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Outreach Is Part of the Gospel

After 30 Years

Nov 25, 2012


by: Jack Lash Series: After 30 Years | Category: Things I've Learned | Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:19–5:21

Outreach Is Part of the Gospel

I. Today: How God changed my thinking about outreach, evangelism and missions, or, even better, How God changed my thinking about the world.
II. Explanation
A. When I came here 30 years ago, I thought of sin as basically synonymous with worldliness, with loving the world.
1. Of course, the Bible tells us that we must not love the world.
a. James 4:4 “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
b. 1John 2:15-17 “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world — the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of the eyes and pride in possessions — is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its lusts, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”
c. We cannot love the world’s adultery, or its materialism, or its rebellion, or its godlessness, its pride, its selfishness, its lawlessness, its belief system, its self-fulfillment.
2. In this sense it is very wrong to love to world. And honestly, when I was a young pastor I thought I was doing pretty well not loving the world.
3. But one of the things God taught me in the late 90's is that there is another sense in which it is necessary to love to world, a sense in which I wasn’t doing so well at all.
a. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
b. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
4. Here’s one of the ways this began to dawn on me: Sinners gravitated to Jesus. He was called the friend of sinners. He sat with them and went into their world.
a. I realized that I was not a friend of sinners. Lost, broken sinners were not attracted to me. They did not see in me a love reflective of God’s unconditional love and grace and forgiveness.
b. Of course, Jesus wasn’t a friend to all sinners. ALL sinners weren’t drawn to Him.
(1) E.g. He wasn’t a friend to the unrepentant thief on the cross.
c. But He was a friend of many sinners. And I wasn’t, because in this regard I wasn’t Christ-like.
d. When He came into this world, He really came into this world. He walked among the sinners. He rubbed shoulders with dirty, evil people. He reached out to them; He developed relationships with them; He went to their homes. The righteous with the unrighteous.
e. Unlike Jesus, I was intimidating and unapproachable to sinners.
f. Jesus loved the world. I really didn’t.
B. EUANGELION = the gospel of Christ, the message of His love, His death on the cross, His victory
1. Good news/message
2. Angel: messenger
3. By nature it is news, it is a message. That means it was made to be shared.
C. Great commission – Matthew 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...”
1. There is a go in the gospel. Go into all the world.
2. Some are led to go in a way many of others are not. But all of us are to be involved in the effort the win the people of our corner of the world to Christ.
3. The world is not just where we happen to be. It is part of our calling. We are in the world — for the gospel.
4. Evangelism implies something about where your feet are and also about where your heart is.
5. Your feet in the world
6. Your heart with Christ — burning with the gospel
7. There in the midst of the world, but loving a different world because we are citizens of that different world — citizens of heaven (Eph.2:19).
8. While we are here, we are God’s representatives wherever we are. Wherever we go, God has called us there — to be His ambassadors.
9. 2Corinthians 5:19-21 “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
10. Ambassadors are away from home.
D. ISA 52:7 How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation, and says to Zion, "Your God reigns!"
1. Feet are not the first body part to grab our attention for beauty.
2. What makes the feet beautiful? The message that they bring!
3. This verse’s fulfillment has continued down through the centuries as the message of Christ has been carried to every continent and every nation on the face of the earth.
a. And you and I continue it on. We are the fulfillment of prophecy.
b. And when we do this, we are loved by those who love this message. They think we are beautiful! Not because we are, but because our message is.
c. We can be beloved too, if we spread the news, if we comfort God's hurting ones with the good news.
III. Conclusion
A. If all we aspire to is our spiritual survival, then we’ve missed the whole point.
B. The goal is not that we live lives of safety and security but of usefulness in God’s kingdom.
C. It’s not enough that we be enjoyers of the manifold grace of God. We must be ambassadors of the manifold grace of God! (1Pet.4:10)
D. It’s risky. It’s messy. It’s dangerous.
1. But there also is a danger in not going.
2. Proverbs 14:4 “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.”
E. We must be confident that He who is in us is greater that he who is in the world. (1John 4:4)
1. Like Jesus (Mark 1:40-42) we touch lepers with the loving hands of the gospel.
2. If we are paranoid of the world, we communicate that the world is more powerful than the gospel, that the darkness is more potent than the light.
3. When we live lives of fear before the world, we act like there is no Savior, and no King of kings and no Holy Spirit.
4. Romans 12:21 tells us not to be overcome by evil, but to “overcome evil with good.” Evangelism is one of the ways we do this. For good is more powerful than evil.
F. Luke 14:16-23 “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. 17 And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ 19 And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ 20 And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ 21 So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ 22 And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ 23 And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.”
a. We are these messengers of the Master: going and bringing people into Christ’s banquet.
G. The goal of Christianity is not protection, it is attack. We are God’s arrows, not His knick-knacks..
1. Wherever God calls us, there we are missionaries — even to our own culture.
IV. We need this.
A. The world needs Christians. This is how God has chosen for the world to hear about and come to know Jesus. But not only does the world need believers in Christ, but believers also need outreach to the world.
B. We need to see the gospel at work: changing lives, bringing salvation.
C. Just as a community needs children, so a Christian community needs new Christians and young Christians. We need the inspiration of watching the gospel transform lost sinners into beloved saints right before our eyes.