Well, good morning and welcome once again to Christian Life Academy. And this morning, being the fourth Sunday of the month, we are in our practical theology track and we are currently doing a series on evangelism. So last month we looked at the idea of what is the gospel? What do we need to know before we can go sharing our faith, our belief in Christ with others? So the week, the month before that we looked at what kind of people we need to be. And then last month we looked at what is the gospel and the various elements of the gospel that we need to be able to communicate when we communicate with those who do not know Christ that we are accurately conveying to them the good news of salvation through faith in Christ. And so this morning we're going to deal with the question of what is evangelism itself and how do we go about doing that. I think a lot of us are interested in evangelism, interested in sharing our faith, and we just don't know where to begin. So hopefully this will give us some pointers this morning. I want to start with some definitions of evangelism, and this comes from Ernest Reisinger, who was a 20th century Reformed Baptist pastor, and he wrote a small booklet on evangelism, and so this is excerpted from that. But he says evangelism is the communication of a divinely inspired message that we call the gospel. So that's the first thing we need to know about evangelism is that the message that we are sharing with other people is not ours, it's God's message. This is the gospel that God has revealed to us. It's a divinely inspired message. So when we are sharing with other people our faith, we're giving them the good news of Jesus Christ that has been revealed to us by God in the scriptures. He goes on to say, it is a message that is definable in words. but must be communicated in both word and power. And then he quotes from 1 Thessalonians 1, verse 5, where Paul writes and says, for our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost. and in much assurance. And so Paul is reminding the Thessalonians that when he was there and proclaimed the gospel to them that it wasn't just words, that it actually had the power of the Holy Spirit to bring people to repentance and to faith in Christ and that there was an assurance that they had, that they truly had been saved. when they believed the message. Reisinger continues and says, the message begins with information and includes explanation, application, and invitation. So he's saying that we begin by conveying information to people, actually knowledge about Christ and what he has done, but then we have to explain that. Why is this good news? What does it mean for you? How is this applied in your life? And then we have to invite them to actually repent and believe the gospel. If we don't do those things, we haven't really evangelized them. We can give them some information about Christ, but if we don't explain it, if we don't apply it, and if we don't actually give them a call to repent and believe, then we've just shared information with them. We've not actually evangelized He continues and says, the information is how God, our creator and judge, in mercy made his son a perfect, able, and willing savior of sinners. The invitation is God's summons to mankind to come to that savior in faith and repentance and find forgiveness, life, and peace. Think about that. The message that we are communicating to people when we evangelize is the message of salvation, of forgiveness, of life, of peace. These are things that people want. People want peace. They want to live in peace both in their souls and outwardly with others. They want life. And so we have the good news. We have the answer to life's biggest questions. So then he gives us a formal definition of evangelism. He says that evangelism is to present Jesus Christ to sinful men in order that they may come to put their trust in God through Him, to receive Him as their Savior and serve Him as their King in the fellowship of the church." And so you can see there's a lot of elements there that he's including in what evangelism is. We're presenting to them Jesus Christ, the information about Christ. We're giving that to sinful men, people who are in need of forgiveness and redemption. that they are to put their trust in him, to be saved by him, but then also to serve him as their king and to do so in the fellowship of the church. According to his definition, evangelism knows nothing of simply proclaiming the gospel to people and then not connecting them to other believers in the fellowship of the church. This is vital for the task of evangelism and for what we have been called to do as believers. So, our question is, how do we go about doing this? So, I want to start by looking at a passage in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and we'll begin in verse 18. 2 Corinthians 5, beginning in verse 18. Now all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them. and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God, for he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him." This is a dense passage that is packed with a lot of information here. There's a couple of interesting phrases that Paul uses. First of all, this idea of reconciliation. This is what God is doing in the gospel. He is reconciling sinners back to himself. And that means that there is a breach, a separation that has occurred because of our sin. And so what the gospel is accomplishing is restoring or reconciling our relationship with God so that we can once again be in relationship with our Creator. And he is doing this through Jesus Christ, through the work of Christ in our redemption. And then Paul says that he has given us, that is believers, the ministry of reconciliation in verse 18. And then in verse 19, that he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. So the word of reconciliation is the message of Christ, the gospel. And our ministry is to proclaim that word, to teach it, speak it to others so that they might be reconciled to God as well. But then Paul says in verse 20, that we should view ourselves as ambassadors. We are God's ambassadors to men to proclaim this message. And there's some things I think that that implies about how we go about this work of evangelism. First of all, if we are ambassadors and Christ is our King, then we have been commissioned by him to take this divinely inspired message of reconciliation to others. And so our job, our role as ambassadors is to faithfully deliver the King's message. As ambassadors, we don't have the freedom to alter that message. This is the king's message and he has sent us as ambassadors. It's not our message, it's his. We don't have the freedom to alter it in any way or to change it. in any way. So there's a message of the gospel that men are sinners, that they're in need of forgiveness, that they must be reconciled to God through Christ alone. So this is the message that we have to proclaim and we can't alter that in any way. We're to communicate this message as his ambassadors, regardless of whatever discomfort, whatever difficulty or opposition we might face. We don't have the freedom to say, well, this is too hard, I'm going home. No, we're ambassadors. We've been sent by the King with a message. And so even if that means that we're killed in the line of duty, so to speak, then that's what we endure as ambassadors. And as we look at church history, we can see many, many faithful ambassadors, missionaries and pastors and faithful martyrs who have indeed been killed because they have been faithful to proclaim the message of Christ. And then the other thing is that as we faithfully proclaim the King's message, we have to understand that we're just the messengers, we're just the ambassadors. Our duty is to deliver the message, but we have to leave the response to Christ. That's His work. We faithfully deliver the message and call people to repentance and belief. but to actually change their hearts is the work of the Lord, not our own work. So we are to proclaim the message faithfully because we are his ambassadors. And as we do so, I think there are some things that we need to be encouraged by. In 2 Corinthians chapter four, verse one, Paul says, therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, do not lose heart. And I think it's easy sometimes when we consider the task of evangelism to lose heart, that we try and share the gospel with friends, family, co-workers, whoever it may be, and oftentimes they reject it, they oppose it, they may ridicule us because of it. It would be easy to lose heart. It would be easy to go, well, I'm trying to do this and no one is getting saved. Nobody wants to hear the message. it would be easy to become discouraged, but we're told here, do not lose heart. We've been given a ministry by our king as his ambassadors, and so we are to faithfully go about those duties and leave the results to him and not become discouraged if we don't see the results that we think we ought to see. The second thing is over in Paul's letter to Philemon. He writes this, which is interesting. He says, I thank my God making mention of you always in my prayers, hearing of your love and faith which you have towards the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints, that the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. Now I think he's particularly talking about the fellowship of the saints when he talks about the sharing of their faith. I don't think he means it necessarily in the context of evangelism, sharing our faith in that way, but in sharing our faith mutually with other believers. I think it's interesting that he says that in that fellowship of the saints, and remember that evangelism is tied to the church in that way, but that in our sharing of the faith with each other, that there is an acknowledgment of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. And so I think when we rehearse the gospel to each other, even as believers, that we are encouraged and it is effective in our own souls. And I think the same is true when we rehearse the gospel in evangelism, when we share the good news with others, even if they don't accept it. Even if we look and we go, this doesn't seem to be effective. It's not producing the results that I would like to see. We need to be aware that when we speak the gospel to others, we're reminding ourselves of the gospel as well. And it is effective, even if it's only effective in our own hearts, to remind us of every good thing which is in us because of Christ Jesus. When we share the gospel with others, we share the good news of forgiveness, of mercy, reconciliation with God. We're reminding ourselves as well as telling others. And so that is effective in our own hearts and our own souls to encourage us in the faith, to bring us to maturity in the faith. The other thing about being ambassadors delivering this message is that it reminds us that we should be humble as we go about proclaiming the gospel to others. We have no cause to be prideful or arrogant or to lord it over them. We are ambassadors by grace because this message that we're sharing was once shared with us and we had to be reconciled to God as well. We were once in need of the salvation that comes by faith in Christ and we're still in need of the gospel. It's still as effective in our own souls. And so as we go about wanting to share the good news of Christ with others, we should do so with humility, recognizing that we need it as much as they do. And then finally, because we are ambassadors, and it is the king's message that he has entrusted to us. We can share it boldly because this is not our message. It is a divinely inspired message because it comes from God. It is the best news that we could share with someone and so we can share it boldly with others. In Colossians chapter 4, Paul asks the church in Colossae to pray for him. He tells them, continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving. Meanwhile, praying also for us. So he's asking them to pray for himself and for his team that is with him as they engage in the work of missions. And here's what he wants them to pray, that God would open to us a door for the word. So he wants God to give them opportunities to evangelize, to share the gospel with others, And then he says, to speak the mystery of Christ for which I am also in chains that I may make it manifest or clear as I ought to speak. So he's asking them to pray that God would give them opportunities and then make them bold to take advantage of those opportunities and to clearly articulate the gospel to others. And so we should take that prayer for ourselves that God would give us opportunities and make us bold and give us clarity when we speak the message of the gospel. So I think that's what it means for us to be ambassadors, taking this divinely inspired message of Christ and sharing it with others. As we go about sharing the gospel with others, there's a balance that I think that we need to strike between three elements in our attitude, I guess, as we share this divinely inspired message with them. It's a balance between honesty, urgency, and joyfulness. And so, we need to be honest as we're sharing the message. Like I said, it's God's message. We're just the ambassadors. We don't have the authority to alter the message. So it's His message about sin, about guilt, about judgment that is coming on those who do not repent, about the need for repentance and humility and belief in Christ. We have to be honest about those things. We can't soft-pedal it. We can't leave off the fact that somebody is a sinner and that they need to repent and just promise them good things in Christ without pointing out the fact that they're going to need to humble themselves and ask for His forgiveness. We have to be honest about the message. And I think if we turn over to Acts chapter 2, which we've looked at at some length in the past, but this is... At Pentecost in Jerusalem, Peter is taking advantage. So here's a door of opportunity that opened. The Holy Spirit is poured out on the church. A crowd has gathered going, what's going on here? Why are these people speaking in all these various languages? And so Peter seizes this opportunity and boldly proclaims the gospel. And it's interesting. how honest he is with his audience, the people that are hearing him. In verses 22 and 23 he says, wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst as you yourselves also know him being delivered by the Determined purpose and foreknowledge of God you have taken by lawless hands have crucified and put to death Whom God raised up having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible to that he should be held by it. So Peter goes on to proclaim the need for them to repent and believe in Christ as the Messiah. But notice how honest he is with them about their sin. You have taken him by lawless hands, have crucified and put him to death. That's a hard pill to swallow. Peter's not soft-pedaling their need for forgiveness and repentance. They are sinners who put to death the Messiah. So we need to be honest with people about their sin and about the need for repentance to turn away from that sin and to give it up. We have to be honest about the fact that Yes, you don't have to get your life in order to earn salvation. You can't do that. But when you come to Christ in faith, it involves repentance, which means you're going to have to give up your sinful ways. You're going to have to turn away from that sin. You're going to have to give it up. And let's just be honest about it. We enjoy our sin sometimes. We don't want to give it up. So we need to let people know that this is not an easy believism sort of thing. You can't just say that you believe in Christ. You're actually going to have to turn away from sin and it's going to be difficult to give up things that you treasure and cling to for the sake of Christ. We have to put that honesty then in balance with these other two elements, which is urgency. We have a message to proclaim and it is a message that has a good deal of urgency with it. In 2 Corinthians chapter 6, Paul says this, he says, We then, as workers together with him, also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. There's an urgency to our proclamation of the gospel. Don't put this off. You don't know what tomorrow may hold. This is the day. If you're hearing the gospel, this is the time for you to repent and to believe. James tells us in his epistle, James chapter four, Verse 14, he says, you do not know what will happen tomorrow, for what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. So we need to have an urgency when we're speaking the gospel to people to let them know, like, look, you're hearing the gospel. This is an opportunity for you to repent and believe. Don't put this off. You're not guaranteed tomorrow. You need to repent today. You need to believe today. In Acts chapter 4, we see Peter again preaching and proclaiming that there is no other name by which you can be saved other than the name of Christ. We have to put our faith in Him. So there's an urgency here. Put your trust in Christ. Believe the gospel. Repent. There is no other name. Don't put this off and Think that you can indulge sin longer and then repent later. No, you need to repent now and believe in Christ. In Revelation chapter 14, we see in verse six, then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people saying with a loud voice, fear God and give glory to him for the hour of his judgment has come and worship him who made heaven and earth the sea and springs of water. We need to let people know there is an hour of judgment coming and we don't know when that hour is. It could be later today. It could be tomorrow. We don't know. There's an urgency and the call for people to repent and believe the gospel. So we need to be honest with them about their sin, about their need for forgiveness. We need to be urgent in pleading with them to repent and believe. But we have to put those two things in balance with a joy. This is good news. It's supposed to be joyful. In First Timothy, Sorry, we're jumping all over the place this morning, but in 1 Timothy 1, verse 15, Paul says, This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief. That's good news. That's the gospel we're proclaiming. Christ has come into the world to save sinners. So there should be a certain amount of joy in our proclamation of the gospel. Christ has come to save sinners. And so God fills us with joy. Paul tells us in Romans 15, Jude chapter 24 says that we will have joy in his presence. So there's a certain amount of joy that we should have in our proclamation of the gospel. This is good news. It's urgent. It's serious. There's sin to be repented of, but there's forgiveness. There's reconciliation with God. There's the promise of eternity in the presence of our Creator, so there should be joy in our proclamation. If we don't maintain this balance between these three elements, what happens? Well, if we have the honesty and the urgency and no joy, then we have a pretty grim message that we're sharing with people. Right? Turn or burn. Repent or die. There's no joy there. It's just grim. It's harsh. If we have honesty and joy and no urgency, then what happens? We get careless. We get lazy. We tell people how wonderful it is. We tell them they should repent, but then we don't actually implore them to repent today, now is the day, because we don't feel that urgency. What happens if we have the urgency and we have the joy and we leave off the honesty? Well, we end up presenting some sort of truncated gospel. We're not giving them the whole message. We're not telling them that they're sinners who need to repent and turn from their sin. It leads to a distorted gospel. This is what the prosperity gospel is, right? There's an urgency and a joy, but there's no honesty. about what the condition that sinful men are actually in and their need to repent and get right with God through Christ Jesus. So we need to have this balance of honesty, urgency, and joy. So once we have that in our minds, how do we actually go about sharing the gospel? Well, there's no given formula. I'm not going to give you a formula, but I'm going to give you a couple of things that I think are helpful. And the first is, is that we need to prepare, right? We need to know the gospel. And that's what we went over last month, the various elements of the gospel. But I think a great example of this is found in Acts chapter eight, right? In Acts 8, we have the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. Here is this man who has been in Jerusalem. He has left Jerusalem and he is leaving. He is in his chariot. He has a copy of the scroll of Isaiah and he is reading it. runs alongside his chariot, hears what he is reading, ends up in the chariot with him, speaking with him, and in chapter 8 verse 35, Philip says to him this, or it says, then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this scripture, preached Jesus to him. This is an important little thing that we need to know here is that we need to be ready to take whatever scripture might be to hand and find a way to Jesus from there. This is what Spurgeon talks about that there is a road from every text of scripture to Christ and if he doesn't see one he's gonna go over the hedges to find a road to get to Christ from that scripture. We never know what scripture might Somebody might be reading or might have in mind or might fit a conversation that we're in. And so we need to be able to find the gospel, to find a way to Christ from wherever we are at in the scriptures. We need to know how to get to the gospel message. Second thing that we need to do is we need to pray. As we've already seen, we need to pray for opportunities, for open doors to proclaim the gospel. And then I think we need to pray specifically for lost people by name that we know, our co-workers, our family, our friends, our neighbors. We need to pray for them that God would save them and that he would give us an opportunity or give other people an opportunity to share the gospel with them. If we're not asking God for those opportunities for specific people, then how can we expect to be effective in actually sharing the gospel with them if God doesn't give us those opportunities. And then thirdly, we need to be ready to speak when we do have those opportunities, when we do have conversations with them. We need to be clear when we speak. We need to be careful that we define our terms, that we don't use big theological terms like justification or even the word gospel or salvation. We need to define these things. If you happen to be talking to a Mormon, they'll use the word gospel and they mean something different by it than we do. So we need to be careful to define our terms. And then we need to have in mind that as we speak to others about Christ, our goal is not that they would like or agree with what we're saying. Our goal is that we would be clear, that they would understand what we're saying. They might not like it. They might not respond the way we want them to, but our goal is to be clear so that they can actually have an understanding of the gospel. Not to present a gospel that they'll like or enjoy, but to present the gospel they need and to do so in such a way that they can understand it. Our goal really is to provoke them to some self-reflection, to thinking about their state as a sinner in need of repentance and forgiveness. And so a couple of things that I would say here, and this is I think the important, this is where the rubber meets the road. How do we actually share the gospel with people when we do have the opportunity to have a conversation with them? And I think There's multiple different ways that you could go about this. I can't give you this is the method or how you do this. But ask questions. This is how we get into the conversation with people. Ask questions and ask the right questions. Don't just ask them how they're enjoying the weather. You could do that and find a road to Christ from that as a creator who's created all things. But we need to ask the right questions. One of the most effective questions that I have found is simply to ask people if I could pray for them. Especially if you're having a conversation, somebody's going through something or having a difficulty, they happen to be telling you about it, just ask them if you can pray for them. I rarely have had somebody say no. Most people will let you pray for them. And then that opens up a door to talk about spiritual things with them. I think I've only had one person tell me no when I asked if I could pray with him, and it was a homeless person in Boston, and I think he was afraid that if he stopped and prayed with me that he would lose out on the opportunity to panhandle from some of the passing motorists. But most of the time, you ask people if you can pray for them, they will say yes, and that opens a door to other conversations. You can ask questions like, what is your religious background? Did you grow up in church? You can start conversations that way. Or you can ask them, especially if it happens to be a circumstance where they've lost a loved one or something, you could ask them, do you believe in an afterlife? Do you believe in heaven? Is it a better place? How do you think that someone gets in to heaven or gets into this better place? Surely not everyone gets in, right? You can ask them these sorts of questions to begin a conversation with them. And if they say, well, yeah, I think this is how you get in. Well, how do you get there? How do you arrive at that conclusion that this is how a person gets into heaven? What is your standard? How did you arrive at that information? So you can ask them these sorts of questions. One question people like to talk about is just simply ask them who they think Jesus is. Everybody's got an opinion on that, right? Ask them who they think Jesus is. Another thing is if you happen to be in conversation with somebody and they're complaining about a problem in the world, whether that's immigration or taxes or whatever the problem is, that you can ask them, well, why do you think this is a problem? Why do you think people behave in these ways? What do you think the solution is? And then ask them, what do you think God thinks about this situation? What do you think the solution might be that God would offer us from this situation? And the key here, as you're asking people questions, is to be friendly and actually listen to their answers, right? Don't ask them the questions simply because you're trying to get to your answer. You want to actually hear what they say, listen to it, because you can begin to understand where they're at and what their thinking is and what they actually believe about things. So you need to be interested. But then as you ask them these questions, they will give you an opportunity for then you to answer the question as well. And when you do so, you need to make sure that you present God as holy, that you present His law as absolute, that we are sinners by nature, separated from God and in need of reconciliation that comes through Christ alone. If you're interested in how to have these sorts of conversations and ask people questions, there are a couple of books that I would recommend. One of them is called Tell the Truth. It's a book on evangelism and has a whole section on how to start conversations and go deeper in conversation with people by asking the right questions. The other one is I would simply encourage you to read John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and pay attention to the conversations that Christian has with the various people he encounters. Some of them are believers, some of them are not. And every time he has opportunity to get in a conversation with people, he asks them questions about what they believe or why they think they might be accepted at the celestial city in heaven or the better place that happens after this life. Look at those questions that Christian is asking people. Some people who think they're a Christian and they're really not, and he's asking them probing questions. Well, how did you get into this way, into the Christian life? Did you come in by the gate? Who is Christ? Or did you climb over the wall some way? He's asking them questions to get at the truth of what they believe. And then he's able to follow that up with explaining the truth to them. And so Pilgrim's Progress is wonderful that way in seeing how to ask appropriate questions. J.I. Packer says this about our evangelism. He says, When evangelism is not fertilized, fed, and controlled by theology, it becomes a stylized performance, seeking its effect through manipulative skills rather than the power of vision and the force of truth. So as we evangelism, his point is we need to have good doctrine. We need to understand the gospel so that as we communicate with people, we can make sure that we're pointing them towards the truth of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit and that we're not just putting on a performance or trying to manipulate them in some way to get a response out of them that may not actually be a genuine repentance, but rather it's just an emotional response in the moment, or maybe they're just going through the motions in order to get us off their back. We need to ask deep questions, understand what they really believe, and then finally we need to implore them, as Paul said in 2 Corinthians, to repent and to believe the gospel. Because if we don't do that, then we've really missed the heart of evangelism. We can share the message with them. We can tell them what we believe. We can ask all the right questions. We can give our answers to those questions in Christ. And then if we turn and we walk away, we don't actually tell them, you need to repent, turn away from your sin and believe in Christ. And we haven't evangelized them. We've left them hanging. We've said, here's this good news out here, and then we've not told them how to grasp it for themselves. And so we need to make sure that our evangelism includes a call to repent and believe. This is what Paul does here with the Corinthians, even in our passage that we looked at in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and he's writing to Christian church and he is still saying we implore you on Christ's behalf be reconciled to God and then he gives them the snapshot of the gospel for he made him that is Christ who knew no sin he was perfect he was sinless to be sin for us he took our sin on himself that we might become the righteousness of God in him he took our sin he gives us his righteousness so that we can be reconciled to God so Here, even with a Christian church, Paul is imploring them to repent and to be reconciled to God. So how much more should we do so with unbelievers? So, again, there's no secret formula to evangelism. I've seen tracts in the past that have You know, here's how you do this. You put your hand on the shoulder at this time and you... That's that manipulative performance that J.I. Packer is talking about. True evangelism is to be clear about the gospel, to ask questions, to get at the root of what someone believes, present Christ as the answer to life's deepest questions. Everyone knows in their heart things are not right in the world. Even non-believers recognize there are big problems. There's violence and death and all these things and so we have the answer to the why do these things exist because of our human sin. What is the answer? The answer is reconciliation to God. through repentance and faith in Christ. So don't make a performance out of evangelism, but genuinely care for people and make sure that you're issuing a call for them to repent and believe. And without that, you're not doing evangelism. So let's close in a word of prayer.