Witnessing Lon Solomon McLean Bible Church November 23, 2008

Transcription

1 Witnessing Lon Solomon McLean Bible Church November 23, 2008 On June 11, 1739, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church and one of the greatest open-air evangelists of all time, wrote these words in his journal. He said, I look upon all the world as my parish. By that I mean that in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right and my bound duty to declare to all who are willing to hear the glad tidings of salvation. With these simple words, John Wesley established the Magna Carta of modern evangelical Christianity, namely that as followers of Jesus Christ, everywhere we go, we are to be witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ. I love the true story from the life of Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist. Moody was on a train station platform in Chicago one day handing out tracts to people as they were getting off the trains. This one gentleman stepped off the train and paused for a moment, looking around to kind of get his bearings. As he stood there stationary, Moody went right over to him and said, Sir, are you a Christian? The man turned to Moody and said, It s none of your business. Moody said to him, Oh yes, it is. He turned and said, Well then, you must be Dwight L. Moody. I ve heard about you! (laughter) How cool is this, folks, that Moody had gotten such a reputation for sharing Christ that even people who had never met him before knew his name and knew what he did. I really believe that, as followers of Christ, this is the reputation that every one of us ought to be trying to establish for our own lives. But you say, Lon, listen. Wait a minute. John Wesley, Dwight L. Moody these people were different. I mean, these people were called by God to be full-time evangelists. Look, Lon, I m just a wake-up-in-the-morning, get-on-the-beltway, go-towork, ordinary Christian. Well, listen, friends, the Bible is clear about the fact that God wants every follower of Jesus Christ not just the ones He calls into full-time Christian work, but every one to be a bold, outspoken witness for the Lord. In Acts 1:8, Jesus said, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

2 I love what the apostle Paul said. He said, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. Paul wrote Timothy, his protégé, and said to him, Timothy, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. Listen, as far as God is concerned, my friends, there is no such thing as a CIA Christian. Have you got me? Do you understand? I believe with all my being that when a person really comes to faith in Jesus Christ, I mean, when a person gets the real disease, folks, I believe that God puts inside of that person bubbling up from the deepest resources of that person s soul a pressing desire, a passion to tell everyone about Jesus Christ, about what He has done in our lives, and about what He wants to do in their lives. I think of Andrew in the Bible. Andrew met Christ, came to faith in Christ in John chapter 1. Then the Bible says in John 1:41, The first thing Andrew did I love this! is get baptized. No, no, no, that s not what it says. The first thing Andrew did was to go find his brother Peter and tell him, We have found the Messiah, and Andrew brought Peter to Jesus. Now friends, nowhere in the Bible do we ever read that Jesus told Andrew to go do this. Instead, what happened here is that as soon as Andrew came to genuine faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, there was in his heart an immediate desire to go tell other people about Christ. I believe this is always the case when a person truly comes to know Jesus Christ, so much so that if you don t have this desire in your heart, I believe you need to take a hard look at where you stand with Christ and make sure you genuinely know Jesus Christ and are not just playing church, friend. Because of all this, what I want us to do today in part 8 of How Firm a Foundation is talk about witnessing, about sharing our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ with other people. I want to talk to you about two things. Number one, I want to talk to you about the theological foundation upon which all witnessing is based, and then we want to talk about some practical suggestions about how you and I can be more effective witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ.

3 So let s begin by talking about this theological foundation that all of witnessing rests upon. The theological basis upon which all witnessing rests is the Bible s teaching that without Jesus Christ, every human being is spiritually lost and spiritually condemned for all of eternity. This is the sine qua non, without which nothing of witnessing namely the absolute conviction that apart from the redemption that God offers people in Jesus Christ, every human being alive is alienated from God, under the judgment of God and irreversibly headed for hell when they leave this earth for all of eternity. And you know what s interesting is that in every age, including ours, the devil himself has tried every trick in the book to convince Christians that this is really not true. Let me tell you why. It s because the devil knows that witnessing carries with it such a high price. You say, What do you mean? Well, you share your faith with people, and you are going to experience a price that you re going to have to pay, a price in ridicule that people are going to throw your way, an ostracism that they re going to throw your way, mocking that they re going to throw your way. There are going to be offended feelings on the part of people you share Christ with and even broken relationships with family and friends. Witnessing carries a high price. There is no way and the devil knows this that you and I as followers of Christ are going to be willing to pay that price unless we are utterly convinced that every single person we meet is headed straight for hell for all of eternity and that the only hope they have is for us to open our mouth and tell them about Jesus Christ and about what He did for them on the cross. If the devil can undermine that absolute conviction in the lostness of man apart from Christ, then he knows he can undermine all missionary work and all evangelistic work in the church, because if there is some other way for people to get to heaven, then friends, we re not going to pay that price. We re not. So what does the Bible really say about people outside of Jesus Christ? I think we need to go back. This is the theological foundation of witnessing. I think we ought to review this, and since I m preaching, that s what we re going to do. (laughter)

4 Okay, what does the Bible really say? John 3:36 says, Whoever believes in the Son that is, Jesus Christ has eternal life. Fine, but what about the rest of the world? Look. But whoever rejects the Son will not see eternal life, for God s wrath, God s judgment remains, sits, rests on that person. In John 14:6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life here comes the most important word in the verse no one comes to the Father, no one gets eternal life or gets into heaven, except through Me. I John 5:11 says, And this is the record, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Watch now. He who has the Son has eternal life, but He who does not have the Son of God does not have eternal life. How can you say it any simpler than that? This is why Peter said, in Acts 4:12, Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we can be delivered. Finally, just in case there s any doubt about this, the apostle Paul said in II Thessalonians 1, God will punish those who do not know God and who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and will be shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of His power. Wow! You say, All right, Lon. I got it. I understand the point you re trying to make, but you know, I have some real objections to this position. Well, fine, let s talk about them. You say, Number one, my first objection is why would a loving God be so cruel and so mean to people? Well, folks, listen. You ve got it all wrong. Just in asking this question, it s obvious that you have the em-pha-sis on the wrong syl-la-ble on this whole thing. Now listen, the Bible says in Romans 5:12, Therefore sin entered the world through one man Adam and death through sin, and so death passed onto all men. The Bible teaches that when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they brought a flaw upon the entire human race; we call it the sin nature. Every human being alive is born with it. It s like a defective gene that we all inherit, and the result of that, Ephesians 2:1 says, is that every one of us is born spiritually dead in our trespasses and our sins.

5 Friends, this is the normal state of every human being on earth, alienated from God, separated from God and under the judgment of God. Now, in His mercy, God provided a way out of this horrible situation for you and me. He provided a way for us to escape this horrible fate, and it was because of what Jesus did on the cross. It was by means of His shedding His blood for us on the cross and paying for our sin, but if a person rejects God s way of deliverance and as a result, a person experiences God s judgment, does that make God mean and cruel? No. It makes that person stupid, but it does not make God mean and cruel. You say, But now wait a minute, Lon. Wait a minute. I can buy that. If a person hears about Christ and rejects Christ, I can buy that. But what about a person who never hears about Jesus Christ, never heard of Him? Well, the Bible talks about that in Romans 1:20. Paul says, For since the creation of the world, God s invisible qualities, namely His eternal power and His divine nature, these things have been clearly on display where? Later on, Paul says they re displayed in creation so that men are without excuse. The Bible says that in creation, God has revealed in the natural world enough about Himself so every human being ought to be able to look around at the trees, the stars, our own human body and say, You know what? I didn t create all this. You know what, I couldn t create all this. You know what? This couldn t just happen; there has got to be a mighty creator God somewhere. When a person does that, my friend, the Bible makes it clear that God takes the responsibility to get the rest of the story to them. I don t care how remote they may be; God gets them the rest of the information they need to close the deal. That s my story. In the summer of 1964, I spent six weeks at Virginia Tech as part of a National Science Foundation summer program. I was a young Jewish high school student between my junior and senior years in high school. While we were there, we were studying enzymes. I don t have enough time to tell you all about the enzyme system in the human body, but take my word for it, it is so complicated and so complex, there is no way it could happen by itself. I ll never forget walking across the campus one sunny July day at Virginia Tech after studying enzymes that morning in class, getting to the steps of the dorm where I was staying, standing there on the steps

6 and pausing for a minute and saying out loud, You know, there has got to be a God, because there s no way that enzyme system in the human body could happen by itself. There s got to be a God. Now, I didn t know this God. I didn t have a clue about how to come to know Him. I didn t have a Bible. I d never read the Bible, but I was enough of a scientist to look at the human body and say, There has got to be a God. Do you know what? Six years later, standing on the streets of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was a man named Bob Eckhardt, who God sent to Chapel Hill just for me, so I could close the deal that started that day on Virginia Tech campus. Now Bob didn t know he was there for me, but he was. I don t care where you re living, whether you re in the remotest part of the world, if you respond to creation the way God says, then He will get you the rest of the information. You say, All right, Lon, but wait a minute. What if a person looks around at creation and acknowledges that there s a God but the closest religion to them is Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Confucianism, Islam, or whatever? What if, instead, they go to that religion that is right on their doorstep and sincerely seek God in that religion? Won t they be okay? Friends, the answer is no, no, no, a thousand times no. What did Jesus say in John 14:6? He said, No one comes to the Father except through Me. You say, All right, but wait a minute. Couldn t God just kind of credit the blood of Jesus Christ to that person? Even though they don t know Christ and never heard of Christ, couldn t God just say, Well, you re seeking Me sincerely through Buddhism, Islam or whatever, so I m going to credit you with the blood of Christ, and this person only finds out about the blood of Christ when they actually show up and get into heaven. Couldn t God do that? Well, friends, God could do anything He wants to do, but He says in the Bible that He doesn t do that. Listen to Romans 10:13. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord that is the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved. Watch now in verse 14. But how can they call on Him in whom they haven t believed? That makes sense, right? And how can they believe watch in someone they have never heard of? And how can they hear about Christ without a preacher?

7 Verse 17, Therefore, faith comes by hearing the message and the message is heard through the Word of God. Okay, so let s follow the Bible s logic here. Are you ready? Here we go. The Bible says that in order to call on the name of the Lord right, a person has to believe right, but in order to believe right, a person has to hear the message of Jesus Christ right. And to hear the message of Jesus Christ right, somebody has got to tell that person the cognitive, biblical information about Jesus Christ His virgin birth, His deity, His sinless life, His death on the cross, His blood payment for our sin, His resurrection. This is why the Bible says in Romans 10:9, If we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord not that Buddha is nice or that Mohammed was a prophet or that Joseph Smith thought he saw an angel or that Rabbi Schneerson thought he was the Messiah, but if we confess that Jesus is Lord. Now wait a minute. How are you going to know that unless somebody tells you that s what the Bible says? And the verse goes on, If we believe in our heart that God has raised Jesus from the dead. How are you going to believe that unless somebody tells you that s what the Bible says? It s then we will be saved. Friends, the most sincere Muslim, the most sincere Jewish person, the most sincere Buddhist, the most sincere Hindu, the most sincere recycling American it doesn t matter until that person hears the truth about Jesus Christ and believes it and calls on the name of the Lord for salvation, that person is lost, lost, lost. That is the unambiguous teaching of the Word of God, upon which all witnessing rests. So let s summarize. Friends, if people are not lost apart from Jesus Christ, then every missionary that ever lived threw their life away Hudson Taylor, Wesley, Whitfield, Adoniram Judson, David Brainerd, Jim Elliot they all wasted their lives. They didn t need to go doing what they did; people could have gotten to heaven some other way. Listen, if people aren t lost without Jesus Christ, then that man Bob Eckhardt, who stood on the streets in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and let people spit on him, ridicule him, yell obscenities at him and mock him so that he could be there to tell others about Christ, that man was a fool. He was a fool to do that.

8 Listen, if people are not lost apart from Jesus Christ, then for you and me, witnessing is stupid. It s stupid. There s no reason for us to expose ourselves to the price we have to pay if people can get to heaven some other way. But listen, God says in the Bible that people are lost without Jesus Christ, eternally so, hopelessly so, irrevocably and irreversibly so. He also says in the Bible that as followers of Jesus Christ, He has given us the privilege of being witnesses for Him and sharing with people the biblical information they need to know to reverse that fate. Now, are you all still okay? Are you awake? (audience responds) Now that s as far as we want to go theologically this morning, because now we want to stop and answer our most important question about witnessing, so are you ready? All right, nice and loud, here we go. One, two, three SO WHAT? Yeah! You say, Lon, so what? This is great. I understand what you re saying, but you know what, Lon? If you go out there and try to share Christ with people, this is a pretty scary thing to do. I mean, can you put some handles on this? Can you give us some practical suggestions about how to be an effective witnesser? I can. I ve got four quick ones to give you. Number one is prayer. Friends, the message of Jesus Christ is a prescription. Do we understand that? It s a remedy, but nobody s going to be willing to take the remedy until they believe they re sick, so how in the world are we going to convince successful, powerful, sophisticated, affluent, arrogant Washingtonians that they are spiritually sick? How are we going to do that? The answer is that we can t. The answer is that only the Holy Spirit Himself can convince them of that. This is why Jesus said in John 16:8, The Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. You and I don t do that. How do we bring the Holy Spirit s power to bear on a person s life so that they begin to understand they re sick and need a remedy? Friends, we do that by prayer. We do that on our knees. Prayer is the number one strategic weapon in our witnessing arsenal. Prayer is like bombarding the beach before we try to land the gospel troops. Do you understand what I m saying? I believe the most powerful witnessing is

9 witnessing that s done in partnership with prevailing prayer for the person we re trying to share Christ with. Number two is to use Scripture. In Isaiah 55:10, God says, My Word that goes out from My mouth will not return to Me empty, but it will achieve the purposes for which I send it. Listen, friends. It s not our cleverness. It s not our logical argumentations. It s not our well-honed apologetic skills that God promised would never return to Him empty. It s His Word. When people walk away from a conversation with you and me about the Lord Jesus Christ, what we want ringing and reverberating in their ears is not our logic or our wisdom or our reasoning, but the eternal words of almighty God from the Bible. You know, the man who led me to Christ, Bob Eckhardt, shared Christ with me for a couple of hours, and then he gave me a Bible and made me promise that I would read the Bible. Do you know what? That was one of the smartest things he ever did. This man was never going to talk me into coming to Christ. This man was never going to argue me into coming to Christ. Forget it, it wasn t going to happen. But I started reading the Word of God, and one month later, I was on my knees by my bed, giving my life to Jesus Christ, because it was the Word of God that brought conviction to my life. Listen, if you re trying to share Christ with somebody and not making much headway, then one of the greatest things you can do is ask them if they would simply agree to read the Bible, and put a copy of the gospel of John or the New Testament into their hand, and get them into the Word of God. Friends, if you get them into the Word of God, I promise the Holy Spirit will do the rest. Number three, if you want to be a great witnesser, then get some basic skill training. You know, friends, there are lots of techniques for witnessing, but all of them are built around the same five basic skills. Let me put up on the screen what they are. They are: (1) sharing our personal story in a compelling way, sharing our testimony, (2) having the skill to present the plan of salvation clearly and simply, (3) the skill of handling objections biblically that they may have to the faith, (4) helping people make

10 that decision step for Christ, and (5) teaching people about assurance of salvation. Those are the skills involved in being a great witnesser. You re not born able to do this. Nobody is. It takes some skill training to learn how to do this, so I strongly recommend that if you want to be a good witnesser, you take Christianity 301. That s what we do here. In six weeks, we ll teach you all of these skills and let you practice some of them, but you know, everybody starts needing some skill training. Everybody starts needing to learn how to do this, and the more you learn the skills, the better you get. If you want to take Christianity 301, you go right out to the booth in the lobby. We re starting our next round of McLean University courses right after the first of the year. Talk to the folks at the booth and sign yourself up. Finally, number four, if you want to be a great witnesser, then just start. Friend, if you re sitting around waiting for God to pour some witnessing whiffle dust on you from heaven and all of a sudden, you re going to stand up and start witnessing like the apostle Paul, well, you re crazy. It s not going to happen. Everybody just has to start. The apostle Paul just had to start. He started in Damascus right after the experience where the Lord knocked him off his horse, but you know what? I ll bet the apostle Paul was not as good a witnesser in the first few weeks in Damascus as he was twenty years later when he stood before the emperor of Rome, but guess what? He started. And because he started, he got better and better and better. God steers a moving ship, friends. If you sit dead in the water, God can t steer you anywhere. Just start. And if you re not real good, guess what? You ll get better, and guess what? God s ability to use you to lead people to Christ doesn t depend on how good you are anyway. It just depends on you opening your mouth and giving out the information God needs you and me to give out. You say, Well, Lon, wait a minute. Just before you re done, I have two other objections. My first one is that, Lon, I witness with my life. You know, this little light of mine, I m going to let it shine. I just figure I ll let my little light shine, and people will figure it out. Well, you know what? I can t argue with you that in order to be an effective witness, we need our life to be authentic and credible before people. I can t

11 argue with that. But friends, nobody ever came to Christ because you or me just let our little light shine. It never happens, friends. You and I have to open our mouths and make the connection for them to Christ. I had a friend of mine who used to follow this let your little light shine approach, and do you know what? This is a true story. He had a lady come up to him one day and say to him, You know, I ve been watching your life, and there s really something different about you. Are you a vegetarian? (laughter) That s a true story. He told me that story, and I said, You see there? That s what I ve been trying to tell you. People are going to give the credit for your little light to all the wrong places if you don t open your mouth and tell them it s not about vegetables; it s about the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen, friends. CIA Christians never lead anybody to Christ. Do you understand? You ve got to open your mouth. You say, Well, Lon, I ve got one final objection, and that is, God bless you up there, man. God bless you, but you live in the church all day long. You don t live out there with real people. Friends, I don t live here. I live out with real people. You say, You don t understand, Lon. Real people in the real world are not interested. They re just not interested! I had a friend a few years ago who was in the Korean War. He told me a true story that happened while he was there. He said that he and his company were dug in in a foxhole and were taking heavy artillery fire. It just so happened that the foxhole right next to him took a direct artillery hit right into the foxhole. He crawled over, because there was a soldier in that foxhole to see if he could be any help. The soldier was already way too seriously wounded to survive, but my friend rolled him over and held him in his arms, and this young soldier looked up at him and said, Do you know anything about Jesus Christ? My friend, who was not a Christian at the time, said, No, I don t. The soldier said to him, You know, I sure wish I did, and then died right there in his arms. Now friends, I ll bet you if somebody had tried to share Christ with that soldier who died a month before, a year before, ten years before, he probably wouldn t have acted like he was interested. He probably wouldn t have responded, but when he

12 needed the information in that foxhole, he would have had it. A lot of the people you re going to share Christ with are going to pretend like they re not interested. Maybe they re really not interested. But you know, there may come a day in those every one of those people s lives where they re going to want that information. They re going to wish they had that information, and if you gave it to them even though they didn t want it, they re going to thank God for all of eternity that you did that. Don t you worry about whether other people are interested or not. God never called you to only share Christ with people who are interested. He didn t call me to do that. He called us to share Christ with everybody, whether they re interested or not, and a good witnesser doesn t let people s interest slow him or her down. A good witnesser understands that we re not called to be successful every time we share Christ; we re just called to be faithful. You just give out the gospel, friends. Whether people are interested or not doesn t matter. If you give out the gospel, there will be a day that most of them will be interested, I promise you that. So let s conclude. Toward the end of his life, the apostle Paul was in jail in Caesarea on the coast of modern-day Israel. While he was there, he had the privilege to stand before King Agrippa the second, one of the great-grandsons of Herod the Great who was ruling part of Israel at the time under the Roman Empire. Here s what the apostle Paul said to King Agrippa. He had shared his testimony with him about being knocked off the horse and said, So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. From the time I gave my life to Christ to this very day, standing in front of you, with God s help, I have continued witnessing to both small people and to great people alike. Wow, what a wonderful testimonial to end your life with, huh? To be able to say, Hey, I didn t get it right every single time, and there were maybe a few times where I should have shared Christ, and I was ashamed and didn t, but Lord, You know for the most part, I have witnessed for You to every person, small and great, that has come across my path and has let me do it. I don t know about you, friend. You can have whatever goal for your life you want, but this is one of the goals for my life, to be able to stand before the Lord and say, Lord, I didn t get it right every time, but I tried

13 hard to not let a person pass me that I didn t have something to say for You. Friends, I want to say that I think that ought to be your goal if you re a follower of Christ. This is the testimony the Lord wants you and me to end our lives with. It takes courage to live like this, but do you know what I ve learned? I ve learned that when you get ready to share Christ, you may be nervous. You may have cotton balls in your throat. Your armpits may be soaking wet. Your knees may be banging together, but once you open your mouth, once I open my mouth and get started, the Spirit of God takes over, and it s easy after that. The hardest part is just opening my mouth and starting. I challenge you to do that, friend. I challenge you to (sings) be a missionary every day. Tell the world that Jesus is the way. The Lord is soon returning. There is no time to lose, so be a missionary, God s own emissary. Be a missionary today. What do you think? (applause) Be a missionary, friends. Walk out of your house and say, Today, Lord Jesus, I might be going to work. I might be going to drive the car pool. I might be going to get my toenails done. It doesn t matter where I m going, Lord. I m a missionary today, Lord. Make me a missionary and give me opportunities to share Christ. Let s pray. Heavenly Father, thanks for talking to us today from the Word of God and challenging us with the privilege and the responsibility that You ve laid on each one of us to share Jesus Christ. Now Lord, it is scary out there. You know that. None of us like to be ridiculed. None of us like to be made fun of. None of us like to be ostracized, but Lord Jesus, give us such a love for you that we are willing to pay any price to stand up for you. Give us such a love for men and women s souls that we are willing to pay that price in order to give the information to them that they may need in a foxhole one day. Lord, change our lives because we were here today, and send us out as McLean Bible Church each and every day as an army of missionaries into Washington, D.C., that we might impact this entire city for the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, thanks that we could be here to hear the Word of God today. Use it in our lives for Your glory, and we pray this in Jesus name, and what did God s people say? Amen.