Evangelism is Incarnational
You will be my Witnesses • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 4 viewsNotes
Transcript
Evangelism is Participatory
John 17:20-23
Series Slide
Good morning and welcome to worship, those of you online and gathered here in the house of God. It is so good to be gathered here on this 4th week of Lent and the 5th week of our sermon Series. We have one more week before we get to Palm Sunday! What that means is that you have another week to get eggs in for our big Resurrection hunt and figure out what you will bring for the potluck. The Roundtree family is bringing brisket and the church will supply fried chicken… the rest is up to you. Dora is going to be coordinating the set-up, tear-down, and all that… but she will need help. If you are available to help, please let her know!
We haven’t said much about Lent this year while we’ve been in the series on evangelism, but I hope you are taking this season to prepare your heart for the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but more than that, that we are preparing our heart for a life following the Risen Lord into the world that he has called us to. While Lent has not been explicitly discussed, it is certainly implied in the idea that “We will be his witnesses.” Speaking of that… let’s quote our verse for the month together… This is the last week, so let’s get it right…
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8
That is great, let’s do it one more time, just so that we have it down…
Now, I introduced the memory verse for April last week, but I want to put it in front of you this week…
1 Chronicles 4:10(NIV)
Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “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.” And God granted his request.
Now, if you haven’t read Chronicles in a while, let me give a little context by reading the verses before and just after this verse:
1 Chronicles 4:5-12 (NIV)
“Ashhur the father of Tekoa had two wives, Helah and Naarah.
Naarah bore him Ahuzzam, Hepher, Temeni and Haahashtari. These were the descendants of Naarah.
The sons of Helah:
Zereth, Zohar, Ethnan, 8 and Koz, who was the father of Anub and Hazzobebah and of the clans of Aharhel son of Harum.
Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, “I gave birth to him in pain.” Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “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.” And God granted his request.
Kelub, Shuhah’s brother, was the father of Mehir, who was the father of Eshton. Eshton was the father of Beth Rapha, Paseah and Tehinnah the father of Ir Nahash. These were the men of Rekah.”
There was something special about this gentleman. While listing the lineage of the people of God, there is a hard break, an interruption, about this one person… What do we know about Jabez? His birth was painful… Now, having been in the room for three births, they are always painful, but there must have been something different about his birth… I mean, his mother called him Jabez, which is a word that sounds like the Hebrew word for “pain.” So, he spent his life walking around with a name that sounded like people were calling him “pain.”
So, his prayer was that he would not cause pain. That God would bless him and that he would not cause pain.
He wanted to be influential in his clan… and God granted that wish.
Jabez was so impactful, that the author of Chronicles felt it necessary to include a prayer that he was known for… a prayer that he must have shared with others… the author concluded that God granted him his wish. So, Jabez was a special man, blessed by God with an increasing territory… an increasing influence for God.
What would it look like for you to be blessed by God with an increasing influence for God?
I think it would look like someone seeking to live like Jesus. I think it would look like someone seeking to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world today. I think it would look like someone trying to live the life that Jesus taught us to live. In other words, I think it would be incarnational… that Jesus is in you as Jesus was in the world.
Evangelism is Incarnational
So, today, we are going to take that concept of the incarnation and apply it to Evangelism. Because I believe Evangelism is Incarnational!
So, with that thought, let us pray.
<Prayer>
Video
Sermon slide
Sometimes we just need to have a little fun, right? OK… that is the opposite of Incarnational Evangelism.
So, what do I mean by the fact that Evangelism is Incarnational? To know what that means, we need to understand the idea of incarnation.
In John 1:14, we learn that God became flesh and dwelt among us. That is the definition of incarnation. According to Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, “Incarnation” means literally “en-fleshment” or, slightly more fully, “embodiment in flesh.”
We find the concept all through the gospels, but it is most explicit in the Prologue of John.
John 1:1 tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Then in verse 14 we read that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Why? “So that we can behold his Glory.”
I’m not going to go down the trail of scholarship that explains the Greko-Roman idea of the eternal word, and that the Gnostic thought was that the flesh is what we need to escape and how they didn’t believe a real god could put on flesh in reality.
But what John was saying, what he learned and realized from his time walking with Jesus, was that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. That God became one of us and walked among us… that God came in the form of Jesus Christ – 100% God and at the same time 100% human. God was en-fleshed as a human!
In that culture, the god’s were separated – they were transcendent… they were far off… that the god’s existed outside of this space and time.
Not Jesus.
Jesus was immanent, he was close. Jesus physically existed inside this space and time.
Not only that, but God in the Flesh, Jesus, Emannuel came and lived among us. He made his dwelling among us… or as the King James put it, “He tabernacled among us.”
Remember, the Tabernacle was the tent of meeting, it was the portable Temple before the people begged for a permanent place of worship. The Tabernacle meant that wherever the people went, God went with them. God “pitched” His tent among the people.
When Jesus came to this space and time, being born in Bethlehem, living in Egypt, Nazareth, and then throughout Judea and Samaria… God tabernacled with the people once again.
So, what does that mean for Evangelism?
Think back to the words we read together from John 17 a few moments ago. It was Jesus’ prayer “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
Just as God the Father was in Jesus and Jesus in the Father, Jesus wants to be in us… In other words, we are the en-fleshment… we are the embodiment of Jesus on earth today that the world may believe.
OK, that’s a lot… that almost seems meta-physical in some way…
Paul put it a different way in 1 Corinthians 12:27 when he told us, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
I don’t think there is anyone who has said it as eloquently as Teresa of Avila. She was a Spanish Nun and reformer of the church in the mid-1500s. While Luther was trying to reform the universal church in Germany, Teresa and others like her were trying to reform the universal church in Spain and parts of France during what is known as the counter-reformation. One of Teresa’s famous quotes was this…
Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
You know what… God is God, and God can introduce himself to someone in a dream, or through some mystical method… and God does. I shared a story to the Wednesday Pastor’s Study group a couple of weeks ago about a young lady that grew up in an Atheist home… one night in a dream, Jesus came to her and told her about his grace and love. She sought out a Bible and began to read and learn. Evangelists to the Muslim faith communities tell of stories of Jesus coming to Muslims in a dream, and them converting to Christianity.
So, yes, God does do that… but that is the exception rather than the rule. Instead, we plant seeds along the path… we water the seeds that others have planted… we get to participate in God’s harvest as His body on earth.
You and I get to participate in being the hands and feet of Jesus… you and I get to be the eyes and ears of Jesus… you and I get to be the voice of our Lord, sharing the goodness of God to the world around us.
Evangelism is incarnational because you and I are the Body of Christ in the world today.
Now, what does it mean to be the incarnation of Jesus… well, it kinda looks like Jesus living through you the way that Jesus lived 2000 years ago.
Here are a few points I ran across when I was looking into this idea:
Incarnational Evangelism is not just a technique or strategy, but a way of understanding and living out the Christian faith.
We have a million techniques and strategies of sharing the Gospel… and most of the time they are misused and misapplied. When strategies and techniques are used without the love and grace of God applied to them, we end up driving people away from Jesus rather than drawing them to Jesus. Incarnational evangelism isn’t something we do, it is who we are… it is letting Christ live through us.
Incarnational evangelism prioritizes building genuine relationships with people, understanding their needs and contexts, and sharing the Gospel through lived experiences and actions. It isn’t about scaring the Hell out of a complete stranger the way I learned to evangelize… It is about building real relationships with people who are far from God. It’s about hanging out with sinners.
OK, a little secret. I have a couple of tattoos and I might get more. It starts with a long story that involves the army and a biker house in the middle of the woods in Maryland… Fast forward 25 years to Brownwood and you find me sitting in a chair getting a walrus tattoo covered (it was supposed to be a wolf, but the Biker lady messed up and I had lived with this walrus howling at the moon for 25 years.)
Anyway, I am sitting in the chair and get to talking to the tattoo artist who is a nominal Christian. I later told someone about it and they said, “Oh, you can’t go to see him… don’t you know what he did?” and they proceeded to tell me of the accusations against him and the sins he had committed and all that. You know what I did? I went back for him to add more to my tattoo. I went and built a relationship with him… I prayed for him… I didn’t let his sin separate him from the opportunity for the love of God…. Jesus didn’t separate himself from me, in fact while I was yet a sinner, he died for me. So, I offered the love and grace of God to him… not in a judgmental way, but through the love and the power of the Holy Spirit… I planted seeds… I watered seeds, and I trust that God will reap the harvest.
We have to be building relationships with people outside the church!
NEXT
Incarnational Evangelism emphasizes living a life that reflects the values and teachings of Jesus, demonstrating the love and grace of God through daily interactions and service.
Yes, we need to proclaim the truth of the Gospel to the people we meet… with our words. But, we need to do that through a life shared with them. If someone is starving to death, they aren’t going to be very willing to listen to you say, “I’ll pray for you.” We need to meet physical needs so that they will hear the spiritual needs.
A friend of mine tells the story,
“There was once a man who was walking along a path and fell into a pit. Along came a government official who said, “I’m so sorry this happened to you. Here are some vouchers for groceries to eat. I hope you are OK.”
“Then a pastor walked by and said, “I’m so sorry this happened to you. And he prayed a prayer over the man, and walked away.
“Finally, another man walked by and saw him in the pit and jumped down there with him. The first man in the pit said, “Why did you do that, now we are both stuck in the pit.” Then, the 2nd man said, “Yes, we are both in the pit, but I’ve been here before and I know the way out.”
Incarnational evangelism is getting in the pit with them and showing them the way out.
Incarnational evangelism encourages adapting the message of the Gospel to be relevant and understandable in the specific cultural and social context where people are living.
Now, we have to be careful with this one. We don’t change the gospel to fit the culture. The good news of Jesus transcends culture. But, sometimes we need to explain and adapt the message in culturally relevant ways.
An example is a missionary to the Amazon was trying to explain the Gospel and the idea the the enemy comes as a roaring lion. They just weren’t getting it. They didn’t have roaring lions, they didn’t even have jaguars or other big cats in their area. One night as she was trying to figure out a way to explain it, one of her assistants told her about the Anacondas in the river that would snatch them and kill them. The next day, she explained that the enemy was like the great anaconda what would steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus came so that they could have a complete life. The people got it, they understood. She didn’t change the Gospel, but she told the story in a way they could understand.
Jesus did this all the time. When he was with farmers he talked about sowing and reaping. When he was near the lake he talked about catching fish. When he in the hills he talked about the things of the shepherd. The message was the same, but presentation was adapted to the audience. We need to do the same thing with those we meet.
Finally,
Incarnational Evangelism views evangelism as a collective responsibility of the church, rather than solely an individual's task, encouraging everyone to participate in sharing their faith and serving others.
We don’t just “live like Jesus” and then do nothing. Remember, Jesus not only healed the sick, he then told them to “go and sin no more.” He not only gave the woman at the well living water, he talked to her about the life she was living… not in a judgmental way, but in a loving and caring way… a way that drew her into the truth of the life He was offering her.
Sermon Slide
The job of evangelism, the practice of sharing our faith, is not something that “the preacher” does. It isn’t something reserved for the church staff or the leaders. The work of evangelism is our job. Yours and mine, as we go about our daily lives we – you and I – make followers, disciples, of Jesus Christ, teaching them to obey Jesus’ commands, and we do that knowing that he is with us always, to the end of the age.
That is why this past week, I had you writing your story that can be shared with others.
So, you have memorized why we do what we do… “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and the ends of the earth.”
You have identified your mission field and are praying for them.
You have begun the process of identifying and writing your story.
This week, we begin praying for God to enlarge our territory… to put people in our path to present the good news of Jesus to…
So, this week's homework… to rewrite your story, to go through last week's exercise and rewrite it based on just what has happened in the past 24 months… and bring that with you next week.
Continue praying for those you have identified.
Pray for your Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria
Pray that God would increase your territory.
And come back next week ready to put it all into practice.
Amen…
Amen!
