By: Mark Engler, Mt. Vernon Christian Church, Mt. Vernon, MO
How To Be A Good Evangelist
Text: Matt. 28:16-20: But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. 17 And when they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful. 18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Before we take a look at all of that, I want to define what an evangelist is. Evangelist haven’t changed since New Testament times, when Jesus was speaking the Great Commission he was giving charge to evangelist, they didn’t use the term evangelist in that day they were disciples and later called apostles.
Disciples are students, like the 12 that accompanied Christ in His earthly ministry, after that though they became apostles. Apostles are what we are, not just like the 12 that were with Jesus. They had miraculous powers that were given to them, which we do not have today, but we are apostles in the same sense that they were. You might be wondering why I call us apostles.
According to Smith in Smith’s Bible Dictionary is says an apostle it, “One sent forth”. In the New Testament, the official name of the 12 disciples whom Jesus sent first to preach the gospel. In a nonofficial sense to designate a much wide circle of Christian messengers and teachers.
So you should see that in a nonofficial sense according to Smith we are apostles, because we all are Christian messengers and teachers. Lets not just take Smiths word for it though, lets see what God says about it. 2 Cor. 8:23 says: As for Titus, he is my partner and fellow worker among you; as for our brethren, they are messengers of the churches, a glory to Christ. Here it speaks of common Christians, brethren as messengers, again in Phil. 2:25 it says: But I thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger and minister to my need.
Epaphroditus was also just a common Christian, just like we are today and he is called a messenger and minister. So what is an apostle today? An apostle today is simply a messenger, or one sent forth. What we would call an evangelist or missionary today.
Now as we look at the Great Commission I hope that we can see that when Jesus spoke it, it wasn’t just to the apostles of that day. It was spoken for us today, the apostle of today, the messengers of today, the evangelist of today, which, if we are Christians, is who we are. So this message that I have today is for all of us since we all are responsible for the work of evangelism. We have the responsibility to spread the word here locally and worldwide.
Earlier I read the whole Great Commission, now lets work it down to verses 19 & 20, which I think is the core of it, verses 19 & 20 say, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” This is one of the most powerful statements in the Bible. Jesus’ last words were a command to us to take action; they were to get us moving in the task He set forth for us to do.
Well, now I want to pick out all the verbs, all the action words. So lets go back to English class a minute and pick out all the verbs in this section.
There is GO, there is MAKE, there is BAPTIZING, there is TEACHING, there is OBSERVE, and there is COMMANDED. So now what is the most important one. GO is important, how are we going to spread the Gospel if we don’t go? BAPTIZING is important, how will we be following God’s word if we don’t baptize or be baptized. TEACHING is important, no one will be able to learn God’s word if they are not taught. OBSERVE and COMMANDED are very important also. But the one that I think is the most important is the on that you probably have already picked out because I skipped it. It is MAKE, MAKE includes all of these other verbs, in doing the going, the baptizing, the teaching, the observing and doing what Jesus commanded is all wound up in MAKE.
So now we are going to take the Great Commission down to one word and that of course is the word MAKE and are going to study it more closely. We are going to take it letter by letter and see what each letter stands for.
First the letter M, stands for motivate or motivation.
1. A good evangelist must be motivated or have motivation.
I think that it is appropriate that this is the first one. In Cross Cultural Communication class I had several years ago we studied what it takes to communicate cross culturally all semester and the number one, most important thing to communicate was motivation. This goes for not only cross culturally but with people of our own community. In LaMonte where I was a Youth Minister, in Sedalia, where I lived for a long time, and here and the surrounding area we almost have to communicate cross culturally if we want to communicate the Gospel to all the people. The mission field is not only abroad, but is right here in our own backyards.
So what is it that gets us motivated to get out and spread the gospel? It is just that, the Gospel, what Jesus Christ did for us in His time here on earth. 1 Cor. 15:1-8 should give us some motivation as the events in Christ life gave motivation in the lives of the apostles. The verses say this: “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. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as it were to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.”
The facts of the Gospel is what should motivate us to move, to move forward and have the desire to want to see that other people have the chance to hear the Gospel and believe it, for without the knowledge of the Gospel people will be lost. Christ, through what He did saved us, and the gift of salvation is a free gift to all, but they will never be saved unless they hear what we have been commanded to spread. So let the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, what God intended to motivate us, motivate us. Paul used the gospel as his driving power and he worked relentlessly spreading it until his death. There are two kinds of people on this earth, there are the lost and the saved. We must take the word to the lost. Luke 19:10 says: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” We must be about the same thing. That’s what the Great Commission is all about, to seek to save the lost.
The church build can no longer be the place of most of our evangelistic work. The primary work of the church is to evangelize the world, but the primary work of the church is not done as we gather, but as we scatter.
Second in Make we have A and the A stands for attitude.
2. A good evangelist needs to have the right attitude.
Why attitude? A lot of the times I think we associate attitude with a bad attitude. That’s not what I’m going for exactly, but we must avoid a bad attitude in order to spread the Gospel as we should.
Phil. 2:1-5 says this about attitude: “If therefore there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus”
In this 2nd chapter of Phil. Paul is telling us to be like Christ in our attitude. Paul says here, if Christ is an encouragement to us at all, then we in love, in affection, in compassion need to unite for one purpose. Not thinking of ourselves, but of Christ and what He commanded us to do, and that is to spread His Gospel. We can’t be divided and expect to spread the word effectively as Christ intended us to. We must stay together as one body as Christ intended us to be. Not only within our local churches but also with all the other Christian Churches. We must work together or we will surely fall apart.
Again in Phil. 3:14,15 Paul says this: “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you”
Just what is the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, well I believe it is to preach the Gospel to the nations. Well you might say, I can’t do that, God didn’t call me to be a preacher and I don’t believe that at all.
I believe that God has called every Christian to be a preacher and evangelist. Now everyone may not get behind the pulpit and preach a sermon, but everyone does preach a sermon everyday of there life, whether you know it or not. The best sermons in the world that are preached are not sermons preached from the pulpit, but it is what you preach everyday of your life. We preach sermons in what we do and what we say, in how we live. The best sermon that will ever be preached is one that a faithful Christian preaches everyday of his or her life.
In Jeremiah 12:3 is says this: “But Thou knowest me, O LORD; Thou seest me; And Thou dost examine my heart’s attitude toward Thee.”
God knows our hearts; He sees what we do day in and day out, lets keep the right attitude. We need to have an attitude that is toward spreading the Gospel. Not the kind of attitude that says on Sunday morning I’m going to have the attitude of a Christian and then the rest of the week I’m going to do what I want. If we are Christians then we need to have the attitude of a Christian all the time. Day in and day out, when we wake up in the morning and until the time we go to bed at night, always looking for the opportunity to spread the gospel.
We must remember who we are, after we accepted Christ as our Lord and Savior and went through that watery grave of baptism; we are no longer the people we were before. We are new people in Christ and our attitude needs and must reflect that if we want to be the messenger of the gospel that we should be. God uses the Gospel to motivate us and He will us it to give us the right attitude we need to have in our everyday lives.
Next in make we have K. Well you might be wondering what in the world would K be. It is for knees and of course when we are on our knees we are in prayer.
3. A good evangelist must spend time on his knees.
This again is something that we must not neglect. Prayer, I believe is the most powerful tool that God has given us.
Illus: Isaac Newton said this about prayer, “I can take my telescope and look millions and millions of miles into space; but I can lay my telescope aside, go into my room and shut the door, get down on my knees in earnest prayer, and I see more of heaven and get closer to God than I can when assisted by all the telescopes and material agencies on earth”. There is nothing on earth as powerful as prayer is. This may third in my points today, but it is of the utmost importance in our everyday lives. God will, hear and answer your prayers. In Acts chapter 10 it says “And he said, ‘Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God.” In this case God brought the preacher and the prospect together because the prayers of Cornelius. It is no different today, what a good evangelist is looking for is to get himself together with the prospect. Through prayer we will be more in tune to what the will of God is for our lives, He will lead us and other people together so that we may be witnesses for Christ to those that will hear.
Illus: Dr. Harry A. Ironside as a young preacher visiting the aged Alexander Fraser and listening enthralled as one truth after another from God’s Word was opened up by Mr. Fraser until he could restrain himself no more, cried out, “Where did you learn these things?” “On my knees on the mud floor of a little sod cottage in the north of Ireland,” replied Mr. Fraser. “There, with my Bible open before me, I used to kneel for hours at a time, and ask the Spirit of God to reveal Christ to my soul and to open the Word to my heart. He taught me more on my knees on that mud floor that I could ever have learned in all the colleges and seminaries in the world.”
God will and does reveal Himself when you pray, you will not only gain knowledge and awareness, but you will be closer to God that ever before is you spend time on you knees. When we wake up in the morning we should be praying that God will make our paths cross with someone that is lost and needs to hear the gospel.
Now we’re ready for the last letter in Make which of course is E. The E stands for Educate or Education.
4. A good evangelist must educate himself and others.
We don’t need to have a Bible College education to spread God’s word. I think that is good, but not really needed to spread the gospel. What is necessary is that we read our Bible daily so that we know and understand what God is telling us in His word.
It’s not the education of the evangelist that I’m going for in this point, it is the education of the prospects. Of course we need to be educated if we hope to educate. 2 Tim. 2:2 says this: “And the things, which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” Basically what this is saying it take the education you have and pass it on the others so they will be able to pass it on the others and so on, and so on.
We have neglected to do this to some in the past. I would like for you to think back in your lives, remember how many people that you have seen baptized and committing their lives to Christ. Now think about how many are here or involved in churches somewhere. I’ll bet that there are many that are involved actively in the church, some maybe even teachers or deacons or elders or preachers, but I’ll bet that some are not. I’ll bet that some have not set foot in a church for years and maybe not even once after they have been baptized and those are the people that we have neglected.
All people that come to Christ need to be educated, but it is the ones that I see baptized and then don’t see at church anymore that really bother me. We must not let that happen, we must make every effort to encourage them and to teach them. Without the knowledge of God’s word they will fall away. And without us educating and encouraging them, most of them do fall away.
A person must live a faithful life to Christ to the best of his or her ability to get that eternal reward. That’s why I have made a commitment years ago to give every person that is baptized in the church I’m serving in a bible. When I give them that bible I want tell them that I want to work with them to help them study it and help them understand the parts they don’t. We need to see to it that people understand that getting baptized it not the last step in salvation. While it is essential the life they live afterwards is just as essential. And our work is not done after we baptize it has only just begun.
We must not and cannot neglect the work of educating. It is a vital part of the process of evangelism and it is a vital part of living a Christian life. Remember 2 Tim. 2:2 says in essence: we must educate so they will educate and so on and so on and so on.
Conclusion:
So lets look back at what we have looked at today. We have taken the Great Commission, one of the most powerful statements that Christ ever made. A statement that was intended to move us to action. We reduced it down to the action words and looked at what I think is the most important action word because all the other action words are wound up in it.
What is in Make is what it takes to be a good evangelist. So the M was for Motivate or Motivation for without motivation we will do nothing. The A is for Attitude, we must have a Christian, an evangelistic attitude everyday, day in and day out if we hope to spread the Gospel. The K was for Knee, without spending time on our knees in prayer daily we will not be in touch with God, with prayer He will guide and direct us to the prospects, and the E was for Educate, we must not neglect those that come to Christ and we must educate ourselves so we can educate others.
So we have a job that is set our before us, it’s not a job that I set out or the church set out, it’s a job that Christ Himself set out for us. We cannot and must not neglect it, it is right here in out backyards and the world abroad. John 4:35 says, Do you not say, “There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest.
We are all evangelist, it is all of our jobs to take the message to the people, lets take heed the word of this day and see that fields that are white for harvest.
