In this sermon, the pastor emphasizes the importance of relying on God's strength and not our own. He encourages the audience to trust in the message of the gospel rather than the messenger delivering it. The pastor also highlights the need to use the law, specifically the Ten Commandments, in evangelism to help people understand their guilt and need for salvation. He gives examples of how Jesus and other preachers used this principle effectively. Overall, the sermon emphasizes the power of the gospel message and the importance of relying on God's word rather than our own abilities.

So, it's great to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me. As you can tell by my physique, I am not German. I am not Norwegian. I was born in Mexico. So I was born in Mexico and then I moved to Canada. That's where I met my beautiful wife. And that's also where I was born again. So, yeah, I'm double Canadian because I'm by citizenship and also because I was born again. I am a personal assistant of an evangelist in the U.S. that is called Ray Comfort, his name. And he leads this ministry that is all about evangelism. But I live in the south of France. And that's where I do my, well, our ministry. And as Kurt said, it's all about evangelism as well. Going out to the streets, sharing the gospel. And also teaching others how they can share as well. I teach a four-hour crash course on evangelism. And the Lord has opened the doors all over Europe for this teaching. This year I've been in a different country almost every weekend. So I'm very humbled and I'm very grateful for that. But today, because I have only like 15 minutes, I have prepared some... No? 40 minutes? 40 minutes? No, but for real, how long I have? About 40? Okay. So I had prepared something for you. But really this morning I changed it all. So I have something really fresh and something special for you. But before I get started, let me just share with you that before we got married, we were very nervous because I am from Mexico. And my wife is from Kazakhstan. So we didn't know if someone had ever tried the genetical experiment of a Mexican and a Catholic. So we had to buy a very expensive software that would make the experiment for us and then we would decide if we wanted to move on. So the program asked me for a picture of someone from Mexico. And then I had to input also the picture of someone from Kazakhstan. And then the computer program gave us these results. And then the program gave us these results. But then by fate we decided to try it out ourselves. And we have a nice family. The dog is not part of the family. So today I want to share with you a message. Get on fire for God. Get on fire. And it's all related to evangelism. Get on fire so that we can share the gospel with the lost. There are two main reasons why people don't share the gospel with others. One is because they don't know how to. They don't feel equipped. And the second one is fear. And fear is something that really paralyzes us. Fear is something that is on our minds. And if we have fear of driving, we will never drive. Some people are fearful of flying. And that keeps them from actually traveling. If we are fearful of sharing the gospel, then we will never do it. We will never take part in the great commission that the Lord gave us. So fear is a powerful weapon in the hands of the enemy. Because as long as you stay inside of the church without actually reaching to others, then he is not really your enemy. But when you start going out and trying to break into the battlefield, then he will be your enemy. He will want to stop you. And how does he stop you? With fear. So fear is like a snake. It's like a snake that hangs from the body of Christ. And that snake is paralyzing us. But when I think of a snake, I remember the book of Acts 28. When Paul is in the island of Malta, and he is picking up some wood, and then suddenly there is a snake hanging from his arm. How did he deal with it? Well, the Bible says that he shook it up. He didn't pray much about it. He just shook it up. And he shook it off into the fire, the Bible says. So if fear is like a snake, it makes sense for us also to just shake it off. Into the fire, if our God is a consuming fire. So just say, God, I have fear of doing this thing. But I don't want to have this fear, and I give it into you. So shake it off into God. God will be very happy to deal with it. So that you can be effective in reaching out to the lost. So, but, you know, I regularly witness. I regularly go to the streets. But every time that I want to go out and witness, I can think of 200 excuses why I shouldn't go. I can think, today is such a nice day. Or I can think, oh, today is raining. Or I can think, I didn't have a good night yesterday, I better go to sleep. I can think that I live in France, and I have an accent when I speak French. I can have the excuse of, I look different than the French. Or I can just think, what if they ask me a difficult question, like about transubstantiation. In the Catholic Church, whatever. So, but all of these excuses are really rooted on fear. Some of us, we even think that we don't qualify. That we don't qualify. So let me show you a passage from Scripture. And let's see if you qualify. So if you have a Bible in Spanish, you can. So I'll read it to you in English. 1 Corinthians 2, 1 to 4. It says, when I came to you brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not wise and persuasive words but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power. So from this text, I want to show you four qualifications. And we will see if we qualify. So let's see if you qualify. So the first one would be, you do not have to have excellency of speech or wisdom. So if you do have excellency of speech or you are very wise, you do not qualify. But if you do not have those, then you qualify. Number two, you must have weakness. So if every time you are going to share the gospel with someone you feel weak, then you qualify. Number three, you must have fear. So if you feel fearful every time that you are going to witness, once again you qualify. And the last one, you must have much trembling. If your knees shake, then you qualify. Why? Because if you have these characteristics, then you do not rely on your own strength. You do not trust in the messenger. But you trust in the message. You do not trust in your own wisdom or your smile or your looks. But in your mission as a messenger of the gospel, as a message. If you qualify these four characteristics, please raise your hand. And now the pastor can take a picture. If you qualify, then you have aligned yourself with Moses. Moses had also five excuses he gave to God. Here they are. He said, Who am I? He said, Who sent me? He said, They won't believe me. Then he said, I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. And then the number five is my favorite. He said, Send someone else. So if you identify yourself with these excuses, you are just like Moses with the potential of saving a nation. You are in good company. Not only Moses. Also Gideon. Gideon. Gideon, he basically told God that he was nobody for the task. Besides Gideon, we have also Jeremiah. Jeremiah, when he got his commission, he gave God one excuse. He said, But I cannot speak. I am only a child. And scholars say that Jeremiah was already 25 years old. So he was only really making an excuse. He didn't want to be obedient. And the last example is what we already saw. The Apostle Paul. Paul, he said that he had fear and weakness and much trembling. And yet he planted so many churches and he was like the first evangelist kind of thing. If you think about it, Paul could have had one excuse and that was, I am an Apostle. I don't have to share the gospel. But his concern to the churches pushed him to share fearlessly. And the key and Paul's key is found in verse number two. Where he says, For I determined to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified. He said, But I determined, or I resolved, I took the decision. And in our lives we can take that decision as well. We can say, I don't know exactly how to do it. Maybe they will think I am a fanatic. Maybe they will laugh at me. But I determined to do it. If we take that decision in our heart, in our mind, it will be very easy to crush that fear. And we will be able to take part in the Great Commission. When God says, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. We are to be obedient to that commission. There is a preacher in the States. His name is Paul Washer. And just paraphrasing something that he says. He says something like this. That is God in the day of creation. And then he says, he looks at the stars and he tells to the stars, Move into this formation and stay there. Then he looks at the planets and he tells them, And you all turn around and stay here until I give you another word. Then he looks at the sea and he says, And you see you are going to come until this far. He looks at the mountains and he says, All you be lifted up. And then he looks at you and he says, Go. And you say, No. That should bother us. Why are not we obeying the commission that God gave us? But let me share with you a big danger. If we have the zeal or the desire to share the gospel, We have to do it in a biblical way. There is a danger with what is called modern evangelism. Not about any particular church or denomination or anything else, Just as a whole in general. We have all heard exciting reports of thousands coming to a decision for Christ. Thousands in crusades and stadiums filled with people making a decision. But we hear very little about the fallaway rate. And that is that 80 to 90% of those who make a decision never come back to church. They become backsliders. Someone who once made a decision and then he just goes back to the world. Just to make it more real to you, A major denomination in the US They reported 294,000 decisions But found only 14,000 in fellowship. Which means that 280,000 just fell away. Why did that happen? Was that because of a lack of follow-up? I don't think so. I think it's because the church has strayed away from a biblical way of presenting the gospel. If we go to Mark 10, 17 We have the story of the rich young ruler. And the young ruler comes to Christ, comes to Jesus and he asks him Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? So stop there for a moment and think if it was you. If someone is asking you, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What would you say? We will see how Jesus reacted. But let's see first what Jesus did not say to this person. Jesus did not say You have a God shaped hole in your heart that only I can fill. Jesus did not say You have to only repeat this prayer after me. Jesus did not say You have to ask me into your heart. And Jesus did not say I will give you love, joy, peace and also you will go to heaven. And if you think of modern evangelism sometimes we tend to give this type of responses. But that is not what happened with Jesus and the young ruler. Jesus started by asking him Why do you call me good? He said That is not good by one and that is God. And then he took him through the ten commandments. He gave him five of the ten commandments. And the young man said I have kept them all since my youth. And then Jesus pointed him to the essence of the first and the second commandments. And that is when the man went away sad. Because his God was his possessions. So Jesus was using a principle that prepares the heart for the good news. It is a principle that has been used by Jesus, by the apostles by the great preachers like Spurgeon and Wesley Whitfield. And it was used by the reformers. But in the turn of the century something happened and we don't use it anymore. And that principle is to use the law, the ten commandments in evangelism. Let me give you an example to show you how that works. If I come to you and I tell you I have very good news for you. Somebody paid your fine. Someone paid a fine for you. Congratulations! Do you think that that is good news? Well, I don't think so really. Because what are you talking about? If you come to me and you tell me somebody paid $25,000 on your behalf. I would say, what are you talking about? Why would someone pay a fine on my behalf of $25,000? Why would someone pay $25,000 for me? I think that if I only give you the message like that it is a message that is foolish and it is offensive. It's foolish because it doesn't make sense. And it is offensive because I am implying that you did something wrong. And that's why someone had to pay a fine. If I tell you the same message in a different way, it would make more sense. If I say, on your way to church this morning. If I tell you, when you were coming to church this morning there were 10 clear signs saying that the maximum speed was 100 km per hour. But you didn't care and you went speeding at 150 km per hour. What you did is very dangerous. There was a blind children convention in the city. So what you did was very dangerous. And so the police officer he clogged you with the radar. And now you have to go to prison for 3 months. Or you have to pay a fine of $25,000 but you don't have any money. And in that moment when you hear that part of the story you are like, what am I going to do? And now I can say, but don't worry I have good news for you. Somebody paid that fine on your behalf. Is that a good news? That is good news. The message is not foolish and it is not offensive. It is not foolish because it makes sense. You understood. And it is not offensive because I explained exactly what you did wrong. And that is what happens when we use the law in evangelism. There is a basis in Scripture that tells us that the law is given for that purpose. For example, in Romans 3.19 says, it says that the law is given to us so that every mouth is stopped. And that everybody that all the world will become guilty before God. So the law is given to us so that we see that we are guilty. We cannot justify ourselves in saying there is someone far worse than I am. Because if my neighbor is a drug dealer then I am a pretty good person. But if I compare myself to the standard of God that demands perfection in thought, in word and in deed then I am not a good person. I am in fact a lawbreaker. Someone who has lied. Commandment number 9. Someone who has stolen. The 8th commandment. Someone that has committed adultery. Because Jesus said that if I look at someone and I have lust after that person No. If I look at someone and I have lust for that person then I have committed adultery in the heart. I have committed adultery as well. I am guilty of the 6th commandment that says that you shall not kill. And I am guilty too because Jesus said that if I hate someone I am committing murder in my heart. I have broken the 5th commandment. I have been naughty to my parents. And that's only 5 of the 10 commandments. So if you and I see ourselves compared to that mirror that is called the 10 commandments we have to understand that we are like guilty criminals. The law is showing us that we are dirty. It's like in this morning what was the first thing that you did when you woke up? You went to the bathroom and you looked at yourself in the mirror. You wanted to see the damage that happened during the night. And after that then you go to the water and you wash yourself. That is the function of the law. It's just showing us that we are dirty and we have to be cleansed. Romans 3.20 just says that the function of the law is so that we can become conscious of sin. 1 John 3.4 gives us a definition of sin. It says that sin is the transgression of the law. The 10 commandments. Romans 7.7 says Paul says that he didn't know what sin was until the law told him. And finally Galatians 3.24 tells us that the law is like a schoolmaster. It's like a guide that leads us to Christ. So the law does not help us. It only leaves us helpless. It leaves us guilty. It leaves us helpless. But in modern evangelism we have got rid of the law. We don't show people what sin is with the commandments. And so the church had to find another reason to bring people to Christ. And that reason that the church, the modern evangelism uses is to offer Jesus as a life enhancement product. In other words, you come to Christ He will give you love, joy, peace, fulfillment and lasting happiness. So people are coming for the wrong reasons. If someone comes to Christ looking for joy and love and peace, but that person has not recognized that he has broken God's law. If that person does not repent in his heart, then he is coming for the wrong reasons. And when he sees that inside the church there is someone that died for cancer, and another person that was in a car accident, that person that came for the wrong reasons will say, they lied to me. I didn't find any of this. I'm only finding persecution, tribulation and temptation. So that's why we are to use the Ten Commandments when we share the Gospel. Because it leaves us all guilty. It stops our mouth of justifying ourselves. And also it prepares the heart for the good news of the Gospel. It's like preparing the soil for the good seed. If there are two men sitting on a plane, and to the first passenger I tell him, put on this parachute because it will improve your flight. The passenger will put on the parachute because he trusts me. And after a while he will notice the weight on his back. He will see that he cannot sit up straight anymore. The other passengers are laughing at him. Until the passenger will remove the parachute and throw it on the floor and will say, this stupid parachute. But to the second passenger we tell him, put on this parachute because we are going to jump. Do you think that he will remove the parachute when he feels the discomfort in his back? When the passengers are mocking or laughing, he will not remove the parachute. He put it on for the right reason. And that is what we have to do when we preach the Gospel. We have to tell them that we have to expose them to the law, the Ten Commandments. Show them that we are guilty. That if there is a God that is just, then he has to send us to hell for eternity. That nothing that we can do can save us from that punishment. So that is the bad news. And only when that person has understood the problem, then you can say, but God is rich in mercy. I have good news for you. Jesus Christ came and he suffered and died on your place. You broke God's law, the Ten Commandments, but Jesus paid your fine. So justice now has been satisfied and you can go free. If that person comes to Christ for that message, chances are he is coming for the right reasons. He has understood his big problem and he has understood the big, amazing solution. If we do not use the Ten Commandments, there is a risk of causing what is called a false conversion. Someone who came to Christ for the wrong reasons, without repentance. John Wycliffe, one of the Bible translators in the 14th century, he said, if you do not use the law in gospel proclamation, you will fill the church with false converts. Why did he say that? Because if there is no law, then there is no knowledge of sin. If there is no knowledge of sin, then there is no repentance. And if there is no repentance, then there is no salvation. So we have to be responsible Christians and make sure that we tell people to come to Christ for the right reasons. Because God will judge the world in righteousness. And it does not matter how happy we are here today, now. What matters is what is going to happen to us after we pass, after we die. The Bible says that the world is worthless in the day of wrath. But it is righteousness that delivers you from death. So it is the righteousness of Christ that we need. So now, in the last few minutes that I have, I want to show you very practically how can you share the gospel using the law. So we can all start the conversation in the natural domain, right? We can all go to a stranger or to a family member and just ask him, Hey, such a nice day. Or such a nice dog. We can all do that, yeah? So the difficult part comes here. How can you swing that conversation to the spiritual realm? How can I start talking about the dog and then go to the things of God? Well, I do that using a gospel tract. This is a million dollar bill with Michael Jackson on it. A million dollars. And it has a gospel message in the back. So a gospel tract will help you to make that transition. And here is how it works. Hi, how are you doing? Such a nice day. Such a nice dog. Do you live around in the area? And then I go like this. Did you get one of these? And then I go like this. Did you get one of these? And because they are funny the person will take it gladly and will say, Oh, this is so cool. A million dollar bill. Oh, can I have another one for my wife, for my children? You say, yes, of course. Here you go. The person will laugh will say, I am rich. So you are having still a friendly conversation. And naturally the person will ask you what is this? And I would say something like it talks about the million dollar question or the most important question. Do you know what is that question? The person will say, what is it? Well, the question is what do you think happens after someone dies? So keep in mind I am just asking for her opinion. What do you think happens after someone dies? Now the person can answer me whatever they want. I will come back as a dolphin. It has happened to me, yes. Or I will go to purgatory. Or I will go straight to heaven. Whatever answer they give you I am a Jehovah's Witness, for example. Whatever answer they give you it will be classified in this big bag. That says you have to be a good person to earn it, to do it. It is only Biblical Christianity that says we cannot do enough so that is why God sent his son to take us. So after I ask that question what do you think happens? And the person tells me I believe I will come back as an eagle. I just have to ask do you think you are a good person to come back as an eagle and not as a rat? And here we are doing what Jesus did in the story of the rich young ruler. We are going to correct the understanding of good. And the person will say yes, I am a pretty good person. The Bible says in Proverbs 20.11 that most men will proclaim their own goodness. In other words they will say that they are good. So when they say yes, I am a pretty good person I just follow in the footsteps of Jesus and take him through the Ten Commandments. Ok, so you think you are a good person? Let me ask you a few questions to see if that is true. How many lies have you told in your life? That is the Ninth Commandment. Have you ever stolen anything? And the person will say no, never stolen. I just have to say have you ever downloaded something without paying for that? And they say yes, but that is sharing. And then I just say ask the author if that is sharing. Then I just have to I am taking him through the commandments. Have you ever looked at a woman and you have lusted after her? Have you ever hated someone? That is the Sixth Commandment. The person will admit that he has broken the law just as you and me. The person is not a good person now. I just have to go on and explain justice and destiny. If God judges you by the standard of the Ten Commandments would you be innocent or guilty? The person will admit that he would be guilty. If you are guilty then what would be your destiny, heaven or hell? The person will admit that it would be hell. Only then and only only then I can go and give him the good news. But I have a good news for you. Do you know what God did for you so that you don't have to end up in hell? And there I am going to explain the grace of God. I am going to make it amazing grace. When the sinner has recognized that his sin is like this big then he will very much appreciate the big grace that is to cover that big sin. And I will finish my Gospel presentation mentioning the two things that are most necessary for salvation. That is repentance and faith. So those are the two things that you have to ask. That is the response of someone so that he can be saved. So I hope that this small little presentation has put things in perspective. And will help you to get on fire for God and reach the others. Start by analyzing yourself and see if you came to Christ for the right reasons. And then share it with your family, with your co-workers, with your friends. I brought 100 of those million dollar bills for you. So you are without excuse. You have Gospel tracts now. And also I want to share with you before I go, this website. This is the website we use in the Tower of France. So if you want to know what we are doing in the Tower of France or you are interested in the ministry, this is the way to go. And I have an orange card also as a gift for you. So is it ok if I pray? So let me just pray before we dismiss. Dear Father, Father, thank you for this opportunity of being here. And I pray, Father, that the truth that we are speaking today will be affirmed in their hearts. Father, that we will appreciate your grace when we see the guiltiness of our hearts. And then that we can go and be faithful, bold and faithful witnesses for you. Please cause a fire and a burden in this church so that I can go and reach out those people in this beautiful city. And I pray a blessing for the pastor and his family that they will remain faithful ministers of your word. Thank you in Jesus' name.