Keys To Effective Evangelism Series

INTRODUCTION

• When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, our lives should change; people should be able to see a difference in our lives.

• The church is called to reach out to lost people so that we can win them to Jesus. Once we immerse them into the kingdom of God, we are to take those new converts and make disciples out of them. This is the mission of the church. We may do other things, but they must all lead back to this prime objective.

• Do we meet this objective by accident? Does God just send a few people a year to us or is there more that needs to happen as we try to reach out to the lost?

• Today we are as we continue in the book of 1 Thessalonians; we are going to see what made the church at Thessalonica successful in their quest to impact the world around them for Jesus.

• Last week we started by seeing that in order for us to be successful in impacting the world for Jesus, we first had to let Jesus impact each one of us in a way that others will see the difference Jesus makes in our lives.

• Remember, the whole subject of the book of 1 Thessalonians can be summed up in the statement, “How Now Shall We Live?” What are we to do with ourselves as we await the return of our Lord Jesus?

• In 1 Thessalonians 1:5-10 Paul continues with his theme of thanksgiving. In this section of text, we are going to look at some keys to effective evangelism.

• When the church stops evangelizing or spreading the good news about Jesus Christ to the world, the church will die, not only that, but the church would be condemning all within her sphere of influence to a sentence of eternal punishment.

• Our success or failure will have eternal consequences on many people!

• For the Church of Jesus Christ to make a difference in the lives of other people and in the world around us, we must possess these keys.

SERMON

The first key to effective evangelism is:

I. RECEIVING THE WORD verse 5.

A. What are we receiving? This may sound a bit trivial, but it is important for us to consider.

1. We are receiving the very Word of God!

2. We can know that we are one of the elect by the fact that we were won to Jesus by the right message.

3. This puts a big responsibility on the one who shares the Gospel to make sure it is indeed the gospel that they are giving to people.

4. We do not want to use some gimmick to win people, we have to win them to Jesus with God’s word. We can use a variety of techniques to get people to come, but we must ultimately win them with the Gospel.

5. ROM 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

6. 1CO 15:1-2 Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

7. If we attract people to a perverted version of the message, we are not winning them to Christ. We end up winning people to something other than Jesus.

B. The way the message is presented and the way we receive that message will affect how passionate we are about evangelism!

The message is to be preached and received in:

1. Power!

• The word for “power” is the same word from which we get the word “dynamite”!

• The message should be presented in a powerful way. The gospel was changing the lives of those who accepted it.

• ROM 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. (SHAME) IT IS TIME TO QUIT APOLOGIZING

• The gospel should come in and disrupt things, it should not only destroy the old life, but it will construct the new life we have in Christ (2 Cor 5:17).

• When you are going to build a new building on a site where an old one exists, you use dynamite to destroy the old so the new can be built.

• The power of God was behind the preaching. The message of the gospel is not just a bunch of words, but the power of God for salvation!

The message is to be preached and received in:

2. The Holy Spirit!

• The Holy Spirit was at work in the people who were preaching the message and that work was evident in the lives of the messengers.