Evangelism is Participatory
You will be my Witnesses • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
Evangelism is Participatory
Matthew 28:16-20
Series Slide
Good morning and welcome to worship on this amazing day the Lord has made. A special welcome to those of you who are joining online. I am so glad that we have this resource for you. I know it doesn’t replace gathering together in one place to lift our voices to God, but when we can’t be here, it is a great alternative.
We are now in week 4 of our sermon series based on this month’s memory verse, Acts 1:8, “And you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and the ends of the earth.”
You and I are to be God’s witnesses! We started by looking at the need in this community for people to know about Jesus… there are 26,000 who are in danger of an eternity separated from the goodness of God. We discussed that we need to stop sharing sheep and calling it church growth. When people leave one church to go to another church it might make the receiving church feel good… the new attendee may find they are discipled in the faith better… but we aren’t making new disciples for Jesus Christ. It’s good to welcome Jesus followers into our fellowship… I want that… but more than that I want to see those who don’t know Jesus to come to know the love and grace, the abundant life that He offers.
Then, last week we looked at the fact that we need to let God do God’s thing. Our job is to plant and water… we are to share the seeds of faith, and we are to water the seeds that someone else may have planted… but the harvest belongs to the Lord. We need to be prepared to be God’s hands and feet in the process of the harvest, but the harvest does belong to God.
Now, you had some homework this past week. You were to name 5 people who are far from God, write their names down, and begin praying for them. I truly hope you did that. I hope that you took the time to pray for them daily. That assignment will continue as an ongoing homework assignment. We all need to be considering and praying for who it is that God would have us share our faith with.
Now, this week, we are moving in a new direction. This week we are looking at how it is that we participate in evangelism. In other words, it isn’t something we talk about, it is something we do. We are to be actively sharing the faith.
Evangelism is Participatory
So, as we get started considering what that means, let’s pause for a prayer.
<Prayer>
You are an evangelist. The question is, what are you an evangelist for? We are passionate about many things and we will tell the world about whatever we are passionate about. If a new restaurant came to town and you loved it… you would tell everyone around you that they have to go try it. Some of you are fans of Jack Reacher or Paradise some other streaming show, and you will tell others about the latest episode. Some of you may have fallen head over heels for a new sports team… and you tell everyone about it so they too can experience the joy we feel. For me, it’s SCUBA… you all know that. I’ll talk about SCUBA to anyone that will listen. Why? Because seeing and understanding the beauty of the underwater world has changed the way I look at the world around me. It has changed the way I interact with God’s nature. In short, it has changed my life and I want to share that with others.
You have had prior pastors that might have talked about Duck Hunting a bit… or maybe Donuts...
We are passionate about many things. Why then are we so silent about our faith? Something that not only changed our life, but it has changed our eternity.
I think, often it is because we are afraid. Not afraid of someone or something, but more afraid because we don’t know what to say!
We think we have to be some kind of scholar and know all the ins and outs of the Bible in order to share our faith. Well, that isn’t how you came to faith, so why do you think that’s the way you have to share your faith? Most of us came to faith because a Sunday School teacher took the time to care about us and teach us about Jesus… not that they were an expert, but because they were willing. Others of us came to faith because of our families… not because they were scholars, but because they cared.
Let’s pause for a moment to consider today’s verse. Some of us already have verses 19-20 memorized… “we are to Go and make disciples of Jesus Christ, teaching them to obey everything that he taught… oh, and by the way, he is with us always, to the end of the age.”
Too often we get this all mixed up. Too often we focus on the wrong word in the verse. We often think it’s all about the go or the teach, and not the make. The United Bible Societies Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew puts it this way… you English teachers will love this…
UBS Quote (2 slides)
“Go … baptizing … teaching (verse 20) are each participles dependent upon the main verb makedisciples of. But in such a construction it is not uncommon for the participles themselves to assume the force of an imperative. However, the command to make disciples is the primary command, while the commands to baptize and teach are ways of fulfilling the primary command.”
I have often taught this idea in this way… As you go about your daily life, your walking around – everyday life, make disciples by baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and teaching them the things that he has taught us…
Sermon Slide
The imperative isn’t to change the way you live your life to be an evangelist, it is instead to render your life a reflection of what Jesus has done in you so that you can share that with others. You don’t have to become something different to be an evangelist – God made you the way you are… with your own intricacies and specialties. God made you as you are with your story. God has touched your life in a specific way, and that is your story. That is your witness.
I’m giving away a secret of one of next week’s devotionals, but I wanted to share this about someone using their everyday life to make disciples of Jesus Christ. His name was Edward Kimball. Who is that you ask? Edward was a shoe salesman who had a young man working for him named Dwight. He was also a Sunday School teacher. He encouraged young Dwight to come to church and join the Sunday School class of other rowdy boys his age. Edward took the time to pray for and mentor this young man in the faith, leading him to make a personal decision to follow Christ. That young man later grew into the famous pastor and evangelist we know as Dwight L. Moody.
Moody then went on to lead Wilbur Chapman to Christ and mentor him as he became an evangelist.
Chapman then led Billy Sunday to Christ and mentored him as he left baseball to become an evangelist.
It was at a Billy Sunday revival that Mordecai Ham accepted Christ and later became a preacher.
Then, one day during a revival in Charlotte, North Carolina a sandy-haired, lanky high school student whom everyone called Billy Frank came to the revival meeting, was converted and surrendered to the ministry.
His friends knew him as Billy Frank, but you probably know William Franklin Graham II, as Billy Graham.
We don’t need another Billy Graham or Dwight L. Moody or even another Paul. We need more people like Edward Kimball. The Body of Christ needs you to be willing to pray for a young person or mentor a fellow follower of Christ. I really doubt Mr. Kimball expected that his trying to help a young boy could literally change the world, but it did. We never know the impact we have on an individual… only God knows that. As we said last week, the harvest belongs to the Lord. Our job is to plant the seeds, water the seeds, and be ready to participate in the harvest of the Lord.
Now, what does being ready to participate in the Harvest look like?
First of all, it involves prayer. You are already praying for 5 people you need to reach for Christ.
But here is another prayer for you to consider. In fact I will cover it in more detail next week and, just a hint, it might be an upcoming memory verse… It comes from 1 Chronicles 4:10 and we call it the Prayer of Jabez.
“Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.”
It got a bad wrap for being the prosperity gospel… you know, if you pray the prayer just right you get rich… “God bless me and give me more land and more stuff…”
But that isn’t what the prayer says. In that culture, territory was influence. So, when we pray, “God bless me and enlarge my territory” what we are praying is “God, increase my influence for you” Or, God, put someone in my path that I may influence them for You.”
So, prayer has to be a huge part of the process of participating in evangelism.
We also have to recognize that God is with us. Just as we read in Matthew 28… Jesus told us, “I will with you always, until the end of the age.” We do not go alone. Jesus is with us as we go about our daily lives, making, teaching, and baptizing… Jesus is with us.
Finally, We have to be prepared to tell the story God has given us. So, I ask, do you have your elevator speech ready? You know what an elevator speech is don’t you? In the sales world, you need to be able to tell the story of your product in the time it takes to ride the elevator.
In other words, you want it to be clear and concise. We need to be ready to tell our story about our faith in the same way.
So, your homework, in addition to praying for your 5 people who need to know of the love and grace of Jesus… your homework is to write your story. In your bulletin is an insert that serves as a prompt to write your testimony. It is set up as 3 different questions each day. Write a paragraph or so on each of these as you think about the question. Then, on Friday take all that you have written and write your story.
That’s your homework for today.
Pray for one who is going… Terry Jacobson…
