Evangelism Is Not Optional
Tom Shrader teaches that God is a God of second chances, as seen in His renewed call to Jonah, and emphasizes that every believer has been called to evangelism just as Jonah was called to Nineveh. He addresses common excuses Christians make for avoiding evangelism and explains that sharing the gospel is not optional but an inevitable part of Christian witness. Using 2 Corinthians 5, he describes believers as ambassadors for Christ with a ministry of reconciliation to the world.
“If you know enough to believe the Gospel, you know enough to share the Gospel.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Jonah (2004)
Recorded: 2004 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 52 min
Themes: evangelism, witnessing, obedience, calling, second chances, ministry, gospel, ambassador, avoiding evangelism, fearful of witnessing, new believer, reluctant christian, feeling inadequate, pastor, evangelist, struggling with obedience
Scripture: Jonah 3:1-2, Matthew 28:19-20, Acts 1:8, 2 Timothy 2:10, 1 Corinthians 15:3, Romans 3:23, Romans 5:8, 2 Corinthians 5:17-20, John 20:21, 1 John 4:19
Theological Themes: great commission, evangelistic calling, ministry of reconciliation, ambassadorship, missional living, gospel witness, divine calling, christian responsibility
Full Transcript
Well, that's a great deal for me because I get to follow that. How's that? Well, Johnny, I admire your bravery. It takes a brave man to go over to that piano like that. Takes a brave man, John.
I was just a poor farm boy. When I was seven, I was about three foot one. My mama said, Tom, I don't think you're going to amount to much, but I love you. So she entered me in a freckle contest. We were farmers. My dad was cutting edge. He got himself a pair of chickens, rooster, and we started a boneless chicken farm. The chickens just kind of flopped around in our place.
Some of you have told me that you are leaving early tomorrow. Normally, I do this the last day, but you've asked about church. Let me give you just two websites, and I want you to know, absolutely, I gain nothing from this. There's no financial benefit to this at all, but if it's helpful, it might be helpful to you.
Church and Ministry Resources
One is the website of the ministry we do during the week, and I've alluded to it. Basically I'm in the marketplace three times a week teaching Bible studies. They're very different than what I do on Sunday. They're topical in nature. That website, all one word, Priority Living AZ. So I've got to get it all together now, PriorityLivingAZ.org. You'll find there a list of all the tapes we've ever done, but you will find also audio for the most recent series, maybe in the last couple of years, and notes and stuff.
The other website is from the church. Our church is East Valley Bible Church, so the website initial is ebbc.org. There's just helpful resources to you there. You'll get on that site and you'll just be flipping around. We just started some video stuff, and in fact we're webcasting live at 10:30 now on Phoenix time. You'll see archives there. Also, for some of you who are maybe looking for study material, our adult ministry has some study guides on there, and there are mountains of useful information there.
I don't for a second pretend to say, go here and here's a Tom resource. Go there and there's a resource. If you want to communicate, feel free to email me. Brevity is the soul of wit, and I'm not a really good emailer, so I'll get you back something if it's necessary. So those are the two websites, prioritylivingaz.org and then ebbc.
God Is a God of Second Chances
Let me invite you to turn to Jonah 3, and verse 1 and 2 is where we left off this morning. We've been talking so much about the fact that the main character in this book is not Jonah, but it is God. We've seen the Lord intervene. The Lord has hurled this great storm, this wind. He has appointed a fish in chapter 1, verse 17. Chapter 2, verse 10, the Lord commanded the fish to vomit Jonah on the dry land.
We said this morning, and got a little bit sidetracked, but said we wanted to make two points to you this morning. The first one's there in verse 1 of chapter 3, and that is that God is a God of a second chance. That's great news to you and to me. He loved us. In fact, we love Him because He first loved us. Our salvation was generated from God.
Every Christian Has a Call to Mission
Here's the second point that I wanted to make. We're going to take just a little ride here, maybe away from the text just a bit. That's that you and I, like Jonah, have a call on our life.
So often when we talk about missions, we talk about, or we seem to imply that there's a necessity that you have a passport and a visa and your shots and some pills, otherwise you're not a missionary. But God has called all of us to be missionaries, and every person in this room, and most likely the majority of us will be missionaries right here where God's placed us, here in Vancouver, Washington, or Vancouver, Canada, wherever God's placed us.
I want you to get a hold of that, because I have discovered that by and large, Christians don't seem very excited about this. By and large, Christians seem to see mission work or evangelism more as a burden rather than an opportunity.
What Excites You?
Think about what excites you. Think about those occasions in your life. Maybe it's the celebration of arrival of a new baby. There's a young couple in our church. He just joined our staff, in fact, while I was gone. So he just joined last week, and they were expecting and had their first baby this morning at 2:43 or something, and they'll be so proud to announce that. We'll get a little something in the mail. It'll be a little pink thing with a little picture, and she'll be like, yes, because they're ugly. They've got to admit, they're just about as ugly as can be when they come out of there. It seems a cross between Churchill and Gandhi. So we'll get this picture, and then we'll all go, isn't she cute? But then they grow, and then they become beautiful.
So you get a birth announcement, or you get a new car, and there's nothing like the smell of a new car, or you have a new house, and there's this housewarming party, or maybe you're in business, and you get a promotion, and you close a deal. Nobody has to tell you to celebrate those occasions. Nobody has to tell you, listen, let's have this housewarming or send out this announcement, because those things seem to really excite you.
I want to tell you, we shouldn't have to
Tell each other this, but we do, that God tells us to be excited, and God commands us to share His Word, doesn't He? Matthew 28, verse 19 to 20, "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."
Now, when you and I look at that sentence, the emphasis seems to land on the go. That's how we read it. "Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations." In the Greek, in the structure, the verb is not go. The verb is make disciples. The sentence or the verse is probably better read, "As you are going, make disciples." As you're walking through whatever life brings to you, make disciples. As you're walking through Cannon Beach.
Natural Opportunities for Ministry
It's interesting, and again, it is just such a privilege to be here. We love to be here. Why we aren't invited up here more, I don't understand, but we love to come up here. You would think we'd be here on an annual basis, wouldn't you? Think we'd be here all the time. You think we'd be the teacher in residence. I mean, you just think this would be where we are. Well, I love to come up here.
The last time we were up here, I ran into a guy down on the beach, and we just started talking, and we ended up developing a relationship, and we walked into town. We're walking down here the first day. We're walking down the street, and this is amazing to me, because I'm walking along, and I see him. Oftentimes, I even called before I came, but I knew I'd run into him. I ran into him, and he said, "Tom, how are you doing?" I said, "How are you doing?"
Here's what he says to me. He said, "How's Susan?" He's never even met her other than a hello, and it amazed me, because I introduce her as Sarah all the time, so he remembers her name. It's unbelievable. So tomorrow, we're going to have lunch and talk. The idea is that everywhere you go, as you're going, you're an ambassador for Jesus Christ. God brings these people into your life, and your responsibility is to just be real, is to share Jesus and who He is and what He's doing, to be able to give a defense, an explanation of the hope that lies within you.
Acts 1, verse 8, Jesus says, "You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. You'll be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, even to the remotest parts of the earth." That's what God has commanded for you and for me. Paul writes this to Timothy, "For this reason I endure all things, for the sake of those that are chosen, that they also may obtain the salvation, which is in Christ Jesus with the eternal glory." 2 Timothy 2:10.
The Reality of Our Calling
So that's what I want to camp on just a second, and then we'll move off of it. Is that just as Jonah received a call so clearly and undeniable, his probably more specific than yours, "arise, go to Nineveh," God has said to you, "go and make disciples."
Now, I don't want to beat around the bush and tell you that this is not going in any way to be difficult. It is. We sent a missions group to Mexico this year, and I was going through the brochure. I'm not a real detailed guy, but I was going through the brochure that they put together for them, the instruction manual.
In it, it said this: "This is going to be a hard trip. Travel is going to be long, hard, tiring, cramped, without many stops. You will need to sleep in uncomfortable, cramped, cold, noisy conditions if you get to sleep. There will be bugs, and some of them will bite. Everything will smell, mostly for the worse. Food might not be what you want when you want it, the amount you want it, or at the right temperature you want it. Some meals you'll miss altogether. There's a good chance you'll get sick from many different causes, leaving you miserable, even if you're careful. You might have problems with team members or even team leaders. You might not get the job you want, or you may get the job you didn't want. You could feel useless at times, or so busy you can't even think. The days are going to be long and tiring. Yet through it all, you'll find this trip very rewarding."
But it's kind of a brochure, isn't it? This is tough. This is difficult. It's awkward. And yet, we can get so excited.
The Natural Joy of Sharing Good Things
If you go and see a movie, and you really enjoy this movie, the most natural thing in the world is start to tell everybody, "I just saw this, have you seen this? You need to see this movie." It's a movie. Or "I just read this book." It's just like Life 2.0. I love that book. I talked to my brother today. I said, "You've got to read this book. I know you're going on vacation. Grab it for plane reading. It's perfect for you to read."
But now, here we are. Those of us who have sinned, been separated from God. God sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross so we'll have everlasting life. We who are sinners and separated from Him are now united with Him. We are so close to Him that God, through the Holy Spirit, indwells us. And now, somebody says to us, "We need to share your faith." I go, "Really? Do I really need?" Do you see what I'm saying?
The Complete Commission
He says, "Go and make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the Father, Holy Spirit. And observe them all that I commanded you." You'll find churches that put such a great emphasis sometimes on evangelism that they forget that these people are now born again and now they need to be nurtured. "Teach all that I've commanded you." And there's a whole series of things that that can mean.
I think it's an accurate view of Scripture. The sovereignty of God, especially as it relates to salvation. The depravity of man. Salvation by grace alone. The security of the believer. And that there's work to do. I'm saved.
by grace through faith. That's not of ourselves. It's a gift of God, so that you and I won't boast because that's what we would do. If we could do anything to earn this, we would boast about it. But salvation, no, no. It's from Him. But He saved us for a reason. Verse 10 of Ephesians 2. For His workmanship. To go and do the work that He's prepared for us.
So my question to you is this: Are you answering this call? If there's a little bit of Jonah in all of us, I would guess that there's a little bit of Jonah in us as it comes to evangelism as well. What's your attitude toward evangelism?
I'll just give you some statistics here. Only 3 out of 5 who identify themselves as born-again Christians—actually the number is 57%—feel a sense of responsibility to tell others about their faith. That's an amazing number.
Why Don't We Share Our Faith?
I'm going to start with a negative premise here, but it's probably accurate. I'm going to ask this question: Why don't you share your faith? I sat down and just made a list of things that pop into my mind.
Number one: I'm afraid that I can't answer every question. That's one of those things. I'm going to sit down and I'm going to talk to somebody and all of a sudden they're going to talk to me about dinosaurs and they're going to talk about these Gospels and writings that are discovered and all these things, and you're going to have to say, "I don't know." And you're going to feel like an idiot. And that's what I'm afraid of. I don't want to say that: "I don't know."
Look, this is important. If you're somebody who writes stuff down, write this one down. This is a good one: If you know enough to believe the Gospel, you know enough to share the Gospel. If you know enough to believe it, you know enough to share it.
They're going to ask you questions. Some of you have already experienced it this week. The most frequent answer I give, and I mean this, by far is, "I don't know." I don't know. Some of you asked me to speculate about Jonah. I don't know. I'm kind of stuck. If it says it here, I know. If it's outside of that, I don't know. And I'm intellectually challenged because I'm not that curious. I don't know. I don't know. It's okay to say.
If you know enough to believe the Gospel, you know enough to share the Gospel. You're going to be growing in this. And so, obviously, you have more answers the more you grow with Him. But it's like we looked at last night with the blind man. All I know is I was blind and now I can see. All I know.
My Early Evangelism Experience
When I got saved in March of 1980, and as I mentioned, it was pretty radical. I come from a religious background, so I'd been around all this stuff but kind of just determined it was irrelevant to me. Susan has no background at all in any of this stuff. None of it.
So I got saved. God saved me. And her recollection of this and mine are very different. So I tend to think I'm probably right. Okay, that's my suspicion. But she says that I would come home to her almost every night and say, "You're going to hell. You're going to hell. You're going to hell." And she said after—and I don't remember this—but she said after a month or two, she would say to me, "Are you going to be there?" And I said, "No." And she said, "Fine. I'll go there." We weren't real close in the early days.
But I never had her. I mean, I knew I didn't know anything. And I knew this: I was blind and now I could see. I was dead and now I was alive. And my life had meaning and purpose. It's because the Bible taught it.
Fear of Rejection
You might be afraid of rejection. The first time I shared my faith with one of my family members, I called my brother and I said—and I took him through the whole thing. And I used to have, this will be hard, I used to drink a lot. That was my old thing. I liked to drink. I would drink a lot and I was not—I've never done anything in moderation except work. Okay. Everything else I do to excess. I'm not in the middle of the road.
If it's time to eat, it's like tonight. I'm sitting over there and I'm thinking right now, "I'm going to have ice cream. I'm not going to have ice cream." If you see me over there, you will see a mountain of ice cream in front of me. So I've never done anything in moderation except work.
So the guys used to say at the end of the day, they'd say, "Do you want to stop and have a beer?" And I'd say, "I'll go and get drunk or I'll go home, but I have no interest in having a beer." So that's just the way I live. I lived that way from about the time I was 19 on.
So I'm sharing, pouring my guts out to my brother and I'm sharing with him. And all of a sudden, he starts to laugh. And he's laughing and he's laughing, which is not exactly what I expected. I said, "What are you laughing at?"
And he said, "Do you remember, do you remember at my rehearsal dinner, do you remember that you got so drunk you decided to walk home and you passed out down on Third Street and a friend of yours who was delivering pizzas picked you up and brought you home? Do you remember that?" I said, "I remember waking up smelling like pepperoni, but I don't really remember the details. I don't remember any of them." And he had me stuck in that.
And so now it's time to share your faith. And you know you're going to be rejected.
Understanding Rejection
I'm about to give you some real encouragement here because some of you got converted as adults. And so there's all sorts of yuck in there, isn't there? There's some really yucky, stinky stuff in there. And there's some friends. And now as you begin to take a stand for Christ, these people are pushing you away, aren't they?
Here's what I want you to see. They're not rejecting you. They like you. They go to the ball games with you, the movies with you, and dinner with you, and camping with you. They like you. They can't stand the Jesus that they see in you.
So you're going to experience rejection. That's what He said. Didn't He say something like this? If they persecute me, they'll persecute you. It may be, here's another reason, it may be that you don't
You don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. You're afraid you're going to offend somebody, their good friends or their co-workers. And you don't want to risk the relationship. This is a person that you love so much and you care for so much that you're afraid if you say, "Jesus is the only way," you'll push him away.
Think about this. This is somebody that you care so deeply for and love so much that you don't want to lose a friendship with them, but you're willing to see them lose eternity in a place called hell.
The Gospel Sounds Foolish to the World
You're afraid you're going to sound foolish. Well, that's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, doesn't He? He said the cross is foolish to those who are perishing.
Think about this now with me for a second. You're just a regular guy. We go down and we grab a guy out of Bill's Tavern, bring him in, sit him down, and we say, "You're a regular guy. We got a couple of propositions for you. Here's one. Just be the best you can be. Don't really do anything really big and bad, and you'll go to heaven. That's one."
"The other one is this. There was this guy named Adam. And, well, he sinned, and when he sinned, he really ate this fruit. When he ate this fruit, then he plunged all of us into ruin. And then, a few thousand years later, God became man. He just dwelled around us. He was just like us. He was like us in every way, except He didn't sin, because He didn't have a daddy, humanly speaking. His father was the Holy Spirit. His mom was a virgin. And then He lived 33 years, and He never sinned. And then they crucified Him. And when they crucified Him, what happened there is He traded places with us, and then they buried Him, because that's what they do with dead guys. And then three days later, He rose from the dead. And if you believe that, you go to heaven."
Humanly, I'm serious. Doesn't that sound kind of goofy? And yet, to you and me, it makes perfect sense. Why? Well, because the cross is foolish to those who are perishing. They persecuted Him. They'll persecute you. You will hurt some people's feelings.
Faith Is Personal but Not Private
Here's another thing. You may think that your faith is a private matter. One of the presidential candidates the other day said this. He said, "Life begins at conception." Now, that's a pretty strong statement. Because if life begins at conception, then we've got some real serious issues after that, doesn't it? He said, "Life begins at conception, but I believe that the whole matter of whether to end that life or not is a matter between a woman and her doctor, and it's a private matter, and I'm not about to take what I believe and force it on other people."
Here you go. Your faith is a deeply private matter. It's a deeply personal matter. But it must infiltrate all that you believe.
Can you imagine sitting down with a guy, and you're hiring a guy, and you're saying, "Well, we're looking for somebody here, and let me see. That looks good. You went to school. That looks pretty good. It says here you go to church. You go to church?" "Yes, I do." "What kind of church is it?" "It's a Bible church. They teach all this stuff about the Bible, and they teach all these great things, and they tell us how to behave, and they give us an ethic, and they really call us to a higher standard and to live and to be honest and straightforward, to be a man, a woman of integrity. But I want you to know something, sir. None of that's going to affect the way I work for you. I lie and steal and cheat just like everybody else." How stupid is that?
Your faith is a personal matter, but it's not a private matter, and it must affect all that you do and say and how you live.
The Reality of Hell and Our Response
Maybe you're convinced, and I think a lot of people are, even Christians, that somehow it is a narrow way, but God's got a plan B. He just hasn't shown it to us yet, that somehow everybody's going to be okay.
W. Robert Godfrey writes this: "One of the tragedies of so much contemporary church life is that the truth about the holiness of God and the wrath against sin has all but disappeared from view. In an effort to connect with contemporary non-Christians, the church has given much of its energy to teaching adjustment and self-acceptance. The implication of this teaching is that the great human need is to have peace with yourself, but such a view is far from biblical revelation and from true Christianity."
The world is sick and dying. The problem is sin, and the solution is Jesus, and you and I hold that solution.
Maybe, and I've got two more here, maybe you don't really care. Maybe there are people around you that are going to hell, and you don't even care. I challenge you all the time. Here's what I do all the time. Let's imagine, and I know you can't look in the heart of the people around you. I understand all of that, but you go into your office. Here's all these cubes. To the best of your knowledge, grab a cup of coffee and walk through and try to figure out if the person in that cube or office is going to heaven or hell.
So you're just walking, you've just got your coffee or your beverage, and you're walking through and you're just going, "Hell, hell, heaven, hell, hell, heaven, hell, hell." That's just the church office. "Hell, hell, hell." So you do that, but now you've got to ask yourself, here's these people. Here's these people that are right in your sphere of influence that to the best of your knowledge, they're going to spend eternity in hell, and apparently you don't care enough to tell them.
The Christian Bubble Problem
It may be, and here's the last thing, it just may be you're not around unbelievers. One of the things that started to bother me just a bit is we've got Christian everything. We've got Christian books, Christian music, Christian tapes, Christian comics, Christian TV, Christian radio, Christian cookies, Christian... We've got Growing Dogs God's Way. We've got everything there is out there. We've got everything...
There is out there. Christian, Christian, Christian, Christian, Christian, Christian, Christian. Let me help you out here. This is a big deal. This is a huge deal. This should be another one of those big moments for you. Christian is a noun, not an adjective.
So look, here you go. You will see when you go to the yellow pages, Christian plumber. You'll see a guy with a little fish or something that tells you you're a Christian plumber. There is no Christian way to fix your toilet. There's no biblical way to fix your toilet. There's no way that's better than the other that God's revealed to us. And I'm serious about that.
If I go home, we're flying home Tuesday. I get home Tuesday afternoon and I say to Susan, I've got chest pains. And she takes me to the hospital and says, we've got a cardiologist. You've got problems. We've got a choice. And I say, well, give me the choice. Well, we've got this guy. He leads a Bible study. He's a godly guy. He's a great man of God. He finished last in his school. And he's lost 50% of his patients. Or we've got this guy who's a pagan who doesn't care a rip about God, but he's never lost a patient. I don't even need to pray about this. Give me the pagan guy. Why? Because he's just slicing, dicing, and cutting, and pulling, and ripping, and knitting together. That's what it is. It's a mechanical thing. It's not an adjective. It's a noun.
Engaging the World Around Us
And some of us are so... Because it's a scary, yucky world, isn't it? And that's what's happening. That whole part, we're starting to leave the cities and move to Bend, and move to Sisters, and move to Ashland, and move to little towns all around because we think we're going to be safe there. But you know what? You can't go and make disciples if you don't have unbelievers around you. You've got to be in the world.
I don't think there's anything particularly, to me, good about the fact that you don't have any unbelieving friends. I've got pagans and their buddies all around me. And they don't get me. And they don't understand it. You have one guy, especially, he says, "You know, Schrage, you used to be great. You were like..." And this is his picture. "You were 31 flavors. We could take any sin, but you could just add your own little gift to this. It was incredible. And now you're vanilla."
I said, "Isn't it interesting when you get in trouble, you dial 1-800-VANILLA. Because when your kids are in trouble, you don't call the guys you just snorted coke with. You call me." Isn't that interesting? So you've got to go into this world.
The Gospel Message
What's the message? 1 Corinthians... We're not going to take a ton of time on this because you know it. 1 Corinthians 15:3. Here's the gospel in a nutshell. "For I delivered to you of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins." Very important now. You and I take this for granted. The world acknowledges that He died, but Paul tells us He died for a reason. He died for our sin, according to the Scripture. He was buried. He was raised again, according to the Scriptures.
That all men have fallen short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23. The wages of sin is death. So when somebody says, "You know, here's my deal with God. God, I'm not looking for anything free. I just want my wage. I want what I've earned." Well, what you've earned is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. If you accept, if you believe, if you respond.
I was watching the World War II dedication to memorial, and there was a man there, a general, retired general, and he looked like he was an incredible American man. He said, "I want to bow for a word of prayer." Here's what he said, and I quote, "Please pray to your chosen God." That's the problem, isn't it?
The Problem of False Religion
I'm watching Regis and Kelly one day. I do this for you. I don't do it for me. And that little guy, the little home alone guy, little Macaulay Culkin guy is on there, and he's now, he's evolved into what he is, and he's morphed, and he's kind of weird. And he said, "I'm spiritual. I'm not religious. I have this idea of spirituality, not religion." Kelly Ripa said this, "It's important that your religion works for you." No, it's important that your religion is true.
That's what Paul writes to Timothy. In the last days, men will be lovers of self and lovers of money, and they will hold to a form of religion, but they will deny its power, and the power is in the blood of Jesus Christ. So we take this message to the marketplace. We're able to say that God demonstrated His love toward us, Romans 5:8, and that while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us. That if any man is in Christ, he's a new creature. The old things have passed away, and now we are ambassadors for Christ.
Our Ministry of Reconciliation
Let me spend just a second on this, because it's so important. In fact, I'm even going to have you turn there. 2 Corinthians 5. Will you turn there just a second, please? 2 Corinthians 5. Great passage. Classic passage. Worthy of so much more time than we're going to give it.
2 Corinthians 5, verse 17: "Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things have passed away, new things have come." He's a God of a second chance. Now all of these things are from God. Here's the key. Who reconciled us to Himself through Christ. See who initiates and continues all of that? It's God reconciling us to Him. And then He gave us, 2 Corinthians 5:18, a ministry of reconciliation. That's your ministry to the world.
So in just a few months from now, you're going to be able to turn on all sorts of secular radio stations, and you'll hear this song that will say, "God and sinner reconciled." That's what this is about. The reconciliation that took place was Jesus dying so that man could be saved. And now you, I, me, we, us, we have a ministry of reconciliation. Verse 19 explains it. "Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, but He's committed to us the word of reconciliation."
Verse 18, the ministry of reconciliation. Verse 19, the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God were entreating through us, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
There's your ministry. You're an ambassador. Just like humanly speaking, an ambassador, when he goes to a foreign country, he goes to a foreign land, he doesn't become a citizen of that land. His passport is still stamped USA. You and I are citizens of heaven. We're ambassadors here.
What's an ambassador do? Well, he represents his nation. You and I represent Christ. Somebody said this, and I know it sounds a little corny, but it's pretty interesting to me, that you may be the only Bible that some people ever read. When people see you, they see their Father.
You Look Like Your Father
Girls aren't like this anymore, but when our girls were small, I could bring them up here. I could put 20 girls on this stage, little girls, and I could say, you pick out the Stracener girls, and you'd go, it'll be that one and that one. They got a little round face. There's little jowls hanging down. They're looking because they look just like daddy. You're supposed to look like your heavenly Father. You represent Him.
An ambassador guards a nation's interest. You guard His interest here, His word, His proclamation of the truth. A nation or an ambassador protects the nation's citizens that are in that foreign land. That's you and others. It's the church. It's the body.
Supporting the Local Church
One of the great things that I see, and this is tension not in this room, but in the body of Christ, is the parachurch ministries. I am one of them. So often, they do such an awful job of directing people back to the church. Here's what I tell people of Priority Living, and I tell them this all the time. If you got to choose between church and Priority Living, you go to church.
If you're going to give money, and I presume that you are, and you only have a certain amount of money to give, you need to support the church before you support me or Young Life or Campus Crusade or anything else. It's the church. God did not ordain Priority Living. He ordained the church, and I need to be an active part of the church.
An ambassador resides temporarily in a foreign land. I was thinking about this the other day when Randy Alcorn was talking about heaven. If you go to a foreign land, or if you talk to somebody in this country who especially is striving through financial hardship, you will see in these people a longing for heaven. But not many of us have that longing, do we?
Our Comfortable Life Here
Oh, we may on April 14th say, "Oh, Jesus, come quick." Even as I get a little bit older, I find myself, and there are certain days where I find myself saying, "You know, I really wouldn't mind dying." But even then, it's selfish. Because it's not to go and be with my Savior. It's more to get out of the yuck of this world, really.
You and I have it pretty good right here, don't we? Even those of you who don't have much materially, you have an awful lot as compared to the rest of the world. I keep hearing about how bad things are, and I don't buy it for a second. You get on to Lazy Susan's, and you stand in line 45 minutes to pay them $8 for a quarter egg. I don't think things are all that bad. We don't yearn for heaven because, in a sense, we got heaven going right here.
An ambassador is to behave in such a way as he doesn't discredit his nation. Remember, these are bullet points, fast.
Evangelism Is Not Optional
Number one, evangelism is not optional. Witnessing is not optional. Evangelism isn't optional. It's inevitable. You're a witness right now. You may be a lousy one for Christ, but you're a witness right now. Somebody's watching you.
Evangelism is an individual and a team sport. It's something that you're engaged in individually, and we're engaged in collectively through a body. Your actions can't be separated from your words. What you do and what you say have to match up. If they don't, you are what everyone universally hates, and that's a hypocrite.
If you're not in contact with people, you're not going to have impact on people. You cannot impact the world if you're not in contact with the world. I love this little phrase. We need to have holy worldliness.
Sent Into the World
Jesus said it this way. "As thou sent me into the world, I've also sent them into the world." John 20:21, "Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, I also send you."
Make sure I communicate this clearly. When you're dealing with people, address a person's condition, not just their behavior. And by condition, I mean their spiritual condition. So somebody comes to you, and they're a drunk. We try to get them sober. But if they aren't saved, they just go to hell sober.
It's important to deal with people's behavior, but we need to deal with a person's condition. As you're out there, it's important for us to identify that behavior. It's gossip. It's drinking. It's adultery. But that does nothing more than demonstrate a heart condition. So we need to deal with a person's heart.
Dealing with Hearts
You need to be able to go to that person and say, "Yeah, there's something going on here. God calls it sin, and your condition is you're separated from Him. And if you're a Christian, you need to confess it and repent. If you're an unbeliever, you need to repent and come to Him."
This is another big thing. How do you go into the world? How do you come in contact with non-believers? Let me give you some advice. Act normal. It is amazing to me how goofy Christians can act, how odd they can act. Act normal.
I just want you to know that as you begin to take this message like Jonah to the world, you're going to experience acceptance and ambivalence.
and rejection. But God's responsible for the results. So relax. You can't save a soul.
I was in a church years ago, and they introduced me. They were so excited to have Brother Tom here, Brother Tom, Brother Tom, Brother Tom. And Brother Tom's one of our great soul winners, and we're part of a soul-winning church. Look, I've never won a soul in my life. Any soul that I would win, nobody would want. It's God who wins a soul. We share the gospel.
Let me illustrate that. This is really an important part. So I'm going to take Johnny and Janet. Let's say Johnny and Janet tomorrow go down to the Driftwood, and they're going to have dinner. They run into two other people, and they start to talk, and they say, what do you do? And they begin to share.
Our Job Is to Share, Not to Convince
So Johnny shares with this guy, and he realizes he's not a believer. Johnny tells him about Christ, and who He is, and why He died, and all that goes with it. And this guy says, up your nose, rubber holes. Janet is talking to the gal, and she begins to share all of these things, and here's Jesus, and here's what He's done. And this girl says, I've been waiting all my life to hear this. I want to pray right now. Can I become, yes.
Now let me ask you this question. Is God happier with Janet or Johnny? That's exactly right, both. That's an important answer, by the way. Because their job is not to convince the other person. Our job is to proclaim the truth, and once it's proclaimed, we've done our mission. Because I can't convince somebody. I can't cajole somebody or argue somebody into the kingdom.
People don't care how much you know until they know how much you really care. People rarely, once in a while, you'll hear somebody who turned on a radio station, or walking down the street, and some guy says repent, and the guy does. But most of the time, it's through relationships. And they want to know that I care.
That's what Jesus seemed to model. Jesus seemed everywhere He goes. It's curious to me that the kids run up to Jesus. It's curious to me because kids aren't typically attracted to somebody who's cold and stoic and removed. There must have been something very appealing about Jesus.
Jesus Cared Without Compromising Truth
It's interesting to me that the hookers and the slugs and the drinkers were attracted to Jesus. They seemed to sense that He cared. And He never compromised the truth, can't compromise the truth, but He let them know that He cares. There was something about Him that was attractive.
Here's one last point on this. There are many methods of evangelism, and they change, but there's a message, only one, and it never changes. We're in a really difficult time. And I guess the church has gone through this over and over and over again, but it goes through it a lot right now. What music is right?
I was thinking about, I look at the founders back there, and they hang back there as if to say, don't screw this up. That's what they're like looking at you, going, don't screw this thing up. And I mean that. Every time I get up there, I look, and it's like you're saying, you know, and there he is in his coat and his tie, and he's all dressed up.
Methods Change, But the Message Doesn't
And I'm going to guess that when those speakers came in here in the mid-40s, they didn't wear flip-flops, so they tucked in their shirt and probably had a haircut. And the music probably didn't have a saxophone in it because obviously that's an instrument from Satan. But you see, we wouldn't have done this 50 years ago.
And yet what makes Cannon Beach consistent here, or the church consistent, is the message never changes, but the methods. Relax. Loosen up. Let it go. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. What matters is that the gospel is proclaimed.
The call that came to Jonah is a similar call that comes to your life. Now, we're going to go through this. I want you to see chapter 3, verse 3. The call comes to go, and this time Jonah's different.
Jonah's Simple but Effective Message
Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. And Nineveh is a great city. It's a three-day walk, meaning it's a three-day walk across it. It's three days to get from one side to the other. It was actually three cities that were kind of side by side by side. So I don't know up here, but like in Phoenix, it would be like Phoenix and Mesa and Scottsdale, side by side by side.
And verse 4, Jonah began to walk through the city, and he cried out. Here's his message. I feel oftentimes like I'm saying the same thing over and over again. But Jonah had one message, and it was eight words. This had to really get boring. Yet 40 days, and Nineveh will be overthrown. That was his message.
He says arise and go, and he goes. And here's his message. Yet 40 days, and Nineveh will be overthrown. Forty days, and this city is going to come to an end. Forty days, and that's the end of it.
The Amazing Response to Simple Truth
And the people of Nineveh, verse 5, believed. In Jonah? No. They believed in God. And they called a fast, and they put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least. And the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and laid aside his robe from himself, covered himself with sackcloth and ashes. He begins to repent.
He declares this to all of the people around him, and the king issues a proclamation in verse 7. In Nineveh, by decree of the king and nobles, do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. There's going to be a fast here. Don't let him eat or drink. But both men and beasts will be covered with sackcloth. It's a picture, a symbol of repentance.
And let men call on God earnestly, that each may turn from his wicked ways, and from the violence which has been in his hand. We didn't develop it, but this is an extraordinarily violent culture. Abandon your immorality. Abandon your wickedness. Repent.
Verse 9: "Who knows? God may turn and relent, and withdraw His burning anger so that we shall not perish." And God saw their deeds, and He turned from their wickedness. And God relented concerning the calamity which had been declared that He would bring upon them. And He didn't do it.
It's a great city. We're going to see in the morning that it's a city of probably 600,000. We mentioned it before, probably the largest city in the world at this point in time. And this is as big a revival as we've ever seen. It's born out of the obedience of one reluctant servant, Jonah.
God's Call to Obedience
I can't promise you that you're going to see revival break out like that around you. But then God didn't call you to bring revival. He called you to bring obedience. When we look at those bookends from today, it's that God is a God of a second chance, and a third chance, and a fourth chance, and a millionth chance. And that God's called you, just like He did Jonah, to go and to make disciples of all nations, and to baptize them, and to teach them. And that's your responsibility.
The Urgency of Evangelism
You understand, when we get to heaven, everything that we're doing here on earth, we'll do better in heaven. We'll worship better in heaven. We'll pray better in heaven. We'll understand God better in heaven. We'll do everything in heaven better than we do on earth. Except there's one activity that we'll be missing in heaven. There's no evangelism in heaven.
That's to be done here. And it's to be done now. And it's to be done, not in some massive organized way, but through you and me. We don't even have to go and infiltrate Seattle. We already have. You're already there.
Living as Christians Where We Are
It's just like the ambassador from Africa. We don't need more Christians in Seattle. We need more people who are Christian in Seattle to live like they're Christians. And just maybe, maybe, God will bring revival to that city.
Father, thank you for this truth. Thank you for Jonah. The more I read him and the more I study him, the more I love this guy because there's a whole lot of Jonah in me. I want to run, and I want to hide sometimes. And God, that's not what You'd have. You want one thing from me, from all of us, and that's that we're obedient.
God, give us courage and boldness, not born from a trust in our own gifts or talents, our own intellect. It's a trust that we have in You. God, we thank You for Jesus. We thank You for His life and for His death and for His resurrection, that proclamation to the world that He's different than every person that's ever lived. He's the first fruit. That's what's going to happen to all of us. One day we'll come busting out of our tombs to be united forever with You.
God, until then, You've left us here for a whole bunch of reasons, but most importantly, to bring honor and glory to You. And You call on us to go and to preach the word and to teach the truth and to live it, to not be hypocrites, to witness, to testify, to care for the people around us, to love them, to care so much for them that we'll tell them the hard truth. God, we pray that that'll be a picture of our life. We pray that to You in Jesus' name. Amen.