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This page was last updated 02/26/09
Week Of: February 1, 2009
Title: Intentional Evangelism
Series: Study of Spiritual Formation - Part 21
Scripture: 1 Peter 2:9-12
1. What is evangelism? One definition says: Evangelism “present(s) Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to sinful people, in order that they may come to put their trust in God through Jesus, to Him as Savior and Lord, to serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His church” (Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald S. Whitney, page 100).
2. Or simply put, we might say evangelism is just plain and simple communicating the gospel to people who are lost. And what is the Gospel? “Jesus Christ lived, died, and arose again to save us from our sins so that we could serve and worship Him.”
3. We have preachers called “Evangelists.” Are they the only ones who are supposed to do evangelism? No, listen to the following scriptures.
4. Jesus said them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” (Mark 16: 15)
5. And Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me. I am sending you…’” (John 20:21)
6. "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8)
7. And then in our scripture today, Peter writes in verse 9: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belong to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light…” He goes on to say in verse 12: “live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”
8. 1 Peter gives us the two parts of successful evangelism. One is declaring verbally the praise of Jesus, and the other is living the good Christian life before lost people.
9. Do you find it easy to declare the praises of Jesus around people who are lost? Why? Don’t know enough Bible? Don’t live a good Christian life? Afraid of what people will think? All of these might concern us at times.
10. As a Christian, do you ever feel out of place in the world? Do you ever feel like a stranger with strange opinions and values compared to the values of our world? Peter believes you should feel out of place. Look at verse 11, he tells them: “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world…”
11. Really, at our best, we are supposed to be out of place…different and somewhat weird. We are strangers in this world we live in, not quite at home because our home is supposed to be in heaven. And witnessing or telling others what Jesus may mean to us might even make us feel even more weird or different. Yet, no matter how out of place you and I might feel, 1 Peter 3: 15 says: “…always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.”
12. But according to the Christian researcher George Barna most Christian people don’t witness… because they are afraid of failure. Like there is too much at stake to try to witness to someone because you might fail in presenting the Gospel or you might tell them wrong.
13. Well tell me something, was Jesus an “evangelistic failure?” Remember, when He was rejected by the rich young ruler? Jesus laid it out to him what he needed to do to follow Him and the young man rejected His invitation. Jesus wasn’t a failure, the rich young man failed. Jesus taught and presented the Gospel repeatedly, and nearly in every instance there were people who rejected Him, mocked Him, and made fun of Him, yet He wasn’t a failure, they were.
14. The only failure in a situation where a Christian shares the Gospel with a lost person lies with the person who walks away from Jesus. Really and truly, all shared evangelism is successful evangelism. The only way you and I can fail in our witnessing is not to witness at all.
15. But look at the second part of 1 Peter’s statement. It says: “live such good lives among the pagans that…they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”
16. A lot of folk’s ideas of evangelism and witnessing are just to live a good Christian life, and keep your mouth shut unless someone asks you about Jesus.
17. The thing is that not too many people will just come out and say to you “I want to become a Christian” without you prodding them some. There needs to be some verbal encouragement on our part no matter how good a life we lead.
18. For sure if we live like the devil, no one is going to trust us enough to listen to what we have to say, but no matter how good a life we lead, we are going to have to say someday, “I am Christian how, about you?”
19. Let me tell you the story I heard about a man who became a Christian during an evangelistic emphasiws in his town one day. He got saved and when he told his boss about his conversion his employer responded with, "That's great! I am a Christian and have been praying for you for years!"
The boss was expecting the man to be pleased that he was so excited about his conversion, but he wasn’t. In fact the new believer was crestfallen. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that you were a Christian?” He asked. “You were the very reason I have not been interested in the gospel all these years.”
“How can that be?” the boss wondered. “I have done my very best to live the Christian life around you.” Well, that’s the point.” explained the employee. “You lived such a model life without telling me that it was Christ who made you different that I convinced myself that if you could live such a good and happy life without a being Christian, then I could too.”
20. Someone once said this: “Often it is the message of the Cross lived and demonstrated that God uses to open a heart to the Gospel, but it is the message of the Cross proclaimed through word as well as deeds which the power of God uses to save those who believe its content” (page 111). In other words, no matter how well we live the Gospel, sooner or later we must communicate the content of the Gospel before a person can become a Christian.
21. We have to be intentional with our Christian lives and with the message of the Gospel before God can bless our witness.
22. I heard something that might be helpful for some of you who are struggling on being intentional in what you say to others about Christ. Whether it is with someone you’re around a lot or someone you just met for the first time, you might ask them if you can pray for them, and if so what might you pray for them about. As Christians, you and I are used to someone praying for us, but sometimes lost people don’t know of anyone who is praying for them and often are deeply moved by this unusual concern. They might tell you they don’t want you praying for them, but for the most part I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a prayer matter that they would open up to you about.
23. Successful evangelism is just simply sharing what you know about Jesus... and leaving the outcome of your words to the Holy Spirit.
Week Of: February 8, 2009
Title: Learning: Learning For Godliness Sake
Series: Study of Spiritual Formation- Part 22
Scripture: Roman 12: 1-2; Mark 12: 29-30
1. A deacon in a church was quoted as saying: “I never liked school, and I don’t want to learn anything when I come to church.”
2. In my first pastorate, I served in Wildwood Baptist Church. I had a Sunday school teacher who gave his class a test over the things that he had tried to teach them for the past month. You never heard the like of griping from that class because he wanted to test them on what they should have learned.
3. How many of you would like me to test you over the last couple of sermons that I’ve given you?
4. Don’t worry I am not that foolish nor that brave!!! But don’t you want to learn? Don’t you want to learn about the spiritual life? Don’t you like to learn about the Bible, and about what God wants you to know?
5. I loved seminary (and for those who might not know a seminary is a divinity school that teaches men and women how to be ministers). Sharon and I went to seminary just three weeks after we got married. She got a job teaching school making just over 6,000 a year and I was a full time student with a part time job.
6. I loved being at seminary because I wanted to learn!!!! I love being in an atmosphere where so many smart and gifted people taught, studied, and learned about the Bible and the privilege of Christian ministry.
7. And I guess I’ve never stopped wanting to learn, and cannot imagine how anyone does not want to learn. I’ve had people say or act like they aren’t smart enough to learn, but that is not true. Anyone can learn if they want to learn and stay with it long enough—anyone!!!
8. The truly dumb people are just the folks that plain don’t want to learn. I guess they are just too stupid to realize what they don’t know.
9. But what about the Christian faith? Do you feel like you’ve learned everything that you want to know or need to know about Jesus, God, the Bible and the Christian life? You know sometimes ministers are really dumb, because they act like they got the Bible, God, and Jesus Christ all figured out. Like there is nothing more that they can learn.
10. Did Jesus have to learn? Did Jesus ever stop learning? If you remember in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus, as a young boy, got left in Wal-Mart? Well actually not in Wal-Mart but in the... Temple. His mother and father, realizing that Jesus wasn't with them, went back to Jerusalem and found Him sitting in the Tempole "among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions." Luke says that "Everyone who heard Him was amazed at His understanding and His answers." And the Luke adds this in chapter 2:52: "...Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men."
11. So yes, I do believe Jesus did learn…he did grow in wisdom as well as stature. And he kept growing in wisdom until He died.
12. Proverbs 10: 14 says: “Wise men store up knowledge…” and as Jesus lived His life he grew in wisdom and knowledge, about Himself, God, and God’s plan for His life.
13. If Jesus had to learn about Himself, about God, and God’s kingdom and plan, how much more do we have to want to learn?
14. Sometimes as Christians we are told, that in knowing and loving God we put our hearts in gear, and put our minds in reverse or neutral at best. In other words, you got to ignore your mind and follow your heart, but in our Mark scripture today, Jesus says: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” (12:30)
15. Someone once said: “that a Biblically balanced Christian has both a full head, and a full heart, they radiate spiritual light, as well as spiritual heat.”
16. I’ll say it this way, “While I know that there are things that my mind can never figure out about God, the Bible, and what life has to offer (even if I lived a thousand years), I nevertheless cannot stop trying to learn because what my mind cannot grasp my heart has a hard-time accepting.”
17. Therefore, my mind and my heart work in tandem in loving and worshiping God. Let’s put it this way:
If your idea of God, if your idea of salvation offered in Christ, is vague or remote, your idea of worship will be fuzzy and ill-formed. The closer you get to the truth, the clearer becomes the beauty (of God), and the more you will find worship welling up in you. That’s why theology and worship belong together. The one isn’t just a head trip; and the other isn’t just emotion (For All God’s Worth, N.T. Wright, page 10).
Think about this, “unless we love God with a growing mind we will be Christian versions of what Jesus said about the Samaritans, when he said, “You Samaritans worship what you do not know.” (John 4: 22) There are a lot of Christians who are worshiping a false Jesus, a false God, because they haven’t taken the time or had the desire to learn who they are really worshiping.
18. Now is learning by accident or by design? Both! Sometimes we just come across something by accident that just knocks our socks off. Do you know what “serendipity” is? It is when you discover something good or beautiful by pure accident. As Christians, we would say that “Serendipity is when the Holy Spirit shows us or does something for us that is exciting and beautiful, when we least expect it.”
19. Why would you think that God does something or shows you something when you are least expecting it? To get you to depend on Him? Grace? God is good? Ok, but how about to wet your appetite for more wonderful and glorious spiritual things.
20. To make you hungrier to learn. To make you want more and more of His love and presence. To encourage you along not with the stick, but to entice you with the carrot. So that you can learn and grow, not only with your heart but also your mind, and all of your strength.
21. Now there is a sense that everyone craves to learn and everyone wants to be more like Jesus. But only those who diligently discipline themselves to learn will come close to satisfying those desires. Proverbs 13:4 “The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.”
22. Discipline is a difficult word for most of us to understand, but it means “training for a goal, even when you are not wanting to work. It means making yourself do what is necessary to achieve your goal in life.
23. Remember that above all, learning has a goal. What is that goal? To be like Jesus.
Week Of: February 15, 2009
Title: The Ministry of Service
Series: Spiritual Formation - Part 23
Scripture: Hebrew 9: 11-14
1. Each one of us according to the Bible has been given a ministry in life. The ministry that you and I have been given is to serve the Living God!!!
2. All human beings are made to serve God!!! We are made to worship and serve God. Our calling and our purpose is to be useful tools in the service of God.
3. Look at verse 14 of our scripture this morning: “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from the acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!!!”
4. The writer of Hebrews is comparing the sacrifices of the temple made by the High Priest for the sins of Israel once a year with the once and for all blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for our forgiveness of sins, and says: “If you think that the old way and sacrifices that were offered fulfilled the purpose of forgiveness of sin, you cannot compare that at all with what Jesus did.”
5. His once and for all sacrifice has cleansed our hearts from the guilt of sin and set us apart so that we can “serve the living God.”
6. The setting apart “for service to the living God” according to the Bible has been done from the very beginning. Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 2: 10 “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” We are tools that have been created by God to accomplish what God wants us to accomplish. I’ve got some useful tools with me today. (show and tell)
7. Job has an interesting verse that says: “Your hands shaped me and made me.” (Job 10:8) In other words, from the very beginning in the mind of God, God had a plan in which you and I have been given to fulfill and in which our eventual salvation has allow us to be formed and shaped in service to Him. We are tools created to do good works of service for God. As Rick Warren wrote in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, “You are a custom-designed, one-of-a-kind, original masterpiece” created by God—to serve God.
8. Now my tool analogy only goes so far because for one, we are more than just tools, we are God’s beloved. He doesn’t die on the cross for a mere tool of his design. And also, many of the tools we have we only use once and then put them down.
9. My dad loved to work with wood, in fact dad was a jack of all trades. He could do almost anything with his hands. If there was something he couldn’t do, he’d figure out how to eventually do it. He was a smart man that rightly believed you couldn’t do anything without the proper tools, and he hated and refused to borrow anyone’s tools. So to my mother’s sorrow and distress, dad didn’t borrow but he bought new tools that he had to have.
10. Dad would buy a new tool, use it once, then sometimes never use it again.
11. Our heavenly Father doesn’t do us that way. He just doesn’t make us to do one job and then let us sit….As tools in service of the living God we are supposed to be in constant service to Him.
12. And this is where it gets difficult for us…to think of ourselves as remaining in constant service to our God. I am so blessed because God has called me to be a Pastor… I can actually make a living by serving God. But you are not employed by the church or by a religious organization and so you have to come up with creative ways of serving God.
13. Let me remind you of some things. Start thinking of yourself as a servant and minister of God… If I thought it would do any good, if I thought it would change how you see yourselves, I would ordain every one of you… every one of you would be Reverent. If I thought it would make you see yourself as a real minister, then I’d see to it that you were ordained.
14. Two, keep in mind that by worshiping the living God, you are serving Him. Worship at its best is service to God on its knees before God. We are created to serve and worship our God and Savior. They go hand in hand.
15. In fact, no one can “worship God in the Spirit” for very long without having a strong desire to continue their lives in Holy service to God. Now there is a difference between just showing up for church and “worshiping God in the Spirit.” One is to be present in mostly body only; the other is fully in engaged in fellowship with God through the Holy Spirit.
16. Now please don’t misunderstand me, not everyone can and should quit their jobs just to be full time ministers. It just isn’t meant to be!!! Besides, God needs you in the schools, the jobs, vocations you are in to be of service to Him. The question is, do you realize that when you are working, doing your job, or working at home, do you ever think that maybe you are doing your job for God?
17. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – “that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.” Mother Teresa.
18. The bottom line is that service to God is not going to happen until you begin to see yourself as a minister in service to the King no matter where you are... Worship is a full time job, so it service...
Week Of: February 22, 2009
Title: Discipline of Stewardship
Series: Spiritual Formation- Part 24.
Scripture:1 Corinthians 10:23-26; Ephesians 5:8-16
1. Think for a moment with me, what causes you the most stress? Paying bills? Not being able to do what you feel you need to do? Being late for an appointment? Balancing your checkbook? Not getting enough rest? Not getting along with a friend or relative?
2. Much of the anxiety producers in our lives have to do with three areas: time, money, and personal relationships. If we could get these three areas of our lives under Lordship of Jesus Christ, we would be so much better off.
3. Today what I would like to do is talk about two of these areas. The first being money… Which is worse, having too much money or not having enough? Can you have too much money?
4. Spiritually which can present the greatest struggle to you, (1) having too much money (never had too much), or (2) not enough money or (3) none of the above (I don’t struggle with the issue of money)?
5. I dare say that every one of us at one time or another does or will struggle with the issues of wealth, and all of its spiritual ramifications.
6. Why? Because as much as anything, the accumulation of money, the use of money, and things we can do with it represents much of our time and energy, and in a very real sense represents who we are. Do you remember what Jesus said in Matthew 6:21? “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Money, more than anything, can come to represent who we are, what our priorities are, and what’s in our hearts. For so many people in our culture, money sums up who they are.
7. Let me remind you of some things that you need to keep in mind about money and giving—about money and your relationship to God. First of all, everything you own, have, will ever have belongs to God. In Exodus 19:5, the Lord God says: “The whole earth is mine.” Job 41:11 has God saying: “Everything under heaven belongs to me.”
8. Everything is God’s and we are simply stewards of what God owns. The word steward means manager or simply someone who looks after the interests of another. Really, our understanding of ownership is an illusion. To which someone might say that is ridiculous, but is it? When you die, what can you take with you? Nothing, absolutely nothing other than your spiritual soul…Everything you have will be lost or will be handed down to someone else who didn’t work for it. I like what the writer of Ecclesiastes states (turn to 2:18). It says:
“Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I have worked hard for under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet, he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which I have labored by acting wisely under the sun. This too is vanity.”
9. You cannot take wealth with you and most of the time you’ll leave it to someone who will not appreciate it nor know how to take care of it (Dad’s truck illustration).
10. Now I am not saying don’t leave your children and grandchildren anything after you die, in fact the Bible says in 1 Timothy 5: 8, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for his immediate family he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
11. But the question I ask to ponder is not, “How much of my money should I give to God or share with others?” but rather, “How much of God’s money should I keep for myself and family?”
12. If this is true, another thing that stewardship of money reflects upon is spiritual trustworthiness. Well, what do I mean by that? Luke 16: 10-13 says this:
“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So IF you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? ...No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
13. Money and how we use our money ultimately shows just how trustworthy we are to God’s kingdom. The money you have or don’t have and how you crave and use it is one of the best ways of evaluating your relationship with Christ and your trustworthiness in the Kingdom of God. If you love Christ your use of money will reflect that. If you love Christ and the work of His kingdom more than the other things of this earth, then your giving will reveal that love.
14. Giving is really about showing your love for God!
15. Another area of giving is the use of your time… The late Castlewood philosopher Winston Meade used to say: “People say they have more time than money, but how do they know how much time they do have?”
16. Winston was absolutely correct. I don’t know how much money you might have, but no one, not even yourself, knows how much time you’ve got. All we know is that the days of our lives are numbered and no one knows when their time is going to be up.
17. Therefore, in Ephesians the Apostle Paul says… “Make the most of your time.”
18. We can make the most of our time by preparing for eternity. One thing we begin to realize is that no matter how long life is, it is always too short. I know many people put off making a decision for Christ… thinking I am going to do it someday. But you know something, that day for some people never comes. There is always an excuse…a reason (not a very good one) for waiting to put ones faith and trust in God and that time very seldom comes. 2 Corinthians 6:2 states, “Now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” Right now is always the time to prepare for how and where you will spend eternity.
19. Also, we should make the most of time while we are young or at least younger. A lot of younger people have a retirement attitude for serving God.
20. By that I mean just as I am going to wait until I retire to start living and doing some of things that I want to do. I am going to wait until I retire to serve God and make the most of my relationship with Him. Turn back in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes 12:1-8 (read). In other words, remember your God and creator while you have time to enjoy the things you can do for Him.
21. Why? Because life is uncertain… Proverbs 27:1 “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.”
22. Time lost cannot be relived! If we misuse the time that God gives us, then He never offers that time again.
23. Apostle Paul wrote: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).
24. We are accountable to God for our time. Romans 14:12: “So then, each one of us will give an account of himself to God.”