Speak the Truth Boldly
Tom Shrader explores how Christians are called to let their light shine by making the invisible God visible through their lives and speaking the truth boldly. Drawing from Matthew 5:16 and 2 Corinthians 5:14-20, he emphasizes that believers serve as ambassadors for Christ with both the ministry and word of reconciliation. Shrader illustrates this through personal examples and challenges listeners to see their daily interactions as opportunities for witness.
“If I make the invisible God visible but do not speak the truth boldly, I'm a coward. If I'm speaking the truth boldly but I haven't made the invisible God visible, I'm a hypocrite.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World (2012)
Recorded: 2012
Duration: 39 min
Themes: witness, light, evangelism, testimony, boldness, fruit, ambassador, salt, workplace witness, sharing faith, new believer, christian employee, facing opposition, neighbor relationships, young adult, struggling with boldness
Scripture: Matthew 5:16, Romans 1:16, Ephesians 4:1, 2 Corinthians 5:14-20, 1 Corinthians 3:6-7, John 1:19-29, John 10:24-29, John 14:6, Acts 4:12
Theological Themes: witness, evangelism, sanctification, holy living, great commission, christian apologetics, ministry of reconciliation, discipleship
Full Transcript
It's week 7 of an 11-week series titled "How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World." If you have your Bibles, open them to Matthew chapter 5 and we'll pick up right where we left off last week because the weeks are connected.
Let me remind you that the premise of this series is: How do I find stability? How do I find answers? How do I stay anchored? What's my compass in the midst of a culture that's shifting all around us? We start with the Bible as the Word of God. Now I study it, now I make decisions according to it, now I can live life confidently. Not in me, but whatever I'm afraid of, Jesus is the antidote.
Faith That Invades Every Area of Life
We turned a corner a couple weeks ago. What I want to do now is take the faith that we have and understand that it's very, very personal, but it's not private. It now has to invade all of the areas of my life. The fact that you are a Christian should affect everything. If you're a spouse, it's the way that you approach marriage. I would argue it should affect the way you vote, it should affect whether you vote, it should affect how you spend your money, how you invest your money, how you get your money—all of those things.
God left me here for a reason. In Matthew chapter 5 verse 16, we've gone through the Beatitudes, Jesus has said you're the salt of the earth, now you're the light of the world. Matthew 5:16 gives the command to you and me: let your light shine. That's your life—let your life shine before men in such a way that two things happen. Number one, they see your good works. As a consequence of that, therefore they glorify your Father in heaven.
Making the Invisible God Visible
The way we've done this is to break it out and use these two handles: our privilege now is to make the invisible God visible and secondly to speak the truth boldly. I let my light shine in such a way that they see good works. The people around me see there's a physical difference when they see how we respond or how we behave. They see that and they won't instinctively glorify God, they'll instinctively glorify you and they'll say, "Gosh, I wish I was wired like that. I wish I could handle things like that."
Remember we saw last week when we talked about good works, we did not talk about going to church, reading the Bible, praying and all those things, though those are all part of it. We said they see in your life the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.
I had an amazing conversation with a young man the other day who has cancer and it's really serious. He was talking about interacting with a guy at work that's just been a problem for years and years. He had this moment—this is really cool—he said, "I had this moment where I realized the cancer in his heart is more deadly than the cancer in my body." He began to see him not as the enemy but as a guy who just doesn't know Christ and that's what he needs. It began to change everything and now he responds to this guy who apparently is a very unloving guy, an unlovable guy, in a very loving way. So much so that now people are going, "Wow, where'd that come from?" Then he has the privilege when that happens of going, "It's not me, I really can't stand this jerk, it's Christ in me."
The Power of the Gospel
So I make the invisible God visible. I let people see my life, something happens, they see it and now I have the privilege of saying it's not me, it's Christ in me. In Romans chapter 1 verse 16 Paul says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it's the power of salvation"—salvation, deliverance. I'm delivered from past, present and future.
At our church we do communion every week and I can go all the way back to when we started, whatever that was, 22 years ago. I remember the discussions because I came and said I think we ought to do this. It seems like when the church gathered they did it—that's not to condemn people that don't, we're just starting with a clean slate and it's easy, let's do it. The biggest argument against it was won't this become ritual and routine? Yeah, it might, but we'll put the burden on people to work their way through this.
Let me tell you what becomes ritual: introducing communion. It's very hard to do because you have like three or four minutes. I find myself every time I introduce communion, almost every time, I talk about going back to the cross and I talk about past, present and future.
Past, Present, and Future Salvation
In our life we've been saved, past tense, from the penalty of sin—no longer a sinner on my way to hell but a saint on my way to heaven. Present, we're rescued from the power of sin. That doesn't mean that sin doesn't have power over us, but it means that power is breakable. Now there's a struggle. Now I find myself in that terrible spot where I'm not doing the things I want to do and doing the things I don't want to do. And then there's a future.
Susan died a year ago Tuesday, and Haley sent me a picture. Braden's been going to church and I wasn't teaching Sunday—I went to one of our other campuses. Haley sent me a picture of what Braden had drawn in church and it was Nana. It was kind of Nana in what I would call a sick body, it was a little deformed, and then it morphed into this healthy body. Then there was Jesus saying "Welcome to heaven" in that reality.
Yale's five and he's got this whole little attitude. They were over last night. What they do for Halloween is they come over and they pass out candy at our place. They wanted to watch a video which I don't know how to do. Sandy was messing around with it and finally Yale—Yale's five—said, "Is it DirecTV?" I said yes. He goes, "Well then hand me that, don't screw my TV up."
But Yale woke up Tuesday and said, "Mom, I know you're—"
Be sad today but you need to understand that Nana's more alive now than she's ever been. See that's not wishful thinking, that's true. He doesn't understand, I don't think, all the repercussions of that but we do. So that's the future, that's one day absent from the body, present with the Lord. So it is the power of salvation, therefore Paul says I boast, I brag, I don't brag on me, I boast about Christ and Christ crucified.
But we're not talking about Paul, we're talking about you. So in your life as you begin to take this gospel and live it out there's a point where all of a sudden it moves from doctrine, in a sense theory though it's not theoretical, but it moves from doctrine into practice.
From Doctrine to Practice
In Ephesians chapter 4 verse 1, there's a, I always call it a pivot point in that book and frequently Paul does this, so he's got Ephesians chapter 1, 2, and 3, heavy doctrinal stuff, predestination, election, deliverance, all this. Chapter 4 verse 1, therefore I the prisoner of the Lord entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called. And He adds right after it, with all humility and gentleness.
So here's what He said, God saved you for a reason, He called you into this relationship with Him, He has guaranteed your future, but He's saying while you're here I want you to live in such a way, and here's how I want you to live. I want you to let your light shine so that people see your good works, make the invisible God visible. And then you have the opportunity to be the vehicle God uses to present that gospel to him.
Now I said the first week we touch it, these are inseparable, but we studied them separately. In our lives you can't separate them. If I make the invisible God visible but do not speak the truth boldly, I'm a coward. If I'm speaking the truth boldly but I haven't made the invisible God visible, I'm a hypocrite.
Making God Visible Without Speaking
I'm going to give you three examples, real-life examples. The first two are from my life, how I screwed it up both ways.
I had a friend who was thinking about moving down to Phoenix from Davenport, and he was coming down. I said listen, why don't you just stay with us? And so this was however many years ago. So he moves in and he's staying with Susan and me and the girls for a week or so.
So the last night, and I said Susan I'm going to take him out for dinner, so out for dinner we go, and we're talking and the salad comes and he says Schrader, there's something different about you. I said to him, well I've lost a little weight. And then the main course came and he said there's something different about you. I said we're all a little older and more wrinkles and gray hair and what hair's left.
And then dessert came and then for the third time he said to me there's something different about you. And I looked him right in the eye and I said, living in Arizona really agrees with me, and I could hear the cock crow as I denied Christ for the third time. I just remember feeling awful about that. I had made the invisible God visible. He had seen the difference, but I didn't speak the truth boldly, coward.
Speaking Truth Without Living It
Now I'll give it to you the other way. God saved me March 6, 1980s. I can't even describe to you the den. She's decided she's going to get all the books out onto shelves. She put four bookshelves in the bedroom, and three bookshelves back in this den, and three other bookshelves. Now she's in the process of just unpacking these books. They've been there since we moved in.
I found a Bible the other day. Those of you that are, if there's probably a few of you that are old Larry Wright study guys, there's a Bible that Larry used to give. I found one that was Susan's, and then I found one that's mine. The very first Bible I had, before study Bible, that's the first study Bible I ever had there. But this first Bible, and there's the date, March 6, 1980, and it was that day that God saved me, and that began this trip.
Well, June that year, it's a Thursday, so a day like today, got the morning paper, I'm in my office, and I see that Prescott Downs is having a quarter beer nickel hot dog Friday. So I'm a bit of a health food nut, and I worked with a guy, so I went to him, I said, hey, this could be fun. Let's just take tomorrow, we'll go up there, and I said we'll get Mary Ann, she's our admin, we'll get Mary Ann to drive us, and so we don't have to think about driving or anything, and we'll have a great day.
So we went up, had a great day, and that day, driving out of Prescott, all you had on the way out really was that Circle K. Circle K is still there, saw it a couple months ago when we were up there. Stopped at Circle K, got some trail juice for the way down, and we got, this is so real to me. Every time I drive down, and I get to Dunlap and the Freeway, I literally relive this.
I'm in the back seat of the car, he's in the passenger seat, I'm laying out, and Mary Ann's driving, and we're having this deep theological, alcohol-induced conversation, and I say to him, Jesus Christ has changed my life. And he turns around, and he said, I have to change words here, but you look like the same blank and drunk to me.
Now, I was devastated. They dropped me off at my office, it was at Central in Virginia, and I sat in the parking lot of my car and just cried. I didn't know what to do, didn't have cell phones. Went home and called Larry, and I said, listen, I'm in really bad shape here, I need to see, and he said, well, and it was a Friday, he said, it's going to be Tuesday.
And by Tuesday, I was a mess, and I got in there, and this is a side note to the story, and he said, what's the deal, and I told him, and he said, God's really good to you because you get to figure out right now whether you are a hypocrite or a sinner saved by grace. And so when I stepped back, I knew I was serious about it, and I saw, okay, here's what happened here. I was speaking the truth boldly, but I hadn't made the invisible God visible.
Third illustration is a friend of
mine, and we had a mutual friend who had gone through a lot. He had sent his family through divorce, he had lost most of his business, now he had cancer, he's laying in bed dying—pretty much a self-absorbed guy. But God had saved him in the midst of it, and a friend of ours went to visit him. He said to him, "I don't know how you do this. I don't know how you hold this together."
And then, of course, just to make things worse, you always repeat the litany of problems the person has in case they've forgotten them. So you've lost your family and your wife, you've lost your money, you're dying. And the guy in the bed said, "It's not me, it's Jesus in me." See, that's how that comes together. Make the invisible God visible, let them see your good works, and they glorify your Father in heaven.
Witnessing: Sharing What You Know
We talk about sharing faith. One of the words that we use is witnessing. Here's Webster's definition of a witness: to attest to a fact, to bring personal knowledge of something. In other words, to tell what you know.
Sometimes it becomes a daunting issue. God's changed your life, and now you feel like you need a class—which is fine, we have classes—or books, or studies. But here's the rule of thumb: if you know enough to believe in Jesus, you know enough to share your faith. It's the blind man: "What's going on? Here's what I know—I was blind, now I see." I'm going to have more to tell you in four or five years than I do now. Maybe I can explain some of the theology of it.
Well, when you understand this—that witnessing is simply sharing a testimony—then you get this. Here's the second nugget: witnessing isn't optional, and it's not mandatory. It's inevitable.
You Already Have a Witness
You have a witness right now. You stopped today and you got a Starbucks on your way in. You have a witness, a legacy, a testimony to that barista—maybe good, maybe bad. That's why we encourage you to shop at the same place, get your coffee at the same place, kind of develop a little bit of a regimen. You're coming in contact with the same people over and over again, so pretty soon they get to see you, and they develop this relationship, and you get to see them.
There's a restaurant I used to go to. Now having said all that I said, I quit going there. But I would go there, same gal, and I'm in there one day, and she just—it's not working. So I'm checking out, and I said, "Are you all right?" And she goes, "Oh, my dad. My dad's really sick." He had died.
I didn't know what to say to her. I didn't know her dad, didn't know the history of it. So I just went down the street and brought her flowers and brought them back to her. I know that sounds weak, but it was all I had.
I showed up with the flowers, and it completely changed the dynamic of our relationship. It opened up a whole opportunity for her. She didn't know what to say—all she did was cry. You don't expect anything that day, and I wasn't trying to manipulate her. I was trying to find some way to bring comfort to this person you barely know, and it opened up a whole conversation. She studied microbiology, and I said, "That's got to point you to a God—you see all this." And she said, "No, not really." You make the invisible God visible, and then you speak the truth boldly.
Being the Only Bible Some People See
The way that Larry used to say it is, "You may be the only Bible some people ever see." So there are people all around you, and you have to be sensitive. You have to pray about this: "God, make me sensitive to this."
When they look at you and say, "Wow, we just got a memo from the home office, and everybody here is all upside down"—I love those. When you see guys and gals at lunch, and you'll see four or five people from the same office, and they'll be going, "These people are so stupid. The only five people in the world who could possibly run this business are gathered around this table right now. These other people are idiots. They don't know—they're removed." You have the opportunity to say, "I don't really understand it, but I assume they know more than we do." How you respond to that—that's going to shake them. Here's what grandpa would say: "That'll jar their preserves." That's going to shake them up. They're going to wonder.
Historical Evidence of Faith Spreading
Well, that's been the case from the beginning. Let me give you two historical sightings. One from Edward Gibbon in *The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire*. In both of these they're trying to talk about how did Christianity expand? How did it go from this ragtag group of a dozen guys and become this powerful force?
Gibbon offers this: "It became the most sacred duty of a new convert to diffuse, to spread out among his friends and neighbors the blessing he received"—to make the invisible God visible, to speak the truth boldly.
Eusebius, one of the early historians of the church, wrote this: "The feat of Christianity was accomplished by means of informal missionaries." So if it's helpful, start to think of yourself in that context, as a missionary.
You Don't Need a Passport to Be a Missionary
Every time I do this, there's always somebody who's been in church a long time who's going to want to come up and argue, technically, about "Well, missionary really has a foreign concept." I don't care. If you hear missionary and you think passport and visa and getting your shots, that's fine with me. That's just not me.
One of the guys in our church is leading a trip to Israel, and so, "Do you want to go?" I said, "No, I got the Discovery Channel, I got the History Channel, and I don't need to go." And I don't mean that dismissively, because all the people that go—they go and they come back and they say, "My faith will never be the same." I don't want to go. But one of our friends is going, and Sandy said, "Do you care if I go with her?" And I said, "No, that would be great." I wish it was during college football season.
I don't want to go, but that doesn't relieve me from missionary responsibility. Go to the book of 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and you get into a section
that, if you've been around, probably has some markings in it. It becomes really the driving explanation for what we are talking about. Paul's writing to this church at Corinth, and he's been talking to them about salvation.
In 2nd Corinthians chapter 5, verse 14, it's the love of Christ that controls us. Some of your translations will say it's the love of Christ that compels us—that's what drives us, not duty. We're overwhelmed by the fact that here's the king who, rather than send us out to die for Him, went out and died for us.
2nd Corinthians 5, verse 17: "And therefore, because all that's true, if any man is in Christ"—and that's one of Paul's favorite expressions for talking about what it means to be a Christian—"if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature and the old things have passed away, behold new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ." So it's God who initiated, God who drove it, God who saved us, but that's not the end—that's the beginning of our journey.
Our Ministry as Ambassadors
Then He turns around in verse 18 and gives us a ministry of reconciliation. Verse 19: "Namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation." So 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 that call. Why would God leave us here? Well, we're ambassadors, we're His representatives, we speak for Him, we're to let our light shine in such a way that people see our good works. We make the invisible God visible, and then we speak that truth boldly.
What Being an Ambassador Doesn't Mean
Now let me tell you what this doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that you become—and people will adapt this phrase, it's a bad one—that you become a "soul winner." We made a move from Cox TV to Direct TV, and I'm not sure the motivating factor, but it turned out to be I get the horse racing channel now, 602, get the Big Ten Network is there, but I have eight or nine, ten religious channels. It's like drinking false doctrine out of a fire hose when you spring these in. Most of them have some good parts to them, but most of them just aren't very good, and there's one guy on there and he's raising all this money, and it's, "You know, he's going to win, so we're going to win a million souls for Christ."
Well here's the problem: you can't win a soul, forget a million. Turn over to 1st Corinthians chapter 3. Paul's addressing a problem that's in this church at Corinth, and the problem is this—in fact he lays it out in verse 4: "When one says I'm of Paul and another says I'm of Apollos, aren't we mere men?" There was a split that was developing in this church, and some were saying, "Well listen, I follow Paul, Paul's my guy," and others were saying, "Well it's Apollos," and then I'm sure there was a third group, the super spirits: "We just follow Jesus," so I'm sure there was a third group.
God's Role vs. Our Role
But he says, "What then is Apollos, and what is Paul? Servants through whom you believe, even as the Lord gives opportunity. I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth. So it's neither the one who plants, nor the one who waters is anything, but it's God who causes the growth."
God doesn't call us to win souls—that's the responsibility of the Holy Spirit. God calls us to proclaim the truth, and He may or may not do something with this. The evaluation, the judgment that's rendered on you is not whether the person responds, but whether you proclaim the truth.
So if Sandy and I go out tonight and run into somebody that we used to know, and we sit and we have this conversation, we begin and "You guys are married and what's all this," and then "How's this going," and then all of a sudden I have the opportunity to talk to the guy, Sandy has the opportunity to talk to the gal about Christ. "Your life is different, what's going on," and you talk about the reality—it's Jesus. And the gal says, "Oh my gosh, I've been waiting for this all my life, what do I do?" And Sandy has the privilege of explaining to her what it means to come to Christ, and I'm talking to the guy and he says, "Listen, I don't care about this."
Now from God's perspective, who is He more pleased with, Sandy or me? And the reality is He's equally pleased with both of us, because our responsibility was to present the truth, not change somebody's mind, not change their hearts. We can't do that, and there's great freedom there.
The Freedom in Our Calling
I don't sit down and when I'm talking to somebody I feel like the burden of their soul—it's not in my hands, that's not my job. Nor do I walk away and say, "Oh I failed and this person's going to go to hell." And it doesn't mean you don't care—it's not my task. I can't do that. It's make the invisible God visible, and then to declare this truth. That's why He left you here: a ministry of reconciliation, the word of reconciliation.
I always wonder, why would we not do this? And I've come across a couple of these. I had a lady from our church and she was talking about her friend, and she was telling about her friend, and how much she loved her friend. They'd been friends in grade school, and friends in high school, and friends in college, and she loved this gal so much. I said, "Does she come here?" "No." "Does she go to church somewhere?" "No, she's not a believer."
I said, "Oh how does that work when you talk to her about it?" She said, "I don't really talk about it." I said, "Well that seems odd, it's your best friend." And she said, "I am afraid that it would destroy their relationship, would threaten their relationship," and she said, "I've seen that happen in other places, where all of a sudden you interject this into the relationship and the relationship is destroyed."
I get it. Think about this: you're worried about breaking a relationship here that may last
You're going to live for another 10 or 15 years, but what you are forfeiting is the opportunity to spend eternity in a relationship with her. You're both going to live forever. If you both die right now, based on what we can tell from your testimony, you're going to heaven, she's going to hell. It could be we don't care.
That movie Sixth Sense was on again the other night. Remember the little kid and his line: "I see dead people." When all of a sudden you begin to just say, "God, give me the weight of this, not in a debilitating way, but in an enabling way. God, just give me a sense of the spiritually dead people around me."
Seeing the Spiritually Dead Around Us
Take an exercise I talk about all the time. At work, walk through the cubes. To the best of your ability—and understand you don't know anyone's heart, and you're not going to do this a hundred percent—but to the best of your ability, walk through that office and in your own mind assess: if that person, as you know them, were to die today, would they spend eternity in heaven or hell?
Just walk through the office sometime, maybe when nobody's there so you don't look like an idiot. You're just walking through, and you're going, "Hell, hell, hell." This is just at our church office too: "Heaven—I'm not in charge anymore—heaven, heaven." Then ask yourself: here are these people, and you're going, "Hell, hell, hell." They're people you work with. You have an established relationship with them. Why would you not be praying, "God, open a door that gives me an opportunity to speak with this guy"?
I had a guy in my office, a coal banker, who invited me to Larry's Bible study. I asked him two or three weeks later, "How is it you never thought to invite me to this thing?" Their answer was, "It just never occurred to us that God would save a guy like you." That was a great lesson for me. You need to factor that into the conversation.
We Can't Predict Who God Will Save
Here's what I've discovered: we're not very good at figuring out who God's going to save and not save. I've got long lines of men and women who were married to people that when they married them, they said, "I know he doesn't believe, I know she doesn't believe, but they're that close. I'm sure now, if they see me and live with me, that'll draw them right into the kingdom." Apparently it's driven them away.
Then I've seen other people go, "There's no way. That person is so beyond God's grasp." Well, no one is. Think of Paul—not just neutral toward the church, but a persecutor of the church. You would never in a million years go, "I'll bet that's the guy God's going to use."
So our responsibility, privilege, and duty is to simply make the invisible God visible and speak the truth boldly.
Learning from John the Baptist
Let's go to the Gospel of John. John, the disciple who Jesus loves, writes the book, but he introduces us to a character named John, and his name is John the Baptist. Jesus says of John the Baptist that there's nobody who's lived to this point greater than him. That's a big list: Moses, Abraham, David. He is a common man, a bit of an eccentric guy. In this world where we talk about purpose and goals and being driven, he's a purpose-driven, goal-oriented chap.
We meet him in John 1, verse 19: "There's a witness of John. It's John the Baptizer. The Jews send priests and Levites from Jerusalem, and they come to John the Baptist. They said, 'Who are you?' And he confessed, and he didn't deny, and he confessed, 'I'm not the Christ.' 'Are you Elijah?' 'No.' 'I'm not a prophet.' 'Who are you?'"
Here's his job description. Here's his purpose in life. John 1, verse 23: "I'm a voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord." He said, "I'm here for one reason. I'm not the Messiah. I'm here to point to Him."
Verse 29: "The next day, he sees Jesus, and he fulfills that. He said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.'"
The Heart of the Messenger
There are a couple of things we can learn from John. One of them is his heart. There's a humble heart there. "That's not me." It's interesting. They come: "Are you the Messiah? Are you the..." "No." "Prophet?" "No." "Listen, there's a guy coming. I want to tell you about Him. But don't confuse the two of us, because I'm not even worthy to untie His sandal."
The classic line that John utters a little bit later: "I must decrease and Jesus must increase."
I read you that passage from Ephesians chapter four, verse one: "Therefore, walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called, with all humility." That begins to start it all.
How to Become Humble
The way to become a humble person—because the minute you say, you know how self-defeating it is: "My goal is to be humble." The minute I start to have some level of achievement, I become proud of how humble I am, and I'm caught in this catch-22. How do I become a humble person? It's very simple.
I see God for who He really is. I see Christ for who He is. I understand what Christ did for me. I understand that I didn't do anything, that all I got was what I didn't deserve. I didn't get what I deserve. There's no response you can have but humility at that point.
That's the heart of the messenger—a humble heart. God changes us from the inside out. The whole objective in life is to get our eyes off of ourselves and onto Him.
Biblical Christianity vs. Religion
God changes us, and that's the whole point of biblical Christianity, from the inside out, not from the outside in. Religion changes from the outside in. Religion says, "Don't do this, do this, go down this road." Biblical Christianity says, "No, this is who you are. Now act like it." That's your heart.
All of a sudden you have a humble heart that says, "Listen, God saved me. Why? Because He gave me a ministry of reconciliation and the word of reconciliation, and He's called me to be a light to my world." Not the world—too big a job. He's placed me here. He's put you in that job, in that neighborhood, at that club, at that grocery store.
The Message We Carry
Wherever God has placed you - in that workplace, in that store, in that hospital, wherever it is - He put you there for a reason. The reason, in its general sense, is to make the invisible God visible and to speak the truth boldly. And to do that, there has to be a heart of humility.
Here's the second thing: it's the message that you have. Our answer to everything, really, is Jesus. I was listening the other night to something on television, and a guy was talking about how all of us are pursuing the same God. You've heard the discussion a million times. Your path may be through Buddhism, and your path may be through self-realization, and your path may be through Biblical Christianity.
Well, here's the problem with that: Jesus didn't say that. Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, the life, and no one gets from here to the Father without me." He uses the definite article. So when Jesus says, "I'm the way," He eliminates all of the other options.
The Simple Gospel Message
Our message is really simple: that Jesus died, according to the scripture, for our sin, and He rose again. Can you truly be a Christian and not believe in the resurrection? Well, here's what Paul says: "If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." So do I need to believe in the resurrection? Apparently so.
And then now, I go to the marketplace, and here's what I would say. Understand that's a very narrow message. So when people say, "Oh, that's very narrow," yeah, it really is. I didn't make it that way. Jesus made it that way. That's our message, and that's to be delivered in love.
When you tell somebody that they're lost and they're a sinner, and there's only one way, if you've got any arrogance in you, that's going to come screaming out in that, and you become an issue rather than the gospel. That's why Jesus was killed.
Why Jesus Was Killed
One last turn here to the gospel of John again, John chapter 10. John chapter 10 is Jesus speaking. It's just a wonderful section filled with so much practical truth and doctrine. But why was Jesus killed? Why did they stone Him?
Well, in chapter 10, verse 24, the Jews therefore gather around Him, and they ask Him a great question: "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you're the Christ, tell us plainly?" And Jesus says, "Yeah, I told you, but you don't believe. The works which I did in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. You don't believe me because you're not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one can snatch them out of my hand."
He addresses this whole issue of assurance of salvation. He said, "Here's how simple it is. I give them eternal life." How long does eternal life last? Forever. And then adding to that, He said, "No one can snatch them out of my hand."
The Security of Our Salvation
I don't have any money in my wallet, but I have a fish oil tablet. But my grandpa, mean old man that he was, would take a quarter and put it in his hand. We were little kids. And he'd close his hand. This was his way of babysitting. And he'd say, "If you can get my fingers open, you can have the quarter."
And so you'd pry this finger open, and then you'd pry that finger open, and he'd let you see the quarter. He'd tempt you with the quarter. He'd get it down to one finger, maybe his pinky that was barely hanging on, but he had all the strength, and you didn't have any. And then as he'd begin to let that go, the other three fingers would close. He never gave you the quarter. The old man never gave you the quarter.
Every time I read these words from Jesus, I think of my grandpa: "No one can snatch them out of my hand." As secure as that quarter was in my grandpa's hand, I'm more secure in Jesus' hand. If a word picture's helpful, here you go. My Christian faith is not based on me hanging on to Him, because I'm going to get weak, and I'm going to tremble, I'm going to let go. But it's based on Him hanging on to me.
He said, "My Father has given them to me and is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one." And the Jews took up stones to stone Him.
The Heart of Their Anger
He said, "Wait a minute, I showed you many good works. For which of them are you stoning me?" And they said, "Not for a good work, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God." That's why they killed Him.
And so now you go, and you have the opportunity to make the invisible God visible with a humble heart, to speak the truth boldly. I give you three things to remember.
Three Essential Truths
Number one: men can't change themselves. You must be born again. It's an act of the Holy Spirit. It requires that God does a work in their life. There's not something you can do, even in preparation. It's not "clean up your act."
Here's the second thing: salvation is through Christ alone. "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Acts chapter four, verse 12: "No other name."
And then the last thing: when God saves you, He will change your life. Your life will change from the inside out. There'll be a change of heart, a change of attitude. You'll see things differently. You begin to respond differently. Does it happen instantaneously? There are some changes right away, but then it's a lifelong journey, never accomplished completely until heaven.
Our Privilege and Responsibility
So now, here you go. Here's the responsibility, privilege, duty to make the invisible God visible and to speak the truth boldly. Now God comes along in our life, and here's what we're going to talk about in the next few weeks. We're going to talk about suffering and pain, and we're going to talk about contentment. We're going to talk about things that we encounter in life, and then the last week, how this is a daily renewal process.
So you see the journey we're on. God, work in our life, change us from the inside out, and make us bold. Let us be the men and women you've called us to be. God, we pray that even today, we would create thirst in other people, that they would see our good works...
work that You produced, and that we'd speak the truth boldly, they glorify You, that they might come to You in repentance and faith. Thank God, that's our prayer. We ask it in Christ's name, amen.