Who’s Your One?
Matthew 13:44-46
Please open your Bibles to Matthew 13:44-46.
Let me say at the beginning that every once in awhile I will have someone come up after a service with their listening guide and say, “Hey, I missed a blank.” Or, especially if i realize I’m running short of time and I start to fly through the rest of a message, I’ll realize that I missed a blank. So for all you type A folks who will get knotted up if you don’t get all the blanks filled in, I thought I would try something different this week and let you fill in all the blanks at the beginning. And I’m going to make it really easy for you: The answer on every blank—except for the last one—is ONE. That’s it. ONE. So we can all fill in the blanks together, right here, at the beginning, and just get it out of the way:
1. You were someone’s ONE
2. You were Jesus’ ONE
3. Jesus is the ONE
4. Is Jesus your ONE?
5. Do you know how to win ONE?
6. Who is your ONE to win?
Whew! Aren’t you a little more relaxed now? Now that doesn’t mean we can all go home now, but hopefully we can listen a little better! Because I want to talk this morning about this idea that everyone knows someone who needs The One, and you are THE one who can win YOUR one to that ONE.
Why are we talking about this? We’re talking about this because a lot of Southern Baptists have maybe lost sight of the fact that the Great Commission is an “all skate.” It’s not just the responsibility of the pastor, or the paid staff, or the evangelism committee. If you’re a student, it isn’t just for the adults. If you’re an adult, it isn’t just for the students. If you’re a senior adult, it isn’t just for young adults. Everyone knows someone who needs The One, and you are THE one who can win YOUR one to that ONE.
In 2018, there were 3,236 SBC churches in Alabama who reported a total membership of 918,125. The average weekly attendance was 284,292, which means that on any given Sunday, a little over one out of four people show up to worship Jesus and study the Word He left us.
There were 12,615 baptisms reported in our state (average 3.89 per church). Glynwood had 13, which seems really good. We might be tempted to pat ourselves on the back and say, “wow, we are doing so much better than the average Alabama church!” However, let’s look at it this way: if you divide the average weekly attendance by the number of churches, you get 87 people per church per week. Glynwood has around 350 per week. And if you divide 87 by 3.89. you get 22.4. Which means it takes 22.4 regular church attenders to lead one person to Jesus.
So when you take Glynwood’s average weekly attendance of 350 and divide it by 13, you get 26.9. So we are saying it takes 27 Glynwood attendees to lead one across the line.
Ladies and gentlemen, we must do better! Everyone knows someone who needs The One, and you are THE one who can win YOUR one to that ONE.
1. You were someone’s ONE
If you are a follower of Jesus, it is because it is because somebody told you about Jesus. The bible is pretty clear that saving faith is heard faith. Look at Romans 10. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” But it goes on to say that you can’t call on someone if you don’t believe in Him. And you can’t believe in someone if you haven’t heard about Him. And you can’t hear without someone preaching. Verse 17 brings it home: Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. It doesn’t say faith comes from watching someone act like a Christian. It doesn’t come from growing up in a Christian home. It doesn’t come from random acts of kindness. Let’s put to rest the silly notion of “preaching the gospel at all times, and if necessary using words.” Faith comes from hearing. Period. The end. Interestingly enough, as important as the Bible is, and as necessary as the Bible is for salvation, there’s no one record in Scripture of anyone coming to a saving faith in Jesus simply from Scripture. There was always someone explaining the Word so someone else could receive it.
So again, you are here because someone invited you. Someone taught you. Someone told you. Someone was patient enough with you to answer your questions and walk alongside you. Who in your life decided that they were going to make you their “one?” Let’s pause and thank God for that person right now. [Pray]
2. You were Jesus’ ONE
Even before someone decided to make you their “one,” Jesus made you His one. In Matthew 13, Jesus tells two stories about what the kingdom of God is like. In the first, He says it's like a man working in a field who stumbles upon a treasure. So he goes off and sells everything he has in order to buy the field. But in the second story, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a merchant looking for fine pearls. Verse 45 says that when he saw one of great value, he gave everything He had in order to obtain it. I believe in this parable, Jesus was describing himself. In Jesus day, the technique of growing cultured pearls in oyster farms had not been perfected. So the only way to get a pearl was to dive for them. It was dangerous. There were sharks in the water. Diving to that depth took a toll on the body. Many pearl divers drowned. And even if when you survived the dive and the sharks, it still took harvesting 2-3 tons of oysters in order to find just a handful of pearls. According to a jeweler’s website I looked up this week, the odds of finding a pearl in an oyster are one in twelve thousand. So a merchant looking for pearls knows the risk, and he knows the rarity. Again, this is a picture of Jesus. Jesus descended to earth. He endured the dangerous waters of humanity. He gave his life, knowing that even though He gave His life for all, only a few people would respond to his offer of eternal life. Those few are the oysters with pearls! Those few are the pearls of great price, for whom Jesus, the merchant seeking after fine pearls, gave everything He had in order to obtain them. If you are a believer, it is because Jesus has chosen you and has drawn you to Himself. If you aren’t a believer, the fact that you are here this morning, or the fact that you are listening to this message demonstrates that Jesus is drawing you to Himself. He is giving you an opportunity to respond to Him, to surrender your life to Him and to make Him your savior and Lord. And someone has invited you. Someone has brought you to church. Somebody shared a link to this sermon with you. So before you were their one, you were Jesus’ one. You can respond to Him today!
3. Jesus is the ONE
I wonder if one of the reasons we aren’t more intentional about sharing Jesus with people is that we aren’t convinced that Jesus really is the only way to heaven, that there really is a hell, and that people who don’t know Jesus are really going there. This week I did a word study. I used an online concordance—blueletterbible.org, to look up every single time the word “one” is used in the New Testament. And there are over 1100 of them. Now, most of them are not very significant. Things like “one day,” or “one of the disciples”—things like that. But there are several that bring home the truth that Jesus is the only way to heaven. For example:
12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men[a] by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
42 And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. (Acts 10:42)
6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Cor. 8:6)
5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man[a] Christ Jesus, (1 Tim 2:5)
There’s only one begotten son of the Father (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9). There’s only one way to the Father (John 14:6). On the mountain of transfiguration, God spoke from heaven and said, “This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to Him (Luke 9:35).
There is no other way to heaven. And there is coming a day when the Judge of all the earth will separate ONE from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats (Mt. 25:32).
There is coming a day when we will all be standing before the judgment seat, and the book of life will be opened. “15 And if anyONE's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:15)
Can I say to you this morning that there will be a lot of people standing before God that day who believe they got their name into the Book in some other way than by trusting in Jesus as their one and only Savior. They will think you can get there by being a good person, or by growing up in a Christian home, or by being an American or a decent churchgoing Alabamian. And you may be here this morning and you may struggle with the exclusivity of the gospel. We don’t want to be perceived as intolerant, so even though we hear the gospel every week, we hesitate to share it with our friends or neighbors or coworkers. We’re betting that Jesus didn’t really mean what He said about no one coming to the Father except by Him. I’m afraid most Christians live like practical universalists—that somehow all roads really do lead to heaven.
Will there be people you know who aren’t in heaven because deep down inside, you didn’t really believe that Jesus was the only way to get there, so you never told them? Eternity is an awfully long time to be wrong.
4. Is Jesus your ONE?
So that brings us to the next point. Before you can think about who’s your one you can tell about Jesus, you have to ask yourself, Is Jesus Your One? I was fascinated to realize this week that there are only two people in the New Testament who refer to Jesus as “the Holy One of God.” You see in your listening guide who the second one is. It’s Simon Peter. After Jesus fed the five thousand, he began teaching about how, if you really wanted to be one of His followers, you needed more than just physical food. You needed to feast on Jesus Himself. He said “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” And most of the people who had just been fed physically missed the point about being fed spiritually. So they were all like, “Eww. That’s gross. We’re just gonna peace out.” And so John 6:66 says that many went away and were no longer willing to follow Him. Then Jesus looked at His disciples and said, “What about you guys? Are you going to go away also?” Peter looks at him and gives what I think is just as powerful a confession of faith as the one he gave in Caeserea Philippi:
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” (Jn. 6:68-69)
So Peter was the second one to call Jesus the Holy One of God. You know who the first one was? Check out Mark chapter 1. The first miracle Jesus does in both Mark and Luke’s (Luke 4:31-35) gospel is to cast a demon out of a dude.
23 And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, 24 “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”
So both Peter and a demon say the same thing: “I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” Obviously, the demon did not have a saving relationship with Jesus. So just knowing who Jesus is is not enough.
Maybe you’re saying that the difference is “believing.” Peter said, “We believe and have come to know.” The demon just said, “I know who you are.. But belief isn’t enough either. James 2:19 says, “You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe, and shudder.” You might be thinking, well, you’re about to tell us that it’s two different Greek words for belief. He does stuff like that all the time. But no, it’s the same word in both John and James. “Believing” in Jesus is not enough.
So its not enough to know Jesus. It’s not even enough to believe in Jesus. I think the difference is in the phrase, “Lord, where else would we go?” See, saving faith cuts off every other option. Its not that there is no doubt with saving faith. Peter believed, but he still doubted every now and then. And it isn’t that there is no confusion with saving faith. Even though Peter “knew” that Jesus was the Holy one of God, even after the resurrection there were things that he didn’t understand about Jesus. Saving faith isn’t faith without doubts. Saving faith isn’t faith without confusion. But saving faith is faith without options. For Jesus to be your one, He has to be your only one.
5. Do you know how to win ONE? (John 1:46; 4:29; 9:25; 1 Peter 3:15)
See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; (Heb 12:15)
So I want to bring this to a close by asking you—if you realize that the only reason you came to faith is by someone else sharing the gospel with you, do you know how to share it with someone else. If you have surrendered to Jesus as the only one who can save you from your sins, and if you believe He is the only means to a relationship with the Father, then who have you told about Jesus? Are you taking responsibility for the lost around you? Hebrews 12:15 says “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.” Are you seeing to it?
Maybe you think you don’t know enough. I’ll challenge you with two things. First: LEARN! When you get hired somewhere, you get trained on how to do the job you were hired for. No one expects you to just know intuitively how to do whatever your job is. But it is your responsibility to show up for the training. To learn the skills necessary to do the job. That’s where we can help as a church.
[Introduce Missional Assessment flow chart. Then talk about Who’s Your One tour in January.]
But let me say this as well. Don’t let the fear of not knowing what to do keep you from doing what you’ve been commanded to do. Notice how it went down in John 1:46
45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
Philip had known Jesus for less than 24 hours. He didn’t know the Evangecube, or the Romans Road. He didn’t know what the different bead colors represented on a power band. He didn’t know anything. But he knew how to say “Come and see.” That’s all the woman at the well knew in John 4. And if that’s all you do—say “come and see,” then guess what? You’re already doing more than most baptists are willing to do! The blind man in John 9 didn’t know anything other than what had happened to him. He actually said that exact thing:
25 He answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see (John 9:25).
The fact is, if you aren’t sharing Jesus, it isn’t because you lack knowledge. It’s because you lack obedience.
See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.
6. Who is your ONE to win?
So now we come to the one blank where the answer isn’t “one.” And that is, who is your ONE? On the space on your listening guide, I’d like you to write down the name of one person, just one person, that you know that doesn’t have a relationship with Christ. Ideally, this is someone that lives close by. Someone that you have a realistic possibility of actually having a conversation with. Everyone knows someone who needs The One,
Have you written it down yet? Good. Now I want you to think about the reality that you are THE one who can win YOUR one to that ONE.
Will you commit to praying for that person every day? Would you be willing to get trained in how to have a gospel conversation with them? In a few minutes I'm going to ask you to come to the front and sign your name and your "One's" name to one of the boards up here. And then, before you go back to your seat, I'm going to ask you to spend some time in prayer for your one.
You might fail. If it is true that only one out of every 12,000 oysters has a pearl, then you probably will fail. But here’s the thing: Not every oyster has a pearl, but every pearl came from an oyster. Every believer came to faith because someone was willing to pry open the hard exterior. You know how pearls are formed? Pearls are formed when something irritating is introduced to the oyster. We need to be willing to be irritating. Irritating doesn't mean offensive. But maybe we just say something in casual conversation, and a week later your friend comes back to you and says, "You know, I haven't been able to stop thinking about what you said." But until we are willing to get into the nitty gritty with people, to risk rejection, to be okay with failure, then we will never know if the Lord is calling them to be saved or not. Faith comes from hearing. How will they hear if we aren't saying anything?
[pray]
