Wrong Ways to Witness

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Transcript:

I told you that I was going to be talking to you tonight about wrong ways to witness to people, because there are right ways to tell people about Jesus, and there are wrong ways, believe it or not. And I’ve talked to you a little bit previously, especially on Wednesday night, about wanting to bring some evangelism training and get us really more comfortable with sharing our faith. One of the things I’m looking at is Way of the Master.

Some of you may have heard of that if you know who Ray Comfort is or Kirk Cameron, who they are. Kirk Cameron was an actor back in the 90s. I don’t know.

It was when I was a child, but I don’t really remember watching the show. Anyway, they do evangelism. They do street evangelism.

They do some things that would make me nervous as far as standing on a street corner on a box preaching. They do that. But their approach starts with questions about do you consider yourself to be a good person.

one of the, really one of the easiest approaches into the gospel that I’ve ever used. Another tool that I’ve used is called Evangelism Explosion. Did some training in that when I was in high school, where you start out with a couple questions.

Basically, if you were to die tonight, do you know where you’d go? And then if you were to stand before God and he said, why should I let you into my heaven, what would you tell him? And really from those two questions, you can sort of gauge as much as you can somebody else’s heart, you can sort of gauge someone’s spiritual condition, where they are, whether they’re a Christian who just needs more assurance, whether they’re not a believer, whether they’re somebody who thinks they’re going to heaven because of good works, whatever it is, you can kind of figure out where they are.

There are, ladies and gentlemen, literally hundreds of approaches that we can take to sharing the gospel. And as I’m preparing, trying to find some training that we can bring in, I’d like to bring in Evangelism Explosion Training, because I think it’s, none of these I think are the way to do it, but as, I would like to bring in Evangelism Explosion Training for one, but I’m looking at how we could even do that, because I think they have a minimum on the number of people, and it’s, I think it’s more than we have here on Sunday morning. So, looking at a way to do that, some of these other training things, there’s one gospel, there’s one gospel message, but there are literally hundreds of ways to approach it.

And I think it’s just like fishing. The more lures you have in your tackle box, the better suited you are to particular situations. There’s one thing I noticed Wednesday.

I think God has given me children for a number of reasons, but I think one of the reasons is to show me how simple this can be. Benjamin, Madeline, will y’all come here for just a minute. This is totally unscripted and unrehearsed, so I hope this works.

I just got this idea as we were starting the offering. Will you come here for just a minute? Earlier the song said he’s got the little tiny baby in his hands, and right as we sang that, she went forward and caught herself on the pew, otherwise she was going to go face first in the first. Well, apparently he does.

Was there something on daddy’s desk Wednesday night that y’all were interested? This? What did you ask daddy?

What does it do? Well, I’m so glad you asked. You see, this represents man, and this over here, this beautiful light, represents God.

And there’s a problem, and that problem is called sin. Sin is anything that we do that disobeys God. Anytime we lie, or anytime we disobey daddy, or anytime we take something that doesn’t belong to us, it’s sin and it makes God very unhappy.

And so we’re separated from God because of that sin. See the break there, we’re separated. We can’t be best friends with God.

We can’t, hold on, we can’t have a relationship with God. And because of that, hold on, because of that, what had to happen? Jesus had to die on the cross.

He loved us very much. And he took, what did he take with him to the cross? Did he take responsibility?

He did. And so he died on the cross and after that, what did they do with him. They buried him up, okay, behind a giant rock, and they put guards out there to make sure he was dead.

But what happened after three days? He rose again from the dead. He came back to life.

He came out of that tomb, didn’t he? And now because of that, because of the cross, we can have a relationship with God. The cross, because he forgave our sins on the cross, we can have a way to God, right?

Put it up here. And now we have a choice to make whether we want to trust Jesus and have him, excuse me, have him pull us up to heaven and out of hell or not. And then we have an opportunity to trust Christ. And because we trust Christ, then we can be friends with God’s sins on the cross, right?

Does that make sense? Okay. You want to take this and look at it and not tear it up?

Okay, don’t go sit. Totally unscripted, okay, and unrehearsed. I pulled that off my desk a few minutes ago to bring in here just to show it to you.

And if you didn’t get to see the pictures that were on it, you can look at it after church. But I just wanted to show you, hey, there’s even a method so simple as you’ve got this cube. But Wednesday night we were locking up and the kids went in my office, which is still a shambles, but I had that sitting out on the desk because I found it in a box.

And Benjamin says, what is this? And I thought, okay, well, let’s go through this story. Now, they’ve heard it other places, but there’s never a wrong time to share the gospel with kids, even as young as they are.

So they’re hearing it. And I went through the whole thing with Benjamin and Madeline and thought to myself, as soon as I did it, wait a minute, I just shared the gospel with them. I just shared the gospel with them.

And seriously, I will admit to you, I’m sometimes nervous about sharing the gospel with people. What are they going to think? How are they going to react?

Are they going to get mad at me? Are they going to get bored? Are they going to ask me a question that I can’t answer?

If you can share the gospel with a four-year-old, you can share the gospel with anybody, I think. Four-year-olds not only will get bored with what you’re saying, they will tell you to your face. I’m bored with the words that are coming out of your mouth.

If anybody’s going to ask you questions that you can’t answer, it’s probably going to be a four-year-old. And I was struck by Wednesday night how simple it really is. See, I was raised up in a church.

It was a good church. But I was raised up in one of these churches where we went door-knocking every Saturday. Not knocking that.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Door-knocking every Saturday. You want to close the deal. I’m to the point now where I’m very uncomfortable with any kind of sales language when it comes to presenting the gospel.

You want to close the deal. You want to get them to make a decision right now, even if it’s just to get you off of the porch. A few years ago when I realized that the Holy Spirit is really the one who works in somebody’s heart, and our only responsibility is to present the message with clarity, with compassion, and with conviction, and then to let the Holy Spirit work, we’re not responsible for closing the deal. We’re not responsible for making them make a decision.

all I have to do is tell about what Jesus did it really when you realize that it makes it so much simpler to realize I can share the gospel Wednesday night without even realizing I shared the gospel with my kids yet again just because they asked me what’s this on your desk and the idea came to me to walk you through that presentation when we’re singing and Benjamin says I want to see that cube again what’s in that cube so I thought well let’s just show them how easy it really is There are other ways you can hand, if you’re somebody who doesn’t like to talk to people, you can hand tracts to people. You can leave a tract on somebody’s door. There are literally hundreds of ways to share the gospel as long as we’re sharing it correctly, as long as we’re getting the story right, as long as we’re approaching people the right way.

And I will say the right way is just respectfully, respectfully, lovingly. You know, people are going to be offended by the gospel. That’s really not our problem.

And I’m not saying if they’re offended. I’m saying people will be offended by the gospel. Really not our problem.

We should do our best not to be deliberately offensive. Some people, the Bible says that the message of the cross is offensive. It’s offensive.

It’s a stumbling block, and it’s foolishness to the world. That’s not our fault. And there’s really not much we can do if people are offended by the message of the cross.

but we don’t personally want to be offensive in the way we approach people. Beyond that, there are just a few ways that we can mess up the presentation. And even though I’m going to try to bring in some training that we can do, I want to spend the next couple weeks, hopefully, sharing with you some of the points that we just need to make sure we have nailed down.

And they really are simple, but as simple as they are, they’re very important, that we want to make sure we have nailed down. These are sort of the tent poles of the gospel story, of the gospel message. And we want to make sure we have those down so we know how to explain the gospel to people.

We know how to share what Jesus Christ did. But tonight, I wanted to start with you about some wrong ways to share the gospel, because we don’t hear that very often. Wait a minute, you think there’s a wrong way to do it?

If you’ve never heard that there’s a wrong way to do it, you’ve not spent much time around preachers. Because I am a preacher, and I spend time around preachers, and I can tell you a lot of times we sit around and we look at what somebody else is doing. I wouldn’t do it that way.

I wouldn’t say it like that. And we assume it’s wrong because they’re not doing it the way we would do it. Some people do things the ways I wouldn’t do it.

That doesn’t necessarily make it wrong unless it’s against Scripture. But there are some wrong ways to share the gospel. If you, you wouldn’t have turned there with me because I haven’t told you where to go yet.

We’re going to be in Romans chapter 10 tonight. Romans chapter 10. And some of where I see a few of the wrong ways to share the gospel come from looking at Paul talking about how he would share the gospel.

And sometimes when I see what Paul is saying I would do, or this is the right thing to do, it jumps out at me, well then the opposite is what you should not do. But let’s look at Romans chapter 10 starting in verse 1. It says, Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved.

For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believe it.

For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, say not in thine heart, who shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down from above, or who shall descend into the deep, that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.

But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that is, the word of faith, which we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus Christ, or the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

For the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek. For the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?

And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things.

And we’re going to stop there tonight. But he starts out this passage talking about his absolute greatest hope for Israel is that they would be saved. Now, Paul is a Jew.

Paul is somebody who was born a Jew, who was raised not just by genealogy, but he was raised in the Jewish religion. He excelled in that. He was a Pharisee, which meant that he was incredibly well-schooled in the law.

He understood the law. He did the right things. And it would be easy to say, as a Christian, well, they don’t believe in Jesus, so I don’t really care about them.

They’re horrible people anyway. That’s not what Paul’s approach was. His approach was, these are my people.

And even though they hate Jesus Christ, And even though they hate me now, just as I hated Jesus Christ, because I love him now, they hate me too, I want nothing more than to see them come to Christ. And we could look at the world around us and say, oh, look at how horrible they are. Look at the way they live. Look at the way they talk.

Forgetting the fact that we were saved out of the very same thing. And our most fervent desire should be to see those around us be saved. And he says, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved.

He was praying. He was asking God for the salvation of Israel. And he said, though, that there’s a problem.

There’s a problem because he said, I bear record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. He said they are passionate, and they’re passionate about serving God, but the problem is they’re serving God the wrong way. Now, he had this same problem starting out.

The Bible says that he went forth breathing out threatenings and slaughter. against the church. He went out to persecute Christians.

He went out to arrest Christians and bring them to their trial and to their death. And we can look at that and say, what a horrible, horrible man this was. Well, Saul of Tarsus thought he was doing God’s work.

Yes, he was, we know, and he later figured out that he was actually fighting against God, but he thought, he thought very passionately that he was serving God and doing God’s work. We see the same thing going on in our world today. We see so many people doing such evil, horrible things and wondering how they could.

. . We wonder, how could somebody do that?

Well, they think wrongly, I might add, that they’re doing these things on God’s behalf. We see things like ISIS. They’re beheading people.

What horrible evil is taking place, but they think they’re doing something right. We look at this church out of Kansas, and by the way, now we’re going to be on. .

. Now we’re going to be picketed because I said something about it. This church out of Kansas that pickets at funerals and says that God hates everyone.

You know, I can honestly say I appreciate their stand for the holiness of God, but I think they miss part of the message about the mercy of God as well. And they come out and spew some of the most horrible, hateful rhetoric. I mean, that even if you are standing absolutely and unchangeably on the holiness of God, those things should not be coming out of your mouth, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

and you shouldn’t be using those words. But say some of the most vile, hateful, unloving things and hurt people and hurt the name of Christ, honestly, the reputation of all the rest of us because the rest of us have the name Baptist Church, which I wouldn’t change. But they all have Baptist, they call themselves Baptist, they diminish us, they diminish the cause of Christ, but they think they’re serving God.

There are a lot of people who have a zeal for God, but it comes not from knowledge of what God actually says or what God actually wants. And so he said at the time, the Jews who were opposed to Christ, many of them were persecuting Christians. He said they have a zeal for God, but it doesn’t come from knowledge because they’re ignorant of God’s righteousness.

He’s talking here, the Pharisees, and going about to establish their own righteousness. Part of the problem with Judaism in their day was that people thought, hey, if I could just be good enough, if I could just follow these rules. I’m descended from Abraham, and if I can just follow the law, I’m righteous before God and I’m better than you.

And he said they don’t even understand the righteousness of God because Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. You want to find out how to fulfill the righteousness of the law? It’s not being descended from Abraham.

It’s not adherence to the law because we can’t do that anyway. It’s faith in Christ. It’s faith in what Christ did. It’s asking God to put the righteousness of Christ in your account where there’s a deficit that you could never pay back.

That’s where the righteousness comes from. We can apply this to our own day where most people in the world who believe there is a heaven, who believe there is a God, believe that they are going to heaven if they could just be good enough. And we’ve got to change that notion.

There really are only two religions in the world. I don’t care what they call themselves. I’ll take that back I’ll say there are three religions there is atheism which I maintain as a religion there’s the religion of the Bible that says Christ has already done everything necessary for your salvation and then there’s the religion of works that says you need to work for your salvation and I don’t care ladies and gentlemen if it’s called Islam, I don’t care if it’s called Buddhism, I don’t care if it’s called Catholicism I don’t care if it’s called moralism, just be a good person, go to church and give money and be a good person.

I don’t care what you call it. It’s all the same religion. It comes down to do, do, do, do, do, and if you can just be good enough, God will love you and accept you into heaven.

Whereas Christianity says you can’t be good enough. There’s no amount of good you can do. Christ, however, has already done everything that was necessary.

So Paul points out he is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believe it. He’s the completion. He’s the fulfillment of the demands of the law.

He goes on later on to talk about how we express this belief. He says in verse 8, the word is nigh in thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart, that is the word of faith which we preach. He said the word that you’ve already received, the word that you already know that you’ve heard from us that we preach is this gospel about the the righteousness of Christ he said in verse 9 that if you if you because of this if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God hath raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved and folks it’s not just a matter of believing in the historical fact of the resurrection although I think if you do believe in the historical fact of the resurrection then it should change your way of thinking about all this.

It should change your entire way of thinking about Christianity. If the resurrection really happened as the Bible says that it did, and there is good evidence that it did, there’s great evidence that the resurrection happened as the Bible says that it did. But if that evidence is there, then it means that everything Jesus claimed about himself is true.

And if everything Jesus claimed about himself is true, then the entire Bible is true because Jesus affirmed the truth of every jot and tittle of the Old Testament from Genesis on to Malachi and stood on its authority. And if all of the Bible is true, if all of the Old Testament is true, and those who were writing about his resurrection and the things that they learned and the things that they had seen and that they had heard at his feet were true, then that means the New Testament is correct as well. And if the Old and New Testaments are correct, and Jesus Christ was exactly who he said he was, and he rose from the dead just like the Bible says, then Christianity is the only option.

And salvation by grace through faith and recognizing his sacrifice on the cross is the only option. And so when he says, believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved, it’s not just believing in your mind the historical fact of the resurrection. it is believing that Jesus Christ died for our sins and then rose again to prove that he was God who was able to forgive sins.

So if you’ll confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

And he says here there’s no difference between the Jew and the Greek. Again, the Jews were trusting in their lineage and in their law for salvation. Now, this is not an anti-Jewish message because we apply it to the whole world today.

I mean, it’s true of everybody. But he says there’s no difference. It doesn’t matter where you come from.

It doesn’t matter what culture you come from, what religion you come from. We all have the same access to salvation through Jesus Christ. You know what? I was raised in Bible Belt, Oklahoma.

my family has been in Baptist churches going back at least three generations that I know of when I was born my mom was the church secretary my dad was a Sunday school teacher and one of the church trustees or something anyway we were in church eight days a week I feel like and I was saved only through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ somebody born in the Middle East today raised up in generations and generations of Islam believing all sorts of things that are contrary to what we believe, can be saved just as much as I could through believing that Jesus Christ died for their sins. Somebody raised here in the United States who’s a hardened atheist can be forgiven of their sins, can find salvation just as much as we can through believing that Jesus Christ died for their sin. It doesn’t matter where you come from.

It doesn’t matter where you’ve been. It simply matters that Jesus Christ died. and that he died for our sins and that he proved he could pay for those sins by rising again.

And whether or not we believe it and we’re willing to claim it. And then the wonderful promise in verse 13, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Whoever, whoever will call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

And he talks about how can they believe if they don’t hear? First of all, how can they call out to him if they haven’t believed? People aren’t really going to call on Jesus if they don’t believe he’s real. I’m not running for my life because I don’t believe there are rattlesnakes on this stage.

And so it doesn’t make a difference in my behavior. I’m not going to run from something I don’t think is real. I’m not going to call out for help from somebody I don’t think is real either. You’re not going to call on him unless you believe.

It says, how can they call on him? How can they cry out to him for mercy if they don’t believe? And how can they believe if they don’t hear?

and how can they believe unless somebody is sent? In other words, unless we go. And it uses the word preacher and it uses the word preach.

Don’t be scared away by that. It doesn’t mean necessarily standing up here in a pulpit like this. This is part of it.

But anytime we share the gospel with somebody, we are preaching Christ. Whether we’re standing on a soapbox and shaking our finger at them or not, we’re preaching Christ. And so how do we tie this into wrong ways to share Christ, wrong ways to witness? Well, we look at what Paul did and we do the opposite. If you want to know the wrong thing to do, look at what the Bible says and do the opposite.

First of all, the first wrong way to witness, ladies and gentlemen, is don’t pray about it. Don’t pray about it. You don’t need to talk to God about those people.

Just go out and, if you’re going to do it, just go out and try to do it on your own. Now that doesn’t mean just because you haven’t prayed for a particular person and you get the opportunity. I can’t share with them I haven’t prayed about.

I’m just saying, as a general rule, the wrong way to approach this is don’t pray about it. You notice at the beginning of chapter 10, the very first thing he says is that his heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they will be saved. See, it starts with Paul saying, I want to see them saved.

And I think every believer looks at somebody in their life and says, I want to see them saved. Okay, so then what’s the next thing to do about it? My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved.

What he does next is pray about it. What he does next is go to God, and I’m sure Paul was on his knees every day begging for the salvation of the people of Israel. And you know what?

God heard that request, and God honored that request, and some of the people of Israel did indeed come to Jesus Christ and find salvation. Now, many of them did not. but where they did I believe it was because God was preparing the hearts to be receptive and they heard the message and some received and the same thing will be true today that we can pray about it and some will be receptive to the message some will not be but it doesn’t mean we don’t pray about it I heard a phrase many years ago that I’ve repeated several times and that’s before we talk to people about Jesus we need to talk to Jesus people.

And again, if you get an opportunity as somebody you’ve never met and there’s an open door to share the gospel, you don’t necessarily need to say, no, I’m going to put it off and go home and pray about it. No, share the gospel with them. But that person in your life that you’re looking at and saying, I really would love for them to be saved.

And maybe you’ve talked to them about it before and it hadn’t worked. They’re not open to it. They’re not interested.

They get mad at you for sharing it. You’re about to pull out your hair thinking, what else can I do? Go to God about it.

go to God about it. I have a friend who’s a missionary in Quebec, and I remember several years ago him speaking at a missions conference, and I couldn’t tell you most of what he talked about that day. But one thing that he said that has always stuck with me was he was preaching on a passage in the book of Psalms that says those who come sowing with tears will come reaping again with rejoicing.

And he said if you’ve been working the field, and they’re coming back dry and they’re coming back devoid of crops and you’re planting and you’re planting and you’re doing everything you can and you don’t see any results. He said, try tears. And he wasn’t talking about manipulating somebody and crying to get them to take you seriously.

He was talking about getting on your face before the Lord and crying out to him for that person’s soul. See, Paul started out and said, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they be saved. He wanted it, and he asked God for it every day.

Some things you can pray for. Pray for boldness. Pray for boldness.

Paul asked the church at Ephesus to pray for him, to pray for boldness, that utterance may be given unto me. In other words, that God will give me the right words to speak, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds, that therein I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. Paul said, pray for me that God will give me the words and that he will let me open my mouth and share them boldly.

Sometimes it’s going to take boldness to share the gospel. I will admit, it’s not always going to be as natural as talking to my own children. Talk to my own children about a lot of stuff.

My children never stop talking, so we talk all the time. It’s normal. But there are going to be some people that you just get that lump in your throat or that lump in your stomach, either because you’re scared of them or because you just love them so much and you don’t want to mess this up. Pray to God for boldness.

Ask God for boldness. Pray for compassion. Paul clearly had compassion on these people.

Paul could have looked at these, as I said earlier, and said, oh, these horrible people. I’m so much better than them. Look at them.

They just reject Christ. They hate Christ. No, Paul had compassion on them and prayed for them because he knew they were exactly the ones that he came from. He knew he was saved out of the same things that they were. That’s hard for us to see sometimes when we’ve been believers for a long time.

I’ve been a believer now for 25 years. That’s a big fraction of my life. Even before that, I was raised in church.

I was a good kid. You can ask my mother sometime when they’re back again. I was the easy child.

And we were sitting around as our college Sunday school class one time talking about the most rebellious things we ever did. My parents were our Sunday school teachers, and I couldn’t think of anything. And I said, well, what would mine be?

They couldn’t come up with one either. Not that I was perfect, but I was scared enough of my parents that I didn’t get in a lot of trouble. And so there are some things about the way people live in this world that I just don’t understand.

And honestly, I’m not always the most compassionate person about those things. Now, I think God has used circumstances in the last few years to make me more compassionate. But sometimes I still have to pray when I find myself thinking judgmental thoughts.

I have to pray and say, God, would you help me love these people the way you love them? Because I could look at them and say, oh, these awful people. Look at the way they live.

Or I can think, Lord, you love these people enough to die for them. Would you at least help me love them enough to walk across the street? We need to pray for compassion.

We need to

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