Audio Transcript
Good Monday, and thanks for listening to the podcast. As Christians, we love the excellent news that Jesus Christ has “abolished demise and introduced life and immortality to gentle via the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10). This salvation is a good reward to us. But it surely’s not the best reward. The gospel is treasured to us as a result of the best prize of the gospel is that we get God. We get God. He turns into our Father. He turns into “our all-satisfying good friend.” He turns into “our protector and our supplier.” He is the prize of the gospel. We noticed that again in APJs 1079 and 1604 — a treasured level that we are going to return to subsequent time, on Wednesday, in APJ 1934.
However first, in the present day’s query. With such wealth in the excellent news, certainly we should always discover ourselves keen and desperate to share this gospel with everybody we come into contact with, proper? No. We regularly don’t. Gospel alternatives come up, and we are saying nothing. And so we’re left inside a pressure of our personal making — claiming to like one thing that we hesitate to discuss with others, and bringing into query the authenticity of our personal love. If we really cherished the gospel of Jesus Christ, why wouldn’t we extra eagerly share it? That results in our query in the present day, from a candid and nameless younger man who merely asks this: “Pastor John, right here’s my sincere and easy query to you. Will I am going to hell if I by no means evangelize? Not even as soon as.”
First, let me agree with this younger man that there’s such a actuality as hell, and folks actually do go there. It’s the righteous judgment of God. Nobody within the Bible spoke of it extra usually than Jesus. For instance, he stated to the Pharisees, “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to flee being sentenced to hell?” (Matthew 23:33). The apostle John spoke of the one who will — that is most likely essentially the most vivid description of hell within the Bible — “drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full power into the cup of his anger, and he might be tormented with hearth and sulfur within the presence of the holy angels and within the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up eternally and ever, they usually don’t have any relaxation, day or evening” (Revelation 14:10–11). That’s a horrible description, each for its size and its depth.
The explanation I simply underlined that’s as a result of I feel there are individuals who would hear a query like his and say, “He’s so caught on that fundamentalist fable of hell.” The query shouldn’t be based mostly on some custom or some marginal sectarian perception. The truth of hell is horrible. It belongs to the core message of what the gospel of Christ saves us from.
Matter of the Coronary heart
Now, again to the query. Will I am going to hell if I by no means evangelize? The reply to this query goes one thing like this. No one goes to hell for any explicit factor that he does or doesn’t do. Quite, an individual goes to hell as a result of the issues that he does or doesn’t do give enough proof that he’s not trusting in Jesus Christ as his treasured Savior, treasured Lord.
We’re saved by religion, not due to deeds (Ephesians 2:8–9). We’re justified by religion, not by works of the regulation (Galatians 2:16). If we consider on Jesus, we’ve got everlasting life. We don’t come into judgment; we’ve handed from demise to life (John 5:24). However religion is the type of expertise — it’s the type of actuality within the thoughts and the guts — that provides rise to like for different folks. “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for something, however solely religion working via love” (Galatians 5:6). Saving religion is the type of factor that works via love. Or, as James says, “Religion by itself, if it doesn’t have works, is lifeless” (James 2:17). It’s not actual. It’s not saving religion.
Due to this fact, persons are not in hell just because they did dangerous issues or didn’t do good issues. They’re in hell as a result of the issues they did or didn’t do confirmed the rebellious, unbelieving situation of the guts. “Out of the guts come evil ideas, homicide, adultery, sexual morality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matthew 15:19).
Why Am I Silent?
Again to our query: Will I am going to hell if I by no means evangelize? The query now turns into this: What’s the situation of the guts that doesn’t evangelize? There are some passages of Scripture that join being a Christian with using the mouth for Jesus’s sake. First Peter 2:9: “You’re a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a folks for [God’s] personal possession, that you could be proclaim” — for this reason you might be chosen, why you’re a Christian — “the excellencies of him who referred to as you out of darkness into his marvelous gentle.” We’re saved from darkness to gentle to make the excellencies of God identified, to declare them.
Romans 10:9: “If you happen to confess together with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and consider in your coronary heart that God raised him from the lifeless, you may be saved.” Why would that be? Why would it not be the confession with the mouth that results in salvation? Jesus offers a part of the reply in Mark 8:38, when he says, “Whoever is ashamed of me and my phrases on this adulterous and sinful era, of him will the Son of Man even be ashamed when he comes within the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
“We’re saved from darkness to gentle to make the excellencies of God identified, to declare them.”
So the query is, What does our silence imply? Does it imply that we don’t see or savor the excellencies of the one who referred to as us out of darkness? Does it imply that we don’t actually consider that Jesus is Lord? Does it imply that we’re, deep down, ashamed of Christ? These are the true questions. The query is, Why am I silent? That’s the query. Why?
Evangelize Believers
Possibly essentially the most useful factor — and I need to be useful right here; I don’t need to simply indict — I can do for our younger good friend is to make just a few sensible options for shifting ahead. He’s younger. He’s received time. He’s not consigned like a 90-year-old who appears again and says, “I’ve by no means performed this.”
First, keep in mind that the phrase “evangelize” is an English phrase constructed on the Greek phrase euangelizomai — you’ll be able to even hear “evangelize” in euangelizomai; they sound the identical — which implies “communicate excellent news,” particularly the excellent news of what Jesus has performed in dying for our sins and rising once more and forgiving us via religion. The phrase “evangelize” (or euangelizomai) shouldn’t be restricted to talking the excellent news to unbelievers. Let that sink in, younger fella. It consists of chatting with believers. Paul says in Romans 1:15, “I’m keen to evangelise the gospel” — “evangelize,” identical phrase — “to you [Christians] who’re in Rome.”
Now, that’s an important place to begin. Communicate of Christ to fellow Christians. Inform the excellent news to Christians. Inform them what you noticed in your devotions this morning. Inform them a superb promise that’s been serving to you thru some powerful instances not too long ago — that Christ made you and purchased for you along with his blood. Inform them what God has performed in your life, what he’s doing. Remind Christians how treasured Jesus is to you and must be to them, how the nice issues that come into our lives are owing to his demise (Romans 8:32).
“Communicate of Christ to fellow Christians. Inform the excellent news to Christians.”
I don’t know what age we’re coping with right here. If you happen to’re too younger and inexperienced to, say, train a category, a Sunday college class, or have a small group or younger folks, then volunteer to be an assistant in a category, say, of kids or a small group, and ask the instructor or the chief if, once in a while, you might give a witness to the younger folks, or the youngsters, or the small group, of what Christ did in your life, how he saved you and what he’s been doing in your life because you’ve been following him, what you’re studying from him.
Now, I make these options about evangelizing fellow Christians — telling them the excellent news that they already love — as a result of I feel that’s the conventional manner we make ourselves prepared to talk extra naturally to unbelievers. We should always develop up speaking of Christ and his worth and his goodness to believers.
Go Deep with Jesus
Right here’s one final suggestion. When you’ve got a good friend who’s an unbeliever, and you discover it awkward turning regular conversations to Jesus, contemplate this. Simply ask him point-blank when you might have lunch collectively, or no matter you do to hang around one on one, and that you simply’d like to have a dialog with him about some necessary belongings you’ve been interested by, praying about, and also you’d like to listen to a few of his ideas and inform a few of yours. In different phrases, simply ask him for permission to share what means essentially the most to you. That basically is simpler than turning a film dialog to Christ.
I feel one of many causes it’s so troublesome to evangelize in our day is that our conversations are virtually by no means critical. It’s very troublesome to take a lighthearted film or music or athletic dialog and say, “Oh, by the best way, there’s some life-and-death points to speak about.” It doesn’t work, proper? It’s the transition that simply appears so bizarre. You’ve simply received to be actual with folks and say, “Can we simply have a critical second?”
In the long run, the nice situation is that this: What’s happening in your coronary heart? Take care of Jesus. That is my closing encouragement. Take care of Jesus as an actual individual. Go down deep with him in his phrase as you pray over it and apply it to your life. Be totally actual with Jesus till he turns into very treasured to you. Then, whenever you communicate of him, you’ll really feel actual since you are actual.
