“Sharing The Good News”
Passing on the Faith, Part 5
If you have your bible, turn to 2 Kings chapter 6, (pew bible _________)
This is the last message in our series called,
Passing On The Faith.
So we’re going to be talking about sharing our faith.
Now, maybe you’re sitting here this morning,
maybe you’re a visitor,
or you’ve come a few times,
but, you’re not even sure you have any faith,
or have any relationship with God,
And you’re certainly not thinking about
how to share your faith with others.
If that describes you this morning, that’s fine,
we love that you decided to investigate and check things out,
and here’s how you can approach this topic.
If you decided it was true,
at some point in the future,
If you decided there was something to this faith,
how would you want to pass that along to others?
If you decided it was true,
Would you tell anyone,
and how would you tell them?
We’re going to look at
a story out of the Old Testament,
Sort of a gruesome story at the start…
I have to warn you, it gets kind of gross.
2 Kings 6:24
Some time later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria.
Israel is at war with the nation of Aram.
So the king of Aram invades,
and his army surrounds Samaria
which was the capital city of Israel at the time.
There was a great famine in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey's head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter of a cab of seed pods for five shekels.
So during this siege,
the people of Israel run out of food,
and become so desperate
that a donkey’s head was bringing 80 shekels.
That was about a years wages for a common laborer,
so that would be like us paying $20,000
for a donkeys head.
Think about,
When was the last time
you had donkey’s head for dinner?
They were pretty desperate.
But it gets worse.
Verse 26
As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, "Help me, my lord the king!"
The king replied, "If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?" Then he asked her, "What's the matter?"
She answered, "This woman said to me, 'Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we'll eat my son.' So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, 'Give up your son so we may eat him,' but she had hidden him."
When the king heard the woman's words, he tore his robes.
It’s impossible for us to even imagine
this kind of desperation,
About the lowest form of life on earth we can imagine,
is the person who stoops to cannibalism.
But this is even worse,
because the woman wasn’t just a cannibal,
she actually ate her own son.
Basically it had gotten to a point of,
cannibalism or death.
There is no hope,
people are starving to death
everywhere around the city.
The richest people in the city
are paying fortunes for a donkeys head,
and the poor have become cannibals.
Then in the next chapter,
it tells us about four characters,
who are even worse off than the poor.
Chapter 7, Verse 3
Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, "Why stay here until we die? If we say, 'We'll go into the city'-the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let's go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die." At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, not a man was there, for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, "Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us!" So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives. The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered one of the tents. They ate and drank, and carried away silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also.
So these 4 lepers go to the camp of the enemy,
and make a huge discovery.
The enemy has fled,
leaving everything behind,
not just food and drink,
but gold, silver clothing,
This is amazing, its unbelievable,
this is like winning the lottery 100 times over,
this is like going to the doctor, who’s told you
you have inoperable cancer,
1 week to live,
then you go back and he says,
oops, my mistake, you’re fine,
and I’m so sorry I goofed up your diagnosis,
here’s 100,000 bucks to make up for it.
This is literally like going from death, to life.
So the 4 lepers are celebrating and partying,
while they’re stockpiling all of this stuff
they’ve discovered… but…..
Then they said to each other, "We're not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let's go at once and report this to the royal palace."
So they go back to the city,
but they can’t get past the gatekeepers,
because they’re lepers,
and lepers weren’t allowed into the city.
So they tell the gatekeepers,
and the gatekeepers shout the news
and it is reported within the palace.
But a funny thing happens,
The King doesn’t believe them.
Have you ever heard a piece of news,
that is so unbelievably great,
that you just didn’t believe it?
The King says,
No way, there’s got to be a catch.
The king got up in the night and said to his officers, "I will tell you what the Arameans have done to us. They know we are starving; so they have left the camp to hide in the countryside, thinking, 'They will surely come out, and then we will take them alive and get into the city.'"
So the King hears the good news
and He says:
It’s too good to be true.
So what if I’m desperate.
So what if the whole city is dying of starvation,
I’m not going to look like a fool.
I’m not falling for this.
But one of his officers says:
Let’s at least send a few men to check it out.
I mean, worst case scenario,
they get killed.
So what, right now we’re all dying.
So they send a few men,
and they find out it is true.
The good news is true.
Verse 16
Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel.
A seah was about 7 quarts,
so now your 80 shekels could buy,
not a donkeys head,
but over 500 quarts of flour.
Now, why does God make sure
this story gets into his book?
This story is loaded with meaning.
There are a bunch of parallels
between this story
and the mission that God has given
to you and to me:
There a bunch of ways in which
you and I are just like these 4 lepers,
who got blessed
and then had some good news to share.
Let’s look at these parallels.
The first thing we see is this:
These lepers were desperate,
THEY REALIZED THEY HAD A DESPERATE NEED.
The first time we see them,
they are sitting not in the city,
but at the gates outside the city.
They’re not inside
because they are lepers.
They’re not allowed inside.
They don’t even have a chance
to buy a donkey’s head at eighty shekels,
even if they had 80 shekels.
They’re worse off
than the poorest people in the city.
The truth is, that apart from God,
you are desperate,
I am desperate,
and everybody that we ever see is desperate,
This is probably one of the hardest things for us to accept,
because most of the time we look around,
and we feel like we’re doing ok,
and the people around us
look like they’re doing ok,
most people aren’t desperate, right?
Oh, I’ve got problems here and there,
everybody does,
but I’m certainly not desperate.
Dr. Francis Collins.
became famous as the physician and geneticist
who led the Human Genome Project.
And a couple years ago he was appointed
director of the National Institute of Health,
So he’s one of the most brilliant,
successful, influential men in the world,
Basically the highest ranking medical scientist in America,
right now,
and he was an atheist.
But he tells how… as a physician,
he would be around people with horrible diseases.
and he started to recognize that patients without faith
died much differently
than the patients who had faith.
He realized, over time
that he didn’t know how to die,
that one day, death would come his way,
and he wouldn’t know how to die.
One day, one of his patients challenged him:
Doc, what do you believe about death and life
and what matters most?
He started to explain that he was a scientist and an atheist,
and then he realized that
he didn’t even believe what he was saying.
He had never really investigated.
It was convenient for him to believe
that there was nobody out there
to whom he would have to be accountable,
but he’d never even checked it out.
So he began to search,
he actually researched several different religions,
and did some extensive reading,
and, over time,
Francis Collins became a follower of Jesus.
He wrote a book, about his spiritual journey called
The Language of God: a Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.
So despite all his outward success,
Francis Collins realized
he had a desperate need for God.
and that’s true of all of us,
even though many people don’t realize it.
Lets watch a quick video,
it tells the story of a vision that William Booth had,
Booth was the founder of the Salvation Army.
[VIDEO: Who Cares: Vision of William Booth]
Everybody you know …
everybody you see each day,
that you work with,
or go to school with,
or live near,
everybody has a desperate need for God,
whether they realize it or not.
These 4 lepers simply had an advantage,
they realized it.
They were desperate guys.
and that led to the next thing we notice about them:
The lepers developed a “go for broke” attitude.
They’re sitting at the city gates,
and they say to themselves:
Let’s weigh our options.
Option A: We could stay here at the gate,
and if we do that,
we will die.
Option B: We try to go into the city,
but there’s a famine there.
Even if they let us in,
we will still die, along with the rest of them.
Or Option C: We could go to the enemy camp,
and they might kill us.
Then we will die.
But they might not kill us,
and if they don’t, then we will live.
So, let’s review our options.
Option A: 100% death.
Option B: 100% death.
Option C: 50-50.
Hey, let’s go with C.
Let’s go with the 50-50 shot.
Let’s go to the camp of our enemy—
It sounds crazy,
But what do we have to lose?
Let’s roll the dice.
If it doesn’t work out
the worst that can happen is, we die.
And we’re gonna’ die anyhow.
so they overcame their fear, and went.
When it comes to sharing the Good News …
and telling another person
about your faith in Christ,
do you know what the number one factor is
that prevents people
from telling people?
It is Fear.
The number one thing that blocks people
from sharing Good News with other people
is Fear.
So lets just take a second,
and do what the lepers did.
Let’s weigh our options.
Say that you decide to share your faith …
and have a spiritual conversation
with another person.
Option A is,,
they’re interested, at least a little,
and they say to you:
Tell me more!
And your friendship deepens.
They start to take steps on their journey towards God.
Maybe their eternal destiny is changed,
and you were able to be a part of that.
That’s option A.
Its actually amazing how open people are
to talking about spiritual things.
In our society, God even makes the front page of newspapers.
(USA TODAY) How America Sees God.
There’s a reason God makes the front page…
its because people are interested in God.
They might not want to come to church, but they’re interested.
I remember a time I was doing
some door to door surveys
on the west side of Hamilton.
Had a few quick questions about people’s spiritual condition,
low key, not pushy,
but I’d look for people who were open spiritually.
Now, that’s the hard way to share the good news,
and I don’t really recommend you go door to door,
it’s a lot easier to talk with people you already know.
But anyway I was going door-to-door,
and I came to this one house,
and this huge guy answers the door,
must have been 350 pounds at least, name was Mike.
I said, Hi, I’m from a local church,
I’ve got a quick survey on some spiritual things,
do you have a minute to talk.
He said, No, we’ve got company over right now, I can’t talk.
I said, Oh, sorry to interrupt, have a great day.
Turned away. I figured, he’s just making an excuse,
but that’s okay, if he doesn’t want to talk,
I’ll just go to the next house.
And as I’m turning to go,
he said, Well, when are you coming back?
I turned back, and said, what do you mean?
He said, When are you coming back?
I said, Well I’m not sure. (I wasn’t planning to come back)
He said, Well I want to talk with you about spiritual things,
so when are you coming back?
And he wouldn’t let me go, till I promised to come back.
Mike and his wife and family all became believers in Christ,
and joined our church.
In fact I remember baptizing Mike, all 350 pounds,
and how my back felt it for the next week.
But the point is,
Sometimes you talk to somebody,
and you had no idea
but they are just ready to say yes,
they’ve just been waiting for somebody
to talk to them about God,
but nobody has yet,
and when you do,
its just the right time for them.
That’s option A, the best-case scenario.
What’s the worst-case scenario?
You tell somebody about your faith in Jesus,
and they kill you.
Oh, I forgot,
this is not Saudi Arabia, or Iran.
That does happen some places in the world,
but that doesn’t happen here does it?
Here in the US,
your worst case scenario is they might say:
No thanks. Not interested.
But they usually don’t kill you,
they don’t toss you in prison,
they don’t torture you.
You don’t lose your job.
They just say:
No thanks. Not interested.
That’s probably the worst thing
that’s going to happen.
I remember picking up a hitchhiker one time,
a young guy who looked like he’d been living a hard life,
and I started talking to him about spiritual things,
and how God had changed my life,
and he said,
“I know I’m going to hell, and I don’t really care,
I’m fine with that.”
He didn’t want to talk about God,
he basically told me,
No thanks, not interested.
But you know the amazing thing?
That one incident didn’t devastate my life,
it didn’t destroy my self-esteem,
and cause me to find the nearest psychiatrist
and get some prozac for my deep depression,
I don’t wake up trembling from nightmares
due to that horrible rejection,
When he said,
I’m not interested,
I just said, okay, and I let it drop.
That’s the worst-case scenario,
if you live in the US.
But let me add something to that.
Because, that night when I went to bed …
and laid my head on the pillow …
and talked to God for a minute,
at least I was able to say:
God, today, I did what you asked.
I tried to plant a seed,
and share the good news.
I don’t know if that guy will ever remember our conversation.
I don’t know if this will lead to anything more,
but God, at least I did something.
At least I didn’t wimp out.
At least I took a step.
The lepers had a go for broke attitude.
They asked,
Hey, what’s the worst that can happen?
So what if we die,
Let’s go for it!
What’s the next thing we notice.
3. The lepers rejoiced in their blessings.
They celebrated their unbelievable good fortune.
Once they get inside the enemy camp,
and they discover there’s all this loot,
they immerse themselves
in the riches that they have found.
Just imagine the party they had.
They are stuffing their faces with food.
They are guzzling the drinks.
They are trying on the best clothes.
They are stashing away gold and silver.
They can’t believe their haul.
They can’t believe how lucky they are,
and what a treasure they’ve found.
And there’s a parallel here as well:
We also have a treasure.
If you are a follower of Jesus,
you have a treasure!
Jesus said, John 10:10 (NKJV)
I have come that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly.
Now if you read the Bible,
it tells us what gets included with this
abundant life.
Here’s just some of the things it includes:
I listed the references on your outline.
God says, if you follow me,
here’s what I give you:
A Clear Conscience
Life & Peace
Help with weakness
Purpose
Confidence
Security
Power & Strength
Fulfillment
and Freedom
And that’s just the beginning of the list.
There’s a lot more
that God promises for his children.
And if all that isn’t enough,
when I die, I have a promise that
Death will not get the last word,
and I will get to share an eternity with God—
An eternity of unimaginable
joy, and perfection, and delight
with the God who loves me.
You see,
As believers, we have a lot to celebrate,
we have a treasure that is far greater
than what these lepers found.
Did you know that the Bible commands us to celebrate,
and it commands us to live joyful lives,
It tells us Rejoice in the Lord
always, continually, all the time.
We’re supposed to be having a party,
because of this treasure we’ve been given.
Are you rejoicing?
If you’re really aware of your treasure,
and you’re rejoicing in it,
then you’ll want to tell other people
Hey, come see the treasure I found,
its unbelievable,
you’ve got to get in on this.
On the other hand,
if I’m a Christian,
but I’m going through the motions,
doing it out of obligation,
and I have no joy or peace,
I’m not celebrating God’s goodness,
Instead I’m pretending to be religious,
and I’m self-righteous
walking around with a pucker on my face,
looking like I ate too many prunes,
Then why in the world
would I want to invite somebody else
into a life that looks like that?
And why would anyone else want that,
so they can me miserable like I am?
I don’t think so. No thanks.
In fact,
if you’re living a miserable, hypocritical life
as a Christian,
maybe its better not to let anyone know,
just, like
take the fish off your bumper.
Now what’s the next thing we see from this story:
4. The lepers thought beyond themselves.
These lepers are celebrating their treasure,
and then all of a sudden
they think beyond themselves.
This is the key point of the whole story.
These lepers are piling up their treasure.
They’re eating and drinking
and partying
and stashing away the loot,
when all of a sudden,
a thought enters into the mind of one of them.
He stands up and says:
Wait a minute!
Wait a minute!
What we are doing is wrong!
The other lepers say:
Wrong! What do you mean “Wrong.”
We rolled the dice.
We took the risk.
and it paid off.
This is wonderful.
This is fabulous.
What do you mean “wrong?”
The first leper says:
You know,
there’s a whole city of dying people out there.
Yesterday, we were those dying people.
Yesterday, we were the ones starving at the city gate.
Yesterday, we couldn’t afford a donkey head.
Now we’re here at the treasure,
but just because things are OK for us in here,
that doesn’t mean that things are OK.
This is a day of Good News.
We have to share it.
Then they go even farther and say,
If we are silent, we will be found guilty.
If we wait, punishment will overtake us.
We’ve got to go.
We’ve got to tell.
Now remember, this is a story about
how you and I should handle
the treasure God has given us,
the treasure of salvation,
the good news.
It is clear that,
keeping it to ourselves is not an option,
its not okay,
we are going to be held accountable.
You know, as you study the bible,
you find that there’s one thing
Jesus never said
… not to anybody, anytime, anyplace.
Jesus never came along to anybody
and said:
You know, you’re doing pretty good on your own.
I think you’re going to make it without God.
I think you’ll be all right.
Jesus never said that to anybody,
no matter how smart they were,
or how rich or successful they were,
he didn’t say that.
Jesus knew that
apart from God’s saving love and grace,
every human being He saw
was desperate, and guilty, and hopeless.
He knew that human beings were in such bad shape,
that he was willing to even die,
to rescue us.
We cannot lose that sense of urgency,
the same urgency Jesus had.
People we know and love
have no hope without Jesus Christ.
and we can’t simply ignore it.
VIDEO: Tell Your Story
There’s one last thing we see in this story of the lepers:
The lepers were not in control of how people responded to the good news.
Sometimes you take the risk,
roll the dice,
share the good news,
and nothing happens.
That can be discouraging.
The lepers experienced that at first:
They say, This is a day of good news.
So they go tell everybody,
and the King hears it,
and the King doesn’t believe it,
he rejects the good news.
The King says:
It’s a trick.
It’s too good to be true.
I don’t believe it.
I’m not going to be suckered.
Sometimes people respond that way
to good news.
I used to be so worried about rejection.
I remember when I was in the Navy, I was about 22 years old,
some friends from the chapel
were going to the barracks,
to talk to the guys about their faith,
and I didn’t want to go,
because what if they think I’m a Jesus freak or something,
But I felt guilted into going.
So I went along,
but I said, I’m not gonna say anything,
I’ll just let these other guys do all the talking.
So we get over there,
I’m tagging along with another guy,
and he runs into a couple sailors there,
and he’s standing there talking to one of them,
and the other sailor starts talking to me.
And so we’re talking,
but I’ve already decided,
I’m not gonna start talking about spiritual things,
too risky.
(Now, by the way, at this point I was getting ready to start flight school, flying jets on and off of aircraft carriers, but I thought that talking about spiritual things was too risky.) (sort of stupid)
Anyway, we’re talking along,
and all the sudden,
without my doing it,
we’re talking about spiritual things.
I don’t know how it happened.
I think God tricked me.
But this guy started asking me about my faith in God,
when I didn’t even want to.
Now that guy didn’t become a believer at that point,
but I think the whole point of it was
God showing me,
Ken, it ain’t really that hard.
because most people are interested in God.
Jesus told a story.
about a farmer who went out to plant some seed.
But he wasn’t very careful about it.
He threw seeds all over the place.
Some of those seeds fell on hard ground,
and nothing happened.
Some of them fell in the middle of thorns,
and they got choked out.
Some of them fell on rocky soil,
and withered away.
But some of them fell on good soil,
and then they took off,
and shot up,
and produced 100 times as much seed.
Now what would have happened
if the farmer had gone out
and thrown one seed
and it landed on hard ground
and nothing happened.
And then the farmer said:
You know, this is just not working.
I’m discouraged.
I threw down a seed,
and it was just wasted.
I’m not doing this anymore.
Forget it.
and he went home and watched soap operas
and ate potato chips.
He wouldn’t be much of a farmer, would he.
The farmers job is to sow a bunch of seeds.
And some won’t come up,
but some will.
The outcome is in God’s hands.
We can’t control outcomes.
Our job is just to sow the seed.
Just think about how these lepers feel
after they spread this good news,
and salvation has come to the people,
and all the people are reveling in the treasure,
all those people
who thought they were going to die,
but they’ve been saved,
they have new life.
Think about this little group of lepers
looking at all the people rejoicing,
and they say to each other:
Man! I’m glad we didn’t just sit on the treasure.
I’m so glad we didn’t think it was all about us.
We saved a lot of people today.
If you’re a follower of Christ,
You have a fabulous treasure.
One day, you will see Jesus,
and He will have the ultimate treasure
waiting for you and me.
And here’s what he’s going to say to some of us
hopefully all of us.
He’s going to say:
I love the way you cared enough to tell people about me.
I love the way you cared for people who were
poor and oppressed, and hurting,
I love how you prayed for folks who were desperate,
even the ones who look so successful,
and didn’t even know how desperate they were.
I love your “go for broke” attitude.
I love that you took a risk
and talked to those people.
I love how you decided that
even though your treasure was wonderful,
you weren’t just going to sit there,
and enjoy if for yourself,
But you decided to go out and tell the Good News
and share the treasure.
I love how you didn’t let rejection
and difficulty hold you back.
And most of all,
I love how you lived a life that was so rich and joyful,
that other people wanted to get in on it.
because you were rejoicing in your treasure.
I think that’s what you want to hear Jesus say one day.
I do.
