How To Tell Them About Jesus

How to Tell them About Jesus

Matthew 28:19, Acts 16:16-40

Online Sermon: http://www.mckeesfamily.com/?page_id=3567

I was watching the news this morning and in bold, highlighted colors the worldwide meter of COVID-19 cases has now hit over 2.1 million with about 150 thousand deaths! The world is frantically seeking to develop a vaccine and a cure for this deadly disease. Canada for example has devoted 275 million and United States 1.25 billion to do research on this disease! If you developed a cure for this disease would you not share it with the world? Would you not go on every news station, travel across the globe and Facebook everyone how to be saved from this deadly disease? Absolutely, yes! Let me tell you a statistic about a disease far more deadly than COVID-19. Approximately 2/3rds or over 5 billion people of this world are not Christian and face an eternity in hell where excruciating pain never ceases due to a disease called sin. The Good News is that while everyone is affected by this disease the cure is known and available to all who will believe in Jesus Christ! Since we as Christians have the cure why do we devote a mere 1 percent of our tithe to evangelism? There are many reasons the chief of which is that this world is skeptical and dare I say hostile to believing in a single God, especially when that god is not self! The following sermon is going to review how Paul and Silas were able to effectively evangelise to the hostile people of their time in hope that we might learn and apply their proven techniques to evangelising the unsaved of our generation.

Effective Evangelism Starts with Prayer and Action

The story begins by telling us that one day when Paul and Silas were on their way to the Jewish place of prayer, which was located at outside the city gate at the river (verse 13), they met a slave girl who made a lot of money for her owners by predicting the future. She was possessed by a spirit of Pythona, a Greek god of prophecy. While this seems odd to our western culture, in antiquity demon possession happened frequently. Once the demon recognized the divine source of Paul and Silas’ ministry was none other than Jesus Christ it got the girl to shout that these men were from the Most High God and that they were about to tell everyone how to be saved (verse 17). Since salvation “was the object of vows and prayers to many gods in the Greco-Roman world,” the demon was likely trying to get the focus from the missionaries teaching diverted away from Christ and onto any other god. She kept this up for many days until Paul got frustrated with her and “in the name of Jesus Christ” commanded the demon to leave the slave girl. We are told that she was immediately freed from the demon but are left to wonder if she became a believer or not.

From the first part of this story one learns that effective evangelism begins with prayer and action. Prayer is not only powerful and effective for our physical and spiritual well being (James 5:16) but is also the backbone of evangelism. Not only will the Holy Spirit give you the words to say (Matthew 10:19) but will also open the door of a person’s heart to be receptive to the Good News. Our role is to plant and water the seeds (1 Corinthians 3) and to pray that the Spirit would quicken their hearts and upon belief covert them into born-again believers. While the first step in evangelism is prayer let us not forget the second step is … to GO! In the Great Commission Christ commands us to GO and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). With Spirit-led boldness, like Paul and Silas we are to leave the comfort of our church and go out into our communities and preach what this world must do to be saved. While this will be uncomfortable and invite much criticism, surely the comfort that we have received (2 Corinthians 1:3-4) and the prospect of them spending an eternity in hell (2 Thessalonians 1:5-9) is enough motivation to provoke us into fulfilling our role as Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20) and planting seeds of righteousness in God’s kingdom. While not everyone is called to be an evangelist all are called to give the reason why they have hope in Jesus Christ as their Lord (1 Peter 3:15).

Effective Evangelism Invites Persecution

Once the owners realized the slave girl could no longer predict the future and therefore their hope of making money was gone, they dragged Paul and Silas into the marketplace to face the authorities (verse 19). Appealing to “xenophobia and anti-Semitism of the people,” the owners accused the missionaries of stirring up and threatening the social cohesion of the city. Ignoring the obvious economic and self-serving reasons for the owners complaint, without legal or social merit the magistrates of the city shamefully had Paul and Silas publicly beaten and thrown into prison. Despite Judaism being a legal religion of the Roman empire this incident and others proved that the Jewish people were merely tolerated but generally disliked and persecuted. Ironically at this point in the story the authorities had no idea the Paul and Silas were actually Roman citizens and as such the city, which was mostly retired Roman soldiers, would have strongly disapproved of illegally beating and imprisoning their own countrymen!