INTRODUCTION
• When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, our lives should change; people should be able to see a difference in our lives.
• The church is called to reach out to lost people so that we can win them to Jesus. Once we immerse them into the kingdom of God, we are to take those new converts and make disciples out of them. This is the mission of the church. We may do other things, but they must all lead back to this prime objective.
• Do we meet this objective by accident? Does God just send a few people a year to us or is there more that needs to happen as we try to reach out to the lost?
• Today we are as we continue in the book of 1 Thessalonians; we are going to see what made the church at Thessalonica successful in their quest to impact the world around them for Jesus.
• Last week we started by seeing that in order for us to be successful in impacting the world for Jesus, we first had to let Jesus impact each one of us in a way that others will see the difference Jesus makes in our lives.
• Remember, the whole subject of the book of 1 Thessalonians can be summed up in the statement, “How Now Shall We Live?” What are we to do with ourselves as we await the return of our Lord Jesus?
• In 1 Thessalonians 1:5-10 Paul continues with his theme of thanksgiving. In this section of text, we are going to look at some keys to effective evangelism.
• When the church stops evangelizing or spreading the good news about Jesus Christ to the world, the church will die, not only that, but the church would be condemning all within her sphere of influence to a sentence of eternal punishment.
• Our success or failure will have eternal consequences on many people!
• For the Church of Jesus Christ to make a difference in the lives of other people and in the world around us, we must possess these keys.
SERMON
The first key to effective evangelism is:
I. RECEIVING THE WORD verse 5.
A. What are we receiving? This may sound a bit trivial, but it is important for us to consider.
1. We are receiving the very Word of God!
2. We can know that we are one of the elect by the fact that we were won to Jesus by the right message.
3. This puts a big responsibility on the one who shares the Gospel to make sure it is indeed the gospel that they are giving to people.
4. We do not want to use some gimmick to win people, we have to win them to Jesus with God’s word. We can use a variety of techniques to get people to come, but we must ultimately win them with the Gospel.
5. ROM 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
6. 1CO 15:1-2 Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.
7. If we attract people to a perverted version of the message, we are not winning them to Christ. We end up winning people to something other than Jesus.
B. The way the message is presented and the way we receive that message will affect how passionate we are about evangelism!
The message is to be preached and received in:
1. Power!
• The word for “power” is the same word from which we get the word “dynamite”!
• The message should be presented in a powerful way. The gospel was changing the lives of those who accepted it.
• ROM 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. (SHAME) IT IS TIME TO QUIT APOLOGIZING
• The gospel should come in and disrupt things, it should not only destroy the old life, but it will construct the new life we have in Christ (2 Cor 5:17).
• When you are going to build a new building on a site where an old one exists, you use dynamite to destroy the old so the new can be built.
• The power of God was behind the preaching. The message of the gospel is not just a bunch of words, but the power of God for salvation!
The message is to be preached and received in:
2. The Holy Spirit!
• The Holy Spirit was at work in the people who were preaching the message and that work was evident in the lives of the messengers.
• The men preaching the message were instruments of God who were working for the sake of the church!
• The Holy Spirit empowers us to live for Jesus. We can ignore Him or quench Him, but when we do that, we hinder the progress of the Gospel.
The message is to be preached and received in:
3. Full conviction!
• The message was preached with the full assurance that it was what it said it was.
• If we are truly convicted that the Bible is the Word of God, then we will have a passion to share it with others. How many times in life have you come across something that you thought was a good deal and could not wait to share it with other people. That is how we will view the gospel if we are truly convicted that it is what it says it is!
• Paul points to his own life as evidence of his convictions about the message. The Word of God changed Paul from a persecutor of the church to a great witness for Jesus!
• Paul said the power of the message was evident from the way they the messengers were affected by it!
• The way the message is presented and how we receive that message will affect how passionate we are about being a soul-winner! Spreading the Gospel is something we should be on fire to do because we know what it did for us and what it will do for us in the future.
The next key to effective evangelism is:
II. BEING AN IMITATOR verse 6
After receiving the Word, we need examples of how to apply the word in our lives.
A. We imitate the messenger we received the word from. The word translated “imitate” is the same word that we get the word “mimic”. When we proclaim the message of salvation to others, we are to be a pattern for them to follow, a pattern for them to see how Jesus works in our lives!
1. It may be that we are not passionate about spreading the gospel because of the great responsibilities that come with it.
• HEB 13:7 Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.
• We are told to imitate the faith of those who led us to Jesus; this puts a lot of responsibility on the messenger. (MAURICE)
• This is something that Paul welcomed because his life was one that he knew that he was blameless before God.
• Paul did not play games with God; he gave himself totally to Jesus. We do not want the responsibility of others watching and imitating our faith because if we have not totally given our lives to Jesus.
2. We should be living our lives in such a manner that we invite others to imitate our faith. We are saying that we are better than other people, but that we are confident that we are living a life that imitates Jesus the best we can.
B. We imitate Jesus.
• By allowing the Holy Spirit to work on us through the Word of God, we then start imitating the faith of Jesus.
• 2CO 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
C. We may be the only Jesus that people see, what kind of Jesus are you displaying in your life, the Jesus of the bible or something that does not reflect the true Jesus?
D. If we are going to win people to Jesus, our lives need to reflect the faith of those who led us, which should reflect Jesus.
E. Paul only wants people to imitate him in as much as he imitates Jesus.
The third key to effective evangelism is:
III. BECOMING AN EXAMPLE verse 7
As we imitate those who led us to Christ and Jesus himself, we become examples for others to follow!
A. Our example reflects a changed life. Verse 9
1. In verse nine, we are told that the people in the church had turned from their false idols to serve Jesus.
2. This reflects an outward change that the world around them could see. When we come to Christ, the world should see that we too have turned from the false idols. Remember that an idol is something that we put ahead of God. There are many false idols; maybe the greatest one is self.
3. The world should be able to see that we are not self-serving. The world should see you do business different than the pagan. What ever we do should be for the glory of God. For the Christian, it is not dog eat dog, but it is a life of serving Jesus and others.
4. The example of the Thessalonian church spread out past their city to others. Whether we want to be or not, when you call yourself a Christian, you are an example to others. The world is watching us. If we are no different, why should they listen to our message? If we are not convicted enough by it to be different, then why should t he world take us seriously?
B. We become an example to believers and the lost.
1. Our example not only reaches the lost, but it encourages the saved also.
2. This is one of the reasons that we are to come together each week, to encourage one another.
3. You never know when a brother or sister is struggling with something and when they see you over come it, they are encouraged. TALK ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS AS AN EXAMPLE.
The forth key to effective evangelism is:
IV. PROCLAIMING THE WORD verse 8
The word translated “sounded forth” is a word that means something with the sound of a trumpet or thunder in the sky.
As the world looks at us, they see a changed life. The changed life opens opportunities for us to proclaim God’s word. We proclaim His word in two ways.
A. In Word.
1. What we say resonates like thunder; it gets the attention of those who listen.
B. In deed.
1. The verse says that wherever their faith toward God had gone, the Word of God sounded forth.
2. Wherever our faith goes, it should point squarely toward Jesus.
3. What we do should match what we preach.
CONCLUSION
• I hear people say that the world does not want to hear about Jesus.
• The world does not want to just hear about a Jesus, they want to see Jesus first.
• The world is cold to us because many times we do not take our faith seriously.
• When the world sees genuine faith in action, they will listen, they may still not accept Jesus, but they will give us a listen.
• At Auburn Christian Church we have been given the privilege to represent Jesus in this community. If we are not winning the lost, what are we doing?
• Let the community see your faith! Let us take the mission seriously, people in our fine community will die and go to hell without Jesus. Not only that, they will be cheated out of a wonderful life serving Jesus.
• Jesus will give their lives meaning.
• Today, commit yourself to Jesus.
