Making the message clear (12/14/03)

Because my college Sunday School was largely filled with fellow Campus Outreach members, I would typically try to tailor my lessons for the purposes of evangelism. Forgive the cheese with regards to vocabulary; the class thought it was funny when I used big words, so I hammed it up a bit.

This semester we've been talking about evangelism, and we're starting to wind down. This is what we call the denouement, if you will, of this semester's study. This is our twelfth lesson on evangelism, with just one more to go. This week's lesson is entitled "Making the message clear," and our passage is Romans 10:9-17:

...because, if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" So faith comes from hearing, and hearing thorugh the word of Christ.
-- Romans 10:9-17 (ESV)

So, how's a man saved? By calling on the name of Christ. And how does one call on the name of Christ? By believing in Christ. This is the Gospel, in a nutshell. If a man does not believe, then he cannot call on the name of Christ, and if he does not call on the name of Christ, then he cannot be saved. So what is believing?

Belief means something more here than mere intellectual assent. Belief has two dimensions: spirit and truth. Belief in truth is an academic agreement with the scriptures. It causes the person to bank on every word of scripture to be infallibly true. Belief in spirit is that belief that is actionable. It causes us to reorder our lives in light of the truth we hold to.

These are two very inseparable ingredients for salvation. You cannot believe in spirit if you have no truth, and believing in truth without the spirit is impossible, since our faith is not from us, but from God through the Holy Spirit.

Something we have to understand is that we cannot hand out a copy of the Holy Spirit with every tract. That is God's domain. And, like it or not, We have no control over someone's reception of the gospel; zip, zilch, none. It is God at work in non-believers that brings them to belief. What does that leave us with?

Well, it leaves us with truth. In fact, that is the one area where God says it's up to us. We can hand out the truth. In fact, God tells us that if anyone hears the truth, it's going to be from us: "and how will they believe in him of whom they have never heard?" He is is shifting the responsibility to us and saying, "spread the good news." Hyper-calvanists want to say, "God's going to save whoever He wants, so sharing the gospel publicly is like trying to make a jet-plane go faster by flapping your arms." Those people are wrong. Some sow, some reap, but God makes it grow. But if none sow, then none grow, and none reap.

Remember a few weeks ago when I shared with you about doxalogical evangelism? [In my previous lesson, I'd given my own testimony as an example of doxalogical evangelism: sharing the gospel through musical worship. -- Brandon] I was convinced of the reality and truth of the life of Christ by seeing Christians acting out in worship. But first, previous to that, the message of the gospel had been shared with me, and made clear to me. Had I not known the Gospel intellectually, there is no way the site of singing people would spontaneously generate within my head the knowledge leading to salvation.

So, let's give sharing our faith the gravity it deserves. We have something the world needs, and that's truth. Therefore, it should become our life's focus to distribute that truth. The Westminster Confession asks, "What is the chief end and highest purpose of man?" and the answer, as all good churchy kids know is: "The chief end and highest purpose of man is to know God and make him known." [WHAT?!?! Did I really write this? It isn't even close to correct. The Westminster Catechism says: "Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever." All I can say is this: many times I wrote on these things on into 4 o' clock in the morning, and my proof-reading is terrible. [I still can't believe I said that!] -- Brandon]

The truth of the Word is how we make this clear. "So faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." It's our responsibility to spread truth, but God provides the only tool necessary to do it: His own Word. It's important to understand the nature of God's Word. While the combination of words and sentences is not magical in and of itself, the ideas, the truths expressed by those words, not bound to language, but rather the rational thought of its content is the very image of God. That's why we can translate it into any language on earth, and it's still God's Word, and the manifestation of the preincarnate Christ.

So, my talk is called, "Making the message clear." An important part of sharing the truth is sharing it in is entirety, and unadulterated. The truth must be received as it is written in the Scripture. The consequences of not sharing the full truth, or a half-truth, or even the tiniest smidge of untruth, is that the audience is not hearing the gospel, but a distorted false gospel.

To give you an example, I knew a guy who had prayed to receive Christ and I started meeting with him in casually a bible study. He seemed really excited about learning about the bible and this Christianity stuff. We only ended up meeting once, as we hit a small snag in our first time meeting. I'm talking to him about the nature of a new life in Christ, and how we throw off all manner of unholiness to pursue Christ. He points at the verse we're looking at and says, "Wait a second. Is this verse telling me I'm not allowed to have sex?" I was completely baffled, and I reply, "Umm... yes, it is. Pre-marital sex is sin." To which he replies, "I kind of wish I'd known that before I became a Christian." Well, if that's how you feel about it, you're in luck; you didn't become a Christian. [I think I may have overstated this a bit. In point of fact, I was wrong to make such assumptions about the state of the man's heart; and doubly-wrong for giving up on him. -- Brandon]

What was the problem here? Well, this guy made a decision without having all the facts. He had an incomplete Gospel. He had the good news, but he didn't have the rest of the truth. He didn't realize that he was a sinner, and that his life was filled with sin. In the end, that truth made the difference between buying into a real new life in Christ and following an incomplete, false gospel. To that end, we must endeavor to share the gospel in its entirety.

Jesus was all about laying it all out on the line. The rich young ruler is all excited about joining Jesus and getting eternal salvation. But Jesus gives him the full cost up front. That puts a pretty big damper on his enthusiasm. Remember Sam's talk a couple months ago, with the guy holding the cross behind his back? "Oh yeah, now that you're a Christian, here's the cross you get to carry on your shoulders. Peace out, catch ya' in the funnies." [Sam's talk dealt with disingenuine evangelism, in which Christians fail to also tell non-believers about the trials and tribulations associated with the new life in Christ. The illustration was one of a Christian sharing the gospel with the cross (and its associated pain) hidden behind his back. -- Brandon]

The Gospel is the "good news." It's good. What makes it good? Well, it's good in relation to the "bad news" we like to hide from people. The good news: you have a savior! The bad news: you need one! Everybody's going to hell if they don't buy into the Gospel. Furthermore, almost everything we do as non-christians is wrong! Correction: not almost. Everything we do as non-christians is wrong! There is no right.

Our problem is we hate confrontation. We're so into being nice because that's what we think Jesus wants of us that we've forgotten how to tell people things they don't want to hear. So when a non-christian is getting combative with you, says, "Oh, so I bet you think I'm going to hell, don't you?" The correct answer is "Barring any change of heart on your part; yes, I do think you're going to rot in hell for eternity." Christ came not to bring peace, but a sword. After all, swords get attention. When Jonah goes to Ninevah and preaches about how God's going to pour out serious divine righteous wrath and indignation, what do they do? You better believe they put sackcloth and ashes, because God has gotten their attention.

If you share your faith and your respondent says, "That's nice, but it's not for me" or "I'm just not ready yet," then they did not get the whole truth. The impending wrath of God on human beings as a species is not something you say, "that's nice, but it's not for me" to.

Let's say an old lady is sitting in her car, and traffics stuck her on the train tracks on Seventh street. Suddenly, a train comes barreling down the tracks. Oh no! What do you do? Are you going to get out of the car and say, "Ma'am, I believe there may be a more fulfilling life for you outside of the car, and preferably a little ways away from it." No, that's not what you say. You say, "granny, if you don't get your hide out of this car in 2.5 seconds, you're gonna be a smear on the train tracks. That means you'll be dead. And dead is not good. It's bad, and more than a little unhealthy. So get out of the car."

Make the message clear! The world is a sinking ship. Now, am I asking you to be fire and brimstone and scare people into being Christians? Yes, I am. But there's more to it than that. We often fail to relate the good news of the Gospel, as well. In Christ there is abundant, eternal life. Sure, we talk about having a peace, and having communion with God, but scoffers would just say Bhuddists get the same thing, and with fewer rules. The gospel of Christ has one thing Bhuddism and yoga and "tofuism" and all those others don't: we have purpose.

The message of the world is clear: you eat, you drink, you sleep, you have sex, and then you die. And then you're done. In our post-modern society, we no longer need reasons for anything, and so nothing has a purpose. The life of a non-christian is filled with self-rule, self-determination, and an inability to construct events in their own lives in such a way that their will has any effect on their lives whatsoever. They're really like driftwood in a storm. They go where they're carried.

Our message should be equally clear: God has purpose for each and every man, woman, child and sub-atomic particle in the universe. There is no such thing as chance. And in a universe where God is sovereign over all matters, there is also the promise of fulfillment of purpose. God keeps telling us "I will make you this" and "I will make you that;" "I will make you into a royal priesthood" and "I will make you into a great nation." God is all about fulfilling purpose. Indeed, He is the only place where purpose can be fulfilled at all.

The Gospel is good news in response to the bad news of the law. The law says, man was created for a purpose. That purpose cannot be fulfilled because man has fallen and deserves hell. The good news of the Gospel is that Christ died once for all, and by believing in spirit and in truth, we find salvation from damnation, fulfillment of purpose and everlasting life.

Earlier I talked about how it is our part of evangelism to spread truth, and God's part to bring acceptance of the truth. I want to come back to that. Doesn't that mean that we have no reason to delay exposing the whole truth to those we are trying to share with? It would be untrue to say of any given non-Christian, "They're not ready for that part of the Gospel yet." And I've heard that before. What are you going to do, freak them out and thwart God's will? "Well, there went so-and-so. They shared the fire and brimstone and now I can't do anything. Now there's no way the Holy Spirit can crack that nut now." That's not how it works.

"Be shrewd as snakes, and innocent as doves." We are supposed to be strategic in how we share our faith. But, there are certain points that cannot be compromised if you want to have an effective witness. The Gospel needs to be shared in its entirety. Even, and especially, those parts that you think will turn them off. In the end, no one comes to Christ except by the inner-workings of the Holy Spirit, so you might as well trust to God.

So, what is the complete Gospel? We've got the four spiritual laws, but I don't think those really encapsulate the full truth of the Gospel. So, I present to you the Super-Deluxe Brandon Felger Revised Version of the Four Spiritual Laws:

1. Man was created for a perfect purpose. Having fallen short of that perfect purpose, he is now destined for eternal damnation.
2. God came to earth in the form of the man Jesus, and subjected Himself to death on a cross.
3. The only way to salvation is to accept the lordship of Christ and believe that He is able to do as He promises.
4. There is a coming resurrection and eternal life.

An honest prayer to receive Christ requires an intellectual understanding of all these truths.

So what's the application? If you're going to share, you might as well share it all at once. By faith in Christ and not in our convincing arguments, we can share the truth of the gospel unadulterated to great effect. But more than that, anything less will be less than the Gospel, and will not have the same saving power as the message in its entirety.