Discover Jesus Series Pt. 10 - Pastor Greg Addison - February 16, 2025

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you, choir and orchestra.

What a beautiful reminder.

In Revelation chapter 5, they ask that question who is worthy?

Revelation 5 · chapter mention

And they sing uh all of the countless people are in heaven.

They worship Jesus.

He is the one who is worthy because he is the Lamb who was slain.

And so as we discover Jesus and continue that series, that's a great sort of picture for us who Jesus is and what he did.

That scroll they ask, who is able to open that?

It is he they are asking the question: who is the one who can save?

Who is the one who can steal our salvation forever?

And it is Jesus.

And so we've been learning about who Jesus is as we go through his life from Christmas to Easter.

I want you to turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 28, and you just stay there for a minute.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

I'm going to remind you of the last two weeks as we've been talking about, uh we've been talking about why Jesus came and how he is grafting us into that process.

Now, really, what's happened is the last three sermons, last week, uh two weeks ago, this one and uh and last week and then this week, really three points to one message.

And so I took one message and kind of stretched it out over three weeks.

My wife tells me all the time, Greg, you tried to preach three messages today.

You need to separate those and make them like multiple ones, not just one.

Quit trying to cram so much in one.

And so, since my wife is smarter than I am, I listened to her this time and I stretched those out.

So this is really one message uh over three weeks.

And so if you think about it, when we a lot of times are talking about how to study God's Word, uh, we'll use uh what sometimes people call the inductive Bible study method, where we go into Scripture and we study and try to break it apart.

And when we talk about application under that study method, we're talking about uh scripture always calls us to respond.

Scripture always asks us to respond in faith to God's message.

And so when we talk about applying scripture, we talk about what does the scripture require us to do?

Why does this or how does the scripture tell us to do that?

And why is it that we're supposed to do that?

And so when we think about that, what does the scripture call us to do?

How are we supposed to go about doing that?

Why are we doing that?

Those things, really, that's what we've broken apart in these last few weeks.

We saw the first week what we're supposed to do.

When we looked at the calling of Peter and Andrew and James and John in that context of fishing, and Jesus said, I will make you fishers of men.

We talked about the importance of that.

He was setting in place that evangelism is why he came.

And that he's going to teach his leaders to teach how to evangelism, and then he's going to expand that evangelism, and then he's going to teach all of us that we are about the business of fishing for the souls of men.

And we broke apart that statement that Jesus made follow me, and I will make you, Jesus, I will make you fishers of men.

So Jesus calls us to follow him, and we talked about how that following means we are so close to Jesus that we're becoming like him.

It was a word picture of you're following so close to him as a mentor that literally the dust off the sandals of his shoes, off his sandals would splatter onto us.

We're so close to Jesus.

Follow him so we become like him.

And then what is Jesus doing?

He is fishing for men and women, boys and girls.

He has come to save us, and he is trying to spread the good news of salvation.

And he says, when we follow him and we are that close to him, we will be about his purpose, and his purpose is saving people, and so we will become a part of that purpose.

And how is it that we become fishers of men?

Jesus said, I, Jesus, will make you a fisher of men.

So then we went to the next week and we talked about, okay, that's what we're doing.

Then how does that happen?

What is he doing that?

How does he make us into fishermen?

He sends us out to fish, as we talked about last week.

And we looked at the picture where Jesus sent the 70 out two by two, and they were going out, and he coached them on how to go fishing.

He coached them on how to handle people in situations and circumstances when they're out sharing the gospel.

He coached them to specifically preach the gospel, and then he sent them out to go do that.

He made them go out and exercise those muscles.

He made them step out in faith and go out and share the gospel.

We talked about Jesus does that with us.

If we are going to be followers of Christ, then that means following him means we're going to be fishing like he fishes.

And we're going to be taking the step to allow him to turn us into fishers of men.

Now, today, what I want to show you is the making process in the context of a church.

What is the training and making process look like?

Because we do that here.

We are following as best we are able, and we are growing in that following process of doing what Jesus has called us to do.

So there you are in Matthew chapter 28.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

This is a well-known passage of scripture if you spent any time in church.

This is in those last days as Jesus is gathering his people around them and speaking to them and setting them up for that process of I'm going to heaven, the Holy Spirit's going to come, and this is what you're going to do.

We see that Jesus began his ministry preaching the gospel two weeks ago.

He began his ministry by calling leaders and teaching them how to be fishermen.

Then he expanded beyond that to others and taught them how to do that.

And now we see Jesus make the loop complete.

He closes the circuit, so to speak, on this understanding of evangelism.

The Bible says in verse 16, the eleven disciples traveled to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had directed them.

When they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted.

Then Jesus came near and said to them, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.

How do we do that?

Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you, and remember I am with you always to the end of the age.

Now I want you to pay attention to that verse on the screen right there for just a moment.

This is that picture.

Sometimes in church life we call this the Great Commission.

And I think that is an excellent description of what's happening here.

And it gives us that complete picture of what Jesus is about.

Jesus is about people who don't know him as their Savior, learning the good news that he came and he died on the cross to pay the price for our sins, and that he rose again conquering death and sin, and he offers to us forgiveness and salvation in his name.

That is Jesus' sole purpose for being.

It's why he came.

It is what he was about in every moment and in every action and in every word.

It is passing the good news that God saves through the provision of him as the Messiah.

It must run through that filter.

And you hear people today talk about Jesus this and he was that and he loved this and he cared for this and he did all that.

All those things are clearly delineated here in Scripture, but none of them make sense outside the context of Jesus fishing for the souls of men and women, boys and girls, to be saved.

You see, Jesus begin his ministry preaching the gospel.

He calls the twelve disciples to and says, I, this is what we're going to do.

If you follow me, you will be an evangelist.

We are going out and finding lost people.

Then he modeled that personally as he led people to trust him as their Savior.

And then he sent the 12 out, two by two, as we saw last week.

Then he expanded that teaching process and he sends out the 70.

And now as he's going to heaven, he calls them in and he reminds them of exactly what he said from the very first time.

You follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

You're going to go, you're going to lead people to faith in Christ.

You are going fishing, and as you go fishing, you teach them to observe whatever I've commanded you.

And what did Jesus command us to do?

Go fishing for the souls of men and women, boys and girls, that they would know how to be saved.

And Jesus closes the loop that everything that we do, it is all about evangelism.

As you continue to read forward, you read into the book of Acts, and the whole picture of the book of Acts is what?

The Holy Spirit comes, the Holy Spirit empowers individuals, and then individuals become witnesses of Jesus Christ in moments where they lead other people to Christ.

That's what this is about.

It's what all of it is about.

And so a church does a lot of things, but the most important thing that a church does is to be on mission, sharing the gospel, to lead boys and girls, men and women, to faith in Jesus Christ.

That's what we do.

Teaching them to observe whatever I've commanded you.

What are we to teach?

We are to teach how to lead people to Christ.

We are to be raising fishermen.

We are to be teaching people how to fish.

That's what the church is.

And so he taught the disciples, then he taught the greater people, and then as people got saved, all throughout the book of Acts, they all learned how to be soul winners.

And what Jesus says is this is what you're doing.

You're training soul winners, and we are all going out to be soul winners.

He reiterates that purpose.

I will make you fishers of men.

Go baptizing them in the name of the Father, make disciples, baptize them and teach them to do the same thing that we've talked about.

He reiterates his purpose.

He calls and explains his purpose.

And then before he goes to heaven and leaves us under the power of the Holy Spirit, he reiterates what he's talking about.

He closes it full circle.

So how is it then that we teach people to observe in that whatever he's commanded, we teach as a church evangelism?

There are four areas where we really, if you want to put these buckets in place, where we as a church are teaching evangelism.

And so I want to show how we as a church are working to be obedient to the purpose and the calling of Jesus and the Great Commission that tells us we're about leading people to faith in Christ.

There are four general buckets or areas or ways that we're trying to build as a church to go about this process.

The first is we are praying for evangelistic results.

What does Jesus say in Matthew 28?

All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Then you go under that authority.

How are we under the authority of Christ?

When we're doing what he has commanded us to do.

And then he reminds them, and remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.

So what we are doing is what Jesus has called us to do, what Jesus empowers us to do, and we're doing it within the presence and the power and the purpose of Jesus Christ.

And so everything that we do is locked in prayer, it is covered in prayer, it is founded in prayer, it is empowered by surrendering ourselves through prayer to the presence of the Holy Spirit.

When Matt and the team got back from El Salvador last week, the whole time that they were gone, we had layers of our prayer ministry praying for them all throughout that experience.

When Jared goes to the campus at UAFS or goes to the medical school, we are placing that time under prayer ministry and being prayed for.

So we are praying for evangelistic results.

We are asking God to empower us to help us be obedient.

We are asking the Lord of the harvest for fruit.

We are pleading before God for the souls of men and women, boys and girls to come to faith in Christ.

We also are trying to focus on evangelism and equipping people for evangelism.

We have all kinds of ways we're doing that, and I'm going to run through those again in just a moment, but I want you to see the purposefulness that we have as a church in this process.

That we are teaching biblical stewardship to fuel missions and evangelism.

That's what we're doing because it fuels how we go and are a part of that.

And then finally, we are actually going.

We are being a part of the spread of the gospel, and we are sending teams and we are going as a church.

Now let me just break those down for you for a minute because it's important for us to be reminded of what the vision is that we have as a church and what our purposes and processes are in place.

So let's take that first category, for example.

That's what our prayer force is.

That's what we are doing when we're calling people together to pray.

We call our prayer ministry here the prayer force.

We chose that for a purpose.

It is on, they are on mission.

They are stepping into spiritual battle, and we are pleading for the souls of men and women, boys and girls, to come to faith in Jesus Christ.

And as we have structured that, we have two main areas where people are praying.

For example, well, we have those three areas.

The pilots are the leaders.

They help us sort of develop and all that.

But the navigators are people in our church who have signed up for a weekly time slot, and every week they play, they pray in that time slot.

We speak to them, we send them messages, but we count on them all throughout the week, our church.

There are times where committed people are committedly praying for us as a church, and in their marching orders for prayer that week, they have built into that.

We need to see people saved, we want to see people baptized, empower the people who are teaching scripture around the church, that they are preaching and teaching the gospel in Sunday school classes on Wednesday nights in awanas, and when we're preaching, when we're teaching in discipleship groups, men and women on Wednesday nights, and all of those, we are praying that the scripture is going out to touch lives and people are being saved.

It is not an accident that we are seeing people saved in our church.

It is a move of God, and our prayer warriors are the ones who are keeping us on our knees as a church before God, under his authority, and exercising his presence as people are saved.

Then we have a third group in our prayer ministry, gunners, and many of you are gunners, and we have when you sign up to be a gunner on our prayer force, then you receive a call to arms or a mission when we have someone out doing whatever evangelistic work.

For example, when Matt and the team a couple of weeks ago went to El Salvador, we called the gunners in uh on duty and that they were praying all the way through that.

And uh when you see people in our church wearing those little uh green, olive drab green uh prayer bracelets, I was wearing mine that week, then those are the gunners who are on mission praying for God to work.

We do that anytime we have an evangelistic event, vacation Bible school, students have event, children's have an event, we have someone on mission trip.

Any of those moments where we have people who are stepping into that evangelistic moment, we call our gunners on duty and they are praying as a church.

And that's how we are praying evangelistically for people to be saved.

If you've not been a part of our prayer ministry, I want to invite you to be a part of that.

There's information out in the lobby, it is on your brochure there, your weekly how what we're doing this week.

I want to encourage you, the best way to get started in evangelism is to start by praying for people to be saved.

Where Jesus said, where your treasure is, your heart will be also.

Where you invest yourself, your heart and your focus is going in that direction.

If you're not a part of being one of the navigators or the gunners, or if you're a gunner and you need to step up to be a navigator and pick that time slot and pray, then we want you to do that.

When you are praying for people to be saved, it changes your entire perspective of life.

Invariably, if we have folks who've not been in evangelism and you've not been a part of that, and you're God's been stirring your heart maybe through this series and you've been thinking through that, how do you get involved in that?

Invariably, if we're not praying for lost people to be saved, our evangelism heart and involvement is in a place where it needs to be pulled forward and begin to be active.

We would also like to enlist folks to pray during the services on Sunday mornings.

And so that's a spot that's open.

And if you would like to step into a rotation and once a month or so go into our prayer room, pray for our services, pray for God to be saved during the services, I want to invite you to do that.

You find one of us and we'll help you sign up for that.

But we must always be a part of consistently and committedly praying for God to move and for people to be saved, because just as Jesus says in this Great Commission, everything we do is under his authority, and we need to be under his authority and obedient to him.

He said he is always with us, and we need to be praying for the presence of Jesus.

We say it often, I want to keep saying it.

Anything good that happens in the church, it happens because Jesus did it.

And so we never want to take for granted the presence of Jesus, and we want to be praying and asking for his presence and his power to cover everything that we do.

So that's one way that we as a church are praying evangelistically, specifically for people to be saved.

And we don't back away from that.

We are praying for people to be saved, and we are praying for baptisms.

We are calling on the Lord of the harvest to bring those folks to faith in Christ.

The next area that we talk about doing evangelism is in giving.

Again, we don't ever back away from this.

We have a strong heritage as a church all throughout the generations of people giving sacrificially to fuel the work of the church.

It's especially important in times like this where we're in and out, people are sick, the weather's bad, we have all this chaos, that we be faithful to give on a regular basis because the work of ministry does not stop.

Those evangelistic events are happening and ongoing.

The way we give here as a church, we have three main categories that we give.

We operate the church on our tithes and the weekly offerings as those come in.

So the things that fuel what our students do and our children's ministry does, and all of those things, that happens on our weekly giving.

And so I just want to encourage you to be faithful.

If you have not signed up to give online, in today's world, it makes it very easy to give online.

There's information again on your on your bulletin and brochure.

It helps us in times like this where if we're not there or our family is not able to be there because the kids are sick or we're passing around the flu or whatever, that's the time that we're in.

In our church, 80% of our giving happens when people are here in person.

And so when people are not here in person, it makes it kind of go like that.

When you give online, then that's happening whether we're here or not.

My wife and I give our ties online because it just helps, it makes it work through that.

Sometimes people will ask, Pastor, I don't know.

I don't feel the worship connection to that.

That's why we've started passing the plate again through the services.

It frees up that idea that yes, we are worshiping.

And so, Janet and I, when we give during the week and we're sitting here in the service, we are still worshiping and acknowledging that our gifts go to the Lord, and we have not lost any spiritual impact from that whatsoever.

And so it's important that we continue to do that on a regular basis so that the ongoing ministry goes well.

Then we have two other ways that we give.

In the spring, we give what we call our faith forward offering.

We'll be doing that again this year in month or six weeks, and this year's emphasis.

That is an opportunity for us to help build the structure of the church.

This past year, our Faith Forward offering has gone to towards our setting up the war chest that will allow us to plant the campus in the Chaffee area.

And you guys have been incredible in your giving.

You have done so above and beyond.

It's just awesome to see what you guys have done and set us up for that.

Hopefully, we'll have some more information coming out soon about getting ready to do that.

So we're we're excited about that.

Then we give through our missions offerings as Arkansas Baptists and Southern Baptists.

We give to the Dixie Jackson State Mission Offering in the fall.

We give to Annie Armstrong that helps fund church plants around North America through the North American Mission Board, and then the Lottie Moon Christmas offering that we give at Christmas time, which helps our missionaries around the world.

We also add, have added times where we've put special projects in with those offerings.

And again, you guys have done incredible.

Let me just give you a couple of examples.

Last year, we uh helped fund a translation of the Jesus film, working in partnership with the Jesus Film Project Ministries, uh, into the ANUFO people group.

And then we sent a team to go as they delivered that film and a projector sort of process, you know, portable kind of a thing where they can take that out and show that.

We'll be having some more information coming out very soon about the impact of that, but it has been incredible.

Since that time, thousands of people have watched the Jesus film in that language.

It has created ministry opportunities that are ongoing that are incredibly exciting moving the gospel in that world.

This year, we added the Bible purchasing process, uh project in December on Lottie Moon, and we are buying Bibles for men who have been saved in Nigeria and who are entering into a discipleship ministry there.

And praise God, you guys bought almost 2,400 Bibles for men in those, and they'll be distributed, and soon we're going to have pictures of the distribution and all of that.

It's incredible to see what God is doing as we step forward and give.

And as we give, always understand when you're giving, you are giving, you are participating in evangelistic spread of the gospel here and around the world.

Always understand that our giving as a part of advancing the gospel.

Here's the next area where we talk about that, the next bucket about that is evangelism training.

And there are a lot of ways that we train people to share their faith here in the church.

We've had a lot of people who've gone through this evangelism training program.

It's based on something called Evangelism Explosion.

It's a long time-honored way, methodology of sharing the gospel.

This is an online training program that's free.

It's been done in partnership with Love Worth Finding Ministry, which I'm involved with in part of my free time.

It's the preaching ministry of Dr.

Adrian Rogers.

And online, you can go on our website as a church, and right there you can click on and sign up to do this.

It's an incredibly easy training program.

It teaches you how to share the gospel, what key verses are.

It walks you through conversation scenarios to show you how to enter into that conversation and start a gospel conversation.

It is incredibly easy to do.

It happens in bite-sized pieces, about 10 minutes or so each that you go through.

You can do one a day, one a week.

You can do all if you get all excited and go through it.

You can do it all in a couple hours.

It's just a great training program that's free.

We've made it available.

We continue to make that available.

It is there on our website.

Listen, hear me very clearly.

There is no reason for a Christian to not know how to share the gospel.

There is no reason for a Christian to not know how to share the gospel.

There are resources everywhere.

It is incredibly simple and easy.

People who study these things, they tell us that one of the top reasons why people don't share the gospel is they are afraid they're going to get a question they don't know the answer to, or they're afraid they're going to mess it up.

There is no reason for a Christian to ever have those fears.

And so these training programs are simple and they are easy and they help you, and mostly what they help you do is give you confidence.

Most Christians know how to share the gospel.

First of all, you know the gospel because you trusted Jesus as your Savior and you know how you got saved.

You don't need anything else but that and your testimony.

And so most people really do know how.

They're just not confident in that setting.

And so these training programs help you build that confidence.

That's why we provide them, and that's what they're for.

Let me give you another resource that we have.

Um, this month, I'm going to encourage this is the pastor's suggested reading for this month.

This is a book uh turning everyday conversations into gospel conversations.

If you've been around church, then you've heard us talk about the three circles, and that is a methodology for sharing the gospel.

It's a very simple way to do it.

It's a very effective, easy way to understand.

This is what scripture is about.

It's about the story of redemption and how you share that with someone.

It's an incredibly effective tool.

I've used it.

We have people in our church that use it.

When our folks go on college campuses, they use it a lot.

It's an excellent training tool.

This book is available on Amazon.

It's easy, it's very simple.

It's a great book for you to read.

You ought to read it.

If you haven't, you need to.

If you're unsure how to share your faith, this is a great way to do it.

We also have another tool that some of the men in our church have created.

Our uh pastor young adults, Jared Farley, with another one of our young guys, Grace and Stevens, got together and they created a short training video for us as a church.

And you can access that off the home page of our website, and they walk you through in a very short but effective, very practical video on how to do that.

Bobby, I think we have a clip from that video.

There's a statistic out there that says it takes seven times for a person to hear the gospel and then believe.

I don't know how accurate that is, but if that is the case, we should be prepared to reiterate the gospel a few times in a person's life before they believe.

We never know when the Holy Spirit might make known this truth and transform that heart.

Um, but may we stay persistent and practice.

There you go.

It doesn't get any easier than that.

You practice, and and when you have a tool, it allows you to practice.

You can practice it on your spouse, your parents, your kids.

You can practice it on somebody in your um Sunday school class, Sunday school group.

Y'all just get and go back and forth, challenge each other to learn, use these tools, and walk through it.

We have made them available.

They are so effective, practical, and simple.

There is no reason for a Christian to not be equipped to share the gospel.

Let me share one other resource with you.

Out in the hallway where we highlight some of the things available in our bookstore, there were a couple of apologetics books that we have put out there that help you answer those questions.

I want to encourage you, this is a great podcast by an apologist named Jay Warner Wallace.

I listen to this podcast personally.

It's called the Cold Case Christianity Podcast.

The reason it's called that, Jay Warner Wallace was professionally a uh law enforcement professional.

And then he spent a lot of time in his career learning how to solve cold cases and solving cold cases.

And then when he was confronted with uh the claims of Scripture, he used those investigative techniques and principles as a cold case detective, if you will, law enforcement professional, and he applied them to is the Bible true?

Is Jesus who he claimed he is?

Is that believable for us to give our lives to Christ?

And he gave his life to Jesus Christ.

And now he has spent his ministry following that uh teaching us how to answer those questions and how to effectively share our faith.

The last two episodes of this Cold Case Christianity podcast uh covers these ten reasons why Christians don't share their faith.

So there's five reasons in each podcast, and he addresses ways to approach if that is one of your struggles.

So the last two episodes, five in each time, the ten most common reasons why Christians don't share their faith.

And he does a very effective job of encouraging us through each of those ten barriers.

Again, there's just so much incredibly good information that will encourage you and equip you and strengthen you to be able to share your faith.

Why am I spending so much time walking through these resources?

Pastor, why aren't you preaching?

Listen, I'm preaching as best I know how.

Jesus said, teach them to observe whatever I have commanded you.

And we are teaching to observe Jesus' command and call to personally share the gospel.

Why?

Well, because of that fourth category.

Personal evangelism itself.

We need to be involved in sharing our faith in Christ.

Every person who is saved by the gospel becomes a witness of the gospel.

Every person who is saved under the good news of the gospel becomes one who shares the good news of the gospel.

Church where I grew up, our worship pastor used to say something like this.

He'd say, Not every singer is a Christian, but every Christian is a singer.

Why?

Because what God has done in our heart as believers, we have to worship Him.

It just compels us to worship Him.

Not every singer is a Christian, but every Christian must be a singer.

We can apply that same logic to preaching the gospel.

We can apply that logic to sharing Jesus.

Every Christian is a proclaimer of the gospel.

Every Christian under the power of the Holy Spirit is a witness of Jesus Christ.

Every person who has been saved by the gospel has a testimony to share.

Period.

Every testimony of salvation, Pastor, whatever it is, sometimes people come and say, Pastor, my testimony is not that dramatic.

Listen, my testimony is not that dramatic either.

I was saved as a nine and a half-year-old kid.

Janet is smarter than I am.

She was saved as a seven and a half-year-old kid.

But I eventually caught up.

I was saved as a nine and a half-year-old kid.

I was raised in church.

I was, I went to school at a Baptist elementary school and Baptist high school.

I mean, I spent my entire life under the gospel.

And so I didn't have all those things a lot of times that you have out there.

And I the way I explain my testimony is this: God knew without Jesus, I would be so awful, he put me under as many safety nets as he could possibly put me under, right?

And in all of that, my parents, my teachers in school, my pastor, my Sunday school teachers, and all of that, they taught this truth.

No one will ever love you as much as Jesus.

All of us are sinners by birth, by nature, and by choice, and every one of us have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.

And Jesus loves you so much, he stepped out of heaven and he took your punishment for your sin on the cross so you wouldn't have to.

And he rose again, conquering death and sin.

When I was a nine and a half-year-old boy in churches like this, I was sitting in the balcony.

There's my people right there in the balcony.

I can't tell you what the sermon was about on a Sunday morning, but I could tell you at the end of it, I understood what my pastor said.

No one ever loved me as much as Jesus.

Jesus died and paid it, took my punishment on the cross.

And I came down out of the balcony, I came down that aisle.

There was an older deacon in our church, friends with my dad, Dewey Burton.

I saw Dewey Burton right there.

I said, Mr.

Dewey, I need to give my life to Jesus because he loved me so much he took my punishment on the cross.

You have a testimony if you were saved.

Listen, don't tell me that your testimony is not dramatic enough, or don't tell me that your testimony is so dramatic.

You had stuff in your life you can't share and you're in awe that Jesus saved you.

Listen, every one of you who is saved, you have a testimony that Jesus saved you.

And every one of you, whatever your testimony is, let me give you some spiritual truths about your testimony.

Jesus had to die on the cross for your testimony.

Your testimony of salvation cost Jesus has shed blood on the cross.

So your testimony is eternally precious because of the price Jesus paid for it.

Your testimony is eternally powerful because Jesus conquered death and sin and he changed your eternity forever when he saved you.

It is eternally precious, it is eternally powerful, and it has an eternal purpose.

Paul wrote to Timothy and he said this, for this reason I was saved.

That others who are being saved might see that me, Paul, the chief of all sinners, could receive God's grace.

For this reason I was saved, Paul said.

For this reason, as an example to those who are giving their life to Jesus, that he'd save anybody.

And your testimony has an eternal purpose.

And that is for you to tell other people what happened to you and how to be saved.

Now, one way we teach that here at our church is we encourage everyone to have a love list.

And we talk about this, we'll keep talking about this.

As long as y'all keep letting me come back to church, we're going to keep talking about this.

Your love list.

Every Christian should have a love list of people that God has laid on your heart that He put you in their life to share your testimony.

Here's the way we capture that again.

Jesus said, Teach them to observe whatever I've commanded you.

And so the way we want to teach this is we have, we challenge you to have a love list.

And that is you have three people that you know need Jesus.

And God puts you in their life, and you are praying for three things to happen.

Number one, you're praying for them to be saved.

Number two, you are praying for a chance to invite them to church.

And number three, you are praying for an opportunity to share your testimony.

We're praying three things for every one of those folks.

You're praying number one, we are praying for them to be saved.

Number two, we are praying for you to have an opportunity to invite them to church.

Number three, we are you are praying for an opportunity for you to share your gospel testimony.

Those three things are happening.

And we want everyone to be doing that.

Can you imagine how it would change the face of our church if every week someone brought down the aisle a person from their love list who had been saved?

Just one.

Just one a week.

Can you imagine what would happen to our church?

Every week, someone is getting saved because a body of Christ has understood why Christ came.

That we are here to plead for in prayer and to share with people, men and women, boys and girls who need Jesus Christ as their Savior.

Let me ask you a question.

I don't want you to answer it out loud, but let me just ask you a question in your heart.

Right there before you and the Holy Spirit, He can see your heart, He can hear you.

Do you believe, again, nobody needs to react?

This is a personal question.

Do you really believe that Jesus saves people?

And my follow-up question to that is when we pray for people to be saved, do you believe God answers that prayer?

If we believe God saves people and we believe God answers that prayer, then we must be about consistently, fervently, committedly praying that prayer that Jesus will save the people that He put in His life in our lives for us to witness to.

There's no other conclusion that you can come to than that.

And so I want to encourage you, not trying to guilt you into it, not trying to manipulate or whatever.

I'm just trying to teach and encourage.

Listen, this will change the face and the life of our church if we embrace this truth.

If we embrace this truth right here, just three people, and you don't even know how to start, but you make that commitment, Lord, you told us to do this, and you said you would make us into fishers of men.

I don't know how to do this, but I'm counting on you to know how to do this.

And I'm gonna start with these three names, God, right on my heart, and I'm just gonna pray right now they'll be saved.

And Lord, I'm gonna pray that you'll open a door for me, invite them to church.

Listen, I get it.

It's hard to go tell people you're dying and going to hell.

It's hard to tell people you're a sinner, and sin must be punished.

Listen, if you don't want to tell somebody they're going to hell, bring them to church.

I'll tell them.

But it creates the opportunity for us to tell them the love of Jesus Christ.

It creates the opportunity for us to tell them the good news that Jesus died on the cross, so they would not have to spend an eternity in judgment in hell.

It gives us a chance to tell them how much Jesus loved him, that he stepped out of heaven and he went through this just for them.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

Not that we loved him, but he first loved us and gave his son to be the payment for our sins.

And it gives us the opportunity to share the good news of salvation in Jesus.

Why is this so important?

Because this is the purpose of Jesus' ministry.

He says in the book of Luke, he came to seek and to save those who were lost.

When he began to call his followers, he called the twelve and he said, I will make you fishers of men.

And then he sent them out two by two.

And then he took the other people that were getting saved through that process, and he sent them out.

70 of them two by two.

And then before he went to heaven, he said, Listen, I need you to understand and remember what this is all about.

Keep the vision in front of you.

You're going to go.

You're going to make followers just like I called you to follow me.

You're going to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And you are going to teach them to do the very thing I taught you to do.

Boys and girls, to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.

I want you to bow your heads as we close this morning.

Just a couple of things I want you to think about.

First of all, if you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, I want to invite you to give your life to Jesus the way I did when I shared my testimony.

In a moment, our people are going to stand and sing, and as they sing, they are singing a testimony that Jesus saved them, and they want you to know they were saved also.

And you can be Say.

If you have never trusted Christ as your Savior, I want to invite you to give your life to Him.

Trust Him to pay the price for your sins.

Listen, if you're watching online, you're home, you're here, there's no incantation, there's no thing you have to recite.

Listen, you come to Jesus and you tell him, I know I've sinned and I have guilt and I can't forgive myself.

Thank you for loving me enough to pay the price for my sin on the cross.

And you give your life to him.

Listen, you don't have to be a theologian to be saved.

You just have to be someone who knows I need to be saved, and Jesus is the only one who can save me.

Friend, nobody ever loved you as much as Jesus.

Give your life to him today.

Second question.

If you're saved and you need a church home, listen, this is what we do.

We go fishing.

I've laid out as best I can this is what we do.

Our folks are doing this and growing in this in an incredible way.

I can't tell you of a better place for you to come and learn how to be a fisherman alongside other fishermen than right here at our church.

I want to invite you to come and be a member of our church.

Join our fishing crew.

Come with us to share the gospel.

How do you do that?

It's real simple.

You just come or you find Matt or I after church.

We'll sit down and have a meeting with you.

Make sure your testimony and your baptism are biblical, and we'll tell you how to get involved.

It should not be hard to join a church.

It should be a joy and it should be a commitment.

And we want to invite you to come be a part of our church family.

And finally, church family, I want to ask you, I'm sure most of you are doing some of this, and that's awesome.

That's why we're seeing folks say.

But my most important question for you is this.

Do you have a love list that you're praying over?

Are you faithful to pray over those three people that God put you in their life to be a testimony of the gospel?

I just want to ask you unapologetically, church family, I want to ask you to make that commitment or reaffirm that commitment to have a love list.

Out in the foyer, we have copies of those little three-line sheets that talk about love lists.

Out there in the foyer, we have little cards, business-sized cards that help you invite someone to church.

But it's really not about those cards, it's about our commitment in our heart.

Three things, three decisions today.

If you've never been saved, come and give your life to Christ.

If you want to be a part of our church family and come fishing with us, come down the aisle and speak to one of our pastors or find Matt or I after church.

Church family, let's commit that love list to the Lord.

Lord, we love you and we thank you.

We thank you for the clarity which Jesus taught us from the beginning of his ministry till he went home to heaven to pray for us that we're to be calling men and women, boys and girls, to faith in Jesus Christ.

Lord, we pray that we will see more souls saved this morning throughout the week and throughout the lives of our church family as we allow you to make us into Fishers of Men.

We pray these things in the saving name of Jesus and all God's people said.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.