Make Disciples

Sermon By Mark Engler

Sr. Minister

Mt. Vernon Christian Church

Mt. Vernon, MO

Any familiarity with any other sermon on the site is totally coincidental.

Make Disciples

Mt. 28:16-20

INTRO: A man was in the hospital close to death. A minister came to see him and asked: “Have you made your peace with God? I didn’t know,” said the man, “that we had ever quarreled.”

That’s the sentiment of many typical American’s today. They don’t go to bed at night with the burning awareness that they are at war with God. But do you know that if you are outside of Christ, if you haven’t taken Him as your Lord and Savior and gone through that watery grave of baptism in Christian obedience that being at war with God is exactly what you are?

There are a great number of people today who feel that they will go to heaven when they die and that many others will go to heaven when they die because they are good moral people. Many would say, “It makes no difference who or what you follow, you can be Islamic, Muslim, follow Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on and so on, and still end up in the same place as if you follow Christ.” But that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

ILLUS: 1999 National Missionary Convention a workshop leader slipped through the crakes. Those who put on the convention thought they had a good teacher, someone who was dedicated to Christ, someone who would teach Christ as the only way. Instead, he used an illustration in which he put God at the top of a mountain and he was demonstrating that there were many different paths to the top. Whether it be Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Muslim, Islamic and so on.

A good friend of mine was in that workshop as well were other classmates of mine from C.C.C.B. When he did that illustration they couldn’t believe their ears. And my friend Salonique Aldophe stood up and disputed the workshop leader. I don’t know exactly what was said, but I do know that the workshop was the talk of the convention. And that Salonique who was a very courageous young Christian with little Christian education at the time, stood up when others wouldn’t and defended his faith in disputing this very educated workshop leader. The people in that workshop sided with my friend and when the workshop was over many people thanked Salonique for his bravery and for defending the faith. That workshop leader has never been back to the National Missionary Convention.

Many people today don’t believe in what the Bible has to tell us. Many don’t believe that the Bible is the God breathed and is God’s inspired Word. It was obvious that the workshop leader that day didn’t believe that either. So when you quote them Scriptures like John 14:7 “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Or like Acts 4:12 “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” When you take them to Scriptures like that they don’t believe that what you are telling them is truth and they say that there has to be more than one way to get to heaven.

ILLUS: Terry Bowland in his book Make Disciples – Reaching The Postmodern World for Christ writes this: “Many today balk at the teaching of the church. ‘Do you mean to say,” they ask, ‘that all those outside the church have no hope whatsoever? What about all the sincere folks who never come to Christ? What of the billions in the worlds of Islam, Buddism and Hinduism? What of those who have never heard? What of my neighbors and friends who are good-hearted people, but who have never made Christ their Lord and Savior? Are you saying that they are lost? Why, if that’s true, then this ‘gospel’ has made you Christians the most narrow-minded, bigoted people on the face of the earth.”

He continues, “Perhaps, we should reply by saying, that far from being narrow-minded and bigoted, Christian are, in fact, the most loving people in the world.”

“Suppose you are a doctor and an individual comes to you one day and describes his symptoms. After taking a blood test you realize that this fellow has acute diabetes. You prescribe insulin injections. ‘Insulin!’ he cries. ‘I don’t want to take insulin.’ You assure him that he must take insulin.

‘But, I don’t want to take insulin,’ he complains. ‘Can’t I take some other drug. How about penicillin? How about a double dose of Tylenol? Won’t those do?’ Again you reaffirm that without the insulin, he will die.

Then he exclaims, ‘Why doctor, I believe you are the most narrow, closed-minded, bigoted physician I have ever met.’ Now, here’s the question: Is the doctor narrow and bigoted or is the doctor loving, because he is telling the man the truth – the only truth which will give him life!”