Even as Christians, many of us try our best to avoid uncomfortable situations. But sometimes, it is within those uncomfortable situations that we find our deepest levels of faith. We are going to discuss one of those situations this morning, but first, let us open in prayer to the Father.
When I was in high school, my thoughts were; to graduate, get a really good job and make lots of money and then live happily ever after. So, you can imagine what ran through my mind when I saw my ideal job being advertised in the paper. The ad read something like this:
I need one young man who is a self-starter, who has visions of making a lot of money and someone who wants to be his own boss. Call . . . . .
They were talking about me! I went down as fast as I could to secure my job. When I got there, I met a secretary that looked like she just came out of a Roger Rabbit cartoon, and after about a two-minute interview, she called her boss out to meet me. She told him that they had just found their man. Boy! I was so excited. With the snap of a finger, I had just been hired at what they said was a very prestigious company, and I was going to make lots of money because they said I had what it took.
After a one-day training seminar, I went out to sell my first vacuum cleaner door to door. I will never forget the first door I knocked on. This older lady came to the door. She must have been all of 28 to 30 years old. When she answered, I smiled and held a brush up in front of me and said, You don’t want to buy a vacuum cleaner today, do you, ma’am? She said, ""No" and shut the door.
Where did I go wrong? I had the energy and the ambition. I had the smile and just tons of charm. So, why did she shut the door? I had failed to make a sale for several reasons. I did not know my product very well, I did not know how to sell it very well, and my focus was on all the wrong reasons to sell in the first place.
There is an old saying among salespeople: Know what you are selling and be able to tell people why they need it. If I had just had that information before that first door, I might have made some money in that job. But, after selling one vacuum cleaner to my parents, the job soon lost its luster and I quit to become a janitor at a car lot where I made a whopping 52 cents an hour! And, as they say, the rest is history.
That story is true, and it reminds me so much of how we normal everyday Christian are when it comes time to evangelize. All churches tell us that we must evangelize, but how many of them explain anything about it or how to do it?
Today, I want to discuss some things that will hopefully give you some understanding of why the e word is so important and how to do it. It really isn’t as scary as we might think.
1. WHAT IS EVANGELISM?
The word evangelize comes from the Greek word ’euangelos’, meaning ’a messenger bringing good news.’ Have you ever brought good news to someone? Isn’t it a very good feeling to know that you have just brought news to someone who really needed to hear it very much?
When you go see a really good movie, you tell everyone you know about it, don’t you? If you go to a really good restaurant, you do the same. And when you tell others just how good that movie or the food was you don’t really care if someone disagrees with you, do you? If somebody has a problem with what you think of the movie or the food, you kind of let it just stay their problem, right? You don’t even give it a second thought.
So, why are most Christians thrown into a state of panic when the thought of sharing Jesus with others goes through their minds? Most Christians are scared to death of evangelizing because they dont really know what it is or what it means. Many of us are very hesitant about sharing religion with somebody who may not want us to. We are overly focused on what others think.
I worked at the Post Office, and we were told not to recruit people into our religion. I don’t even want to do that. Let me explain it this way: Religion is something I try to stay away from because religion was written by man and for man. It has man’s agenda written all over it. Besides, religion never got anyone into Heaven. Therefore, I don’t ever want to try and recruit anybody!
I do, however, eagerly look forward to the opportunities that I have to share the Jesus I know with others who may not know Him. We have to realize that there is nothing wrong with that even at work, as long as -
··· You never do this instead of doing what you are being paid to do
··· You never do this when that person lets you know in any way they do not want to hear it.
Evangelism is just sharing what you personally have experienced with Jesus to others. You do not make a big production out of it, and you don’t rehearse what you are going to say where it comes out like you are reading lines from a script. You just share some honest and personal feelings with them.
If you are given questions that you do not know the answer to, be honest and tell the person you are a fairly new Christian and you don’t know that one. Yet. But you will find out and get back with them about it. Or, you can do what many others have done before you and just tell them that you’d really feel honored if they would attend your church with you. I tell everyone that I really encourage them to come visit us, and then go home and ask God whether or not they should come back. I say that this is His church, not ours.
To plainly explain what evangelism is, we would have to say that it is your sharing some of your feelings about Jesus with others who might need Him. Or, it is trying to get somebody to go to church and worship with you, so that the pastor or another person might evangelize to them once they get here.
But, to be proper, evangelism must be done with a heart that is truly concerned for that persons eternal life. If it is done for any other reason, it becomes nothing but a sales job.
2. WHY DO PEOPLE NEED TO HEAR ABOUT JESUS?
We are a stubborn group, we humans. We are totally focused on ourselves and when we want something, we want it now, don’t we? Do you think that is the way God intended for us to be? I do not think so. I think God intended for us to be perfect, just the way He originally made us.
Every since Adam and Eve caused mankind to fall from Gods grace, God has been working to reconcile us with Him. God has always used blood sacrifices in covering our sins because those sins have to die before God can recognize us. In the Old Testament, the blood came from animals, but that had to be repeated throughout a persons life. In the New Testament, the blood came from Gods Son, and this atoning lasted the rest of a person’s life, once they repented.
But, most people have not yet repented, and are still very far from God. In ISAIAH 53:6 we are told that all of us have gone astray. Since we have all gone astray, and there is only Paul speaks about our rebellion against Gone way back to God, we must be the ones who tell others so they can get back, too. That is evangelism. In ROMANS 5:10 Paul refers to us as God’s enemies. You might think that is pretty strong language, but considering the way we have all but kicked God out of our lives, I think it is a very accurate depiction. We have acted towards God without love and without respect. How else can we say we have acted but as enemies?
Most people know very little, if anything at all, about the true God in Heaven, or the plan of salvation He offers us through His Son, Jesus. These people that do not know this might be the best and neatest people in the world, but it doesn’t matter, because if they do not repent and receive Jesus as their Savior, they will go to hell.
The problem is that we do not like to hear the truth. We do not like to hear that we are going to burn in a lake of fire for eternity unless we receive the Lord Jesus as our Savior.
Therefore, we think that we are "good people" and God surely would not send "good people" to hell, so we convince ourselves that we are going to go to Heaven. We customize God to our standards. The problem with this is that we are judged to God’s standards; He is never brought down to our standards. When we do this, we change everything from Godly to ungodly. This country has been founded by and for Christians, not by and for atheists. I have one word for atheists - repent and be baptized for the repentance of sins, or leave this country if you do not like it. There is a plane leaving every hour upon the hour and if you do not like, or accept, living in a nation under God, we ask that you leave.
But that is why people need to be evangelized to: To give them information that might very well save their eternal lives. We can choose to ignore that if we want, in which case, we might end up going to hell, or we can really take to heart the fact that hell does await every person who has not received Jesus. If we take it to heart, we will start wanting very much to help these other people before they blindly march off that cliff and fall into a lake of fire, of which there is no escape. These people are you family members; your brothers and sisters; daughters and sons; mothers and fathers; your friends and co-workers.
So, what is the best way to evangelize? I don’t think we should rush out and try to impress people with our knowledge of Scripture, because until they receive Jesus, they will only see that as boasting.
I think the best way to evangelize is to simply tell others what Jesus means to you and what He has done for you. And then tell them that He can do the same for them if they want Him to.
3. WHAT WILL THE FUTURE BE FOR MOST PEOPLE?
Have you ever had a dream that you were getting ready to go somewhere, and you were getting all dolled up, combing your hair and doing everything you could to look your very best, and then you got to where you were going, and everyone else looks really good and when you look down, you realize you are as naked as a jaybird? How awfully embarrassing!
You went through all the motions of getting yourself ready and you did everything you normally did so that you would be dressed and ready to go, only to find that everything you did was for naught, and now you were naked and embarrassed beyond belief. You see now that nothing you did helped you, even though at the time you thought it was pretty good, right? We do that not only in dreams, we do that in real life. We even do that in our spiritual lives.
In PROVERBS 16:17, we read where there is only one road, and the person who guards his way will guard his life. In MATTHEW 7:13-14, tells us that the road that leads to hell is wide and a great many will travel it. It says that narrow is the gate that leads to Heaven and only a few will follow it.
Most people go through their life not knowing very much at all about the plan of salvation through Jesus. Oh, they think they do, for sure! But, they are very prideful and very stubborn and they simply refuse to turn their own will over to be subjugated to God. They think they are Christians, and they claim to be Christians; going to church all the time, being good people but never following Gods principles unless it is convenient for them to do so.
You hear us from time to time preach on tithing. Let me tell you something. All through the Bible, God warns us not to test Him. There is only one place in the Bible that God says we should test Him. In the Old Testament, in the book of MALACHI, God is talking about tithing and He says that if we tithe to test Him, He will repay us back so much that we wont have a place to put all the blessings in.
And, we believe that if you are financially able to tithe your 10%, you need to. But, if you are unable to tithe your 10% that God sets as a standard, you are supposed to do what you can, never letting your family or loved ones go in need as you give to the church.
What does that have to do with evangelism? That shows where most peoples hearts are. Most people can give a lot more than they do, but it isn’t convenient for them to do it, so they don’t. That is open rebelliousness. That will cause you to get to Heaven, thinking you are all prepared to just waltz right in, and find out at the last minute that you did not prepare at all that you are in fact, naked and embarrassed at your failings.
But, it does not have to be money. It can be your need to be in control. God says to give your will to Him. Do you? Or do you just kind of do it? That is rebelliousness, too. How about holding a grudge against somebody who long ago did you wrong? We are supposed to forgive, aren’t we? If we don’t forgive somebody who hurt us, how can we ever expect God to forgive us, who have hurt Him so much?
A young man was preparing to get married and he told his father that he was very nervous. He told his dad that he had a very bad problem with his feet smelling really bad and he was afraid his new wife would find out and be unhappy with him. His father told him not to worry about it, just be sure to always keep socks on his feet, even at night, and the wife would never know.
While they were having this conversation, the bride-to-be was talking to her mother and told her that she was scared of getting married. She said that in the mornings, her breath smelled so bad that once she yawned when she got up and all the flowers in her room died. Her mother said it would be okay if she remembered to NEVER open her mouth at all in the mornings until she jumped out of bed and went in and brushed her teeth.
Well, they got married and about six months passed and all was fine, then one morning, he awoke first, just to find that one of his socks had come off his foot during the night. He panicked and started rummaging around to find it. While he was doing this, she awoke and looked at him and said, What are you doing? He looked at her with tears in his eyes and sorrow in his voice and said, "You ate my sock!"
Let me ask you a question. Did this young couple lie to each other? I think they lied by trying to keep something secret and away from each other. How can we ever think we are good people if we go about lying to others for any reason? Yet we all do it, don’t we?
What I am getting at here is that most of us will recognize a little of ourselves in these examples. And, if we can recognize ourselves that means we aren’t as ready as we would like to think. And if we are not ready, how about all those others who dont even have this much information about getting ready?
If people you know are not evangelized to, they will sadly, but surely go to hell. Do you want that on your conscience?
The last command Jesus gave to us before He ascended into Heaven is found in Matthew 28:19-20 -
"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
We should not only be obedient to this command, but eagerly obedient. We should look just as forward to sharing our knowledge and love of Jesus with others as I had when I knocked on that first door, trying to sell vacuum cleaners.
And again, let me say that to share your story of Jesus with someone else, you need something first. You need to have your own story of Jesus. Do you? Have you ever taken the opportunity to really ask God to forgive you for being so rebellious against Him? Have you ever asked God to come into your life and get you right? He will do that if you ask Him. He will do that through His Son, but you need to do the asking first. Will you do that today? Will you ask God to help you get right with Him now as we go into our invitation time?
Jesus says that He is the way, the truth and the life. He says that nobody may know the Father but through Him. We can be good people our entire lives, but unless we truly give in to Jesus, we will never get to Heaven. Today, you can do something about that. You can make a decision today on where you want to spend your eternity.
I ask you to make a stand right now and become right with the Lord God. Your future in Heaven will hinge on this decision. If you need to get closer to Jesus this morning, or if you have never received Him as your own personal Savior, I want you to stand in faith right now and come up here with me - right now. If you need prayer for anything, whether it be for a physical condition or for some other reason, we ask that you get up right where you are and come up front so that we can pray with you.
If this is the morning that you want to become a member of this church, we ask that you get up out of your seats and join us up here to make that request official.
INVITATION
