a proclaimer of the gospel as an apostle of Jesus Christ. He says, if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion, for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel. Paul says, there's responsibility on me that I must fulfill. I have to fulfill this or it's not going to be good for me. You know, Christ commissioned me to be an apostle of Christ.

I have to fulfill that. I have to obey that or I will be held greatly accountable. What this second point teaches us is that we should not view election abstractly. We should not be having abstract discussions and speculations about election unless it brings us into a recognition of the responsibility that we have. We go and preach indiscriminately the gospel of Christ and through a message that the world rejects, God redeems his own. That's why we preach.

It's the means that God has chosen to accomplish his design of election amongst his people so that he can give a gift to his son. Now, final point. There's a sense in which, a very real sense in which, we should feel the utter inadequacy that is ours to be involved with such a task.

Who is it? Who among us is worthy and powerful enough to be an instrument like this? Do you realize that when we talk about the gospel, we're talking about the most sacred message in the universe? Forget everything that you see on the internet this past week or in the week to come. Forget all of the news headlines that you see about silly news stories. It's all going to fade away and go away and amount to nothing at the end of time. All of the things that are dominating national discussion right now are going to be utterly inconsequential.

What's going to matter is the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, what God did for the salvation of his own, and that is what is going to stand and be the proof that stands the test of time and stands the test of eternity for that matter. This is what's great. This is what's glorious. This is hidden in a sense. This is not appreciated by the world around us. We hold a message that the world despises, and we hold a message that was born out of the sacred desire of God the Father to give a gift to his Son that he intends to use to save people throughout ages and across cultures until the end of time. And you and I, with our sinful lips, with our sometimes indifferent hearts, with our prayerless approach to ministry and life, we're the ones to bear that message. We're the ones, as we speak to a lost individual or as we speak to a lost group, that heaven and hell are the consequences for them based on how they respond to this message. We weak human instruments of clay are going to be the instruments of this kind of glorious message?

Oh. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 3. 2 Corinthians chapter 3.

Verse 5. Paul says, we don't consider ourselves adequate as coming from ourselves. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God. He made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, but in myself and my preach, who is adequate for these things?

My inconsistent life and my sinful lips would be instruments of God saving his own to present them to Christ at the end of time? You see, the majesty of this exposes our inadequacy and our unworthiness to be involved in such a sacred task. And yet it's what God wants from us. Look over at 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 5. Paul says, we don't preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus is Lord and ourselves as your bondservants for Jesus' sake. God is the one who is shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But he says in verse 7, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.

See, that's what we were saying earlier. The fact that God takes this message and uses weak human vessels like us, displays his power, his greatness, when by every human calculation this should have failed and been forgotten back in the first century. There is no human way, there is no human explanation to stand before men and say a man crucified on the Roman cross in shame and disgrace is the only savior of mankind throughout all of humanity. There is no way that that message makes sense. That's incomprehensible.

He was judged on a cross by, admittedly, godless human men, but there he was crucified like a common criminal like 10,000 others were and more throughout the centuries. And you're going to tell me that this man, this man from a forgotten race of the Jews in a remote corner of the world called Palestine, that he alone is the savior of mankind, he alone is the one to whom you must bow your knee and plead for forgiveness for the salvation of your soul? That's the message that we preach?

Humanly speaking, that's ridiculous. But it is that message that alone is true. It is that message that alone is the power of God. And because the message by human standards is foolishness, because the instruments are human and weak, the fact that God achieves salvation through a message like that, through instruments like that, show that the power of it is real and it belongs to him alone. And so while we see our requirement for evangelism, we have to remind ourselves, third point here, of the resource for our effectiveness.

The resource for our effectiveness. You know, I have no patience for so-called preachers who stagecraft everything and they're really slick and everything's choreographed and there's lights. Not that these lights are bad, but you know, light shows and all of that that surround their preaching. The whole point of preaching, the whole point of the Gospel is to minimize the human instrument and maximize the person being proclaimed the Lord Jesus Christ. And when men make it about themselves, when men wrap themselves up in human attention and glory, they are diminishing and taking away the one thing alone that could give their preaching power.

We need to see the resource for effectiveness. Titus chapter 1 verse 4. Titus chapter 1 verse 4. In his opening greeting, Paul providentially, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, shows us what we must remember. This great glorious cause of God to redeem his own.

This great responsibility of evangelism and our own incalculable weakness and unfitness for the task humbles us, brings us to our knees, and makes us grateful for what we see in verse 4. Paul to Titus, my true child in a common faith. Titus is spoken about in the New Testament, especially in 2 Corinthians.

You see his name mentioned prominently. Apparently one of Paul's own converts. And Paul writing to him, about to give him instructions for the building of the church on the island of Crete. And he opens with this greeting, Grace and Peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. Here in this little greeting, we are reminded of the only thing that we can depend upon as we carry out our ministry. We are reminded, we are reminded, we are brought face to face with our own inadequacy and our utter impotence to be able to accomplish this great glory on our own. You can gather crowds around with lots of promotion and lots of fake signs and fake wonders and you can gather people around but you can't convert one of them through that kind of stuff. The only thing that's going to bring about the conversion of men, of changing sinners from death to life is the power and grace of God.

And so we're reminded as we see here, as Paul says to Titus, Grace and Peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus. We are reminded that if we are going to have any success in evangelism, we have to despair, we have to forfeit, we have to surrender any claim of ability, power, or ingenuity in order to be able to bring that to pass. We have to surrender ourselves and humble ourselves before the grace of God alone to be the operative principle that would give success to anything that we do.

Your pastor has no power in himself. We are all collectively weak and inadequate for this task. How is it then that we get up in the morning to pursue it? How is it that we open our mouths before people who have rejected the Gospel for so very long? Why is it that we set our hands to the task of establishing a work here? It's because we believe in the grace of God.

We believe that God graciously overrules and works through our weakness and our incompetence in order to achieve his eternal purposes. We do it because he's required us to do so. He's commanded us to go. And we look and we say, as it were, we say, God, you command us to go? Okay, I'll go. I'll go, God.

But you must go with me if this is going to matter, if this is going to produce any fruit. As you go to share the Gospel with your loved ones, you must do so with a conscious dependence on the enabling, sanctifying grace of God to give fruit to your work or it will all be in vain. The greatness of our responsibility and our utter weakness remind us of the fact that we must fall on our knees and ask God to bless it because if he withholds his blessing, we open our mouths in vain. The greatness of the task and the weakness of the instruments throw us upon the grace of God as the one operative principle, the one operative dynamic that could ever make it have any use.

Otherwise, we're clanging cymbals, restlessly bouncing against each other in the wind, producing sound briefly but achieving nothing. Beloved, we've got to come to the end of ourselves and realize that this is something that God must do. We must rely on Christ, not our own strength if we're to succeed in the task that's given to us. And that means something for you and for me. Glad to have you visitors with us.

Glad you're here. Those of you that are here and you consider Truth Community your church home. What I want you to see is that this should produce in us a deeper, more profound sense of dependence and drive us to prayer and say, God, have mercy on us. God, help us.

Human ingenuity is going to take me nowhere. God, you've got to show grace and make this happen if it's going to matter. You've commanded us to speak. Now be with us in the task and bring about the fruit that only you can do. Our resource for effectiveness is found in your grace. And if you withhold your hand, we labor in vain.

And so we see. We see from our responsibility of evangelism that we need grace for the task. And we labor knowing that God will be faithful to His Word.

We share the Gospel individually, just wanting to be faithful, knowing we can't produce the result but we'll be faithful and trust God to do with our labors what He wishes. J. I. Packer says, and I'm closing with this quote, wrestling with the issue of God's sovereignty and our responsibility for evangelism. He says this, and I quote, far from making evangelism pointless, the sovereignty of God in grace is the one thing that prevents evangelism from being pointless. For the sovereignty of God creates the possibility, indeed the certainty, that evangelism will be fruitful. It doesn't depend on you to save somebody.

You can't do that. But you evangelize, trusting God and knowing that He can. And when you're conscious of that, it makes you pray.

It makes you plead. It makes you urgent before God that says, God, help us. God, help me. Help this loved one who is not responding to the Gospel.

God, you've got to help. And the lack of urgency in your prayer life is a reflection of the fact that you haven't quite grasped this as deeply as you need to yet. For if we grasp this at the level at which Scripture teaches us, we would be on our face before God pleading for help rather than strutting around in our boastfulness about what we can or cannot do.

Let us remember two things as we close. Let us remember that God does the work of salvation and trusts Him for that. Secondly, let us remember that God commands us to speak and obey Him.

So as you go out to speak about your faith in Jesus Christ, remember that only God can bring a person to salvation and that we are blessed to have a role at all as a messenger of the truth. Next time, Pastor Don Green moves further into our series, Titus, God's Glorious Plan of Grace on The Truth Pulpit, and we hope you'll plan now to be with us. Meanwhile, we invite you to visit our website, thetruthpulpit.com. There you can download podcasts or find out how to receive CD copies of Don's radio messages for your personal study library. And if you want to go even more in depth, you'll also find the link Follow Don's Pulpit. That'll take you to Don's full-length weekly sermons, not subject to the time editing we need for radio broadcasts. And if you're in the Cincinnati area, check out the Service Times for Truth Community Church, also on our website, and we hope you'll plan a visit. We'd love to welcome you. Thanks for listening. I'm Bill Wright, and we'll see you next time for more from The Truth Pulpit.