I am skipping through a MacArthur sermon that I downloaded from field preacher and want to share some of his points. What did Christ say when he evangelised? MacArthur sums up Chist’s message of Luke 13 v 23-26 in 4 points. He says that gospel work is telling people the gospel of Christ and begging them to respond. Christ did it like this:
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exertion
v24. Calling sinners to spiritual exertion. It’s irrelevant how many will be saved – just make sure you are one of them! Strive to be saved: Deny yourself and follow Jesus. Are you serious yet? A cross is not a mystical experience – it’s where you die. Give yourself up completely. Self dies hard, Christ calls us to self denial, even self hatred. Complete repentance – James 4v6-10. Do we evangelise like this?
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desperation
v25-26. Calling sinners to a sense of temporal desperation. You must be willing to give up everything apart from God’s will. You don’t know when you will die – don’t postpone it! We are living on borrowed time. Do we tell people this in our evangelism? Christ will come at a time we don’t expect. Don’t show up at God’s throne if you have not settled it! There is a reality of being shut out.
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transformation
v27. Inviting sinners to a genuine transformation. True salvation transforms us to obedient people. We have a new character and new nature and desires to please God. Are we characteristically evil people? As Christians this should not be. Does our evangelism message teach people about the requirement of righteous; living with a new heart.
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perception
v28. Culminating evangelism with an eternal perception. Saved from hell! Trouble may come in this life, but what counts is our eternal destination. Almost all of the people who heard Jesus teach went to hell. “Hell is about remorse, expressed in tears and teeth grinding agony, realising that others are enjoying heaven”.
“This sort of evangelism will drive people away!” Check out Jesus preaching in Luke Chapter 12. Gentiles would be in heaven when those Jews would be in hell. Gentiles will be equal with Jews in the kingodm. Luke 13 v29
Luke 13 v34 – 35 It was heart breaking stuff for Jesus to say.
"...I can't think of any other real purpose for which God has Christians on this planet other than to help bring his chosen ones into his kingdom through the proclamation of the gospel..." 
"...I have also been transformed in my thinking by the WOTM evangelism teaching and wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone. I enjoy sound doctrine and the occasional foray into apologetics." 
"...I have always desired to see people become Christians... I now know that I am being highly effective when I witness to friends and strangers because they are hearing the biblical gospel that can save them." 
Desiring God: 
Evangelism Action 
The Lord just wasn’t “seeker sensitive”, was He? Too many “evangelicals” are more concerned with the opinion of the spiritually dead men who need salvation to be of any use to them. There is inadequate concern with the Word of God and there is little to no fear of God within them.
Of course, He never claimed that all who claimed to be His actually were.
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.”
yes the new commands 1 john 3:24,25 also Romans 8:14
Thanks Stuart,
I liked you point on how we are often
This is not just a wake up call for pulpit ministers but something for ever Christian. Are we still being skewed by our sense of sensitivity to the lost. In our walk-up evangelism are we leaving some thing out?
Interestingly enough – I can’t think of any parables or established doctrines of ‘the seeker’ : all I can think of is that no-one seeks God; all are totally depraved and even unable to seek God: but it is God who may seek us.
Bingo. Too often we promise non-believers a “better life” in a temporal sense, or a “better feeling than drugs”. Repentance is a good thing to do once you have repeated the “sinner’s prayer”.
“Self dies hard”
So true man. So very true. It has been one of the hardest parts of my walk.
Let GOD kill your flesh, go to you tube Mike Blume, ( that I may know HIM, sermon on Romans 6-8 It will set you free.
If you search through scripture you will find a recurring theme. “God saves the broken” It is our job to preach a message that God can use to break the hearts of the lost. Without this brokeness they cannot be saved. Look it up.
We prefer people to feel good, when our job is to break them. (it’s God’s job to break them, but it’s our job to preach the message that brings brokeness. Find how many times the bible talks about God only saving the broken and think about in acts, “they were pierced in their hearts”
the old man dies when the new man is born, but his patterns can sometimes be hard to break.
http://www.morefire.wordpress.com
I just thought I would share something that happened to me yesterday. We had an evangelist come in and preach the gospel to our congregation. Normally the gospel isn’t really preached with authority and conviction and so this was a great opportunity for everyone at my church to hear the whole gospel undiluted, including a heavy dose of repentance and an alter call. Again this isn’t very characteristic of my church, which is a pretty big church. So I was very happy and uplifted that be witness to this type of service. I work hard at presenting the gospel at my church and it’s good to see someone else come in from time to time to affirm that the gospel I preach is in fact the real gospel of Jesus Christ.
But I did observe something very clearly though in yesterdays sermon/evangelistic call. The gospel was preached with authority and clarity and I could tell that the Holy Spirit was moving. I could see emotions flow from many who were present. People were hearing what was being said and they understood what was being said. But as we are told in Romans 1:17-19:
I witnessed this evangelist poor his heart out to all who would hear. He was very good and very passionate and I could tell that there were many in the pews who were moved. Among them were some of my wifes family who were present because it was my daughters first communion. They are all Roman Catholic, but I could tell that they understood and were moved by the sermon/evangelistic call.
But then something happened after the service, I started to see the light fade from many faces. I started to see the love and emotion vanish and I started to see the hardness return. We had a party for my daughter at my in-laws house afterwards and everyone who was present for the service had returned to their normal hard, prideful, self-centered, self-reliant selves. Even though they were convicted, their hearts were pricked, they suppressed the truth for a lie and continued to reject God and His message. It was very sad to witness, but at the same time, it was a very happy moment for myself, because I witnessed my first born daughter take her first communion.
It’s difficult to see people reject the plain truth of the Gospel, but it will happen. Even though people know in their hearts what the truth is, they reject it and turn to their own way. All I can do for my wife’s family is to continue to pray for them and be a positive witness to them and have hope that God will someday soften their hearts and give them ears to hear and eyes to see.
Y.B.I.C,
Dave.
What, Jesus Evangelize? I thought that was a twenty-first century invention. (dripping with sarcasm)Good post!
Thanks everyone who has posted here. Louie; I liked your comment:
Dave, you raised a good point about passion. I can imagine that Jesus would have been quite passionate about the truth that He was preaching. In scripture we see a range of tones that Jesus used. I am sure when he was turning money changers tables and whipping people (possibly) he was very passionate.
But I am also aware of other references in scripture to a completely different tone that Christ used.
Christ was zealous and obedient to the Father always. He consistently took the path of humility while on Earth (see Philippians 2). Let’s learn from Christ and follow in his ways with all diligence.
Amen. Jesus definitely did things a lot different to most of us when it comes to evangelism.
We all need to take a fresh look at His methods to make sure that ours are Biblical. Good post, thanks!
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