Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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Go (Jesus has called you)

Matthew 4

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Go: The Church Is Called to Outreach

Lord, we thank you for the privilege to come together as your church. We thank you that we can call upon you in prayer and worship. We thank you that you’ve given us a precious gift of your word. We thank you, Lord, for those of us that know you, you have given us your Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and hearts to understand your word. We ask today that your Holy Spirit would have His way in our minds and hearts, that He would teach us, instruct us, convict us, transform us, and make us more like Jesus. We pray these things in His Holy Name. Amen.

Good morning. If you would, open your Bibles to Matthew 4. I’m going to be talking for the next few weeks, maybe a few months, maybe a few years, I don’t know how long. We’ll see. And a topic we began to study in the life groups, and that is evangelism. Outreach, mission, whatever you want to call it, soul winning, has different terms. These terms become popular at different times. The word now is mission, that’s the word. When I first got saved, the word was soul winning. Then I think it became popular to talk about outreach, but whatever, we all know what we’re talking about, right? Talking about taking the gospel to those that are lost. book of Matthew in chapter four. What I’m going to do, I’m gonna tell you a little bit about my approach here. There are basically three ways to preach a sermon. Well, there’s excellent too, good or bad, no, I’m just kidding. There’s three approaches, the textual, the expository and the topical. And the people often confuse the textual and the expository, but they’re really not the same. My approach is broadly, gonna be broadly topical. In other words, you can expect for the next few weeks, I’ll talk about the topic of evangelism or outreach. However, the approach is gonna be textual. What I mean is we’re just going to look at various texts. And some texts we may look at in depth. Some texts we may look at very briefly. Some Riffly some texts we may group together. And what was fascinating to me as I was looking at the gospels, just the gospels alone, is how many texts there are that relate to evangelism or outreach or mission. I mean, it was astounding to me. I would encourage you to take your Bible and just look through the gospels and read through the gospels and get a concord and start looking up words related to evangelism. Now, this is a tricky topic because the word evangelism actually isn’t in the Bible very much. But you see other things in the Bible like Jesus says, I will make you fishers of men. Well, that’s about evangelism, right? Jesus says you’ll be salt and light. That’s about evangelism. Jesus says I came to seek and to save the lost. Well, that’s about evangelism, isn’t it? We see in Matthew Christ’s compassion for the multitudes. Well, that’s about God’s heart for the lost. I mean, we see many, of course, we have the Great Commission, Matthew 28, but there are many, many texts that if you really think about the text, it’s related to the way we are to think about Jesus’ purpose and thus our purpose, the church’s purpose. Just in the Gospels alone, I found over 20 passages that related in some way to outreach and that’s just the Gospels. Imagine what Acts is like? Because that’s the book that shows the church doing evangelism, right? So we could spend months and months and months just in the Gospels and then probably months and months and months just an axe and then we can go to the Epistles. We could do this a long time. Now we probably won’t go that long, but the point is is that it’s amazing if you stop and look how much this topic is addressed from various angles in Scripture. Well that tells me it’s important. Right? If God talks about something a lot, then that means that to God it’s important.

Might not be important to us, but it’s important to God. But he keeps on talking about it. But because it’s important to him, it ought to be important to us. The things that are on God’s heart should be on the heart of God’s people. Because the church’s mission should be defined by God, not by the church, right? So if God says this is important, it ought to be important to us. So that’s one reason why we need to talk about this. Another reason we need to talk about it will be explained by a story I’m gonna read to you.

John Harper and the Urgency of the Gospel

I wanna tell you a story about a gentleman named John Harper. John Harper was born in a Christian home in Glasgow, Scotland in 1872. And when he was about 14 years old, he became a Christian. And from that time on, he began to tell others about Jesus. And at the age of 17, he began to preach, going down the streets of his village and pouring out a soul and passionate pleading for men to be reconciled to God. After five or six years of toiling on street corners, preaching the gospel and working in the mill during the day, Harper was taken in by the Reverend E.A. Carter of Baptist Pioneer Mission in London. And this had Harper free to devote his whole time and energy to the work so dear to his heart, which was evangelism. Then in September 8, 8, Harper started his own church, and this church, which he began with just 25 members, numbered over 500 by the time he left 13 years later. And during this time, he had been married and widowed. Before he lost his wife, God bless Harper, beautiful little girl named Nana. Harper’s life was an eventful one. He almost drowned several times. When he was two and a half years of age, he fell into a well, but he and he was resuscitated by his mother. At the age of 26, he was swept out to sea by a reverse current and barely survived. And at 32, he faced death on a leaking ship in the Mediterranean. If anything, these brushes with death simply seemed to confirm to John Harper the importance of evangelism. While pastoring a church in London, Harper continued his fervent and faithful evangelism. In fact, he was such a zealous evangelist that the Moody Church in Chicago asked him to come over to America for a series of meetings. He did, and they went well. A few years later, Moody Church asked him if he would come back again, and so it was that Harper boarded his ship one day with a second-class ticket at Southampton, England for the voyage to America. Harper’s wife had just died a few years before, and he had with him his only child, Nana, age six. say Nana or Nana. What happened after this we know mainly from two sources. One is Nana who died in 1986 at the age of 80. She remembered being woken up by her father a few nights into the journey. It was about midnight and he said that the ship they were on had struck and iceberg. Harper told Nana that another ship was just about there to rescue them, but as a precaution, he was just about, he was going to put her on a lifeboat with an older cousin who had accompanied them. As for Harper, he would wait until the other ship arrived. The rest of the story is a tragedy well known. Little Nana and her cousin were saved, but the ship they were on was the Titanic. The only way we know what happened to John Harper after this is because in a prayer meeting in Hamilton, some months later a young Scotsman stood up in tears and told the extraordinary story of how he was converted. He explained that he had been on the Titanic the night it struck the iceberg. He had clung. and a piece of debris in the freezing water. Suddenly, he said, the wave brought a man near John Harper. He too was holding a piece of wreckage. He called out, man, are you saved? No, I am not, I replied. He shouted back, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. The waves bore Harper away, but a little later, he was washed back beside me again. Are you saved now, he called. No, I answered, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. Then losing hold on the wood, Harper sank. And there, alone in the night, with two miles of water under me, I trusted Christ as my Savior. I’m John Harper’s last convert. The relevance of that story for us today, I believe, is we need to recognize that we are on the Titanic. It’s astounding to think that in the year that I was born, prayer was in public school, was illegal, men were men, women were women, gay conduct was not just frowned on, it was illegal. And we could go down the list of how much things have been transformed in just one generation. And they’re all bad. They’re all bad. The reality is, and men like Francis Schaeffer and others have been telling us this for a long time is that we are living in a post-Christian culture in America. Now I remember reading Schaeffer in the 80s and him saying this, I just didn’t, I didn’t believe him. I refused to believe it. I thought he was wrong. But I think he, I think, now I was wrong.

You know, Roe v. Wade was such a profound decision because of not just the unborn, but because it basically decimated the family. It told a man that if he has a child, he has no right to save the life of that child.

The Frog in the Kettle

Basically men were neutered. Fathers were neutered. And really some of the last vestiges of a family as biblically defined was really destroyed then. But what appears to have happened is that we see this pattern where something happens like prayer is taken out of the school. Now at the time, now you may think that’s a good or bad thing, Hm, The point is, is that the time, the vast majority of people thought it was good to have prayer in schools. Now we have gun detectors. the vast majority of of The vast majority of people thought it was a good idea. But prayer is taken out and then the church gets mad and you see this flurry of complaining for a while. And then things just go back to the way they were. Roe v. Wade, same thing. Cataclysmic event, briefly, but then things go back to the way they were. Gay marriage, everyone’s freaking out. For a few months, then things go back to where they were. And so you’ve all heard the proverbial frog in the kettle?, no? OK, well, it’s popular in Christian circles because Barna wrote [audio unclear] what’s gonna happen to the frog, right? Now, I was thinking about this analogy the other day. It’s like, I’m thinking, I like to try that. I mean, is that really true? Has anybody ever put a frog in a kettle and turned it up? I was wondering, is that really true? I thought maybe one of you guys tried, I don’t really wanna kill a frog, but my point is, in other words, the frog acclimates. What happens, [audio unclear] But then we acclimate. So what’s the relevance of this to outreach? And it’s simply this. John Harper, when he washed up to the man, the man also clinging to wreckage, didn’t say, how’s- your-drink. Rhe didn’t say, how’s the view? He, he didn’t say, are you enjoying yourself? He didn’t say, did you like the music on the Titanic? Titanic. That’s not what he said. He said, man, are you saved? Because the reality is the end was right before them. The end was right before them. And I’m not a prophet and I would never venture to say that I think the end, the end is soon. But I know this, that in light of the signs of the church’s mission cannot be what it’s been. The church cannot continue to function the way it’s been functioning. We have got to restore the gospel, to its proper priority individually and corporately. I say corporately, not this community, although I mean this community. But I mean the church in America. What’s really astounded me, as I did a lot of reading on my sabbatical, and I mean reading a non- [audio unclear] paying attention? Is our Christianity or is it as a cocoon to hide, to insulate ourselves because there’s bad out there? You know what I’m saying? And so, I mean, to think that we can get to the point where people don’t, we don’t know what marriage is, we don’t even know what gender is anymore. So we’ve gotten to this point and the church says, well, let’s just continue on as usual.

Whatever as usual has been certainly isn’t working because the church is not being salt in light. That’s clear. And I don’t mean that to be critical. I’m just making observations. I mean, it’s obvious that the church, whatever the church has been doing, is not addressing the need. And I think part of the problem is that I think that the church has tended to tinker with things and attempt to fix problems with the wrong medicine. Now, you notice this phenomenon in America, every four years, people get frenetic and fanatical.

Politics Is Not the Solution

And they act as if politics is the most important thing in the entire world. Well, I’m serious. Every presidential cycle, it’s the end of the world. If this person is elected, I can guarantee you, this time it is the end of the world. Oh, it is. So we get this, and this is in the Christian community, okay? This frenzied thing that goes on. And the funny thing is, you know, a week later, like, oh well, got the wrong guy. Now, I believe that Christians ought to be in politics. I’d love to see more born-again, I mean real Christians, I’d love to see born-again Christians running for office in city government, state government, federal government. I’d love to see more Christians involved in community activities. I’d love to see more Christians involved in the arts and all kinds of ways that we can be part of the culture. that the solution to man’s woes is not the right president of the United States. The solution to our woes is not just to have the right justices on the Supreme Court. Now, I would love to have a born-again Christian in the Oval Office. I’d love to have the entire court dominated by Christians. I would love all of that. But the problem is we start looking at those things as the solution when in fact the solution is the gospel. And we have forgotten that the solution is the gospel. And the, I mean, it’s really a phenomenon to me, and I do it too, too. I mean, it’s really a strange phenomenon to me, and I do it too, but you’ll hear Christians complain about the culture, and yet they have the solution to the problem. Why should we complain about the lost living like the lost? They’re lost. That’s how lost people live. You know, back in the day, and I don’t know when that day was, some people think it was… Well, the problem is if you go back and start looking at the 50’s, they weren’t as good as you thought, and then the 40’s, well, they weren’t as good as you thought. You keep on going back. But the point is, is there was a veneer of Christianity in our culture? Okay. And social norms were shaped by biblical teaching because the Bible had been so prominent in our history for so many years, and that’s all good. But the problem is, the church got comfortable. It got comfortable because as long as everybody conformed to those norms, you’re thinking everything’s fine. But when you go back and really read more, you find out, well, in fact, the church had been apostasizing for probably 100 years by 1950. Liberal theology was permeating the church. All of our great universities were taken over by secularists, they were founded by Christians. Harvard, Yale, go through the list. I mean, there was a, infestation in the building, eating away at the foundation. But people were okay if the veneer looked fine. So people dressed conservatively and went to church and dressed up and did, you know, everybody kind of conformed to the various norms and we still had blue laws on Sunday. I remember growing up, Sunday everything was closed. Yeah. Okay, we’re not talking ancient history. Semi-ancient, but. But my point is, is that that was a veneer. And that’s why when you read Tozer who was writing in the 50s and 60s, you hear him with the prophetic voice saying, Guess what guys, we’re missing the spirit. He talks about the spirit, he talks about worship, he talks about true devotion because he realized that the church, even though the churches were full, the churches were shallow. When you go back and you look at things that have happened that I’ve already mentioned, the prayer, the abortion case, the marriage ruling, you have to ask yourself, What’s it gonna take to shock the American church to the urgency and need for the gospel? I mean, what is it gonna take? We ought to realize the urgency and we ought to realize that the solution has been given to us by God and that’s the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ saves. Because Jesus Christ saves. I was reading a book by this gal, Rosaria Butterfield, her name. She was a lesbian, lit professor at a secular university. Radical as radical could be, right? I mean, you go down the list of radical, this gal was radical. Now she’s a homeschool mom, married, homeschool mom, sings hymns, couldn’t get any more conservative.

What happened? She met Jesus. She met Jesus. And she, the value of the book, although there’s a number of things in her book that I actually don’t agree with. The value of the book is this, is that she helps you see how people on the outside often see the church. And even how often the church treats people on the outside. So that’s valuable in terms of thinking about our mission to reach the lost. And that is to say that often the church is doing things counter to the real mission. Now it may not be intentional, but we are. We’re just doing them because we’re, maybe it’s our tradition, maybe we’re comfortable with it, whatever, but it’s counter effective to reaching the culture. Many Christians don’t understand really anymore, especially they’ve been saved for a long time, Unless you make an attempt to really understand how some of these people are thinking, you just won’t, I mean, you have to make effort to do this. I mean, the gay community, as it’s called, is a real thing with a real worldview and real values, they call them, and whatever. The point is, is that I don’t know how they think unless I try to think like that and learn about that because you know what, I’m not in that community. That’s just one example, and you could talk about other groups, if you will, other tribes in our country. All this to say, as I realize I’m rambling at this point, I apologize, is that the reason we need to talk about mission outreach, evangelism, soul winning, is because the time is now. I say this not just to this church, I believe this is the message to the church in America. The time is now. And I don’t mean the time is now to restore the 1950s. I’ve never defended traditional marriage because it’s traditional. I defend biblical marriage. And even traditional marriage, many people defend it, are not defining it in the biblical It’s biblical marriage. Okay. My point is is that we cannot rely on secondary and tertiary means we must get back to the foundational solutions of the problem. The solution to our personal problems and the solution to our societal ills is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ saves. Jesus Christ heals. Jesus Christ transforms.

If you were lost, well, you were all lost, but if you were lost, and you knew it like I did, and you were out partying and getting drunk and doing drugs and all other kinds of godless things, and then you got saved, you would realize how much Jesus changes people, how he transforms people. He really does. And the, there’s a whole bunch of people out there just like I was and just like some of you were who are godless and they can be transformed by the power of Jesus Christ. But they need someone to introduce them to Jesus Christ. So who’s that going to be? Well, I think it’s supposed to be us. I think, unless I’m misreading my Bible, but I believe it’s the church that’s supposed to be doing that. Here in Matthew, I finally was gonna look at the Bible. Okay. Matthew four was started in 12. Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he departed to Galilee and leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelled in Capernaum, which is by the sea and the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying, the land of Zebulun and the land of Nefthali by the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilei of the Gentiles. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light and upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned. From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is in Jesus’ ministry and in his message, the Kingdom of God is at hand. Now, I won’t get into a theological discussion about whether the Kingdom was going then or, but the point is anytime Jesus is present and anytime you are speaking to someone in the authority of Jesus Christ, because all authority is given to me, you go. The Kingdom is at hand for them. At that moment they can enter the…if they receive Christ from the born again, they will enter the kingdom. Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon, called Peter, and to his brother, casting a net in the sea, for they were fishermen. Then he said to them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they immediately left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, in the boat with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets. He called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and they followed him. So Jesus comes with the message, repent the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But Jesus didn’t just go to the masses, right? What Jesus did is although he went to the masses, he also called individuals to himself so that they with him would go to the masses. Now we know from, because we know the broad story, that Jesus was going to be gone from the earth in two and a half, three years. So Jesus was, what was he doing? He was preparing and training so that they would go and preach the same gospel that he was preaching. Jesus is not here on the earth anymore, right? So if Jesus wants to reach people, what is the instrument that he uses? Primarily his church, and his spirit, but the two go together. So we are the body of Christ. So the head tells the body what to do, and the head is telling the body to preach, to repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The head’s telling the body to reach out to those who do not know Christ. That’s what the head is telling the body. Jesus calls men to repentance, but then he calls men to ministry. I say men, I mean men and women. It’s the old generic version of man. Okay. How many of you know when the day you got saved? Okay. So when videos, when we don’t, it doesn’t matter if you don’t, but the day you got saved is also the day you got commissioned. The day you got saved and entered the body of Christ has the same day that that you were given a commission by Jesus Christ to go into the world. Because the body is called. So Jesus preaches the gospel, but then he calls men to follow him and he says to them, I will make you architects. You will build beautiful cathedrals to me. I will make you scholars and you will write books on theology. We could go down the list. Now, none of those things are bad. Some of those things are actually good. Some of those things can be means of fishing, actually. But he says, fundamentally to the call, be fishers of men. The main point here is that being a fisher of men is an integral part of discipleship. Those who follow Jesus will be cell winners. They will be. Now, I was fortunate enough to get saved in the church that understood this. And the church when I got saved, it was understood if you’re a Christian, you shared your faith. That’s just what, I mean, I was a young Christian. I got saved. What am I supposed to do? They hand me a Bible and they say, preach the gospel, and I did. I led people to Christ. Read your Bible, pray, worship, serve in the church, share the gospel of the lost, it isn’t complicated. It isn’t complicated. But it was understood that that’s part of discipleship. And I think in some circles that has been lost. That is not part of discipleship. It is not part of the lifestyle of many Christians. But scripturally it ought to be. Because the call to discipleship is a call to be a fisher of men. Why is it integral? Why will true followers be soul winners? Because the very nature of discipleship means being an imitator of Christ. That’s what it means: being a follower of Jesus means that you are shaping your worldview, your thoughts, your life, your heart, your practices after the life of Jesus. Now it doesn’t mean you wear a long robe and you have to wear sandals and you know we already had that in the R60s Jesus movement you know.

What Did Jesus Do?

But what did Jesus do? He preached the gospel. He taught people. He healed people. He fed people. He cared for the lost. Right? He built up the saints. That’s how he lived. That’s how we ought to live. We are to imitate Jesus. We are to be like him if we’re going to be a disciple. But a disciple also obeys the master. Now, Matthew 28 is one text where clearly Jesus commissions the church. Here you could say he calls them to be fishers, but it’s a call, it’s not a command. It’s kind of a description of what will happen, but it’s not Jesus actually saying, you must do this. In Matthew 28 he says you must do this. You must go. Now, that commission has a whole lot more to it than evangelism, but if there’s no evangelism you can’t do the other part. You can’t disciple people that aren’t saved. That’s why the first word is go. You gotta go first. You gotta get saved. Then you bring them in, then you train them, then you baptize them, you teach them to to observe everything, okay, mature them, and then ideally they go, and they go, and they go, and they go, right? So it’s a command. If we follow Jesus, we want to be like him, as well as the fact that we’re commanded to do certain things, one of them, which is to evangelize. It really isn’t optional, it isn’t. Not if we really believe the Great Commission. Going is a command and we ought to go because we say Jesus is Lord. Let’s be honest, some of us are disobedient to our Lord in this area. Am I right or wrong? I’m not pointing fingers at anybody. I’m disobedient too. But we just have to be frank about it. Going, well we’ll talk more about going later. Okay, Jesus says, I’ll make you fishers of men. This is the call. But he also says, but there’s also a promise here. He says, I will make you fishers of men. How does he do this? He does this by making us like himself. That’s really what the Christian life is. It’s a transformation of becoming more and more like Jesus Christ, right? And so Jesus, as we become more like Jesus, we actually care more about the lost. I don’t know about you, but my flesh doesn’t care about people. When I was unsaved, I didn’t really care about, I just cared about where I got the next high. I mean, I didn’t care about people. Why should I care about people? Well, because Jesus is changing me and making me like him. And as he changes me like him, I actually start to care about people. Because he does. It’s his spirit in us, making us concerned about the things he’s concerned about and the people he cares about. So he gives us a new heart. prospective The way sanctification works in the Christian life is progressive, right? We get saved God begins to change us transform us The ultimate. Ultimate goal is that we be sons like the Sun And so what this should result in it should result in in the more evangelistic activity than less But this is actually contrary to what we see happen What you usually see happen is the new convert is zealous and eager to share the gospel, right? They’re sharing with all their friends, sometimes unadvisably, if you will. Hi, dad, you’re going to hell. Not a good opening. But the young convert tends to be zealous to share the gospel, and then the older convert doesn’t seem to share the gospel anymore. So what’s going on there? I think it varies person to person, but I think it’s pretty true observation for many. I think sometimes what happens is that people do share the gospel and they don’t see any result, they get discouraged, they just quit sharing. And so it can be disheartening to share the gospel with people and not see anybody come to Christ.

And it’s not that you stop believing the gospel, but you kind of, in a way, stop believing the gospel. You stop believing the gospel really is powerful enough to save and so it’s easy then to slack off Who wants to be rejected right who wants to gauge an activity which you feel like is going to fail? So it’s a faith issue Another problem is preoccupation with our own spiritual growth Which is kind of ironic because we’re really growing want to be witnessing more, but it happens so you get so focused on your own navel that you’re not really looking around you. You know what I’m saying? The Christian’s life’s about me growing and me being holy. Now, there’s a place for that. Trust me, self-examination is important and that’s part of it. That’s part of the Christian life. But we can become pretty self-centered-centered. And it can be a real mix of good and bad motives there, and even good and bad outcomes, okay? I remember when my father died, and I don’t know if I told you this story, I probably did, I’m getting to that age. So he went in the hospital, now I had shared, he knew I was a Christian and I had attempted to share with him a number of times, and he was very hostile. He had lived very hard in terms of his lifestyle, hard drinker, hard liver, his entire life.

He was very angry, very bitter, violent person.

So I go to his hospital room and I brought him a Bible and I don’t know, I tried to witness to him, but again I attempted to share my faith. And as soon as you saw the Bible, he said, lying, lying on what was really going to be his deathbed, he said, I’ve lived as an atheist, I’m going to die as an atheist. And that was my last conversation with him. And shortly after that, he died. Well I believe that those who reject Christ go to hell. I don’t know if you believe that. It seems like more and more Christians now don’t want to say that. But I believe that. I believe eternity is real for the believer, and it’s real for the unbeliever. And the thought, the reality of that was very, very powerful and very troubling for me. I mean, troubling. That someone that I loved, I would never see again, And someone I loved would suffer forever. So, you know, you go through those experiences. You want to share the gospel. Do you even want to think about eternity? I mean, do you really want to think about something like hell? I mean, you have to force yourself to think about it. It’s that repulsive. So that being said, you know, let’s not think about that. Let’s not think about what might happen to lost people. And hence, let’s not worry about the gospel, but it’s real. We say it’s real. We sing it through and it’s real. So, you know, when we get enough rejection, we could do in it, we started focusing on ourselves [audio unclear] not good. Avoid the sin in the world, yes, but avoid the world. Well, how are you going to the salt and light if you’re never in contact with the world? How are you going to lead lost people to Jesus if all you do is avoid lost people? I was like, okay, we need to remedy this and then we took some steps to attempt to remedy this. But you see this in the church, the conservative church, the homeschool movement, I mean this profound fear of the world and this running away mentality. And what’s really weird about it is it’s happening while they’re saying all these things like we’re raising world changers. We’re raising the next generation of champions for Jesus. We’re raising cowards. I mean, I’m just, I don’t know what I mean, sorry. But it’s like, wow, you know, the mission is to go, not to run. Now yeah, flee sin, flee immorality, idolatry, but you can’t, you can’t lead people to Christ and hence disciple them and hence fulfill the great commission if you don’t go toward them. And unfortunately, we, we, many of us have been influenced by a movement which says, don’t run. Build the walls higher and higher. Protect the bad out there. Yes, protect your children by all means when they’re young. Trust me, protect them. Do everything in your power to protect them. But here’s the thing, the protection should be for preparation.

Preparation for what? Preparation for the mission. The mission.

So another problem is, another reason older Christians tend not to show the gospel as much which is, a lot of times they don’t have as many unsaved friends. Maybe they talk to some of the friends, maybe one or two got saved, and the other ones didn’t want to hear the gospel anymore, so they just don’t have contact. They don’t have friends. So there’s this growing separation, if you will, between their life and the life of unbelievers. That’s normal. It’s understandable. But what all that means is that we have to be more creative. We have to be more thoughtful. I was going to save the story for a later sermon, but I’ll tell you now and maybe I’ll tell it to you again. I figured once you hit 60 you can do that. You can start repeating yourself. So,

Wilberforce: Go Toward the Lost

ever heard of Wilberforce? I’ve got to close soon, don’t I?

I’m not a professional historian, but I would say that he is on a very short list. Maybe five people that literally changed the world. It’s astounding. This guy was about five foot nothing. Everybody said he was really ugly. Everything I read he was ugly. He was an ugly guy. He was physically sick. He actually was on drugs most of his adult life because of his sicknesses. But people were impressed with him because they saw the love of Jesus in this guy. I mean, a couple cool things about Wilberforce. One is he diligently practiced the Sabbath. I talked about that recently, right? And he spent all the Lord’s Day after church, he spent reading good theology books, reading the Bible, prayer. Now this is a God that at one point in his career belonged to 39 philanthropic organizations. Some he was president, some vice president, some just a member, but 39 of them. This is a guy that gave so much to charity that in some years he gave more than he made. This is a guy that for 40 years fought slavery and because of his efforts, he was able to get slavery abolished in not only England, but much of the world because England ruled the, world phenomenal what he did. But let me tell you something else he did that most people don’t know. It’s that Wilberforce, on his Sabbath day, would get out a card. He’d get out a card, a little card, a piece of paper. And he’d write down the names of people he knew that weren’t saved. But this is a guy who’s friends with the prime minister. He’s doing important stuff in his life. You know what I’m saying? the world’s pretty big deal. But he had the understanding to get out a piece of paper, write down the names of people he knew that were not saved, and then he began to pray for these people every Sabbath. But then you know when he did this really cool? He put that piece of paper in his pocket, and every day he’d look at it. So if he saw that person that day, he’d be ready to share the gospel with them.

And he was always looking for an opportunity to share Christ with people. This is a guy that’s hanging out with the prime minister. Amazing. Amazing. We need to all do that.

Live Like Jesus, and Go

We need to do that. And if you haven’t done it, well, maybe we’ll do it together soon. Maybe you need to begin to pray now. Who do you know that’s not saved that you can pray for? Who do you know that you can share the gospel with? And begin to pray for them. So you have to be creative. You have to take some effort. Because all your friends now are probably Christian friends. But you have all kinds of acquaintances at work or in the community that are not saved. The last reason that the older Christians often don’t share is S.I.C.E. Good Old Fashioned Carnality. And so, you know, you just lost the heart of the Lord because you’re not close to Him.

It’s really hard to live like Jesus if you’re not like Jesus. I mean, it’s really hard. It’s kind of depressing. It’s kind of dismal, actually.

Because the Christian life is a life that ultimately only Christ can live in and through us. Not that it doesn’t mean we don’t work and study and discipline ourselves, we do, but He is the power. He is the power. So we have to stay close to Jesus. Let’s stand and pray. We’ll talk more about this next week. Lord I thank you that you have allowed us to gather here today in an environment which is getting increasingly hostile to you and your church. I pray Lord that we would discern the times that we would understand that business as usual is really not acceptable for the church anymore. That we must place the gospel where it belongs at the center of remission. Lord, I pray that each of us individually would contemplate what that means for us and for our families. I pray that we would just be open to you, Lord, to follow you, to allow you to make us fishers of men.

We thank you that you have entrusted the precious words of eternal life to us.

We have the words of life for those who are dead around us. O Lord, open our hearts to the lost, but more importantly, open our mouths.

We thank you, Lord, for the great privilege of following you as your disciple. We pray in your name, amen.