When you were a child, your mother or father probably told you more than once to SHARE!
You may remember playing in the park with your favorite toys – your best friend would come up and want to play with your toys, but you wanted to keep those toys to yourself. After all, those were your favorite toys.
And more than likely your mother or father would intervene with the very clear instruction – “Share your toys!”
Hopefully, you grew up with a sharing attitude.
You share your income with the church and with charities.
You share books with friends who enjoy the same sort of literature as you enjoy.
You share your home with family and friends who come to visit.
You share your political opinions.
Big things – small things – you share with others.
And as we explore our purpose of life, today we will discover that sharing is one of our purposes.
Now we have been talking about the purpose of life, and if you look on the banner on my right – your left – you will see a growing list of our purposes in life. This list won’t get much larger.
Our purpose is to Worship – or to give pleasure to God.
Our purpose is to Fellowship – we were formed for God’s family.
Our purpose is Discipleship – we were created to be like Christ.
Our purpose is Ministry – we were shaped to serve God.
Now we come to our fifth purpose. Evangelism!
Evangelism is our mission!!
Today is Halloween!!! All Saints’ Eve. If you want to scare a Presbyterian, don’t say “boo.” Say “Evangelism”.
I don’t know why, but the word “evangelism” is a scary word to many.
But the word “sharing” is a good word – a comforting word. We like to share with others and we love it when people share with us!
Evangelism is nothing more than sharing!
Specifically, we need to share the love and salvation of Jesus Christ!
Now, where am I supposed to share it? Well, let’s look at the next verse. Acts 1:8: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
Now, when Jesus told this to his followers, do you know where they were? They were in Jerusalem. So here’s the point. He is saying, first, I want you to start at home. I want you to start with the people closest to you, right there in your own city, your own community.
Then he says I want you to go to Judea and Samaria, that’s like the county next door, and Samaritans happen to be different culturally and different racially. So He said, “I want you to go to people nearby, but they are different from you.”
Then He says, “I want you to go to the ends of the earth. I want you to go reach everybody else.”
Imagine this verse saying, “You will be my witnesses in Gwinnett County, and in all of Georgia with all of the Hispanics, Immigrants, and people of other races, and even to the ends of the earth.”
Also notice not only where you are to do this mission, but notice specifically what Jesus calls you to be in this mission.
He does not say, “You will be my defense attorney.”
He doesn’t say, “You will be my prosecutor.”
He didn’t say, “You will be my salesman.”
You don’t have to defend God. You don’t have to be a salesman for God. All God wants you to do is to be a witness.
What is a witness?
Have you ever seen a trial on Court TV? Or have you ever seen an episode of Law and Order?
In a courtroom, a witness is called to take the stand. Then they put their hand on a Bible and they have to take an oath to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
And then they say what they saw.
If they say something like, “Fred told me he saw an accident and Fred said, ‘the blue car hit the red car,” then the defense attorney will stand up and say, “Objection – your honor, that’s heresay,”
The judge and jury don’t want to hear gossip, they want the witness to give first hand testimony.
A good witness will say, “I was at the corner. I saw the blue car. I saw the red car. I saw the blue car hit the red car.”
A witness is somebody who just tells what they have seen.
I saw this, and then I saw this; and this is what happened.
And a witness tells what happened to them.
You see, you are the expert on your life. Nobody can be a better witness on your life than you. Nobody can be a better witness of what God has done in your life than you, because you are the authority on your life, not some pastor, not some priest, not anybody else.
So God says, “I just want you to tell other people what’s happened to you, what’s happened in your life.” And He says, “I want you to go all over; the people close to you, the people who are near, but also go to those who are different, and then to everybody else.
Why does He say this?
Because we go back to what we said the second week, God is building a family. God is building a family of people who love and trust Him, that are going to spend eternity with Him. And that, my friends, is the whole point of history. The whole point of history is God is building a family that’s going to live with Him forever and love Him.
God says I want family members from every nation. I want them from all over. And one day all believers are going to be gathered together in heaven. This is not Mission Impossible. This is Mission Inevitable. It is going to happen. And it has been God’s plan all along.
Here’s the amazing part: God has chosen us to complete the mission. The mission that Jesus Christ started when He came to earth, He says, “I want you guys to finish it.” God puts the future of the world in our hands.
So how do you become a history maker? How do you get on God’s agenda and how do you let God use you and bless you so that you can be completing your mission? Well, you do three things.
Step One: Share with those in your own world.
That’s the starting point. I must share with those in my world.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus healed a man, and after Jesus healed him, the man wanted to travel with Jesus and Jesus said, "No, I don’t want you to do that."
He said, "’Go back home and tell people how much God has done for you.’ So that man went all over town telling how much Jesus had done for him.”
Jesus says the same thing to you.
You know where your mission starts?
Right at home, starts in your own neighborhood, in your own community.
With your friends, your family, your coworkers, your neighbors, anybody who crosses your path, the person who delivers the paper, helps you with gas or a clerk somewhere. God says, "I want you to share the Good News with the people first in your Jerusalem, with the people in your home.”
Are we doing this?
Probably not.
Why not? Why don’t we do this?
Well, a couple reasons.
One reason is because we believe the myth that people aren’t interested in spiritual issues. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every single poll and every single survey says Americans are more interested in spiritual things now than they were ten years ago. Not less, but more interested in spiritual issues.
I read this week that George Gallup did a survey and discovered that 65 million Americans have no church home, but 34 million of them said they would attend if somebody would just invite them. 34 million just waiting for an invitation!
Another Gallup poll said teens would rather talk about God than sex, drugs or music.
You see, opportunities to share the Good News really are all around you.
They are staring you in the face every single day. You just have to be ready for them.
Here in the South, we strike up intimate conversations with strangers we meet in the check out line of the grocery stores. We have never met these people before, and we will never meet them again. But there we are. Life has thrown us together and for 10 minutes we find ourselves telling one another about what a horrible boss we have – or what a wonderful one. We tell that person about our child’s report card. We tell that person about who we are voting for in the next election. We are witnesses about what is happening to us!!
God wants us to do that about our relationship with him!
Whenever I tell people that we need to share the news of Jesus Christ, many times people will say to me, “You know preacher, I’m no evangelist. I just don’t like knocking on the doors of strangers.”
What does knocking on the door of a stranger’s home have to do with sharing the Good News of Christ? I was ordained 24 years ago. This is my 5th pastorate. I have never seen Presbyterians organize themselves to go door to door and knock on the homes of strangers as a way of sharing the Good News!
And that’s fine!
How many of you would ever think to knock on the door of a stranger’s home and tell the person who opens the door, “Hi, I’m John Doe and I’m here to tell you about what a great boss I have.”
But we will tell that to friends. We tell that to our family. We tell that to people we just naturally strike up conversations with in the check out line of the grocery stores.
And those are the people we need to be telling, “I’m here to tell you about what a great God I serve!”
And there are so many ways you can share this news.
Invite a person to come to church. Invite a person to join you in your small group. Take your Purpose Driven Life book and loan it to someone. Tell them, “This is a great book, I want you to read it!” Better yet, don’t loan them your book. Buy them a new book of their very own!
You mission, and you need to accept it, is to share the Good News with the people in your corner of the world.
But that’s not enough.
It is not enough to just care about the people who are around you.
Step Two! Reach just beyond our corner of the world.
Love demands I move beyond my comfort zone to people with different background, different education, different language, different economics.
You see, our mission has such eternal consequences, heaven and hell, that we must be willing to risk anything to get the message out. If I had the cure for AIDS, believe me, I’d be shouting it on the street. It would be criminal to keep it a secret. But I have something even more important than that, the way to eternal life. It has been given. Somebody cared enough to tell me, I’ve got to be caring enough to tell others.
Time and again we are told in the Bible to reach out to others.
Galatians 6:2 tells us, "Stoop down and reach out to those who were oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law."
What is Christ’s law? Love your neighbor as yourself. He says, “Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed.”
Now, you don’t have to leave Gwinnett County to do this.
You know, when you read the Bible and you read about Jesus, you read that Jesus always rooted for the underdog that people in that society wanted to ignore; the powerless, the poor, the left behind, the imprisoned, the orphaned, the widowed, the aged, the mentally ill, the social outcasts, sick, the lepers. If Jesus were alive today, do you know who He would be hanging out with -- AIDS patients. He’d probably be at an AIDS hospice, caring for those that everybody else wants to kind of turn their back on.
Now here at Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church, we have so many members who are reaching beyond themselves.
They are not just telling their friends, they are reaching out to people who are different from themselves to show God’s love to the needy.
Every month a handful of Good Shepherd folks are working at Clifton Ministries, providing care and help to the poor of our community. This ministry has been going on since 1978. Here the poor are fed. Homeless men are given shelter.
Here at Good Shepherd one of the great programs we participate in is the Christmas Child ministry. Many of you may recognize it by the simple name – shoeboxes. Every year Good Shepherd joins with thousands of other congregations in putting together shoeboxes filled with gifts for children. We deliver them to a local delivery point, and eventually these boxes make their way all over the world.
In fact, you may have seen that in the bulletin this morning. We hope to gather these together in just a few weeks – November 21. They will be filled with gifts for children and sent all over the world to children who desperately need our help.
Right down the street there is the Lilburn Co-Op. That’s where people go to get help to clothe and feed themselves. You should go there sometime, if you haven’t already. Make a donation of some of the things in your home you no longer use, or buy some used books and help fund their programs. When you go, you will probably see one or two members from Good Shepherd working at the Co-op. The people who go there for help may be different from you and me, but these people need the Lord.
You always have the opportunity to be witnesses for the Lord, and to share the Good News with those who are in your corner of the world, and with those who are just beyond your little world.
The Bible says one day Jesus is going to separate people into two groups: sheep and goats. And He’s going to say to one group, “I was hungry, and you fed Me. I was thirsty and you gave Me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited Me into your home. I was naked, and you gave Me clothing. I was sick and you cared for Me. I was in prison and you visited Me.”
But then the people respond with surprise!
“When did we do that for you, Lord?” And He says, “When you have done it to one of the least of my brothers or sisters, you’ve done it to Me.” When you give a cup of cold water to somebody who is thirsty, when you give a shoe box of toys to a child on the other side of the world who has never had anything, Jesus said, “It is just like did you it for me.”
God loves us and we are to share that news with others.
Here in Gwinnett County, and on into the people who are just beyond our little corner of the world – and even to the entire world.
Step one – share with our neighbors
Step two – share with those just beyond our world
Step three – share with the entire world!!!!
We don’t ever say, “Well, I’m not going to share the news of God’s love with others because they are a different race, or they are from a different country, or they dress differently.” Nor can you ever say, “I’m not going to share the news of God’s love with people who live too far away.”
A few weeks ago I was given the opportunity to join the mission team and go to Haiti. Haiti is so different from our corner of the world. It is poor – everyone seems to be poor. It is dirty – more than that, it’s just plan filthy. There are no public restrooms or sewer systems – people use the streets to relieve themselves. Garbage is thrown in the streets and left there.
And in the midst of that part of the world, so different from Gwinnett County, nine people from Good Shepherd were at work, giving medical care to people who rarely or never saw a doctor. They were doing electrical repairs and improvements at a hospital. They were sharing the Good News through the example of their lives. Haitians are different from you and me, but people need the Lord.
And you don’t have to go to Haiti.
You could go to Belize!!! Many of our members go there to do mission work each year.
Or to Mexico with the youth.
Every other year our youth engage in a mission to Mexico. They camp out together and build homes. It is a wonderful mission in that it changes lives – the lives of our young people, the lives of our adult chaperons, and the lives of those we touch in Mexico.
In fact, you don’t really have to go anywhere to share the Gospel in other nations. Those who are able to go physically depend on financial help from those who are unable to go.
Money from the Presbyterian Church goes to help people all over the world. Haiti, Belize, Cuba, Colombia, Cameroon, Iraq --
And I know that sometimes we wonder if we are doing any good in those nations.
But the work of the church is never done in vain.
God’s Word tells us (in I Corinthians 15:58) that Christians should “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord,”
--and this is a great promise –
“because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
Marge Carpenter used to work in the Presbyterian Church’s office for World Wide Ministries. She recalls that she often runs into people who talk about how much money we have wasted in missions.
China is a prefect example.
For years we were sending missionaries to China.
We poured thousands of dollars into the work in China.
We built homes for children, hospitals, churches.
And one day China threw out all of the missionaries. The hospitals were taken over by the Communist government. The homes for children were closed. The churches were bulldozed.
And people in America grieved – all that money wasted. All that effort for nothing.
Years later China began to relax its stand against the Christian Churches and Marge Carpenter said she and several other Presbyterians went to China. During their tour, they were able to worship with Chinese Presbyterians. They had been there all along. They had been meeting in homes. Marge picked up one of the ragged old hymnals the Chinese were using. She said she couldn’t make out anything in the hymnal. It was all in Chinese. Except she could make out one little line of English on the front page. It read, “Printed by the Presbyterian Church Mission Board, 1928.”
Our work is never in vain.
If I am going to be like Jesus Christ, I must care about the whole world. I share with my world. I dare to reach beyond my world. And then I care about the whole world. And we have to care because God cares about the whole world. This is going to take you to a new level of spiritual maturity.
Jesus said in Mark’s Gospel, “Go everywhere in the world and tell the Good News to everyone.” Now, I want you to notice a couple things about that verse. Look at the verse. Was Jesus talking to pastors there? No. Was he talking to missionaries there? No. He’s talking to just normal followers. If you’re a Christian, Jesus said, “Follow Me, and I’ll make you a fisher of men.” If you’re not fishing, you’re not following. He says to His followers, go everywhere, because everybody deserves to hear the Good News.
Is anybody going to be in heaven because of you? When you get to heaven, is anybody going to say thank you, thank you for telling me the Good News? You knew it and you didn’t keep it a secret. You passed it on.
In the next 365 days, 2.4 million Americans will die, and most of them will go into eternity without Jesus Christ. In the next 365 days, 54 million people in the world will die; most of them will go into eternity without Jesus Christ. Those numbers are almost too difficult for me to bear.
If we care, we must share.
God calls us to a mission – a mission of sharing his love and forgiveness with others. A mission of being his witnesses in the courtroom of life.
How do you respond to that call to a mission?
I think there are only four choices you have.
You can be like Moses.
When God called him, Moses didn’t say, “Yes, send me!” He looked at the burning bush and said, “Who, me?” Then he pointed to his brother and suggested that God should send him.
Or you can say like Jonah.
When God called Jonah to go to the Ninevites and share the Gospel, Jonah didn’t say, “Yes, send me!” No. Instead he said, "Not me." Then he got in a boat and headed in the opposite direction that God wanted Jonah to go to.
Or you can say it like Habakkuk. When God called the Old Testament prophet, his response was not, “Send me,” but it was “Lord, why me?"
And the only other response is to be like Isaiah. When God called him, he was the one who said, “Here I am, send me."
You have heard me say this many times. The most dangerous prayer you can pray is "God use me." I dare you to say it. Do you have enough courage to say, "God use my life"? Watch what happens! Little becomes much when you put it in the Master’s hand.
Copyright 2004, Dr. Maynard Pittendreigh
This material may be used by other ministers
For more sermons and worship materials, visit www.Pittendreigh.com
