Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / July 30, 2017 | Really? - Preach The Gospel. Use Words If Necessary.

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July 30, 2017 | Really? - Preach The Gospel. Use Words If Necessary. · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing today?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Life is so good.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've had eight cute kids in my house this week, and I'm related to them.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been a lot of fun.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: But it's great to see you.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting, we're in a summer series called Really?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is number nine today out of 12.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I ran across a quote, a line, a statement by Benjamin Franklin several hundred years ago this week.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I my first thought was, I don't find it that hard.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I can find it easy to remain stupid.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the purposes for this series is to sort of shatter or shake up some of our Christianies, Christian cliches, things and things that we hear cause us to think about those.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're going to do again this morning.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Our text comes from the book of Romans, chapter 10.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: In the King James, it goes like this in Romans 10, 14 through 17.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And how shall they hear without a preacher?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And how shall they preach, except they're sent, as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that bring the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: But they've not all obeyed the gospel.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: For Isaiah says, Lord, who's believed our report?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So then, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: King James Version.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 10, 14 to 17.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this morning I want to address the line that I'm sure you've heard became popular in the 60s and 70s, 1960s and 70s, that is.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Preach the gospel, use words if necessary.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been heard a lot in the last four years since the present Pope took office.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: As you know, when popes take office, they take a name of a saint.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: They choose a saint, take a name.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so this pope chose the name of Francis from Saint Francis of Assisi, 1180, 1181, 1182, lived, in other words, a long time ago.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, the moment he took that name, the most famous quote attributed to Saint Francis suddenly started becoming very, very common.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not that he quoted it, but you know, you began to see it again on bumper stickers, you saw youth pastors plastering it over their youth rooms, you saw it on those church message boards, you see it at all places.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary, use words.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Attributed falsely, excuse me, attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk about this morning, and first I want to say a couple of nice things about it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, before I blast it, I want to say a couple of nice things.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give it a thumbs up in a couple of ways.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: For one thing, this idea, preach the gospel, use words if necessary, which of course is intended to point out that deeds and deeds of compassion and cups of cold water and so forth, that that's the most important thing to do, living the life, and if necessary, use words, that it has a couple of things going for it.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: One is that compassion is a good thing, and it is God's will.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Both in the Old and New Testament we read it.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs, we read it, Proverbs 14.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Book of Proverbs is sort of looks at the whole world, all of us as people, as having the image of God, as being created.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, on that basis, there's sort of a worldwide democracy of care that we ought to give.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Don't oppress poor people because that insults their creator.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Be generous to the needy, whether they're Christians or non-Christians, and that honors their creator.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the New Testament similarly says in Galatians 6, verse 10, therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now it does say after that, especially to those who belong to the family of believers, and we know from Paul elsewhere in Timothy that especially to your own family, but we're supposed to try to do good to all people, right?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one of the thumbs-up things with this statement.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Another is that we know that proclamation witnessing can be undercut by a lack of compassion.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the story of the Good Samaritan, where this man gets wounded severely, he's by the side of the road, and then the religious people come by, the preachers come by, a priest comes by, and a Levite comes by.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the pastor, an elder, and a deacon.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And they pass by and they pass by the other side, and as a result of that kind of behavior, nobody respected or really listened to those people.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you can short circuit your witness if you're uncompassionate, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why when something like that happens, I mean, Hollywood movies are full of it.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: The preachers or the religious people are always the hypocrites or they're always mean.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's when actions speak louder than words.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's when we know talk is cheap.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's when what you do speak so loudly we can hardly hear what they're saying.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: When the proc what they say, when they're when their talk does not fit their walk.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: So now I said a couple of nice things about this.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Preach the gospel, use words if necessary.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna back up the dump truck and tell you seven things that I think are wrong.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give it a big thumbs down.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: For one thing, it's self-contradictory.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: For the word gospel means what?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: It means news.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: It means good news.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, it's the very essence of the gospel that it is words.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so saying, preach the gospel, use words if necessary is cute and catchy, but self-contradictory.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, uh saying preach the gospel, use words if necessary is like saying feed the hungry, use food if necessary.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate those laughs.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was supposed to be a little bit funny.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, somebody ever says to you, hey, I believe in preach the gospel, use words if necessary, then you can say back to them, yeah, I believe in feeding the hungry, use food if necessary.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Ha ha.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Something like that.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So uh number two, the problem with this saying is that it reverses God's priorities, in which the message is number one and mercy is number two.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: You say, really?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Those are God's priorities?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, when it comes to dealing with the world, the great commission is preach, go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Go into all the world and build hospitals, or go into all the world and hand out money, food, or cups of cold water.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: The priority that God says is first the message, and mercy is the assistant.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Third, and related to that, is that this saying puts the temporary over the eternal.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: It puts good health and eating over uh over the eternal word of life.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: The central passage, perhaps, in the Bible that contrasts the eternal and the temporary is 2 Corinthians 4, 16 through 18.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: It goes like this.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, Paul says, we don't lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Can I get an amen from those of you over 40?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Though outwardly we're wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Don't put the temporary over the eternal.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the priorities.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, this saying, preach the gospel at all times, use words if necessary, forgets that people are saved by hearing, not health.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 10, our text.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: How can they call on him to save them unless they believe?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: How can they believe unless they hear?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Unless they hear.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: How can they hear unless somebody tells them?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then verse 17, faith comes from hearing the message.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the message is heard through the word about Christ.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Faith comes by hearing.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget, don't overlook the fact that people are saved by hearing, not by eating, or not by good health.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, this saying joins the modern drift from the gospel, away from the gospel toward social action.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most interesting books I read this last year is called Drift, Mission Drift, actually, by a couple of young guys, Peter and Chris, Peter Greer, Chris Horse.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what they are doing is they are listing, as they go through the chapters, listing all kinds of organizations, missions, churches, and other organizations in the world that have drifted away from their original mission.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And those, some of those had an original mission of evangelism, but they've drifted away from that.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they give lots of interesting stories.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you would be familiar with veggie tales.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Any of you grow up with you like to talk to tomatoes?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're laughing.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: You could have sung with me there.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Great stuff.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: We used to love that.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: We used to listen to that.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: It began in Phil Visher's garage and then it ballooned, it exploded, it blew up into Chicago, into an organization that employed 200 people, it was$40 million.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: He hired all of these sharp people, some from Hollywood, New York City, you know, cutting-edge people.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so this thing was just going great guns, but then about 10 years ago, so he has this big confab in Chicago, you know, to reinspire them and everything else.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Phil stands up and he says, he tells them his testimony, and I'm a Christian, he says, and I'm so excited we have a company which is advancing the cause of Christ.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as Phil tells it, a dead silence fell over the room.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: At which point the president of the organization, he was the founder and CEO, but the president, whom he'd hired just two years before, the president of Big Idea Inc., which is the name of the company, stood up and said, Whoa, if that's your mission, I need to opt out.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, a number of his other leaders said, I didn't realize the mission of this organization was a Christian.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I felt so stupid that in my hiring, I had neglected to ask people and talk to them about the mission of the organization.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, as a result of that, big idea went bankrupt shortly after.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mission Drift, absolutely critical.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And a number of you, of course, are familiar with the fact Mission Drift is not new.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Harvard University, of course, had a mission statement.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is what?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Four or five hundred years ago.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: That would be called mission drift.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Same with Yale University.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or some of you are familiar with the Young Men's Christian Association, the why, started in the late 19th century and started as a sort of a Bible study evangelistic organization, health and working out was secondary, had a lot of Bible studies.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then when John Mott, a famous, famous missionary and Christian leader, took over as president in 1888, he expanded it to foreign missions.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: So believe it or not, YMCA was sending out foreign missionaries.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: But as you know, in the 1960s and 1970s, that all got flipped.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: It became primarily an exercise, a fit and health organization, and now as of 2010, the only thing left of the YMCA is the Y.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it's what it is now.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's just what happens to organizations.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or I think of one of the uh major philanthropic organizations in our country.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Pugh family was a devout family in the 1930s, 40s.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: The father, uh uh Jay Howard Pugh's dad was the was the was the director or the president of Sinoco Oil.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was a mega millionaire.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Jay Howard, when he took over the company, was supported to send loads of money to Moody Bible Institute, Fuller Seminary, and then a young firebrand of a preacher.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he ran into each other in the early 1950s, and he and Billy Graham became best buddies, and he started funding Billy Graham.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when Billy said to him, I think we ought to have a Christian magazine, an international Christian magazine, it was it was this guy, J.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Howard Pugh, who gave the money to start Christianity today.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: His statue still sits there at Grove City College, where where my son Mark attended, and um uh very Christian Presbyterian College in Pennsylvania.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he started the Pew Charitable Trust, which gave away millions of dollars to Christian organizations, but then in 1971, I think it was, J.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Howard Pugh died.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And now that organization, that philanthropic organization, has become the poster child for Mission Drift.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because now that organization continues to give away millions and millions of dollars, but deliberately only gives money to organizations that are not Christian, to Planned Parenthood, and so forth.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just mention one more, and that is uh a charity that started the whole idea of child sponsorships.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're familiar with Compassion International, Compassion International, which is the big boy in the block now,$800 million a year, got that idea from the Christian Children's Fund, which as recently as five years ago is still one of the top ten charities in America.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: It started as the China Children's Fund, started this adopt a child program and developed into a hundred million dollar organization.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sally Struthers used to stump for it in the 90s.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Any of you remember those advertisements?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: But then one of the board members came out and said, I don't know why we're called the Christian Children's Fund.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's absolutely nothing Christian about anything we do in the board meetings or out.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: In 2011, they thought, well, we ought to just remove the name Christian, so now it's Child Fund International.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's a modern drift from gospel to social action.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: There are a number of reasons for it, perhaps.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: But one, of course, is the scandal of the gospel, the idea that somehow there is one way to God.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I am the way, the truth, and the life.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow the idea that you need Jesus Christ for salvation.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: As Tim Keller says, we can only grasp the gospel sweetness if we first grapple with its offense.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can't save yourself.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the scandal of the gospel.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that you'll run into people who say, you know what, I really appreciate what your brother does in Africa with the mission, you know, with, I mean, with the hospital type stuff, but I hate the fact that he proselytizes.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you hear that, right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So saying, you know, preach the gospel, use words if necessary, is just jumps in that river, that drift away from the gospel, proclamation, to compassion and mercy and social action.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And number six, uh, let's be honest, the changes are short term.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Changes, when you help people with their food or with their health, those changes are always short term.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: I saw this most clearly a couple of years ago when a prominent atheist in London came out in the London Times and on BBC after his years in Africa, saying, as an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: He says, missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: The crushing passivity of the people's mindset.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he continued, you can't see it, it's too small on the screen.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelists, Christian evangelism makes in Africa, sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, non-government uh operation, governmental projects, and international aid efforts.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: These alone will not do.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Education and training alone will not do.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: In Africa, Christianity changes people's hearts, it brings a spiritual transformation, the rebirth is real, the change is good.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: He concluded by saying, it confounds my ideological beliefs, it stubbornly refuses to fit my worldview, it has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I believe he said that Africa needs God.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: So preach the gospel, use words if necessary.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: According to Matthew Parris.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: The lead rabbi, uh, he's just stepped down, he was the lead rabbi in the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sachs, a well-known uh character overseas, added about the same time, much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: That needs another kind of change agent.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: It needs religion.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: So those are uh the first six things.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's changes or short term, and let me add one more thing.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of hinted at it before.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and one more thing.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Francis never said this.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he never said it, never got close to saying it.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: None of the people who hung around him said it.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody who wrote about him for the next several hundred years said it.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: The first time we find that line is 800 years later.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say that Francis would be horrified, horrified to hear that this saying was attributed to him, for actually he would go from village to village, averaging five villages a day, and he preached the gospel.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: If he was outside, they say he would grab a he would grab a uh a hay bale and stand on it, and if he was downtown, he'd ask for a box and he'd stand up, and they say he had happy feet.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was like Billy Sunday in 1900, that his feet were constantly moving, and and he was really a character, and if the people were slow in coming, he would turn and start preaching to the sheep or to the cows or something else.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: But he was preaching the gospel.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, there are a lot of reasons why I'm going thumbs down on this.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to begin to apply it, and to do that, I sort of want to walk my way through two sort of other bad ugly dogs that are that are related to it, okay?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Preach the gospel, use words if necessary, is a whole lot like saying it's not the talk, but the walk that matters, right?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's also like saying you must earn the right to share the gospel.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Have you heard those things?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Of course you've heard those things.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let me talk about those latter two for a second, briefly.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: In the end, you've seen this sign perhaps.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: In the end, it's not the talk, but the walk that matters.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Last time I checked the end, that would be the book of Revelation.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: I go, really?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the end goes like this, Revelation 20, 15.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone's name was not found, Written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: In the end, you know what?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the talk, it's the gospel that matters, not the walk, not the food.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or let's one more, let's look at that other one.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: You must earn the right to share the gospel.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: I blanked out the face on the screen of the preacher who said this recently because I like him a lot as a person.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know you know him.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know many of you like him a lot, and I want to stay away from his personality.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: I am embarrassed that he said this.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: But he said it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: If we were able, he said, to rewrite the script for the reputation of Christianity.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think we would put the emphasis on developing relationships with non-believers, serving them, loving them, and making them feel accepted.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Only then would we earn the right to share the gospel.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And John the Baptist says, Really?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Need to earn the right to share the gospel with those people?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Really?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when the woman came at the Samaritan woman at the well, I didn't even lower her bucket and get her her water.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And yet I shared the gospel with her.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter on the day of Pentecost, thousands of people out there, and he stands up with the eleven.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you tell him you must earn the right to share the gospel as he's stepping forward with the 11 other apostles and shouting, listen carefully, all of you fellow Jews and residents of Jerusalem.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, Shh, be quiet.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: You need to earn the right.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: You need to feed them first, or ask them how they're doing and comfort them.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: That day about 3,000 were added to the church.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul, and he's in jail, and then all of a sudden there's an earthquake, and the jailer calls down to him, What must I do to be saved?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you, after I've earned the right to share the gospel with you.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or in Acts 21, when there's a riot in Jerusalem and he says, soldiers, can I speak?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Recently, John Speed has written a book called Evangelism in the New Testament.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: I quote that book.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: By our reckoning, there are at least 89 instances of Christ and his associates doing evangelism in the four gospels.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Of these 89 instances, 77 happened in the context of confrontational instead of friendship evangelism.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've added instead of friendship.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I put that in there because really there's two kinds of evangelism you hear about.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: One is friendship evangelism.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's when you evangelize the people that you've, let's say, earned the right.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: You've been you've drunk coffee with them, you spent time with them, you played basketball with them at the wire, you've whatever.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Confrontational be like sitting next to someone on the plane, or you have an opportunity, you know, and and and let me be clear about this, by the way.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: The first kind, the friendship evangelism, that's like steak.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And confrontational evangelism is like hot dogs.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: You'd love, you love the steak.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's great, but the problem is you can't always eat steak, right?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's you you're not friends with everybody that you run into.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: He continues 87% of the witnessing encounters are with total strangers.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's in the four gospel.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: You go to, by the way, you go to Acts, there's about 30 witnessing encounters in Acts.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: 24 of the 30 are with complete strangers.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: No earning the right.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my conclusion is I I really don't feel like I need to earn the right to share the gospel because Jesus Christ already earned that right for me on the cross.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: So let me confront us.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just ask four practical questions and then uh we'll celebrate the Lord's table.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Question number one is a question that I wrestle with as a member of the missions committee of this church.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a question that I ask myself regularly.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, as I'm going down to Honduras to build a building, to build a house with some money we've donated.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go down in September as I'm involved with Trash Mountain and Haiti Lifeline and Orphanage and Highland Crest, we're involved over there.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: But this question is a question we should ask ourselves as a church.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a question we elders ask ourselves, mission committee asks, are we filling bellies and ignoring hearts?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's an important question to ask.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: In a day when surveys show that five times as much money is donated in evangelical churches for mercy projects, as is given to evangelism and church planning.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's flipped from 50 years ago.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, we were always going, you know, maybe we should be a little nicer to people instead of just handing out tracts.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we should do more.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, uh don't get me wrong, missionaries say overseas have always been the ones building the hospitals and being very kind.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And Christians have always been the big givers.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Christians donate 10 times as much money to charities as non-Christians do.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we've always helped, but but everything's flipped where now the normal thing is to respond quickly to the food and health needs of children without sometimes asking, how about their heart needs?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Are we ministering to their heart, sharing Jesus with them as well?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Are you with me on that?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not being critical of anybody or anything here.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, the question to ask yourself is am I walking the walk and talking the talk?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Am I walking the walk?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do walk the walk, walk with integrity, walk with kindness, walk with generosity toward the world, walk with compassion, but don't stop there.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Talk the talk as well.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: For Colossians 3 says, whatever you do in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: We need both of them.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: We need the deed, but we also need the word.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Question 3 Am I keeping silent about the things that matter most eternally?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Am I keeping silent about the things that matter most?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther King Jr., our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking with a young person this week about this topic.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he says to me, Jim, it's kind of interesting.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think any new Christian, anybody who's been a Christian for just a year or more, would ever even for a moment think, preach the gospel, use words if necessary.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, they're all about words because that's how they became a Christian.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're excited about words.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's when you get older and more scared, a little more cowardly, trying to please people.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want people mad at you.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're afraid of those people who say, you know, I sure hate the fact that you Christians proselytize.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's only then that somehow you begin to be silent about the things that matter.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Don't stay silent about the things that matter most.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think we all admire the fact that a number of athletes today in every sport step forward and they're courageous and they're bold on their tweets or in front of the microphone, as embarrassed as NBC is, and it's too late to grab the microphone away from you know an Olympic gold medalist who's saying, I just give all glory and praise to Jesus Christ.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: They've uh led the way for us.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: And let me get really personal with those of you who have children at home.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's sort of an irreverent magazine that I like, an online magazine called The Babylon Bee, and earlier this month they and this is all tongue-in-cheek stuff, but I love the one earlier this month where it said, Father of three wonders when he'll get a chance to influence others for Christ.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is that supposed to be funny?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was funny, you know, and in there has the whole article, and he says, I'm just praying for an offer, got the Lord to bring by anybody, somebody for me to somehow have an influence on, Father of Three.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: So let me say this Dads and moms, in your drive to turn your children into great students and great musicians and great athletes, do not neglect the most important thing, which is to talk personally with each of your children about Jesus Christ.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if you say, I can't get them to stop, I'll tell you when you can get them to stop.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want to go to bed at night.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Once you get them in bed and the lights are off, if you'll sit down on the side of their bed, they will be thrilled, and you can talk with them about anything as long as you want.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to them about Jesus.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I like about some of our ministries here at TBC has been that both Joe D'Alfonso with the Young Adults Ministry and Derek Rowe led the student ministry this summer to places where they weren't just doing mercy, they were actually talking to people about Jesus Christ.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: In both cases, they were partnering with Jews for Jesus, whom you've heard about already this morning.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm involved with them, and David Brickner's coming in two weeks.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Jews for Jesus.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: The reason I joined Jews for Jesus, I agreed to serve on their board and so forth, is because as versus all of most all of the other Jewish organizations, Christian messianic organizations, the others generally spend their time going to churches talking to Christians about Jews.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Jews for Jesus spends its money and time going to street corners talking to Jews about Jesus.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: See, they they emphasize proclamation evangelism.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at the same time, uh they'll do something that's attractive and kind on hot days.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've stood behind these tables, as did our some of our students this summer, stood behind this table, complimentary cold brew, coffee, and gave out coffee and tea and so forth with a cup that read brews for Jesus.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And people stand there and they say, Why would you do such a nice thing?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get to share the gospel.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, if somebody says to you, preach the gospel, use words if necessary, replace that.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Tell them, you know what I believe?
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: Preach the gospel and sense it's necessary, use words.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you want to be really in their face, say, no, I believe preach the gospel, use deeds if necessary.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: So my final question then for us is listen, am I rescuing people or am I just making their lives a little easier for a little longer time?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking of 9-11 for a moment, and uh and a woman, an evangelical woman, who tells the story of how she traveled in the path train, P-A-T-H, the train there in New York City, and she traveled down to Basement World Trade Center, and she got off the train, and she and a number of others, you know, started making their way up the stairs, and she hadn't gotten to her office yet, and the plane hit, and all these people started flying down the stairs, and she turns around and she joins them as she's fleeing the building before it collapses.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, To her astonishment, to her shock, she saw a number of the other people had been on the train.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're coming up, they're continuing to go up, and she says, I got in their faces.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: I yelled out, go back, go back, go back, trying to get them go down.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Some of them listen to me, and they turned around, but so many of them, she said, just push back, saying, I've got to get to my office, and kept on going up.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, in years since then, as I talk to people about Jesus, I find the same kind of feeling in me that I feel like I'm trying to rescue people from what's coming, and I'm telling them basically, go back.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: You need Jesus in your life.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them stop and some of them listen and some of them don't.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just say to you that what she's doing is great because it's a rescue operation, and if you and I are involved only in non-rescue operations, making people's lives a little easier, then maybe we need to ask ourselves, should I be involved perhaps in a rescue operation and start speaking the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now we move to the Lord's table, and I'd like us to bow in prayer because this is what we're talking about, seeing Jesus on the cross and his death for us.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when you take the bread and when you drink the cup, you need to relive that and say, wow, that's the gospel.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's the most important, that's the main thing in life.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I need to be about.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: So look at Jesus in your mind's eye and thank him for this and remember the importance of sharing this with others.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity we call communion or Eucharist, this opportunity to look back and relive and be blessed by you and your spirit for a moment.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: As we relive your son's death on the cross for us, because of your abounding love for the whole world and especially for those who believe.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.