Voice of the Nazarene 8-9-26

Coming to you from North Central Ohio, we share with you the Voice of the Nazarene, a week-by-week venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus, Ohio Church of the Nazarene.

We join our pastor, Reverend Ray Lassau, and the Voice of the Nazarene.

And God's priority for his church is to be soul-winning kingdom.

Maybe you didn't come from a church background that emphasized that much.

Maybe they just told you to bring in your family and us four, and maybe no more.

I held a Tick Crusade several years ago, and I was amazed to find that element did not believe in evangelism at all, but just have large families and just gospalize your family.

But the thing is, the writer tells us to go into all the world and preach the gospel.

There's people besides our family that needs God.

And if there's truly a heaven, and I believe there is, then there's truly a hell.

And if there is, we better help people to find their direction to heaven.

Solomon had written.

In the 11th Proverbs, the 30th verse, he said, He that winneth souls is wise.

He that winneth souls is wise.

Paul said, Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord in 2 Corinthians 5 verse 11, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.

2 Corinthians 5:11

Man born as a sinner, sinner by birth, sinner by nature, sinners by choice need to be reconciled to God.

And Paul realizing that man's estranged from God, born with his back toward God, his face toward hell, he said, I'm going to do everything I can to persuade men.

You need to realize that every person you meet is a soul.

Genesis 2, 7 said that God formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

Man became a living soul.

Upon death, the body will go back to the ground from whence it came.

Moses wrote in Genesis 3.19, Till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Solomon pitched in, and he said, Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto the God who gave it, and your soul will belong to the ages.

Made in the image of God.

The part of you that will never die is the real you, and that's the soul.

The soul.

And I say again, the souls of mankind will either be in heaven or be in hell, or this book is a pack of lies.

And I've wasted my lifetime preaching it.

Friday night, I awoke somewhere around 3:30.

I was the sickest I've ever been in my entire life, put it all together.

I could get no rest by walking, I could not lay down.

Trying to uh, well, I'll not get into it, but I was so sick, so miserable.

You can get sick enough, you'd be glad to die.

That's where I was.

I didn't think I'd make it through the night.

I've never been in my life so sick.

I thought I'd never dreamed that I'd stand in the pulpit here on Sunday.

Miserable.

I kept telling Jan, don't even speak to me.

Don't even say anything.

I can't, I can't handle even a voice.

We'll go to the hospital.

I said, we go to the hospital, I've got to fill out a form or two.

I don't feel like riding.

I don't think I can ride from the house to the hospital.

Have you ever been that sick?

And then I said they put you in a little emergency room, and there's no bathroom in that emergency room, and I'm vomiting, and I'm I'm facing deathliness.

And I sat in my office a little bit ago and I thought about hell where the flames never go out.

And they talk about being tormented day and night for eternity.

And it just says, reburden my heart to try to keep people out of hell.

I think sometimes we forget our mission.

The reason you're saved if you're saved here today is because somebody shared the gospel with you.

Somebody shared Jesus Christ, what he did at Calvary, and that gift of God that's life eternal if you trusted Christ.

And out there is a world that knows nothing about God or the gospel.

If you ask somebody, well, how do you get to Chatfield?

They'll point north.

How do you get to sycamore?

Well, they'll point north and then a little bit west.

How do you get to Nevada and they'll point you westward?

How do you get to Gallion and they'll shove you over eastward?

But if you ask somebody, how do you get to heaven?

The confusion that crisscrosses faces.

And about all the world can say, well, I just guess be the best person you can and hope for the a good outcome.

But that's not what the Bible teaches.

And we as a church corporately are to be a soul-winning station.

Here in Mark 16, verse 15, it says, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

Mark 16:15

You say, Well, Pastor, I don't know where to start.

Start next door.

Start in the city where you live, the town where you're located, the countryside where you're at.

Share.

I want you to write down three things if you'd like to in your notes this morning.

We do soul winning because, first of all, it's commanded.

Again, I'm not trying to upset you, I'm just trying to nudge you in the right direction.

Every one of us are under this command.

The scripture goes, he that believeth is saved, and he that believeth not is damned.

We're to make believers.

Again, he that wineth souls is wise.

These days churches have wonderful Christians in them, but many of them never witness to anyone else.

Good people.

They believe in Jesus.

They believe in salvation.

But if you ask them, when was the last time you took an opportunity to make a difference in someone's eternity for God?

Most of them will look kind of blank.

In fundamental churches, only 6% of the people ever witness or invite anybody to their church.

Now what that means is that 94% of the people are just in the bleachers.

They're looking on.

And God's called us, the only plan God has to reach this world is through you and I, through the church.

And do you realize you and you and you and you, you're the church.

God has no other plan to reach the world.

God's not going to send angels to do it.

He's called you and I to do it.

And out of the 6%, only 4% are faithful in doing that on a continuous basis.

Every day or at least weekly.

We have a world that needs Jesus.

And notice what Mark says.

He says, go you.

And it's not a suggestion, it's a command.

This is addressed to all of us.

He wants us to be witnesses.

I'm to be a witness.

You're to be a witness.

Witnesses under pressure.

Witness circumspectly, people looking at us from any direction.

We're a witness.

We're to be the salt.

We're to be the light.

And there in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, he said that ye shall become my witnesses.

Acts 1:8

You'll receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall witness unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and under Samaria and under the uttermost part of the earth.

Honestly, I feel like it's a sin not to witness.

Now I know people that never swear.

They don't look at porn.

They don't chase, but they become comfortable with this whole concept of witnessing, they just don't feel responsible to do it.

But every one of us are commanded.

You say, well, it's just not my thing.

If you're a child of God, it's a commanded thing.

And we've never had better material to use.

We've never had nicer buildings to invite people to come to.

In all these years that I've been in ministry, we've never had better music.

We've never been better organized.

I think we've just forgotten that God's commanded us to share the church and the gospel.

I think about Jesus, first of all, in John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

He's with his disciples.

And there's a woman heading out of Cycre, the city of Sycre, and she's heading down the way, and Jesus quickly sends his disciples into the city to buy some food.

It was kind of a private thing, not a public thing.

Some people need to have a private moment because they've got a past, like this woman had a past.

Most of us do.

Most people just need forgiveness.

The disciples didn't need to be in on it.

Fact of the matter truth and grace is a balancing act.

I've met people that seem like they've got about 99% truth and about 1% grace.

They're pretty harsh.

I grew up that way.

I'm what they call a recovering legalist.

We forget about grace.

That everybody's on a different shelf and on a different level, and they may not be as far along on the road as you are.

And some folk may not think I'm as far along as I ought to be, but I'm a long ways from where I was, and I'm doing pretty good for your information.

And so this woman needed witness to.

She came down to get a little bit of water, and Jesus takes the conversation into water.

He talks about water.

He didn't say, you know, if you were to die right now, where would you go?

He didn't use any shock tactics.

I'm not against people that do, but I'm telling you folk, witnessing and sharing the church and sharing the gospel, you don't have to just pull out a ball bat and use it.

You can just talk to people where they're at.

And she came for water.

Jesus talked about water and got the conversation over on to eternal water.

And she took a drink.

And the Bible said she left her water pot.

She forgot all about natural water, headed back into the city and said, Come see a man that told me everything I've ever done.

Come and see.

Here's what the scripture says in John 4.39, and many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman.

What a witness! What an invitation.

A city-wide revival took place because one woman told about Jesus to others.

Said, He told me all that I ever did.

And the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them, and he abode there two days.

And many were more believed because of his own word, and said unto the woman, Now that we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard him ourselves, and know that it is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.

If you just can get somebody inside the church, if you can encourage them just that much, they'll begin to believe because they've heard the gospel as it's been shared.

I thought about Philip.

You ever read about Philip over there in the book of Acts?

Did you know he was not an ordained preacher?

He never went to any seminary, he never was credentialed, but he became a deacon.

You see, the early church multiplied.

3,000 saved at Pentecost.

5,000 more were added.

They're running now about 8,000.

They're getting saved till half of the city of Jerusalem was converted within six months.

And the Bible said in Acts chapter 6, because the disciples had multiplied, there are rows of murmuring.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

Well, we preachers hate it when the murmuring starts.

It'll turn your hair this color.

There are rows of murmuring.

And so they had a meeting and said, We we need some ministration.

We've got to get back to ministry.

We've got to get back to what God called us to do.

We need to get some deacons to take care of the scenes behind the scenes.

And one of them was Philip.

And God used Philip, and you can read about it.

And over here in the book of Acts, chapter 8, verse 26, it said, The angel of the Lord spoke unto Philip, saying, Arise, go into the south.

Acts 8:26

An angel directed him to go south.

And he arose and went.

And behold, a man of Ethiopia, then eunuch of great authority under Canais, queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all of her treasure.

And he had come to Jerusalem for to worship.

Verse 28, he was returning, and he's returning empty.

I mean, he's heading home.

And things hadn't changed in his heart.

And he stops his chariot, and he's sitting there and he's opening the Old Testament scroll.

And he had turned to the book of Isaiah, it said.

And in verse 29, then the Spirit saith unto Philip, Go near and join thyself to this chariot.

Now angel had sent him in the first place, and now the Holy Spirit's nudging him.

Why don't you speak to that man?

And he walked up to him and he said, Understandeth that thou readest?

You don't have to scare everybody out of their wits.

You talk to people on a normal level wherever they're at.

And he's sitting there reading the scripture.

And Philip ran thither to him, heard him read the prophet Isaiah, and said, Understand, standeth what thou readest.

And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me?

I'm waiting for somebody just to come.

And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.

The place of the scripture which he read was Isaiah 53, verse 7.

Isaiah 53:7

Did you know you take the 66 books of the Bible and you divide it right in the middle, and the centerfold of the Bible is the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.

And you open the centerfold, and it's a picture of Jesus.

Look at it.

Here's what it says.

Place that he read.

He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, like a lamb dumb before sheer, so opened he not his mouth.

And the eunuch turned and said, Philip, who's he speaking about?

Of himself or some other man?

And Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus.

And as they went their way, they came to a certain water.

And the eunuch said, See, here's water.

What doth hinder me to be baptized?

And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.

Takes more than just water.

You've got to believe with all of your heart.

I got a call this week.

I got a lot of calls this week.

I got calls into the hospital, people dying.

I'd be the last preacher that ever stand next to their bed.

Look into their eyes.

But I got a call.

Could you come?

And we'd talk to you about water baptism.

Could we be baptized?

And I'm so sick now that I can't come.

We made our way to their apartment.

And family had gathered for that moment.

We talked about their sins being forgiven.

They desperately wanted to do everything they knew to do before they faced God.

I said, unless you have a miracle, unless you have a miracle, you don't have very long.

And that's why I called you, preacher.

Had someone else, I, preacher, I need some of my family baptized.

I'm in a terrible situation physically, and I don't think I'm going to make it unless I get a miracle.

We deal with that a lot.

He said, and Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.

And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip that the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing.

And I'm so amazed at how the angel of the Lord was involved.

I wonder if Philip even knew it was the angel of the Lord.

And how the Spirit of the Lord urged him and nudged him to speak to this eunuch sitting up there.

And from that, he continued the conversation along the same line.

He talked to him about the scriptures about Isaiah that he was reading.

Then I looked up in my Bible sitting in my office this last week.

How did Jesus witness?

How did he go about it?

And in Mark 1:16, he's going along the Sea of Galilee and he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net in the sea.

Mark 1:16

They were fishermen.

And Jesus said to him, Follow me.

So evidently started talking to him about fishing.

You catching anything?

What are you catching?

Are you using lines?

Are you using nets?

Is it easier boats?

And he said, if you'll follow me, he said, guys, I can make you fishers of men.

Instead of fish.

Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

I was pastoring Brazil, Indiana.

Had a man dying in the hospital over at Union in Terre Haute.

I made my way to Union Hospital and slipped into the room, and I don't know, I've always been aware in a room that there may be someone else in the room.

So whenever you're talking, somebody else is listening on another side of a curtain.

The whole world's listening.

They're watching.

And I talked with the man for a moment or two, and I said, I'd like to have a word of prayer.

I said, Hold it just a moment.

And I stepped around the curtain and I said to the other man, Would you mind if I include you in my prayer for this other guy?

Would you mind?

Big old tears started down his cheeks.

He said, That would be so wonderful.

I'm really sick.

He said, Where are you from?

I said, I pastor in Brazil, the Nazarene Church.

Boy, he said, pray for me too.

I shoved the curtain back so that I had the audience of both men and prayed a prayer.

Sunday morning, I looked and on the front seat, there was that guy from the next bed.

So after service, I went to him and I said, Why are you here, Bob?

He said, I thought if any preacher cared enough to include me and to speak to me and showed that much interest when my own pastor never showed it all after I'd called him.

That's the church I want to go to.

Everybody is just looking for an encouraging word to share with them.

He said, In Mark here, go ye into all the world.

It's time we get the goal back into the gospel.

We witness because we're commanded.

And may I say, secondly, because you love Christ.

Christ left heaven, came to earth to die for our sins.

We're on the same team, I hope.

In 1 Corinthians 9, verse 19, Paul mentioned five times here that he's trying to win different people.

1 Corinthians 9:19

And in verse 22, he writes, he's trying to save some.

And he presented himself differently to different people in different ways so that he might win some to Christ.

Here's the third reason we witness is because you have compassion.

Because you love people.

People can tell whether or not we love them or not.

I get away with a lot of things just because I love people.

There's people that don't like to be hugged, but I don't care.

My arms are already reaching for them before I get to them.

I do it before I even realize what I've done.

I care about people.

I've always loved people.

Can I ask you a question?

How can you say you care about somebody if you don't tell them about the gift of God?

And forgiveness of sin.

How can you say you care?

There's a verse over in Jude 22.

It says, Of some have compassion making a difference.

Now, out in Las Vegas, there's an act.

It's called Pin and Teller.

Anybody ever heard of that act?

It's a big act out there.

Somebody came up to Pen and they said to him, I bet you hate it.

He said, hate what?

He said, those uh people out in front of your uh show said uh they're witnessing and preaching out there and handing out tracts.

I bet you really hate that, don't you?

He said, why would I hate that?

Meaning you don't hate it?

He said, no, why should I?

If anybody really truly, he says, believes that the Son of God died for their sins, if you really believed that uh the cross, he went to a cross to pay for your sins and my sins, and if you really believed it was a free gift from God and that if you'll ask, he'll forgive you of your sins, why would I hate that?

He said, if I really believed that very much, how could I hate somebody for doing and sharing their faith?

How could anybody despise somebody that's sharing Jesus?

Do you know we're actually supposed to love people?

Then why don't we tell them?

You say, well, I'm not good at good at it.

Could I help you here?

Nowhere in all of the Bible does it ever say that we have to be good at witnessing.

People's everywhere.

I don't know about where you're at, but when I look into people's eyes, I know those eyes will be lifted up from someplace.

Either a topless heaven or an endless hell.

Compassion.

In Luke 10, verse 25 through 37, it's the story of the Good Samaritan.

Luke 10:25–37

Jesus shares this story about a lawyer that asked him, Who is my neighbor?

And Jesus talked about a man that was beat up and left for dead beside of the road, and he's beat up by the world, but he gets passed up by the church.

Levi goes by and he doesn't want to be involved, and priest comes along and he doesn't want to be involved, but somebody came along with compassion.

They called him the Good Samaritan.

I don't know if you know this, but there's a law in our books called the Good Samaritan law.

That if you're traveling the highway and somebody's in a wreck, that if you go over and help them, you can't be sued and blamed for it.

He picked him up after pouring oil in his wounds, bound him up and packed him away and took him to an end, and even got his billful out and paid for his care.

He had compassion.

I wonder if someday in eternity somebody will say, But I had a Christian neighbor, but they never urged me to go to church and look at where I'm at for all eternity.

In Luke chapter 5, verse 17 through 39 is the famous story of four men that took a paralyzed band, and they took him to where Jesus was speaking in Capernaum, and the crowd was so large it blocked the way, and they climbed up on the roof and dug through it and lowered him with ropes right before Jesus so he could heal him.

Luke 5:17–39

They were on the same team, full of compassion.

For a little while I pastored in Fort Scott, Kansas, 14 months.

Problem was I liked pastoring and never dreamed I would.

I'd been in a car wreck and I thought I couldn't travel anymore, and I'd taken the church, a beautiful building, right along the interstate.

We ran a good hundred or so in a property in another side of the city up on a hill.

We had about five streets of duplex homes.

Bought use built under HUD, and we had about, I think, 20 years to go, and they would be the property of the ministry and had a duplex, and then they had a farm across the state line in Kansas.

So I'd moved there to pastor for a little while.

I'd bought a house right on Wall Street, not the other Wall Street.

Guy was remodeling the house and lost it, and it went into bankruptcy, and I bought it.

I knew I could finish it.

And anyhow, a street over, a little boy by the last name of Brown.

And my my boy was just a little bitty guy, and he met Aaron at the public school, and they became buddies.

They didn't, that family didn't have much.

And so Aaron would come over to our house, and he and Roger would play video games, and way back when the Mario brothers were doing their thing and the beep, beep, beep of the Mario, and uh and they were like brothers.

They'd even get into fights, and Jan would have to send Aaron home to solve things, and before the day was over, he was right back.

You know how brothers are.

And uh somehow Jan talked Aaron into coming to church with Roger.

They sat together.

I I was out holding revivals a lot now at that point.

When I'd see Aaron when I'd come home, but I didn't know anything about the church, only what Jan told me that he was coming to church with Roger.

We moved away.

A few years passed.

Roger's a teenager.

Aaron's a teenager.

He'd gone out in the country to visit his girlfriend on the way back into town on a little country road, and then it had that little one-lane, narrow bridge.

Have you seen him?

Only one car can get through.

I don't know what happened, another car was coming, whether he was careless.

But he hit the concrete wall of that bridge.

Cars came up and they got out to help him.

He was pinned in the truck.

Aaron.

The little boy that came over to our house.

They talked into going to church.

He's pinned.

And about that time that truck burst into flames.

And it was so hot, nobody was an extinguisher.

It was out in the country.

And it was so hot people would step back and they heard him scream, please have mercy.

Somebody.

Can somebody get me out of this truck?

And the last thing he was saying, I'm in hell.

I'm in hell.

I'm in hell.

I sent a message to my boy this week when I thought about Aaron.

And he sent a message back.

He said, It was sad, wasn't it, Dad?

My buddy, it's so sad.

I was in English, Indiana, holding a revival for Reverend Paul Stroud.

He was assistant district superintendent in that area.

During the week, I had a call from Corden, Indiana, right nearby, to come over and uh have dinner.

It was two college classmates, Mike and Nora.

Mike had married Nora.

She had the best girl in the whole school.

He had married her.

And he was pastoring there at Corden, and I went over and I thought I'd check out Nora's cooking.

I was a single boy.

He was glad to get any cookie.

We were seated around the table, we were eating, and the phone rang, and Mike answered, and I watched his face tightened up.

And he hung the phone up and he said, uh, and it was an end-of-life call.

Somebody's dying, they needed a preacher.

He said, There's a woman dying, and he said, Ray, is there any way you'd go with me?

Well, I said, certainly.

He said, This woman's dying.

I don't know her.

I said, Well, I'll go with you.

We stepped into that room.

I never seen anybody picking and picking and picking.

She was grabbing like she was getting a hold of something and trying to pluck it off her clothes and pluck it off in her hair.

And she looked up when she saw the two of us standing there, and she said, Don't you see it?

And Mike said, See what?

She said, Don't you see the fire that's on me?

Mike said, No.

She said, It's all over.

What's the matter?

Can't you see it?

She said, Can you pray?

Do you know how to pray?

He said, I'm a preacher.

Are you both preachers?

Yes.

She said, I'm slipping into hell.

What are you standing there for?

Start praying.

Mike prayed a filibuster.

It went about as high as the ceiling, and the whole time she's fighting and plucking and pulling and screaming, and nurses were standing at the door, but they didn't want to come in.

It was an awful feeling in that room.

And when he finished his prayer, she said it didn't help, and he prayed again, preacher.

And he tried again.

He'd already lost his filibuster, and he just kind of mumbled some words.

And she said, But it didn't help.

Sir, would you pray?

We left that scene.

I went back to English and I closed out the meeting with Paul Stroud and his wife, and uh it happened to be a Wesleyan church.

We uh we had a couple in that church by the name of Debo.

Mr.

Debo owned the local funeral home in English.

And he said to Brother Stroud and his wife, is the evangelist going to stay over tonight?

They said, Yes.

He said, Would you, would the three of you mind coming over to our house for snacks?

And uh they agreed and we went over.

Their living quarters was attached to the funeral home.

And we were in their living quarters, and he turned to them and he said, Reverend, I don't know, I know you're an evangelist.

Have you ever been in a prep room in a funeral home?

I said, No, sir.

Well, he said, let me show you.

And Paul and I followed him into that prep room, and there was their equipment and for cleaning out the body, for adding malehyde, and all that stuff.

And I noticed over there on what looked to me to be a table, he called it a cooling board.

Under the sheet was a body.

It's a strange feeling to be in the same room.

And he walked over to the body and he took the sheet and he pulled it back from the face.

And it was the same woman that had been in the hospital at court, saying, I'm slipping into hell, pray again.

It's not helping.

Pray again.

I'm already on fire.

Pray again.

We uh had our snacks, but I didn't enjoy them.

Headed back to the parsonage, and Paul Stroud said to me, He said, The little lady that you saw on the cooling board, I said, yes.

He said, Could I tell you a little story?

I said, Sure, Paul.

He said, I pastored here for years.

You see a lot of things.

A young man was saved, and God called him to preach, and it was this lady's husband.

And she didn't want to go with God.

And she didn't want to be a preacher's wife.

So he couldn't take a church, but he was a good enough speaker.

He began to get revival calls.

And he would come back from a meeting, and she he'd find all of his clothes out in the front yard where she'd thrown him out of the upstairs window, locked him out of the house.

He'd sleep in the car, and she fought him and fought him and fought him until he got discouraged and gave up, went out in the deep sin, and they got a divorce.

And that's the woman that you saw on the cooling board.

I said, Paul, I said, when I went over to Corden, I said, Pastor and I were invited to the hospital.

She was dying.

And I said, she was grabbing all over her body and saying, I'm I'm on fire.

There's fireballs falling on me.

I'm slipping into hell.

And she finally did.

What I'm trying to tell you, all around us are people slipping into eternity.

I see it nearly every week of my life since pastored here.

I see it in the obituary columns.

And I wonder which way did they go?

We witness because it's commanded.

We witness because we love Christ and we want to be a team player with him.

We witness and we invite people to the kingdom and to church because our hearts are full of compassion.

It's called soul winning.

And Solomon said, He that winneth souls is wise.

Can I tell you your greatest job on earth?

It isn't running that tractor down through the field.

It isn't standing there at that machine at the factory.

It isn't standing in front of a group of students in a local public school.

Our greatest responsibility is to make a difference in the lives of people that are around us.

For I'm looking into the eyes of a soul, of somebody that'll live forever.

I don't say that to upset you.

I say it to nudge you.

Become soul conscious.

People will live forever.

You're worried about dying.

You're gonna live forever, the real you.

Where will you be a million years from now?

Will you be happy?

Will you be singing?

While ages roll throughout eternity, where will you be a million years from now, Father?

Thanks for being a part of the Voice of the Nazarene.

Visit us every Sunday at 9 a.m.

with BNC's pastor Ray Lasalle.

For more information regarding BNC, visit Osiris Nazarene.org.