Maturity No.8 Sharing the Gospel

One of C.H. Spurgeon's students, on one particular occasion, put to him the question of the heathen who had never heard the gospel. And the student said, Mr. Spurgeon, what about those who have never heard the evangel? Isn't it a problem? Don't you think they will still be saved? And the classic reply of that very great man of God was this, it is more a question, it is more a problem to me, whether we who hear the gospel and fail to give it to others who have not, can be saved. Let me repeat his comment, because it's very significant, I think.

Spurgeon reckoned that the greatest problem that confronts Christian people is not the problem of the heathen who have not heard, but the problem of the Christian who has heard and does nothing about declaring the gospel to others. Can such a man or woman be saved? Now, the great Spurgeon didn't say they couldn't, he just said it was a problem. And when you read through the epistles of Paul, you begin to realize that this was a man who believed that gospel reception and gospel proclamation were two sides of the same coin.

In other words, it's not easy for Paul to think of someone who receives the good news of salvation and keeps it to himself or herself and doesn't communicate it to others. You will be aware that this church is called the Worthing Tabernacle. Well, like the plays of Shakespeare, it has also a subtitle.

Have you ever noticed what the subtitle of our church is? It's on the front of the building in brackets, but in capitals that are not quite as heavy as the ones identifying ourselves as the tabernacle. Well, the subtitle is Worthing Evangelical Church. In one sense, that description highlights the most positive aspect of our witness here downtown.

It underlines its strength, but it can also underline its weakness. You say, what do you mean? I don't understand. The word evangel basically means the good news of the gospel, and an evangelical Christian is someone who believes the good news of the gospel.

But the reason why I say that that word evangelical emphasizes our strength and also our weakness is this. It's alright as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. There is a chasm of difference between the word evangelical and the word evangelistic.

You can be evangelical and not be evangelistic. In other words, you can be concerned for the truths of the gospel, orderly services, the traditions of our church, and so on and so forth. You might know the doctrinal system or statement off by heart from top to bottom and bottom to top and so on and so forth.

Evangelical, yes. Orthodox in your belief, yes. But not handling your responsibilities rightly with regard to telling others of Jesus.

The person who does that, you see, or the people who do that, the church that does that, is an evangelistic church, not just an evangelical church. And what concerns me, my friend, this evening, and concerns me as pastor of this church, and I'm sure my brother elders share the burden, is that we shall be more than just evangelical. We need to be evangelistic, and let us recognize that there is a distinction between those two terms.

You see, when the apostle Paul, in the verse that is quoted on your note, says, Woe to me if I preach not the gospel, he is affirming two things. One, he believes the gospel, therefore he's an evangelical. Two, he wants to disseminate the gospel, so he's more than just an evangelical, he is evangelistic.

And the gospel that he preaches, well, what's it all about? Condense it to a summary fashion, put it in a creed of not more than half a dozen words, and it is this, we preach Christ and Him crucified. And that's a succinct summary of all that the mighty word of reconciliation involves. You remember how the apostle Paul, at the beginning of his letter to the Corinthians, makes it very, very clear, indeed, that he is not ashamed of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Turn to that chapter, will you, 1 Corinthians chapter 1. He's comparing, let me talk as you find it, he's comparing what the Jews are seeking for over against what the Gentiles are seeking for, and what he, as a herald of God, is prepared to offer. Well, the difficulty was this, that the Greeks were after wisdom, and the Jews were looking for some sort of miraculous sign, but what Paul had to set before, both communities at the human level did not impress them immediately. I'm reading from the 21st verse of 1 Corinthians 1. For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

Jews demand miraculous signs, Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. And what does that mean? Well, we run into a terrific obstacle. It's just like having a brick wall that's so very high in front of me every time I minister to the Jews.

Why? Well, it's a stumbling block. The idea of God dying on a cross, this is nonsense to the Jews. And for the Greeks, well, it's too naive.

To the Gentiles it's unacceptable because it does not in any way satisfy them intellectually. And he goes on to say, but to those whom God has called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. It only satisfies those who have been made sensitive to the things of the Lord, be they of the Jewish camp or of the Gentile camp.

Now why am I emphasizing these things? Well, it's part of our subject matter this evening, but also because there is a tendency these days to neutralize the gospel or to suggest that the essence of the gospel does not need preaching in the old-fashioned way. You know, as far as the sophisticated European is concerned, you don't speak about a man dying on the cross. That's the gospel of the slaughterhouse.

Okay, in Victorian times, all right for men like Spurgeon, but we're 100 years or so on. We live in most sophisticated environments. We can't conceive of people coming to the old rugged cross.

There must be some way of philosophizing upon this gospel, reducing it from its bluntness and its starkness and making it much more palatable for Western man. Oh well, once you tend to do that, what happens? Well, you've got no gospel at all. I make mention on my notes, I was advised in Jerusalem that the time has not come to preach the gospel to the Jew.

You are to comfort the Jew. You are to help the Jewish people economically and so on and so forth and take their side in political arguments. Well, that's quite debatable.

It's a point of opinion. But to say that the time has not come to preach the gospel of Christ and the cross of Christ to the Jew, what would the Apostle Paul have to say? There's nothing else to tell the Jew. How can you comfort them in Zion? Unless you tell them of the Messiah that has come from their own ranks and died on a hill outside of Jerusalem and because of His death, the Father is prepared to entertain Jewish sinners as He does Gentile sinners on a basis of confession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

No, the gospel has got to be preached to all communities. This is what Paul says and there's only one gospel. It's the same, thank God, for the Gentile as it is for the Jew.

Well, what is this gospel? Well, listen to a definition by Dr. Jim Packer. This gospel or evangelism, if you like, to give you some help in getting this focused in your mind, is to evangelize, is to present Christ Jesus to sinful men. This isn't in the notes.

To evangelize is to present Christ Jesus to sinful men in order that through the power of the Holy Spirit, they may come to put their trust in God through Him. That's what evangelism is. That's what the gospel is all about.

If you were to trace the history of the word back in the Anglo-Saxon, you would discover that gospel comes from God's spell. That wasn't just the name of some pop musical on the life of Jesus. That was old-fashioned English, God's spell, the spell of God, the good news that God has for Jewish sinners and Gentile sinners, that at Calvary He has made it possible for us to be reconciled with Him.

And this good news, once it's been received, is to be passed on. It's water. It's living water.

Not to be damned up and held, but to be poured out amongst others, being replenished each time you pass the news on, replenished with the power of God. Now, it seems to me that this is what the Apostle Paul, the great evangelist, the great gospel, understood more than most people. He was concerned to proclaim the message around the Roman world.

Listen to him as in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 and verse 19, he starts to speak about what his philosophy of life is, what his objective is. 1 Corinthians 9, 19, Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I become like a Jew, to win the Jews.

To those under the law, I become like one under the law, though I myself am not under the law, so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law, I become like one not having the law, though I am not free from God's law, but am under Christ's law, so as to win those not having the law. To the weak, I become weak, to win the weak.

I have become all things to all men, so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. That is perhaps the choicest passage in the New Testament that speaks of the attitude of a mature man, of a mature woman, who is dedicated to tell others of Jesus.

I made all things to all men. I will be skillful in the way that I present the truth. I will try and win the confidence of the Jews by not necessarily cutting across their tradition if I don't need to, and I'm not sacrificing any gospel principle.

Exactly the same applies with the Gentiles. This, my friend, is not just incidentally principles that were practiced in the first century with prophet. These were the sort of principles that men like Hudson Taylor had.

He goes to China, and he identifies with the Chinese. He tries to live like the Chinese live, as much as any European can, identifying himself with their culture, with their customs, getting alongside them. And without betraying any gospel principle, he wins their confidence and then directs them to the Christ of God.

I've seen this in India. Brothers from America, from the States, abandoning their lifestyle, even wearing the same clothes as the Indian, living like the Indian, eating as the Indian eats, relating to the Indian, becoming like an Indian as much as is possible so that they can win their confidence and ultimately lead the Hindu or the Muslim Indian to the foot of the cross. Now, to have that sort of attitude means, basically, you must have a burden to tell others of the lost.

And it's the word burden that is heard time and time again for those whose ears are sensitive. In the New Testament, here is our Lord Jesus Christ. How do you describe the emotions of Jesus? Thank God for his emotions.

And here he is on one of the high hills overlooking Jerusalem, and its citizens largely have dismissed what he has to say as nonsense. And so the tears flow down his cheeks, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem. And he remembers their past history, and it's such an ugly history, the history of the Jews in many a way.

They were blessed more than any other nation. God sent to them spokesman after spokesman, and they rejected, generally speaking, the message that was brought, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem. How oft would I have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathers her chicks, but you wouldn't.

The very attitude that you had towards the prophets in the Old Testament, you who stoned them, you have towards me, and you'll reject me, says Jesus. And that's why I weep. He had a burden, you see, for his people.

And in one sense, you cannot be an evangelical engaged in evangelistic activity if you haven't got a burden. We're not involved in trying to win an intellectual argument, we're trying to win people for Jesus Christ. That's sometimes why I feel personally, when I'm preaching the gospel, my emotions are going to break.

Because there's more than just an argument to win, there's a soul to win. And as Andrew Bryant makes very clear in an essay that he's just written for me to have a look at on evangelism, the truth of the matter is this, that unless people hear of Jesus, they're hell bound. That's blunt, it's stark.

And the average person in Worthing would say that I'm a fool for declaring it in the 1980s, but it's true. And when I sometimes think of a lot of those who hear the message and reject it, I find the emotions difficult in my breast to contain. Now listen to the Apostle Paul, he has more heightened emotions than I have, his spirituality is Himalayan in heights.

And he's talking about his people, his own people. Remember he's the Apostle to the Gentiles, but he's got an interest in the Jews. And in the ninth chapter of Romans, he opens up and the teaching isn't always easy to grasp.

His concern for the Jewish people, listen to him, Romans nine, not just the argument that follows, but the emotion that's wrapped up in the first two or three verses. I speak the truth in Christ, I am not lying. My conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit.

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Now, never did a man concede what his emotions were for the success of the gospel amongst his own people, as Paul does here. If only they could be saved, I take leave of my intellect, of my rational understanding, if I could barter with God for their salvation over against my damnation, then I'd opt for the latter because I so love these people.

That's a burden. And until we begin to rediscover something of that burden, it seems to me, we'll never be successful as evangelistic people, though evangelically we might retain the accuracy of our doctrinal statements. People sometimes say to me, when you come back from the East or from any mission enterprise, what's the most difficult thing to relate to back in Worthing? I've never answered the question publicly, but I'll try now.

The most difficult thing to relate to is the fact that many Christian people are completely off-center as to what our basic priorities are as a fellowship and as an evangelical community and communities on the South Coast. I am not concerned about specific orders of service. I'm not concerned about specific hymn books or prayers or what have you.

I'm not concerned whether we sing choruses or hymns. I'm not concerned what your view happens to be on secondary issues of the return of Jesus, whether you're amillennial, premillennial, postmillennial. I'm not really concerned as to where you stack up your theology on the experimental approach to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

What I am concerned for me and for you and for us as a people of God in the center of town is this, are we telling others of the gospel of Christ? When everybody in Worthing has heard, when everyone on the South Coast has heard, then I'll get more concerned and involved with these secondary issues. But until that has happened, then I tell you I am in no way concerned about secondaries until people in this country, let alone people around the world, have heard the primary of the gospel. Do you know I was at a mission meeting in London three weeks ago and I heard the new statistic that's just been brought out in regard to the metropolis.

Ninety-two percent of people in London never go to church at all. Not talking about occasional, haphazard going at Easter and what have you, lumping every situation, every conceivable possibility of attending church in London, ninety-two percent never go. So, London is as pagan, in fact it's more pagan, than say Kenya or Nigeria, some of these mission countries.

And you and I must have the same heartbeat as the Apostle Paul, woe to me if we don't preach the gospel, if we don't tell other people about these things and forget some of the quibbles on the secondary issues, we'll resolve them in glory. I've been using illustrations from Carey because I've been reading and re-reading a biography that's been loaned to me for the last few months. And there is a story, the biographer could not swear as to its accuracy, but at least even if it's just a legend, it's interesting.

There's a story of Carey when he moved from being a cobbler to a school teacher and he was teaching his class geography and he had a primitive sphere of the world, globe of the world, and he was pointing out the various nations. And when he got to India, he indicated to them the estimated number of Indians alive at that time, which was still fantastic, though nowhere near as big as it is today. And Carey apparently said with tears in his eyes, they're Muslims and they're Hindu and they don't know Christ and they're spinning on their way to hell.

He has a burden, you see. Remember that lady who just died recently, what was her name, the film star Inga Bergman? The only reason I remember Inga Bergman, if I've got that right, I went to see a film of hers. She depicted Gladys Aylward, not saying that she did it very well, but it was a depiction of Gladys Aylward.

And she made Gladys Aylward come alive to me because I'd never read of this lady, though I'd heard that she'd gone to China in rather an unorthodox fashion, take it on the Trans-Siberian Railway and then you turn right when you get to the end of the line, so I understand. She had such a burden, such a love for the Chinese people, that stimulated her to take on the China Inland Mission and to say that the executive of that mission were wrong, she did have a call and she was going to China whether they helped her or not. A burden, you see.

It's a burden that you, that I require for being effective evangelistically. But it's not just a burden. The Apostle Paul, in teaching on maturity in an approach to evangelism and enlarging upon the teaching of our Saviour, indicates that there is a cost factor involved.

I mean, you understand this, don't you, when you're reading in Acts 20 and as he's taking his leave from these people in Ephesus, there's the cost of his own emotion. He loved the people and he was saying goodbye and that's not an easy thing to do. But then he gives us a little cameo, a little picture of the way that he lived for the three years he was pastor at Ephesus.

Look at the 19th verse, if you're on Acts 20. I serve the Lord with great humility and with tears, although I was severely tested by the plots of the Jews. And he goes on to say how he had ministered for three years publicly and personally, going from house to house, bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There was a cost factor involved. And when he writes to the Corinthians, he talks about his lifestyle, not very often that Paul draws a curtain on his own life. And we see him shipwrecked.

We see him bearing the whip of the Romans as he's scourged because of his gospel proclamation. We think of him, as one person made the powerful metaphor, metaphorical comment, we think of him as a bleeding, wounded rabbit in the snow, following his bloody trail from place to place. And he won't give up because he's a gospel intoxicated man.

He's drugged on the gospel. Chop him into little pieces and the gospel is in every piece. And if you think that's a bit of a high-blown metaphor, I got it from David Wilkerson.

Do you remember his book, The Cross and the Switchblade, how he comes face to face with one of the thugs of New York and Wilkerson, a pretty diminutive, thin character, says to this chap, you can take your knife and you can chop me up into little bits, but every little bit will love you. And he won Nicky Cruz for the Lord because of the burden and the love and the cost that he was prepared to accept as a proclaimer of the gospel in New York. Well, thus the Apostle Paul, following the steps of our Lord Jesus.

Yes, it can be costly. The Lord Jesus spelt it out, didn't he? He said, look, don't come to me unless you recognize that any other human relationship must be secondary to the one that you have with me. If you're so concerned about your mother and your father or about your children and you put them before me, it is an illegitimate ordering of priorities.

I must come first. That's very hard teaching. But it fell from the lips of the gentle Jesus.

And he said that a man must be prepared, if necessary, to lose his life in order to find it. Oh, we find other statements our Lord said much more comforting and we go to them more often and sometimes we get an imbalance in our understanding of his teaching because, well, you know, it's like the promise box, isn't it? You pick and choose what you put in the box because you don't want to give anyone a shock in the morning. You know, you imagine going to your promise box at eight o'clock and pulling out the text and it says, flee from the wrath to come.

Not going to help you during the day, you're going to feel a little bit alarmed and concerned and so they get a nice sweet text that will send you on your way. I'm not speaking against promise boxes as such. What I am speaking against is, is not taking the whole sweep of Jesus' teaching and putting emphasis on each little bit as Jesus put emphasis.

Now there's a cost factor. Now for many of us it's not going to be the cost of martyrdom or even the cost of severing human relationships and being catapulted across the world into some third world situation. But there could be the cost of embarrassment.

You know, one of the things that stops the gospel being proclaimed is that we don't want to feel a fool in front of other people. Now I speak with compassion, I've failed the Lord so many times in this area. Remember as a lad out of theological college and going into a school in London with a staff of twenty-odd, didn't know apart from the headmaster that any one of them really claimed to be a Christian.

And just to say to any of them that one belonged to Jesus and believed the Bible, oh it took so long just to do that. Why? Because of embarrassment. He got a Marxist who was diabolical in the way that he could put across his arguments and I was scared of this man.

I don't know why I was scared but I was. Probably because as I say, embarrassment. And what's embarrassment but a sort of perverted pride, afraid of being a fool for the sake of Christ that someone might run circles around you in your argument.

Well there's a cost of being embarrassed. There's a cost of time. It takes time to win people for the Lord.

Sometimes it's not a conversion just like that. It's a process. You have to win their confidence.

You've got to be with them for a long time. They may have a somewhat neurotic disposition and that can bleed you of time. But that's one of the costs.

Thank God for people who spent time with you and with me. Thank God for my Sunday school teachers. Always feel embarrassed when I think about Sunday school.

The time that I got thrown out of Sunday school. What we did to our teachers in terms of being mischievous and what have you. God bless them.

They still prayed for us and I wouldn't be here myself along with five other lads who were in my group in Sunday school who were in full time ministry if those teachers hadn't been prepared to spend time and to wait for some sort of maturity to come to us. That's cost. And there are obstacles of course.

Obstacles that we put up, red herrings, smokescreen, in which we try to tell ourselves that we're really just not ready for this yet. I once read a parody on evangelicals and their lack of evangelism, only it was written about fishing and you know how I really love fishing. And it talked about holding a conference on fishing and having seminars on fishing and showing rods on fishing and bait and hooks and tackle and all the bits and pieces and when you'd finish one conference you went to another conference and then another conference and then another conference but you never fished.

And that is more than just a humorous tale. You can go to seminars on evangelism. You can go to an evangelical church.

You can stay there for twenty odd years and you never evangelize. It's possible, isn't it? You ask yourself, it's a hard question, ask yourself, when did I last honestly on my own try even to start to tell someone about Jesus Christ? Ask yourself that question. And if you can say I'm doing it all the time, then you've every right to have opinions on these secondary issues.

But until you have got right on the primary one, forget about the secondaries because you've no right even to have an opinion. If you're not doing what Jesus said, for Jesus said, go ye out into all the world and preach the gospel. Some of us are waiting for a call when it's on the page.

Jim Elliot, who died in 19, what was it, 54 in Latin America, one of the martyrs of the Auker Indians, wrote in his diary when he was in Wheaton College, USA, what people are waiting for is a call. What they really need is a kick in the pants. Well, maybe the language wasn't eloquent, but maybe the sentiments were more biblical than some of us would give them credit for.

The obstacles, I don't know enough. And yet when you read the Acts of the Apostles, there were those converted on the day of Pentecost who later on in a couple of chapters are on the streets gossiping the gospel. They never went to London Bible College, they never even made it in Bible College, they never even came to any seminars at an evangelical church to any degree, though the Apostles were teaching all the time.

I'm not too sure what the basic minimum is that one needs to have before you can communicate. I would have thought just an experience of Jesus Christ and His love, and a recognition that He died on the cross to save. That may not sound sophisticated intellectually, but there are thousands of people who would be glad just to hear that message from you, and to hear how it's changed your life.

Don't say I don't know enough, for Lord Jesus loves you and you're aware of that, then that's enough to tell people. Or I'm not good enough, as though you've got to be Gabriel's twin before you can be pushed out in the area of annunciation, announcing the good news of Jesus Christ. And as for tools, well what do you need? We provide them at the tab actually.

We give leaflets and we leave them by the exits, and some dear faithful folk take them and use them, and others just pass them by, and pass them by, and pass them by. But why not take a little leaflet? This rather brilliant presentation of the gospel, Chaotic World, is the title, the track was drawn, it seems to indicate that I authored it, but I didn't. It was Graham Payne actually.

It was drawn up just to explain the gospel to other people, and to help as a tool. Why not take one of those? Or take one of those invitation cards for folks to come along to our morning or evening service on a Sunday, and try and place it. Even if you find that difficult to do, as I've mentioned before, at least start by getting up at four o'clock and popping it through somebody's letterbox, they'll not see you at four o'clock, unless they're like my neighbours who suffer from insomnia and see everything I do.

You take something and try and pass it on, or get someone involved in conversation. William Wilberforce, he was a great man, last century, and he used to, I said last century before that, he used to have conversation starters. You know, he'd go into a room and he'd have it worked out in his mind how somehow or other he would get in the fashionable society amongst whom he, amongst which he moved, how he would get the word of the Gospel across.

Now I suggest that maybe we could work on things like this. I'm not going to go through because my time's more or less spent. The account of our Lord and the woman at Samaria, there's a tape actually in our library in which I try to bring out the five or four basic principles that our Lord Jesus illustrates in his handling of evangelism as he meets with this woman.

And I'd ask you if you'd get hold of that tape and listen to it. Have you got a burden for evangelism? There is a true sense, says Canon Max Warren, see how much I'm with the Anglicans these days. There is a true sense in which no Christian has any right to feel comfortable as long as there are any people in the world who do not know Christ.

That should be written across our hearts. No right to feel comfortable as long as there are any people in the world who do not know Christ. When you came to the Lord, you came as a prodigal, didn't you? You went into your father's house and he met you, he embraced you, he put on his wedding ring, so to speak, and identified himself with you.

Now someone has very well expressed the thought, you go into the kingdom as the prodigal, you go into your father's house as the prodigal, but you must come out as a good Samaritan. Travelling up and down the road of life, seeking out those who are lost and endeavouring by the grace of God and the sharing of the Gospel to save them. You go in as a prodigal, you come out as an evangelical, as a Samaritan, wanting to share.

And that seems to me to be the hallmark of Christian maturity in our understanding of the Gospel. Go on from being merely evangelical to becoming evangelistic. And if you're not evangelistic, you've no rights to hold any opinions on secondary areas within evangelical theology.

Amen.