However sometimes God’s
kingdom grows so slowly. People we have
been seeking to share the gospel with can be totally uninterested. Some people who were such vibrant followers
of Christ years ago no longer have any passion for Him. Most of all we struggle against our own
tendency to apathy.
Don’t give up!
1. Don’t give up because God is merciful
The good news is a
message of mercy. In His love God sent
His Son to die for people who have rejected Him. He loved people who did not love them. He took the punishment for our guilt. He pursued us when we ran from Him. He opened our eyes to His truth. He persuaded us of His goodness. He gives us works to do. Therefore,
having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart (1).
In some denominations
they call the pastor ‘the minister’.
That’s misleading. Every follower
of Jesus gets to share in this ministry.
Every Christian gets to embody and speak of the transforming love of Christ. God doesn’t need any of us, but He delights
to use each of us.
Peter Linkens is a great
guy. He’s really smart and has
particular interests. A couple of weeks
ago we were in McDonalds after Crossway.
Peter was having a great conversation with another young man who attends. They were talking about some obscure computer
game. On the way home Peter said that he
finds it hard to see where he fits in to God’s mission. I pointed out that I have been longing to see
the guy he was talking with made feel more connected. Peter connected with him more naturally than
any of the rest of us could. I told him
to go to bed and thank God that He had used in a unique way that evening.
God has prepared works in
advance for us to do. You don’t have to
be someone else to do His ministry. He
knew what he was doing when he wired you.
So, don’t lose heart. Ask Him how
He wants to use you and He will show you.
Ask Him for opportunities to speak about Him and you will find
conversations opening up. Ask Him for
the strength to live in a way that shows people how merciful he is.
2.
Don’t
give up doing God’s work God’s way
One of the most painful issues
in Irish church history is ‘souperism’.
This was where Protestant Bible societies set up schools, around the
time of the famine, where starving children were fed, on the condition of
receiving Protestant religious instruction.
Souperism has left a lasting distrust towards evangelism in this
country.
In our own day there is a
thing called ‘bait and switch’. Like the
event that offered a draw for a new Play-station (the bait). But when you can to the draw you had to first
listen to a gospel presentation (the switch).
Similarly, we need to be careful not to manipulate emotions or take
advantage of people’s vulnerabilities.
How we share the gospel
matters! Paul writes that, ‘we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper
with the God’s word, but by open statement of truth we commend ourselves to
everyone’s conscience in the sight of God’ (2). If we have confidence in the power of the
gospel we won’t feel the need to manipulate people.
A retired couple went to
a town where there was a small church that only opened for part of the
year. They were the right people for
that place at the time. They had a
special love for migrants and many migrants were moving in to their area. God chose to let that church grow. People in their denomination tried to figure
out what their technique was. In truth
it was simple. They simple prayed, loved
people and taught the Bible. Don’t stop
doing God’s work God’s way!
The false-teachers who
opposed the apostle Paul tried to attract people with how impressive they were
as speakers, with talk of the money they could charge and how they had unique
spiritual experiences. Most seriously
they weren’t faithful to God’s truth.
Paul wrote to his disciple Timothy that ‘there will come a time when
people will not tolerate sound teaching.
They will collect teachers who say what they want to hear because they
are self-centred’ (2 Timothy 4:3). There
will always be pressure to water-down the message. There will always be people who say that they
want to hear something more ‘relevant’.
That is the advantage of sermon series that simply work through the
Bible. We are letting the text set the
agenda.
Church growth teaching
used to emphasise how those up-front needed to convey a certain image. They had to be the sort of people those on
the street aspired to be like. Cool people
were seen as more valuable. However, ‘what we proclaim is not ourselves, but
Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake (5).
While the false-teachers
highlighted how great they were, Paul makes himself a servant for Christ’s
sake—in a culture that knew nothing about servant leadership. One commentator explains that ‘no person can
think of themselves as great and at the same time declare that God is great.’ One of the reformers wrote, ‘he that would
preach Christ alone must necessarily forget himself’ (Calvin).
A Christian is to live
with humble confidence. Humble in the
fact that we know that we have done nothing to deserve God’s mercy, and we have
given Him many reasons why He should give up on us. We have nothing in ourselves to boast
about. But our boast is in the Lord (2
Cor. 10:11). We are confident because
the sacrifice of Jesus is of infinite worth and covers the worst of sins. We are confident because the mercy of Christ
accepts all who see their true need of Him.
We are confident because the love of God, our Father, is such that He
will never drive us away. Humble
confidence is what commends the gospel to the world!
3.
Don’t
think anyone is beyond his love
Jesus warned us that
there would be discouragements. He
taught that when the seed is sown—the good news about His kingdom is shared—some
soil would fall on rocky ground.
Sometimes of the people we tell about Jesus remain totally
uninterested. If we measure success by
numbers then we will be attempted to attract people with hype. But what you attract people with will be all
that you have to grow them with. Our job
is to faithfully share the gospel, only God can bring new life.
And
even if the gospel is veiled, it is veiled from those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world had
blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the
gospel in the glory of Christ, who is the image of God
(3-4). Those are hard words. Jesus is not going to save everyone. God let’s many people live with the
consequences of their rejection of Him.
But mercifully He brings
new life to many. A woman had repeatedly
shared the gospel with her friend, but her friend simply did not get it, even
though she said that she wanted to understand it. So, finally, the woman said, ‘You have a veil
over your heart. And you need to pray
that God will remove it.’ A few weeks
later the woman’s friend called, elated, as she explained that she had gone to
bed the night before perplexed, but when she awoke the meaning of everything
was clear. The veil had been removed
forever.
For
God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made the light shine in our
hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face
of Christ (6). What an
interesting way to describe what it is to be a Christian! We are people who know the glory of God that
is displayed in the face—the person and work—of Christ.
‘There is no one beyond
the creative and recreative power of God.
He who spoke the world into existence and with a word birthed light and
plants and birds and sea-creatures and animals and us—this God can illume and
transform us from glory to glory with a word.
No one is beyond his love. No one
is beyond his grace. And no one is beyond
his creational power’ (Hughes).
Conclusion
Let’s finish as we
started!
In His great mercy Jesus
has given you a wonderful ministry. You
are an ambassador of Christ. You get to
share the very words of God. Around you
are immortal souls who are heading to hell, but you can tell them of God’s one
way to heaven. The person of the Holy
Spirit is within you to equip you for this task. Angels watch on and see what you do. Better still, God applauds your efforts to
serve Him. Through your actions and with
your mouth you have many opportunities to show the world that God is
great.
Let’s seek to make
disciples of Jesus by praying for people, loving them and speaking clearly of
the person and work of Jesus Christ. We
won’t give up because God is merciful.
We won’t give up doing God’s work God’s way. We won’t give up on believing that God can
rescue the most unlikely of people.
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