Effective Evangelism

 

The last thing Jesus said to His disciples before His ascension was: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20

 

Let me repeat a portion of this text for emphasis. Jesus commanded, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” By definition, a disciple of Christ is one who obediently follows the Master and assists Him in spreading the gospel message. A disciple is one who, as the prophet Isaiah wrote: (Isaiah 52:7) “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who announces peace . . . who announces salvation.”

 

So, the focus of my message today addresses the question, how might we be effective evangelists for Christ, effective sharers of the good news of salvation? To answer that question, let’s look at our primary text for today in Paul’s first letter to the Christians at Corinth.

 

(1 Corinthians 3:9-15) “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”

 

It should be clear from this text that Paul is using the construction of a house as an analogy to our working together with God to build the kingdom of God. In his analogy, Paul makes at least two points germane to our effectiveness as evangelists, as co-workers with God in building His kingdom. The first point: Jesus and only Jesus is the foundation of God’s kingdom. The second point: Be careful what materials we use in our construction.

 

Let’s spend some time with that first point – Jesus is the only foundation of the house, which is also called the Church – meaning the people of God as one Body with Christ. The Church, according to Scripture, is not a building or even a denomination. It is Christ’s body with Him as the head. Here is  Colossians 1:17-18 “He [Christ] is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.” 

 

That Christ is the foundation of the true Church is immutably central to saving faith. But it’s crucial we understand that foundation is the Jesus as described in the Bible, not the Jesus of our own making. The Jesus of the Bible is much more than a gentle Lamb; He is also a consuming fire. Listen to the apostle John’s description of Christ:

 

Revelation 1:14ff “His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire. ¹⁵ His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters. ¹⁶ In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength. ¹⁷ When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man.” 

 

Paul – indeed, all the New Testament writers – write about the Jesus through whom alone the world was created. If you know your Bible well, you know the New Testament writers speak of the Jesus who is Almighty God incarnate in the form of a man. They write of the Jesus who is the only door to eternal life, which means that everyone – Jew, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, agnostic – even Catholic or Protestant – who denies the Jesus of the Bible is self-condemned and unavoidably doomed to an eternity in the Lake of Fire.

 

That might seem a harsh statement, but it is a harsh reality for all who follow the Jesus of their own desires instead of the Jesus of Scripture.

 

The New Testament writers tell us about the Jesus who demands obedience to His all His Commandments. They do NOT write about the Jesus who is updated with every century or in some cases with every decade to fit in with the culture. Such satanic-birthed lies are evidenced all around us. Just think of the churches you may have attended for a while, or heard about or read about where, for example, same-sex marriage is promoted, or abortion is an acceptable means of birth control. Whether in Catholic churches or Protestant, such evil is sweeping across pulpits and pews.

 

For example, you might have read a recent news article about Yvette Flunder, the lesbian pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in Oakland, California. She contends that the Bible needs a third Testament because she doesn’t agree with the Scriptures that address sexual immorality.

 

No, the Jesus of the Bible demands repentance from sin, a repentance which must always lead to a turning from that sin. If our repentance is not accompanied by a commensurate intent to turn from that sin, then that repentance is a worthless in God’s sight – to whom we all will give an account at the Judgement.

 

Listen to CS Lewis speak to this point about sin and repentance: “We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s and even with laughter.  But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.” C. S. Lewis

 

So, to not belabor the crucial point, the Jesus of the Bible is the only foundation God provides us upon which to build our lives AND to build His Church. Which now brings us to the second point, the second element of effective evangelism. With Christ as the foundation of the Church, we must be meticulously alert to the materials we use to build on that foundation.

 

Again, here is Paul in our text: Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” (1 Corinthians 3:12-15)

 

God separates into two categories what we use in our building His Kingdom, in sharing the gospel with others. The first category are things of value and permanence such as gold, silver, and precious stones. The things of inferior quality, things perishable, things cobbled together, He categorizes as wood, hay, and straw.

 

Many of you remember the fable of the Three Pigs and the Wolf. Three little pigs went out into the world to seek their fortunes. The first pig built his house of straw, the second from sticks, the third with bricks. One day a hungry wolf came along and demanded of the first pig: “Let me in! Let me in!”  The pig refused and said, “Not by the hairs on my chinny chin chin!”

 

So, the wolf huffed and puffed and blew the straw house down, forcing the pig to flee to his brother’s house made of sticks.

 

The wolf followed and said to the second pig, “Let me in! Let me in!” When the second pig refused, the wolf huffed and puffed and blew down the house of sticks. Then both pigs ran to the third pig’s house made of bricks. When the wolf demanded, “Let me in! Let me in!” the three pigs refused.  But this time, although the wolf huffed and puffed, he couldn’t blow the brick house down and the pigs were safe.

 

I hope the point of the fable is clear as it relates to building God’s house, God’s kingdom. So, what constitutes inferior and temporary materials that will be burned up at the Judgment, and what constitutes valuable and durable materials that will last into eternity?

 

Poor motives certainly qualify as inferior building materials. Why do we do what we do, say what we say, go where we go?  Is it for self-aggrandizement, or is it to point others to Jesus? The Lord Jesus addressed this question in His sermon on the mount when He said, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:1)

 

And Matthew 6:2-4 “So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.” 

 

For good reason the Scriptures warn, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways,
according to the results of his deeds.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10)

 

We can EASILY deceive ourselves into believing our motivations are admirable. But as Solomon also warned: (Proverbs 16:2) “All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the Lord weighs the motives.”

 

A note of encouragement here: The Holy Spirit will not allow the honest Christian, the one who truly seeks the please God, to remain unaware of his or her impure motives. James tells us: “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5) In other words, if we want to serve and to build with pure motives, we only need to ask God to reveal to us our true motives; and if He shows us what we are doing is rooted in self, we merely need to repent and ask Him to change our hearts. It’s really that simple.

 

The essential point here is that whatever we do for the Lord as we co-labor with Him in building His kingdom must be done from pure motives if we hope to build with valuable and permanent materials. (1 Peter 4:11) “Whoever speaks,” the apostle Peter wrote, “is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

 

Compromise is another perishable and worthless material that will be burned up at the Judgment. When we speak the good news with others, are we more concerned about offending them by speaking truth, or by offending God by not speaking it?

A pastor in this town told me he doesn’t speak about abortion because he doesn’t want to offend anyone in this congregation. Another pastor in this town joked from the pulpit that he wouldn’t speak about the Biblical directives of how wives must be submissive to their husbands. Why? I can only speculate it was because he didn’t want to offend the women in the congregation.

 

It is the fear of offending congregations that many pastors compromise the hard truths, the inconvenient truths, the annoying truths of Scripture and won’t talk directly about sin but rather speak around those issues in the most general terms. It’s why many in the pew rarely if ever hear their pastor speak specifically about fornication, adultery, homosexuality, same-sex, marriage, transgenderism, and all the other demonic social ills sweeping across the Church.

 

Well, let’s start bringing this message to a close. We’ve looked VERY briefly at building materials of poor and transitory quality. There are others we could have examined, but I think you can extrapolate from what we’ve already seen to what other inferior materials might be. So now, let’s look at building materials of eternal value, what Paul spoke of as gold, silver, and precious jewels.

 

As we should expect, Scripture helps us here. Listen to Paul’s final words to Timothy – and by extension, to us: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. ³ For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, ⁴ and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:2-4).

 

In other words, tell other about the Jesus of the Bible, without compromise and without seeking either praise or reward. 

 

Listen now to Peter: (1 Peter 3:15) “Sanctify [set apart] Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.”

 

In other words, living holy lives has eternal value. We cannot hope to effectively tell others of Jesus if we ourselves do not openly and consistently seek to obey Jesus.

 

Another valuable material for building on the foundation of Christ is our maturing in Christ. What we do not want to find ourselves as those to whom Hebrews was written: “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.” (Hebrews 5:12)

 

How does a child of God mature? I hope we all know the answer to that – study God’s word: “Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.”  And be consistent in prayer –“But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. (Jude 1:20);

And routinely fellowship with other Christians, “Not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”

 

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20

 

We cannot effectively make disciples unless we build on the foundation of the Jesus of Scripture and with valuable and permanent materials.

 

On October 12, 2019, the Hard Rock Hotel in New Orleans partially collapsed, killing three. Investigations found weak structural elements and questionable material quality.

 

In 2021, in a suburb of Miami, the South Champlain Towers collapsed, killing 98 people. Investigators linked the disaster to the poor quality concrete used in the tower’s construction.

 

Too much is at stake – ETERNITY is at stake – for us to cheat the Lord, to cheat ourselves, and to cheat others by not, for any reason, building Christ’s kingdom according to His blueprints.