Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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Our Witness of Faith

Sermon Transcript

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

Romans 10

Alright, turn, if you will, to Romans chapter 10. Romans chapter 10, starting in verse 5. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead You will be saved for with the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved For the scripture says everyone who believes in him Will not be put to shame For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is the Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ. Now when we witness to people and talk to them about Jesus, we’re offering them forgiveness of sins through Christ, a fellowship with God that will last forever. I mean, why are we doing that? I mean, why do we witness? Because it’s fun? Most would say no. Unless you’re David Snyder, right? No, that’s challenging. That can be nerve-wracking. So why do we witness? Because we’re supposed to? Well, I mean, yes, there’s truth in that, right? We are supposed to do it. That’s usually the answer that we think of. Because we love these people, hopefully. At the foundation, no, we it’s the truth.

And we believe that this truth of the Gospel, it trumps all of our other truths. So whatever truth there is, we believe that this is the quintessential, the supreme, the most important truth that we could possibly tell anyone and everyone. Because without this truth, all hope is lost. Literally. So we proclaim this truth as the truth. Now we’re not out preaching the gospel that make people feel better. Even though some people do that, we’re not out there to do it to make them think things will be better for them. I feel like sometimes we, we are offering people like a Christian alcohol. I know there’s no such thing. It’s like we’re giving them, you know, we’re pouring our little cup of alcohol for them and we’re offering it to them. And if you drink this, if you drink this gospel and you ingest it, then all your woes are going to be gone. You’re going to feel better and everything will be fine. Because that’s what, you know, people use alcohol for, right? Kind of make all their woes gone, all their pain be gone, feel better. Of course, what happens? in the morning and the effect is gone. And that’s what happens sometimes if we start sharing the gospel with people and we are telling them that it can make them feel better and feel good and be better and all their problems are going to go away. Well that might happen for a short time for them. But what happens when problems start to creep up, when they start having a bad day, when they’re going through some trials, when they have some pain in their life? Well they can try to go back and have another shot of that Christian alcohol, but eventually the effect wears off. And so then what? Well they realize that that Christian alcohol really isn’t that good and not very helpful, so they get rid of it. That’s not an effective way to preach the gospel. We are offering people hope. And I do believe if you put your faith in Christ, that the Lord will take care of many things. Now that doesn’t mean we’re going to be all happy and giddy and la-da-la-la. He’ll walk us through those things. In the midst of the trials, he will be there. Have you ever taken, you guys have all taken medicine, duh. Have you ever tried to make your kids take medicine? Not always the easiest thing. You know in the past few years, though, They’ve done a better job of getting cherry and mint. You go to the dentist now and there’s like 25 different types of stuff they can buzz on your teeth, whatever that stuff is called. So they’ve done a better job of helping the medicine be more palatable. But medicine is medicine. And there is some nasty medicine out there. I had to do this, you know, drink this stuff one time for a procedure they were gonna do on me. It was about the nastiest stuff I’ve ever drank in my entire life.

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The Hard Truth

Telling people that they’re in sin, that they’re fallen, that they can’t do anything to save themselves. People don’t like hearing that. That’s kind of the sour taste of the gospel. You have the sweet taste of the gospel, the sweet nectar that all hope is not lost. That the Lord has come, that he has paid the penalty for them. That in spite of their sinfulness, in spite of the fact that they’ve rebelled against God, He offers them the free gift of eternal life. That’s the sweet taste of it. So when we witness, we’re giving them the truth of the gospel, sometimes that truth is going to be rejected. Sometimes it’s going to be received. I read an article the other day and the gentleman said that witnessing rarely works. And he went on to, the author went on to justify why he doesn’t witness. This is a Christian article on a Christian website. He says it rarely works. I mean, what does that even mean, really? Because I started thinking, it rarely works. What does he mean by works? Like someone doesn’t get saved? I mean, is that his definition? If you witness someone and someone doesn’t get saved and it didn’t work, because that wouldn’t be my definition. To me, if you are filled with the spirit and you are sharing your faith with people, it is working. We are called to be the planters. We’re called to scatter the seed, right? Others will come along after us and they’ll be the sowers. What does the word say? God gives the growth. God gives the growth. So if you’re in the Spirit sharing, it is working. Now, you know what? The other reason I disagree with it that witnessing really works is because probably just about every single one of us here is here because someone witnessed to us. Most of us didn’t get saved reading a book. That’s possible. You know, a book on apologetics or maybe even reading the Bible, people have gotten saved that way, but most people get saved because someone sat down and shared the good news with them. How many of you are here because someone shared the good news with you? They witnessed to you. It might have been a relative, a neighbor, your friend, a sibling, a parent, a child, but they witnessed to you. Well, I would say it works. So the article went on, and The reason this guy was kind of in a huff was because he went to Starbucks. I saw some of you walking with your Starbucks. That’s good. He went to Starbucks Sunday morning, and someone came in and started witnessing to people. And this guy went on to criticize how the man looked, his clothes, and he said he tricked people into talking about church. I wish I could trick people into talking about church. If there is some way to get people to talk about church, man, I would love to know it. Because I’m always looking for a different way to bring it up. But he tricked people into talking about church. And then he was really upset because the guy stayed at Starbucks for two hours.

Now when I read the article and I read it and I read that the guy stayed there for two hours, I actually felt a little tinge of conviction. I’m like, man, I will share with people when I’m out and I get those different opportunities, but I’ve never gone to Starbucks or any place for two hours and just made it my complete goal by myself to go and witness to people. And I’m like, why is this guy in this Christian article, on this Christian website, like, he’s insulting to fellow brother. He just didn’t like his approach and the manner and all that stuff. Can I just say something? If witnessing is not your thing, that’s between you and the Lord. I don’t think you have any ground to stand on, and you really don’t, but don’t blast people who witness. We’ve got enough people on the outside. I expect the world to take shots at us. I expect the world to be mad at us. I expect the world to get offended when we’re at Starbucks sharing.

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Don’t Just Sit on the Sidelines

Yeah. What is their role? If you’ve ever watched The Muppets before, you know, what do they do? They just kind of sit on the sidelines and heckle everyone

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You just sit on the sidelines, it is easy to be the critic.

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It is easy to be the critic. Anyone can be critical. That is not a fruit of the spirit. Some people think it might be, but it is not a fruit of the spirit to be critical. It’s really the exact opposite. I expect us as believers to be walking in grace with one another, to be encouraging one another. Look, I’ve had some awful times witnessing to people. I’ve really messed up. Bad. I was at a hardware store once with a friend and I started sharing with this guy who was working there and he was helping us out. He was a Catholic and I was emphasizing, you know, we’re not saved by works. And I’m like, and it says in Ephesians 2.8, and I just like went blank. Like I was like, 2.8, 2.8. And I just like stood there. And finally my friend was like, for by grace, I’m like, for by grace we were saved, you know. And I was just like, but I was just like blank. It felt like forever, it was probably just a couple of seconds. Totally blank thought, I’m just like, afterwards, I hung my head and went into the car and I was just like, dude, that was horrible. That was rough. And my friend was like, man, you kind of … I was like, yeah, he’s like, well, actually you really didn’t. And he said you know, when you’re witnessing to someone, you need to realize something. You’re sharing. The guy was about 40 years old. When you’re sharing with someone, you’re not just sharing with an individual. sharing with a family because maybe that guy is going to take what you told him tonight and he’s going to go home and around the dinner table he’s going to be like, you know, honey this guy was, you know, talking about the Bible today and, you know, we haven’t been to church and he was talking about we’re not saved by trying to, you know, I mean you don’t know what might happen, right? And his kids are sitting around the table and they’re taking that in, and you just don’t know the impact. And that’s what his point was to me, that when we’re sharing, we don’t know how that’s going to spread from there. The seed that we’re planting, you know, that person might take it. It might not even necessarily be for that person. Maybe his wife is the one that needed to hear that. But it really changed the way that I looked at evangelism. We’re sharing, when we’re sharing, we’re sharing more than just with one person. We really are sharing with the family. they’re gonna go and they’re gonna go talk to their friend. And you know what, maybe they’re mocking, man this guy was so whacked out telling me about Jesus and how I can be forgiven of my sin, and you know what, maybe that friend is listening, , he’s like wow, that’s for me. That’s what I need to hear. We don’t know that. Now I believe the Lord’s gonna open our eyes and let us see that when we get to heaven someday, and then we’re just gonna be blown away of how the different things that we just thought collapses and fails and we knocked on someone’s door and they just took the packet and you know we don’t know what happened to that DVD. I pray for those DVDs and those letters some of them get stuffed in drawers right you guys all have drawers that you just kind of stuff stuff into and like it’s almost like your diary because you could look in there you got like ten years worth of stuff. Well I pray I pray for those DVDs and those tracks that we’re handing out that those that get stuffed in the drawers that they’re taking out at the right time, maybe by the person that didn’t even stuff it in there but someone else, and they pop it into the DVD player and they see that. It might be two, three, five years from now. They’re going to be playing that DVD that we’ve been handing out to the homes here in O’Fallon. We just don’t know the impact that we can have by a simple gesture like that. When we went out with the master plan about a month ago, I walked up to a guy. He was already standing out in his yard, and I handed him the packet. You would have thought I had just got out of a spaceship and said I was from Mars. He was looking at me so crazy. I was just like, I’m just handing out some literature. So I talked to him about the church in a little bit, and he was like, I’m a pastor. And he started handing me the packet back. And I was like, you know, why don’t you keep the packet, and then why don’t you look at the DVD and read the track and read the letter, and then why don’t you give us some feedback and let us know what you think of how we’re out talking to people in your neighborhood. Because I really thought maybe that he needed to hear it. I still haven’t heard from him. We’re all going to die one day. Every one of us. And then it’s going to be over. We need to take advantage of the time now. Jesus took many, many opportunities to witness. You really think about that? I mean, Jesus was like the quintessential witness. And it wasn’t always a 30 minute conversation. Sometimes people are like, well, we need the ideal condition and really if we’re gonna really sit down and give them the gospel, we really have to make sure from beginning to end and Genesis to revelation and that is ideal. But the opportunities that we get are usually like 30 seconds or a minute or two minutes or five minutes. We don’t get much time all the time if we’re out and about doing our work or if we’re trying to share with the mail lady, if we’re talking to the charter guy in our house. We don’t get that many opportunities, and those opportunities don’t always last for eons. We have to take advantage of those short opportunities and grab them when they come. Some of us, depending on our different situations, look, I’m a pastor, so I don’t get, I’m not around a ton of unsafe people. So I have to, when I get an opportunity, I can’t, well, I’m going to get one tomorrow, I’m going to get one in another hour. Man, I got to grab that opportunity and take it, because it might be a little bit before I get the next opportunity. And the same is true for many of you. When we get those opportunities, we just got to go.

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Short Opportunities

75 words is what Jesus spoke. 75 words is what is written down in the scriptures for us. Short opportunity. Jesus grabbed it. What about the woman at the well? It’s 21 verses. Jesus sends the disciples to go get some food, right? And they head out. He goes by the well. Lady’s comes up. They have this little conversation until the disciples come back. Woman caught in Daltry. And John. Now the whole thing, it seems like it plays out for a while. But he only actually says about 25 words to her. His actual interaction just with her, one on one, is very short. 25 words. And then there’s the man healed at the pool on the Sabbath. 14 words Jesus spoke. Changed his life forever. Each of these people encountered Jesus, had an interaction with him and they were changed. Some for the good, sometimes rich young ruler what happens to him? He goes away. Sad, depressed, upset. But they had an interaction. Guess what? When we’re sharing with people, they are interacting with Jesus. You are Jesus to them. You’re the ambassador. You’re the representative if he lives inside of you when you are talking, it is really the Holy Spirit talking to them. It is if Jesus himself was there speaking. And you get that privilege of doing that.

Jesus gave some pretty tough words though. Think of the rich young ruler. Sell all that you have. You’ve done all these things, but the one thing that I know you can’t do, or you won’t do, and I’m gonna nail it right here to you, sell it all. Because that’s your stronghold. You’ve got the riches, and that’s what you’re trusting in. You wanna follow me? You wanna be be one of mine? Sell it all. What about the woman at the well? I mean, he starts talking about her adultery and all her divorces. That’s not a very nice thing to do. Right? He’s getting to the heart of the matter. She was changed. And he and all c and lovey-dovey he gave a blunt word in a loving way and you she received it. What about the man healed at the pool on the Sabbath? If you want something to meditate on this afternoon when you go home in your quiet time, read the passage in John 5, okay? Because he says to the man, do you want to be healed? And the man’s like, yeah. Get up, take up your bed, and walk. So he does this. But then it goes on and says, later he found him in the temple and he tells him to sin no more so that nothing worse may happen. I’m like, nothing worse may happen. Wow. What is that about? That’s what you guys can meditate on. Nothing worse. And I was going over this and I was like, man, that’s kind of scary. Stop sending so that nothing bad happens. Look, we can make an impact in just a few short minutes. It doesn’t take long. The right word at the right time, spoken. to that lady in the grocery store as you’re checking out. That right word. Maybe it’s just

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be offensive. So if people are going to get offended, let’s let it be because of the truth.

Because of the truth. Not because of us, but because of the truth.

The Offense of the Cross

Look at what Galatians chapter 4 says. This is Paul talking, he’s talking to the Galatians, these people are believers, but he’s being pretty blunt with them. And he says in chapter 4 verse 16, have Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? And sadly, yeah, we do sometimes become the enemy. 1 Peter 2 says something similar. Look at 1 Peter 2. In verse 4 of 1 Peter 2, it says, As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense a rock of offense. The NIV says a rock that makes them fall a rock of offense that’s talking about Jesus he’s the offensive rock why because people don’t like to be told that they’re sinful people don’t like to be told that they’re prideful. People don’t like to be told that they have to depend on someone else for something. We have enough problems as Christians depending on one another and leaning on one another, we could all do a better job of that. We don’t like to admit that we can’t do it on our own. That’s fallen human nature. Well, how much more so to have to depend on someone completely, fully, complete trust your very soul. That’s the rock of offense. That’s the stumbling. Galatians calls it the offense of the cross. The offense of the cross. What’s the offense? Man can’t save himself. He has to depend on Christ. Man can’t earn favor with God. He has to depend on someone else to earn that favor. Look, people didn’t pick up stones to kill Jesus because he was a nice guy. Usually nice guys don’t get stones thrown at him. They don’t get threatened with that. Well, there’s a danger. Look back in Romans, there’s a danger, and it’s the danger of silence. The danger of silence, it says in verse 14, How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And then in verse 17 it says, so faith comes from hearing and hearing to the word of Christ.

People get saved through hearing the word. living a godly life to witness isn’t enough. That gives confirmation to your witness. That a to what you’re verbalizing. But you know what? For all you know, this godly life that you’re living, your co-workers might think you’re a Jehovah Witness. Because they live a pretty godly life. I mean, they live a moral life. They might think you’re a Mormon. They don’t know unless you open your mouth. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever met someone before and you start talking and you’re like, hey, maybe, I mean, and you get to know the person and you’re like, wow, this person’s, I mean, maybe they’re a believer. But you start talking with them and then it becomes evident that they’re not a believer, right? So then you’re sharing with them. But if we are trying to use discernment, and sometimes we thought, hey, maybe this person is a believer, you’ve gotten to know him, or you’ve met him, or you’ve talked with them, or you’ve observed them, they’re your neighbor that you’ve built a friendship with, and we as believers that have the Spirit of the Lord in us, and can use discernment, weren’t able to tell, then why would we expect fallen sinful man to be able to see us for what we are? Now it can happen, and there can be shades of it, but it doesn’t always happen.

And people usually, now you guys can correct me if I’m wrong afterwards, but I’ve not had a ton of people running up to me and saying, man, Mike, your life is so, I want what you have. Now that has happened, and that’s happened to some of you, but usually I have to take the message to them. Ambassadors usually go and represent. When Jesus says to go, He means to go glared at us. And we take the message and we go forth. It doesn’t say the nations come to us and we give them the gospel. We go to the nations and give them the gospel. They don’t come to hear from us. We go to them and give it to them. There is an activeness about it. We have to be proactive in what we’re doing when it comes to the gospel. But we can

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Time Is Short

We’re going to say the same thing: it flew by. 2016, all the way to 2042. Twenty-nine years from now, we’re going to be here, Lord willing, some of us might not be, and we’re going to say the same thing, it flew by. And you know what? The older we get, it’s like the more we realize how fast it’s going by.

Now, you know, when you’re like little, teenager and under, it’s like, man, it can’t go fast enough, right? You’re always waiting for the next birthday, and it’s important that you’re 11 and a half and 14 and a half, right? It seems to go really slow. But for many of us, we realize how fast time is. It’s like in our mind’s eye sometimes, it’s like we can relive the past however old we are the past 30, 40, 50, 60 years. And it’s like, here we are. And it’s gone by quick. And we can’t get any of that time back. Now, I was thinking to myself, you know, I was thinking to myself the other day, when my youngest kid is as old as my oldest kid is right now, eight year swing, my oldest kid is going to be really old. And so why? Time is limited. I was listening on the way to church today, I was listening to a preacher and he was talking about you know evangelism and building bridges and he was saying you know we’ve got to build this bridge because you know you want to be have this relationship and you don’t want to offend and he went on to reflect and he said you know some of these people that I’ve built bridges with I’m building this bridge, right? Because I don’t want to offend them, and I want to be a friend to them. I built this bridge, and I’ll, I spend all this time building the bridge, and I’ll never see that person again. I never crossed the bridge. He said it’s a bridge to nowhere. I spend all the time on the bridge, I don’t even ever cross the bridge. And sometimes when we have those chance opportunities, we need to cross that bridge pretty quick. because we’re not going to see that person again. So if they leave the conversation, man, that person sure was nice, and we sure had a good conversation about the Cardinals. That’s great. But that bridge is an incomplete bridge that never got crossed. And our time is short here. We got to cross those bridges. Like we might witness to people and there’s no response. That does not mean we’re failing. The growth is up to the Lord. That’s what you have to tell yourself. The growth is up to the Lord. He takes care of the seeds. I’ve planted a couple gardens in my life, emphasis on a couple, a long time ago. And there’s a lot of work putting into the sowing and the taking care of the garden and the nurturing it and the watering it, right? When you put all that together and then you think of harvesting, I mean harvesting you just kind of go out into the garden and you’re like oh ripe tomato, ripe tomato, cucumber, pepper. It’s right there, right? The harvesting is kind of easy. Many of us are sowers and we might not be the harvesters. The sowers I believe have the pretty tough job. We’re planting seeds and we don’t get to see what sprouts out of the ground all the time. But if it wasn’t for the sowers, there’d be nothing to harvest.

The harvesters would just be looking around, nothing’s coming out of the ground. Why? The sowers aren’t there. They’re not planting the seeds. And whether we’re the sower, the waterer, the harvester, we’ve got to be faithful.

Whatever our task is, we each have strengths and weaknesses. And some of us are strong with evangelism and can go into the lion’s den, and some of us are weak and wouldn’t even get near the lion’s den if it was locked and caged in 10 miles away. That’s okay as long as we’re being faithful to witness with the opportunities that we get. If we’re one of those scaredy cats, then I believe that the Lord is going to give us opportunities for the scaredy cats. He’s not going to toss you into the lions then. He’s going to guard you. He’s going to protect you. He’s going to give you the words to say. He’s going to be there with you. If you’re one of those bold Daniel types, then make sure that you’re not. Just settling for the scaredy cat opportunities. Jump out, go for it, break into that lion’s den and let them have it.

But God’s going to bring us the opportunities. We need to be looking for those opportunities. We need to take advantage of the opportunities like we have with master plan and grasp them. Our time is short. We don’t have much more time. And then it will be over. All that are going to be saved will have been saved someday. All those that are lost will be lost forever. Let’s do what Jude talks about. Snatch them from the fire. Right? Snatch them from the fire. Jonathan Edwards talks about in his sermon, famous sermon, Famous sermon centers in the hands of an angry God, right? It’s like they’re dangling over the pit of hell. The flames are leaping up licking at their feet We need to have a realness about hell And earnestness about preaching the gospel about saving those people from the doom that awaits them Well, you know you’re driving down the road, right? And you look in your rearview mirror and the lights are flashing and you’re like, oh I got a ticket But it’s an ambulance and you’re like, oh, thank you Lord, right? What do you do? You pull over. Everyone makes room for the ambulance, right? For a number of reasons. But you make room. Why? Because a life is on the line. There’s an emergency. Well guess what? We’ve got to make time and room for the spiritual ambulance. Us, really, right? Because we’re on a mission. And we have to clear some things out of the way to be able to make sure we’re doing that mission right. Nothing should impede us from getting out there with the gospel and from sharing. Everything else is distant. It’s an emergency. A life is on the line. We need to reach them.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray. Lord, Lord, our life was on the line at one point and someone came in the ambulance to save us. And they were faithful. They gave us the truth. Some of us got offended by it time and time again, God, but you kept sending the ambulance, and you saved us. Or let us be the ones that are out there saving others now. Wherever we’re at on the spectrum, God, let us step out.

We can do it with just a 30-second conversation sometimes, God. Two minutes, five minutes at the restaurant. Let us take hold of those opportunities in spite of what our flesh says.

In agreement with what your spirit says. Lord, go before us, raise the banner over us. We can do this through you.

We stand, Lord, before you.

It says we can come with confidence. We don’t have to crawl in, but we’re covered with the blood of the Lamb. You’ve declared us righteous. You’ve set us apart. It’s a glorious thing in your sight. We thank you for that, Lord. In your name, Amen.