"A Clear and Present Gospel" Evangelism Part 1 Sunday Evening Worship Service

I want to start tonight and spend the next three Sundays, Lord willing, talking about evangelism.

Evangelism is an important topic for me because I got saved through evangelism.

I did not grow up in a Christian home.

I didn't grow up growing to church.

I grew up very distant from church.

I'd never, that I recall, opened a Bible in my life.

If you don't count the one time I saw John 3.16 on the screen at a soccer game, and that got my curiosity.

And it took forever to find John 3.16 in the Bible, by the way.

316 is not a page number.

That was way harder than I was expecting it to be.

I came back with like objections and you know questions.

These were not educated objections or questions.

They were things that, you know, an 18-year-old punk would say to respond to a Christian witnessing to him.

But my friend took them seriously and wrote down those objections and then sought to answer them.

And the Lord used his faithfulness along with the church that I went to.

He invited me to church.

And my first time going to church ever was Easter Sunday, my senior year in high school, and I heard the gospel that Sunday and came to faith in Christ.

And Tommy, my friend who shared with me, had no specific evangelism training that I knew of.

I mean, he was he was younger than me, he was a high school sophomore and uh was just you know telling one of his soccer teammates about Jesus.

That was the extent of his evangelistic training, and the Lord used that to save me.

In contrast, later on after college, uh my first real job was with a lawn care company.

I was mowing grass, uh the cutting-edge turf care company.

Uh mock it for what you will, it was awesome.

Uh listened to John MacArthur's sermons and John Piper sermons basically 12 hours a day, my entire time doing lawn care.

The Lord used it in my sanctification, but one of our customers was Mormon, and we knew she was Mormon because she was like by far the nicest person we have ever met.

Uh she would help, you know, we would be blowing the driveway after we cut the grass and she would be out there sweeping it up.

We're like, you're paying us for that.

She's like, I just it looks so hot, I just want to help.

It'd be raining outside.

She's out there with a rain jacket on, she'd have cookies and milk for us all the time.

Uh, she gave him the garbage guy too, and the mailman.

Uh, she was just like over the top, and she told us she was nice to us because she was Mormon, and if we ever had any questions about Mormonism, let her know.

And so one time I paused my John Piper sermon and I asked her about Mormonism to say, I want to know what it would take to uh to become a Mormon.

You know, I'm playing along.

I wasn't actually thinking about converting to Mormonism or anything, but she worked so hard that I thought we should give her a conversation.

Uh and she's like, I was so happy you guys asked.

Uh, and so she said, Can I give your phone number to somebody?

And some missionaries will come to your house and tell you about this.

And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Why can't you tell me about that?

I'm gonna ask, yeah, the missionaries didn't give me cookies and milk for the last year, you did.

And she's she said, no, that's not that's not what we do.

You know, we we are supposed to, you know, we being Mormons here are supposed to be nice to people and and share our lives with people, invite people into our homes and everything.

But when somebody wants to know what it takes to be a Mormon, we contact the missionaries, and the missionaries are the ones that are trained to tell you.

Uh and so we did.

We let her call the missionaries, and some other day I will tell you about that encounter.

It was awesome.

They walked into a house filled with youth pastors, it was amazing.

Uh, but that's not my point today.

My point today is that how strange it was that the Lord used some 16-year-old with no evangelistic training to save me.

Uh and yet when you're looking outside of evangelicalism, there's this sense that in order to rightly present the gospel, quote unquote, with the sarcastic quote marks around the Mormon gospel there, it has to be a trained professional.

Now, it's easy to judge the Mormon cookie and milk lady, but it is a worthwhile question for you.

Whose evangelistic method would you say is closer to your own?

Is your evangelistic method like my friend Tommy, who shares the gospel and invites people to church and is just, you know, out there doing the best he can?

Or is it more of the, you know, my job is to lead a good life and hopefully somebody sees it and follows me to church one day, and then the professionals can evangelize them.

I fear too often our evangelism slips into that second category where we think that my Christian smile is enough to draw people to Christ.

Anything beyond that, I sure hope they turn on Caleb on the radio.

I want to define evangelism for you tonight as we work our way uh through this content.

This is my definition of evangelism, proclaiming the person and work of Jesus Christ on behalf of lost sinners.

If you have that definition of evangelism memorized, you're well on your way to being an evangelist.

Evangelism is proclaiming the person and work of Jesus Christ, not just as work, not just his person, but both.

In other words, evangelism is proclaiming who Jesus is and what he has done, that's the work part, on behalf of lost sinners.

Evangelism is not necessarily all the deeds or actions of Christ's life, although there is a sense in which everything he did is in our place, but specifically the intercession he made for us on the cross, the imputation of our sin to his, his bearing our punishment on the cross and his resurrection from the grave, which he does on our behalf, on the behalf of lost sinners.

That's evangelism.

And my most radical claim tonight is from 2 Corinthians 4.15 that nothing in the world so glorifies God as evangelism.

Everything in the Christian life is designed to glorify God.

Everything in the world is for our good and God's glory.

That's true.

Everything that's happening in the world glorifies God in some sense.

But notice the divine mathematics that Paul references here in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 15.

2 Corinthians 4:15

It is all for your sake, and the the all here is all of Paul's evangelism, all of his ministry.

Back in verse 13, I believed and so I spoke.

Paul's speaking of evangelism like axiomatically.

I believe something, so I had to say it, Paul says in verse 13.

Because he knows in verse 14, the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will raise us with Jesus and bring us with other believers into the presence of God.

So that's the reality of the totality of Paul's vision here of the future is that there is a resurrection, and we're going to be there with other Christians.

I believe that now, so I can't help but tell other people.

Why is it axiomatic?

And you know what I mean by axiomatic.

Why, if this is true, why does that necessarily just right there with it?

Why does Paul say, because I believed it, I also spoke it.

Can't separate the two.

Well, verse 15 is the answer.

It is all for your sake.

So does grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.

That's what I mean by divine mathematics.

You're one person, you get saved, you spend the rest of your life growing in the way you glorify God.

You're on progressive sanctification, you glorify God more tomorrow than you do today, and more in two days than you do today.

You're going to grow in sanctification the rest of your Christian life, obviously with ups and downs and ebbs and flows and peaks and valleys and whatnot, but the trajectory should be positive.

And yet you're only one person growing in sanctification.

That's one person.

When you share the gospel with somebody else who believes, now you're exponentially magnifying God's glory.

Now it's a second person who's on the same journey as you.

When that person shares the gospel with somebody else, now God's glory is being multiplied, is the language in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 15.

2 Corinthians 4:15

It's being multiplied, it's being increased.

It's growing.

That's evangelistic mathematics.

The more you evangelize, the more God is glorified.

Even if people who aren't converted, God's glory is proclaimed in evangelism.

Just the act of telling somebody about what Christ has done, that is glorifying God.

If that person believes it, thanksgiving increases, is what verse 15 says, to the glory of God.

And so that's why evangelism really is the forefront of the church's mission.

The church's mission in the world is to carry out the Great Commission, to reach and disciple the nations for Christ.

Now, the church as a whole is not what does the Great Commission.

The church is an enterprise, is not doing the Great Commission.

The church, to use the language of Ephesians 4, equips the saints to scatter into the world to do the work of the ministry.

So the church is the gathering to equip and then the scattering to evangelize.

Evangelism in that sense falls to believers to carry out and the church to train believers how to do that.

The goal of this is to win all of the world with the gospel.

Knowing that the way is narrow, we're in Matthew 7 in the mornings, knowing that coming up in two weeks, the way is narrow, narrow path, narrow gate, narrow way.

Most of the world will not believe the gospel.

Nevertheless, you know, we we aim big.

We aim big.

We want the whole world to know Christ.

This is why the Great Commission, in some sense, is repeated at the end of all four Gospels.

Not sure if you ever noticed that before, but all four Gospels end with a variation of the Great Commission.

The Great Commission is termed from Matthew 28 to go into all the nations, uh teaching, baptizing, uh baptizing, teaching them to believe all that uh he's commanded us.

But he says the same thing at the end of Mark, at the end of Mark 16, their disciples are sent into the world.

At the end of Luke, the disciples are gathered together and commissioned and sent into all of the world.

At the end of John's Gospel, even, uh, John writes this so that others would believe.

It's going to go out into the world.

It's very much, Jesus says in John's Gospel, the Father sent me, so I'm sending you into all the world.

These things are written so that they would believe.

It's a central feature of the New Testament that we're supposed to go into the world with evangelism.

And 2 Corinthians 4 15 is what describes that.

So evangelism is winning people to Jesus, not winning people to the church.

Growing your church is not evangelism, but bringing people to Christ is evangelism.

All kinds of people can join the church without being saved.

Filling out the pews on a Sunday morning is not a sign of church growth in a true sense.

Filling out the waters of baptism is a better indication of that kind of fruitful evangelism.

Evangelism's winning conversions, winning people to Christ, not to the church.

And so here's a quick definition of biblical evangelism.

Uh, and you'll kind of see this on the card that you have, so don't feel like you need to write all this down.

I see some of you taking pictures of it.

That's great.

Don't feel like you need to write everything down because there's roughly 30 of these slides.

Uh, but you have a card in front of you that has most of the content.

All right, so biblical evangelism, you'll see, proclaims God's holiness, that's the first category, man's sinfulness, backside of it, Christ is Lord, and calls for repentance.

That's biblical evangelism.

You are truly evangelizing someone when you are proclaiming those four central truths to them: who God is, who man is, what Christ has done, and what we are called to do in response.

Notice the focus in all of those four points is on God's glory.

The focus is more on the individual than on, I mean, more on the Lord's glory than on the individual.

And I mention that because I do think, you know, the seeker-sensitive movement and the uh kind of crusade approach to evangelism in the last 50 years or 60 years of church history obviously had a powerful impact.

Scores of people came to faith in Christ uh through that kind of crusade ministry, but it had a secondary deficiency to it.

The secondary deficiency to it is it kind of co-opted evangelism.

Evangelism in the last 50 or 60 years of church history kind of morphed into more uh a decisionistic thing, to inviting people to a crusade where they can make a decision, inviting people to a church where they could make a decision.

Evangelism became about bringing people to an event.

And I say this as somebody who has worked at the Greg Glory Harvest Crusades, the Billy Graham Crusades, uh, as you know, one of the runners is people bring down their decision cards, and I collected those cards and helped sort them.

I, you know, I've been in the front lines of those kind of evangelistic outreaches.

So it resonates in my heart a little bit when I hear people describe uh the change in evangelism through much of church history was inviting people to Jesus, explaining the gospel to them and inviting them to Christ.

And something does seem to have changed in American history in the last 60 years or so where evangelism became more event-oriented.

People's idea of evangelism is inviting people to an event.

Let's get unsaved people into a stadium, let's get unsaved people into a church.

And that also has a trickle-down effect because it starts to morph the way people view church.

Church, then, to be a healthy evangelistic church, gets geared towards non-believers.

You see churches that are designed, some even with their own intention.

It's less common now, but even ten years ago, it was very common for churches to call themselves seeker-sensitive churches.

In other words, finding non-believers who are seeking the Lord and building a church to aim for them.

That would be a healthy evangelistic church in their mind.

You want a church where the non-believer is comfortable, so the logic goes they can hear the gospel and they can be converted to Christ.

It's evangelistic.

It's, you know, now it's more likely to be termed the idol of evangelism, where you can set anything in church aside if it's a hindrance to evangelism.

You see the LGBTQ movement uh embrace, you know, worming itself into churches with that same kind of excuse where, you know, we want to make, we want to take the sexual ethic out of the church so that non-believers are comfortable in the church so that they hear the gospel of the church.

That's kind of the trajectory of that.

And evangelism really does get corrupted that way, and that then corrupts the mission of the church, which in a healthy church is to equip the saints to go into the world to evangelize.

But in that kind of church, it becomes making the church comfortable for non-believers.

Well, when that happens, guess what's lost?

The saints are no longer equipped, the saints are no longer able to do evangelism because they're not being trained at the church.

So it it's it's a cycle, it's a loop then.

The saints are not equipped, so what does the saint do who wants to see the lost saved?

They invite people to church.

When people come to church and you know, hear whatever gospel is presented in that secret sense of an environment, and then it cycles back around.

It creates a weak church where evangelism is often impotent or non-existent all together.

Church growth then became attracting non-believers, uh, not about making converts.

Um, churches become set up for non-believers rather than equipping the saints.

Um, churches are described as healthy and vibrant churches based upon the newness of people that are there rather than the wisdom of seasoned saints that are there.

And there's 10,000 other effects to that, but I want to focus on the effect of evangelism getting lost.

And so I would say biblical evangelism is driven by theology, discipleship, opportunity, urgency.

Those four markers are what should drive biblical evangelism, as opposed to the seeker-sensitive movement, which is driven by events.

Biblical evangelism is driven by theology, where you know what is true about God, you know what is true about his word, and specifically what God's word says about evangelism.

It's discipleship focused.

It's not about an event, it's not about decisions for Christ, but it's about the Great Commission teaching them to believe everything that Jesus has commanded us.

By the way, in Matthew 28:19, the nearest antecedent to that, the nearest thing Jesus had commanded them to do, was to go into all the world and preach the gospel.

Matthew 28:19

So when I say evangelism is discipleship oriented, it's about seeing people come to faith in Christ, then grow in Christ, as evidenced by their own evangelistic endeavors.

It's opportunity evangelism.

Where you walk through open doors the Lord gives you.

You pray for open doors, you walk through open doors.

You understand how this is all linking together.

The more you know about God, the more you love him, the more you love him, the more you want other people to know him and love him.

That brings to discipleship.

You're trying to teach other people to know God like you do.

That puts you on the lookout for opportunities to share this with other people.

And that boils down to urgency, where you're driven by just this hunger to have an opportunity to share the gospel with other people.

I was talking with an outreach pastor from a large church out in California a few years ago.

We were actually driving to lunch together, and he was uh disputing this.

He was telling me that theology gets in the way of effective evangelism.

Uh, it doesn't fuel it.

And he said that the right way to know what is the baseline in evangelism, what you need to have, what content you need to have in your evangelism, is to find all of the Bible passages in the Bible that say believe this and you'll be saved, and then find the lowest common denominator of that.

So you take the 20 New Testament passages that say believe this and be saved, make a list of all the content that the this is referring to in each of those passages, and if something is not in one list, then it can't be in any of the lists.

You start crossing out, and what you're left with is the bare minimum of what you must believe to be saved.

And if you actually do that exercise, which I have done, uh you end up with believe in Jesus to be saved, and that's it.

Believe in Jesus to be saved.

And that's it.

Well, what about Jesus do you believe in to be saved?

And this guy, this is an absolutely true story, he took a napkin and wrote the word Jesus on it and wadded it up in his hand and threw it out the window, don't get stuck on the littering part of this, to the bus stop on Roscoe in Coldwater Canyon, right there in front of that Buddhist temple that is there, threw it out the window there, and said, if somebody picks up this napkin and reads Jesus and believes in the Jesus that is written on this napkin, they can be saved.

That's kind of staggering, isn't it?

But that is evident even to this day in churches.

That kind of approach to evangelism where you believe in Jesus, it is it is so prevalent.

I have other illustrations from more recent and from this area, but I will save those probably for other Sunday nights.

It's just staggering when that approach to evangelism happens, it makes false converts, doesn't it?

Because someone is told, hey, believe in Jesus.

Okay, I believe in Jesus.

Okay, you're saved.

The person thinks they're saved, but has no real knowledge of who Jesus is or what he has done for them.

But true biblical evangelism is theology-oriented that and then fuels everything else.

So, evangelism in four headings.

I'll walk you through the card that you have God, man, Christ in response.

I would encourage you to memorize this card.

And I would encourage you not just to memorize the card, but to memorize the headings on the card.

If you memorize this and you memorize the headings, then uh it'll equip you to be a good evangelist.

You can even use the verses on this, you can memorize them.

I tried to choose verses for this that I think most people have memorized.

Uh if you don't have some of them memorized, I'm not judging you, but I just I went, I just I just misestimated.

Not judging, just misestimating.

Uh, but these are verses I thought, you know, many Christians would know.

And so if you can assimilate them in your own evangelistic outline, then you have them ready to go in an evangelistic encounter.

So I'll walk you through this.

And before I go through this outline, I just want to make sure uh you understand what this outline is for.

I think the best way for people to be evangelized is through the Bible.

Uh when you're evangelizing somebody, whether it's on a street corner or in a college campus or at work or a family member, when you're showing them what you're telling them is from the word, it changes the argument than when it's from you.

Like if you say God is holy, then they'll argue with you, well, if God is holy, how come there's bad things in the world?

And now you're in an argument about your opinion about God.

But if you show people in the scripture where it says the Lord is holy, then they want to argue that.

They're actually arguing with what the Word of God says.

It's harder to argue with God than it is with you.

And so that's why this is so Bible-oriented.

And the second thing I would say about this is that these this outline here, it's set up more for pedagogy than it is for methodology.

And what I mean by that, it's set up more for you to learn than it is for you to actually evangelize in this order.

So I'm not telling you, I'm not giving you these four headings to tell you that when you evangelize, you need to go through them in this order, start with God, then man, uh, then Christ, then response.

That's not what I'm telling you.

Look for any opportunity to start a conversation.

I'm giving it to you in this order just so you can remember it and hopefully use it in an efficient way.

Uh, but you take any opportunity you have, we'll talk more about this next Sunday evening.

You take any opportunity you have for evangelism.

You walk through any door that is open to you, um, but it's easier to remember in this way.

So I'm gonna walk you through these four headings and the verses that are on here.

The idea behind all this is this is the content that you want to communicate in evangelism.

And you're gonna morph this in your own way to maybe a five-minute gospel presentation and a 30-minute gospel presentation and an hour-long gospel presentation, and a you know, your brother over the course of his life gospel presentation.

Um, but hinge everything on these scripture verses.

So, first is who God is, uh, and then first we'll start with who God is.

God, it says in your card here is the creator and owner of everything.

Um, he's perfectly holy and he requires just obedience to his law.

Starting with creator here, verses that I think are helpful for that, Genesis 1 1.

That's easy to memorize, isn't it?

Where does the Bible say that God created the universe?

Well, you can go right to the beginning.

Genesis 1, verse 1, the Bible opens there.

Genesis 1:1

1 Corinthians 10 26 is another passage that speaks to the creating aspect of God.

That's all the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

1 Corinthians 10 26, uh common thanksgiving-ish kind of verse.

Verses like this are demonstrating the person you're talking to that everything in the earth belongs to the Lord.

You're not even talking about people here at this point.

Everything that exists.

In the beginning, Genesis 1.1 says God created the heavens and the earth.

1 Corinthians 10 26, everything on the earth belongs to Yahweh.

Psalm 24, the earth is Yahweh's and all of its fullness.

That's another verse that is total in its claim.

Everything in the earth belongs to Yahweh.

And the psalmist explains why in Psalm 24.

This includes the world and all those who dwell on it, for he has founded it upon the seas and he's established it upon the waters.

That's the argument that the psalmist gives in Psalm 24.

Everything belongs to God because he made it.

So it's all his.

That leads to God being holy.

1 Peter 1:16, a common awana verse, because it's written, Be holy, for I am holy.

1 Peter 1:16

Notice the second half of that verse, that God himself is the holy creator.

He is holy.

1 Samuel 2, verse 2, which is not on your card, but there is no one holy like Yahweh.

1 Samuel 2:2

There's no one besides God, nor is there any rock like our God.

Your card has Matthew 5, 48.

Therefore, you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

God is perfect.

1 John 1, verse 5, God is light.

1 John 1:5

In him there is no darkness at all.

That's moral categories right there.

Light and darkness in the Bible are moral categories.

God is pure light, there's no darkness in him at all.

There's no sin in God.

I think that's an important place to start in evangelism because it frames the conversation as that of opposition, that God is perfect and God is holy, and we are not, is where we'll go next.

And then thirdly, God is the judge.

Notice the logical flow here.

God made everything, so he has a right over it.

If he made it, he owns it.

That makes sense.

God is holy, therefore he has the right to judge people who themselves are not holy.

James 2, verse 10.

James 2:10

Whoever keeps the whole law yet stumbles in one point has become guilty of all of it.

The person who said don't commit adultery is the same person who said don't murder.

So if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, James reasons, you have broken the whole law.

That's a pretty easy verse to memorize.

It's kind of long, but it's easy to memorize if you just think about it logically.

When you think about it logically, you recognize, and I don't think all of it's on your card there, but when you think about it logically, it goes to the adultery and murder part.

That applies today.

The person who says, I'm not in trouble with God because I've never murdered, but they are proud and they are arrogant and they are greedy and they are covetous, etc., etc., etc.

They've broken the same law that murder is drawn from.

God's moral standards are a plate glass window.

When you break it at one point, the whole thing shatters.

That's James's logic.

And of course, it's God's right to judge people for breaking the law.

It's his right because he's holy, and he can enforce his character on us because he is the creator.

So in evangelism, I think it's helpful to start with who God is.

That leads to man.

What we have done.

Everyone is a sinner and has fallen short of the glory of God.

That's the second point on the card.

People have sinned and fall short of God's glory.

Romans 3.23 declares this very well.

There is no unrighteous, not even one, and then Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

When you encounter that verse, it forces the person to either argue with you and say, That's not true, I haven't sinned, or to agree with you and say, I have sinned, I'm under the authority of God and his law.

It's a very clarifying verse.

Because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that means that there is a penalty.

The penalty is described in Romans 6.23.

The wages of sin is, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That's the judgment that comes with sin.

The wages of sin is indeed death.

Now, death here is both physical death.

People die because of sin in the world.

It's also a relational death.

It's a separation between us and God that goes on into the next world.

I think of Isaiah 59, verse 2.

Isaiah 59:2

Your iniquities have made a separation between you and God.

Isaiah says.

So he does not hear you when you call to him.

That's the living death that people experience.

And this should give you some kind of sympathy for people who are lost.

You recognize that they are lost.

They don't know why they're made, they don't know their point in life, they don't know their meaning in life.

They pray to God and God doesn't hear.

So that causes anger to grow in their hearts against God, which itself is a sin, which excel, it's, you know, solidifies the space between people and God.

The more they call on God and God doesn't hear, the angrier they get at God, the angrier they get at God, the more sinful they grow.

That's the consequence of being separated from God.

It's the penalty of their sin.

The wages of sin is death.

It's not just that living relational death they experience, but they experience eternal death, of course.

This is Hebrews 9, 27.

It's appointed for man wants to die, and after this comes the judgment.

People will die and stand before God for judgment.

And this leads to the third point on the man section there that good works and intentions cannot save anyone.

This is the default American position, isn't it?

Okay, I grant that God exists, I grant that he's holy, I grant that he's going to judge sinners, I grant that I'm a sinner, however, comma, I also happen to be a good person.

God will know that even though I'm a sinner, I'm not saying I'm perfect, but God will know that I have done the best that I can.

So I think Titus 3, verse 5 is a critical verse to know.

Titus 3:5

Not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit.

God doesn't save us by our good works, he saves us by his mercy and his grace.

At this point in the card, you should understand God and his holy nature, that he will judge sinners, and you should understand that people stand condemned before him because of our sin with no hope of escape.

And by the way, when I'm evangelizing someone, if I'm not in the five-minute mode, but more the 30-minute mode, I'll ask people a question after I'll go through one of these points.

I'll ask them, do you understand what I'm saying?

Do you agree with what I'm saying?

And if they want to sidetrack the conversation with objections about Noah and the Ark or whatever, I'll tell them, pause, we'll circle back to that.

But I do want to just make sure that you're tracking, at least with the logical construct of how this is presented, which leads thirdly to Christ on the back side of your card.

Who Christ is and what he has done for us.

Christ alone provides salvation for all who would believe.

There is no way for salvation apart from him.

When you describe who Christ is, well, first of all, he came to earth, both as God and sinless man.

When you say he came to earth as God, you have that Colossians 2, verse 9 in your card.

Colossians 2:9

In him the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.

I like to use John 10, verse 30.

John 10:30

I and my father are one.

It's a very clear declaration of the deity of God.

That's an excellent verse when witnessing to uh Muslims or Jews, even, where Jesus says, I and the Father are one.

Mormons, even, this goes against so much of Mormon theology.

I and the Father are one, Jesus says in John 10, verse 30.

John 10:30

It's the deity of Jesus Christ.

But not only is he God, he is also sinless man.

John 1, verse 14 describes this.

John 1:14

The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Jesus took on a true human nature.

These verses aren't on your card, but in my mind they're under the heading there.

He came to earth both as God and sinless man.

He is truly God, and he's truly man.

He has a true nature of mankind in him.

He didn't just robe himself in flesh, he became flesh, is the language in John 1.14.

He didn't just borrow somebody else's body, he became a human being.

He became flesh.

But even in his humanity, he was filled with the glory.

The glory is the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Well, beyond that, he was sinless.

He's God, he's man, he's truly God, truly man, and he's truly sinless.

And that's important to tack on at the end of his humanity.

Ephesians 4.15, I mean, sorry, Hebrews 4.15, we don't have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness.

We have one who's been tempted in every way as we are, and yet is without sin.

Hebrews 4.15 is a very clear declaration of the sinlessness of Jesus Christ.

He couldn't be accused of anything.

He is, Paul's words are, without sin.

Despite his sinlessness, the next phrase in your card says he demonstrated God's love by dying on the cross to pay sin's penalty.

He became a substitute.

He died on the cross for us.

And this, I think, is the most critical part of the gospel explanation right here.

This is the part that cannot be skipped.

I would say none of it can be skipped, but this one especially can't be skipped.

Without this part, the gospel message is nullified.

You can believe everything else in this gospel presentation, but failure to understand this part separates you from Christ.

That Jesus died as a substitute for sin.

He died in our place.

That's the great exchange.

That's the gospel message.

He died for us.

He died for us.

2 Corinthians 5.21.

He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us.

That we might become the righteousness of God.

In him, God made him take our sin in our place.

1 Peter 2.24.

He himself bore our sins in his own body on that tree.

It's a very powerful verse.

He himself bore our sins in his own body on that tree.

In his own body, Peter says, our sins were put into his body.

He bore them in our place.

And 1 Peter 3.18.

For Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous.

You know what all of those verses have in common?

The word for, FOR.

He died for our sins.

He bore our sins in his own body.

He suffered once for our sins.

He died on the cross to pay the wages of sin.

He doesn't, of course, stay in the grave.

He rose from the grave, 1 Corinthians 15.

I delivered for you that which of all is I also received that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.

He was buried and he rose again on the third day according to Scriptures.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, this is of first importance.

This is the heading.

There's the word for again, and then he rose from the grave.

He didn't stay dead.

But it was supposed to be the gospel presented in the video, and I watched it and it hurt my heart when I watched this like 15-minute gospel presentation, and there was no mention of the resurrection.

And it was an Easter video, for goodness sakes.

And that just made me cognizant of the fact that so many people present the gospel but leave out the resurrection.

And if you're hearing this for the first time, leaving Jesus on the tree bearing our sins is not entirely good news, is it?

Like that's kind of a lame ending to the story right there.

He died for me.

Like, so I'm dead?

What's the rest of this?

When I taught evangelism at the Master Seminary, I would make the students write out a gospel presentation.

And I told them, I gave them fair warning that if you don't include the resurrection in your gospel presentation, you will get an F.

You will fail this class.

And I, with a good conscience, would have no problem looking at Pastor MacArthur and saying, Yes, I failed this student of evangelism because he left the resurrection out of the gospel presentation.

Please don't be that student.

And every semester without fail, every semester without fail, there would be at least one student that I had to fail in the class for leaving out evangelism.

Now they would appeal to the dean and go wind other people, and who knows whatever happened to them, but my conscience was clear.

He rose from the grave.

Well that leads to the man part.

But before you get to the man part, I do think it's helpful.

Having covered these three things, remember, you cover these in any order in evangelism that you want to.

If the conversation starts with a person who says, you know, I believe people are basically good, you start with the man section.

If a person says, I don't believe in God, you start with the God section.

I believe Jesus was a good teacher, but he didn't really do anything for our salvation.

Start with the Jesus section.

But the point is, at this point in the gospel conversation, we'll talk more about the practical elements of this next week, but at this point, you might ask the person, do you understand what I've told you?

Do you understand that God is the creator and owner of all things, that he's sinless and he's perfect?

Do you understand that if you're sinful, you deserve God's judgment and he'll punish you?

Do you understand that simply knowing these facts can't save you?

That Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation.

You cannot be saved by good works.

You want to make sure the person understands the content of what you're explaining.

And by the way, we have a couple minutes right here.

I'm a little bit ahead of where I thought it would be.

It's so easy to have a conversation like this if you ask the person, can I tell you what the Bible says about this?

If you hear a person say, you know, I think people are basically good, it's a very easy transition with, well, you know what, that's interesting.

The Bible says something different.

Do you mind if I tell you what the Bible says about people?

It says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And that God will judge us because of our sin.

I mean, I can show you.

And you can open your Bible to some certain passages to teach that.

A person says, I don't believe in God.

You know, that's interesting.

Do you know the Bible does believe in God?

Can I show you what the Bible says about God?

And when you ask the question like that, people even today are more often than not inclined to go along with it.

You know, after all, you're not saying, Can I tell you what I think?

You're not telling them what you think.

You say, Can I show you what the Bible says about God?

And you can walk them through these kind of headings.

And then you ask them, Do you understand what I've communicated?

And it's very possible.

I mean, often people will say, I understand, but I don't agree, I don't believe it.

All right, that's fine.

You've discharged your duty in evangelism at that point.

You've clearly communicated who God is, where people are, what Christ has done.

That's all you can do.

You can't do more than that.

So the person says, I understand, I don't believe.

In a sense, you can chalk that up as a victory in your evangelism.

Like you've communicated clearly.

In two weeks, we'll talk more about how to how to handle that kind of response.

But if you if you're talking to someone that does understand and does want to hear more, the next heading is the response.

What people must do.

What is the response?

And the response, firstly, is to count the cost of following Christ.

I'll go through the order in your card.

The response response in your card is repent of all the dishonors God.

Repent of all the dishonors God.

My little notes I have count the cost.

I like that that language more.

This is from Luke 9, 23.

Jesus said to them, If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

There's the command to count the cost.

Luke 14, which of you desiring to build a tower doesn't first sit down and count the cost, Jesus asked.

Make sure he has enough to complete it.

Like, do you know what's at stake here?

The weight of your own sin, the freeness of the life Jesus has in front of you, what's worth it?

And then you confess your sin to the Lord.

That's John, 1 John 1, verse 9.

1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins.

And now we pick up back where you are in your card again.

Repent.

Repent of all that dishonors God.

Isaiah 55, verse 7.

Isaiah 55:7

Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.

Let him return to the Lord.

Many years ago, 11 years ago now, when I first came to Emmanuel, I started preaching through Mark and in my study for the my very first sermon for Mark's Gospel.

But from all the characters in the Bible, really, all the main characters, when you see them, the first words out of their mouth are repent.

From Jesus to John the Baptist to the prophets.

It's just uncanny that when they open it, when Peter opens his mouth after Pentecost and they say, What must I do to be saved?

Repent is where people begin.

It's so often, it's so interesting how often people respond to questions in the Bible with the command to repent.

What must I do?

God's going to rain a locusts on her head.

What must I do?

Repent.

The centurion, what must I do?

Repent, John says.

Mark's gospel begins with John the Baptist, preaching repent.

With Jesus going out, preaching repent.

Very straightforward command, Isaiah 55, verse 7.

Isaiah 55:7

Repent from your sins, forsake your ways.

That's what the Bible commands you to do.

It's so interesting.

This is the one command that is largely absent from more event-driven or decisionistic driven evangelism.

Repent is primary in the scriptures, the teaching of evangelism.

And then believe in Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior.

You put your faith in him.

This is John 3.16, which I hope you have memorized.

It's not a page number, heads up.

Whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

You place your faith in him.

You believe in Christ Jesus as Lord, that he is God, that he's in charge of everything, and you believe in him as Savior, that he provides payment for sin, and that he is alive and reigning today.

And then finally, as you repent and believe in him, you follow Christ with your life.

Matthew 10, 38.

Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

That's a command.

Biblical evangelism ends with the command to follow Christ, which leads you back into evangelism, fulfilling the great commission.

So that is the content of evangelism.

I want to make sure you know that.

So as the next few Sunday nights, when we start talking about the method of evangelism, you know what I mean when I say the word evangelism.

I mean all of that.

Who God is, who man is, what Christ has done, and what the scripture says people are to respond by.

I hope these notes are helpful for you and you read them and internalize them in your heart.

God, we're grateful for the clarity of the message you preach.

It is profound and with infinite depth, and yet it is simple enough to be studied and memorized and communicated.

It is incredible to us that you made the world in such a way that compels evangelism.

Instead of, as Jesus said, you could proclaim from rocks or from angels.

And yet you choose not to let angels proclaim the gospel.

You choose not to let rocks proclaim the gospel.

You instead use us.

We understand that that is so.

The insufficiency of the messenger highlights the sufficiency of the message.

That while we are weak, the gospel is strong.

While we are in chains, the gospel is not in chains, Paul says.

While we fail and while we forget, the gospel never fails and never forgets.

Your strength overcomes our inadequacy.

And so the glory of Christ is magnified through the frail instruments like us doing evangelism.

Thankful for the truth in your word.

Give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.