Loving the Lost

Introduction

Well, let me first say that it’s good for me to be here, and it’s good for you to be here. I’m so glad to see so many who have come together on the first day of the week to worship him, hopefully in spirit and in truth, and let me join in what’s already been said in expressing my appreciation for your presence, especially for those uh who may be visiting with us, whether you’re visiting from out of town or whether you’re a local visitor, we are thrilled that you are here. And we only ask two simple things from you. They’re both very easy and cost nothing. Number one is get the visitor card out from the pew in front of you and fill that out. And you can either just leave it on the seat or hand it to somebody who looks like they belong here, or maybe the easiest thing is put it in the collection box that John just talked about that’s in the in the lobby.

The second thing is if you have the time, uh stick around a little bit after services and let us greet you and get to know you a little bit better and to extend some hospitality to you. The beginning of this new year, I kind of made the decision that in addition to our lessons that I wanted to also put in for lack of a better way of describing it, to put in some commercials. We’re used to commercials, aren’t we? You can’t watch television or anything without a commercial in it. And so, from time to time, not every Sunday, but from time to time, in addition to your sermon, you’re going to get a commercial with your sermon. And this morning’s commercial is brought to you by our YouTube channel.

I wanted to spend just a little bit of time telling you about our YouTube channel and promoting it. That’s what commercials do. Uh, I spent a little time this past week looking at our YouTube channel and watching some of our YouTube videos, and I learned three things. The first thing that I learned is that our camera has a filter on it that removes hair. When I stand in front of the mirror at home, I have hair on the top of my head. But when I watch YouTube videos of me preaching, it’s non-existent. And so I don’t know how the technology works there, but some they say the camera adds 10 pounds, but it also erases obviously hair from the top of your head. The second thing that I learned in playing back some of the videos of sermons that are preached here, do you know that YouTube has a setting that you can adjust at what speed it’s played back?

You can slow it down and speed it up. And I experimented with some of my sermon videos this past week, and I learned that if I speed up the sermon one and a half times, that I speak like a normal person. I didn’t realize how slow I talked, but you can watch my sermons back one and a half speed, and it just sounds like a normal non-Alabama person speaking. But the third thing that I learned is the most important thing is that if you look, and there’s ways that we can track that to see how many views we get, that we get a lot of people watching either on the live stream, and if you’re watching that with us this morning, we’re glad that you’re here, or that go back after the fact.

One of our deacons, Mike, does an excellent job of posting those sermons, editing, posting those sermons and putting them up both on our website and on our YouTube site that we get views every day from all over the country and all over the world. And that’s what we’re going to talk in our sermon about this morning is the idea of personal evangelism. And I wanted to use this commercial to interrupt and just talk just a little bit about using this as a means of personal evangelism. There’s our YouTube channel location. It’s YouTube.com forward slash Bumby Church. And if you just type that in to your personal web browser, you’ll be brought to this page to our personal YouTube page. And then, since this is a commercial, that’s what I want you to click on as well.

That’s the subscribe. And you can subscribe to that channel and get notifications when a new video has been posted. And then if you click, I know you may not be able to read, but right there is just the word video. You click on videos, and it’ll bring up all of the videos from the most recent back to the most ancient of those videos. And you can watch some of those sermons if you missed something or wanted to watch it again, a Bible class or a sermon, that you can do that. But then here’s something else that you can do. Once you click on one of those sermon videos, this will pull up and it’ll start playing automatically. And this little button down here, again, you may or may not be able to make that out.

It’s simply the word share. It has a little kind of arrow with it. Maybe the most important thing that you can do is to open up a video, sermon video, Bible class video, exhortation video, and click on that share button. And what that’s going to let it do is going to let you send that link to someone else. And so there may be a lesson that talks about what someone needs to do in order to be a Christian, or maybe just an encouraging lesson of how to get through the struggles of life. And you may know someone out in the world that needs to hear. Let me rephrase that. You do know someone in the world that needs to hear the gospel. And it may be that they’re not comfortable coming to a church service such as this right now.

Or they’re not even comfortable sitting down at the kitchen table and having a Bible study with you. But everybody watches videos online. And so send them the link and say, hey, here’s a recent sermon that we had. I thought it might be of interest to you, and send that to them. And maybe they’ll listen and maybe the gospel will have its intent. And that’ll be one small way that you can share the gospel through the technology that we have. Again, there’s the URL, YouTube.com, Bumby Church, or you can just go to our website, Bumby.org. And again, Mike has links from those sermons that will take you right to that YouTube page. And you can share it either from our website or from our YouTube page. If you have any questions about that, see me or Mike or someone else here, and we’d be more than welcome to sit down and show you if it needs a little help, a little lesson on how to find these kind of things.

But we want to use this not just as a means for you to watch these sermons over and over and over again, which I’m sure you all do, but more importantly, they’re there so that we can evangelize. But the internet’s a big place. People aren’t just going to stumble across Bumbee’s YouTube page and stumble across a sermon that tells them what they need to do in order to be saved. Somebody, and that’s you, needs to help them find that page. And so use these tools that we have of technology and other ways to be able to spread and to share the gospel. And that’s what we want to talk about this morning. We want to talk about the idea of evangelizing and sharing the gospel in a lesson that we’ve simply entitled Loving the Lost.

Because I think that’s crucial. I think two things are probably true about every Christian who’s listening to this sermon today. The first thing is you probably in your heart of hearts would admit you’re not doing enough. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a Christian who would say they were doing enough or too much when it came to evangelism. If we’re honest, most of us will say, I’m not doing enough.

But to also say I want to do more and I want to do better. And we look for and we struggle for ways. How can I do that? And I think, and I want to be careful and tread carefully here, I think maybe one way that we seek to improve that is through education of that there’s some magic bullet out there. There’s some program or some book or some system or some website that this there, that’s the thing. And if I could learn that system, that program, that book, that technique, then that’s the thing that would save the lost. And we think the answer is through education. And what I mean by education is educating ourselves and how to do it, the right things to say, the right method.

Now, let me pause here and say, I have no problem with education. We do need to be educated about the gospel and about how to spread the gospel. But I don’t think that’s our biggest impediment to sharing the gospel is a lack of education. I think our greatest obstacle is a lack of motivation. To be properly motivated to do it. Because I don’t think there is a magic bullet. Can we get better at how we try to share the gospel? Absolutely. But there is no magic bullet. There is no one book or one technique or one program that is perfect. And so what we’re lacking may not be education, but what we’re maybe lacking is motivation. And that’s what this lesson is about this morning is trying to motivate us to do something.

1. Begin With a Love for God

Not some particular thing, some particular way, but just do something. And the reason and the motivation behind that is going to be that we simply love the lost. And here’s how we get there. And so here’s your motivation for this upcoming week and hopefully this upcoming year is that it needs to begin with a love for God. That’s where everything we do as a Christian needs to begin. And let me also add here that I think a lot of times we do get the cart in front of the horse, to borrow that expression. And that is that the proper order of things is to begin with the idea of motivation. Begin with the idea of love for God. And then flowing out of that is going to be the proper motivation and education to do it better and to do it right and to do it more often.

But it’s got to begin with a love for God. Look with me, if you will, in the book of Ephesians, chapter 3. If I’m going to love the lost, and if I’m going to be motivated to even, Ephesians 3 is where I’m turning, to even get out of my comfort zone and to do something that I don’t maybe feel gifted at and feel uncomfortable with, it’s going to have to begin with my deep love for God. That’s where every motivation for every Christian action is going to come from. Look in Ephesians 3. Let’s start the reading in verse 14. Ephesians 3, verse 14 reads this way For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.

That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and the length and the depth and the height, to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God, that you may know the love of God, he says, or the love of Christ there in verse 19. That is the beginning point of our motivation. That’s the beginning point of our actions. We can’t begin to talk about loving others, loving the lost, unless we begin here.

2. Our Deep Conviction

Know that the love of Christ, and he goes on to say there in verse 19, to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Knowing and loving God will fill me with that goodness. And once I am filled with the goodness of God, because of my love for Christ, then and only then am I ready to be moved to share that gospel with others. And so loving the lost and be willing to do something, anything to share the gospel, begins with my deep love for God, and then it must include my deep conviction. Now here’s the challenging part. Here’s where I’m going to step on my own toes and let you listen. Do I really believe what I profess to believe?

I mean, really believe it. Do I really? I say it, but do I really believe that there is a God? That Jesus Christ came in the flesh, dwelt among men, and died upon the cross, as we already have observed and remembered this morning, so that I might have forgiveness of my sins. Do I really believe that there’ll come a day when he’ll come back? And everything on this planet and life as we know it will cease to exist, and every human soul that ever existed will stand before the judgment seat and give an account. Do I believe in an eternity that will take place in one of two places, heaven or hell? Do I really believe that? It’s one thing to sing about it, to say I believe it, to listen to or even participate in a Bible class or a sermon that promotes it.

But do I really believe it? Because if I truly believed those things, then I’m going to do something. Look with me, if you will, in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Paul said this knowledge was his motivation. 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Paul is talking about his ministry, his preaching of the gospel and even the cost that it incurred upon him, the painful cost. Why would he preach that gospel? Notice what he says. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 13 says, and since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, and now he quotes the psalmist, I believed and therefore I spoke. Now the psalmist there is saying, Since I believed in God, I spoke to God. He’s talking about prayer. But Paul uses that basis of belief prompting speaking and applies it not to prayer, as the psalmist did, but to preaching or to teaching.

I believed and therefore I spoke. Paul goes on to say, we also believe and therefore speak, knowing that he who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus and will present us with you. Paul says, Why am I preaching at a great cost? Why? Because I can’t help from it. I believe it, and it just has to, because I believe there is a day of judgment, because I believe there will be some who are lost for eternity, but because I believe God is a God of mercy who wants to save them, I have to speak. Do we really believe it? So it begins with a love, a deep-seated love for God. It must include our deep conviction conviction of believing those things and therefore speaking.

3. A Reaction to the Horror of Sin

But then it also must come from a reaction to the horror of sin. We decry our society, our culture, and the dumbing down of the spirituality of holiness and godliness. But have we allowed it to affect us? It’s very easy to do. That sin is no longer called sin. It’s no longer something to be avoided and to be condemned. But do we truly understand the horror of sin? The rebellion against a loving God. And that it will separate someone who participates in it unrepented. It will separate them eternally in a horrible existence away from that God. If we understand the horror of that, it will become that motivation. And then we must see everybody that we know, see, and meet as a soul. And a soul in need of God’s salvation.

4. See Everybody as a Soul

I can see their body, their flesh, I can see their actions that sometimes may repulse me and anger me. But am I able to see past all of that, and to see, because of my love for God and my deep conviction of the things of God and His Word, do I see everybody as a soul in need of salvation? And not in some arrogant, conceited way, but in an humble yet truthful way. I see that I have the remedy. Or maybe a better way of phrasing that is I know the remedy. And I need to be motivated to reach out and to do something. And so I want to encourage you to begin of this year, beginning of this week, beginning of maybe a new pattern in your life to do something.

5. Do Something

I want to encourage you in two ways. First of all, do something. We all have different strengths. Paul in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 talks about the different parts of the body and how that makes this whole thing function. Not everybody has the same talents and the same abilities. But you have some talent and some ability when it comes to teaching the lost. You may be simply have a great talent of connecting people, being the appointment setter, of finding someone who does have the talent and the gift to teach, and putting them in contact with someone who is a soul in need, who needs to hear the gospel. Maybe you can be the encourager to encourage just to set in on those Bible studies and to encourage and to nod the head and to pat the back of both the listener and the teacher.

6. Start Small

Do something, find your talent and put it to work. But secondly, I want to encourage you in this regard. Start small. So many times we get overwhelmed with the task. We read the Great Commission, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and you think, I can’t do that. It won’t fit my schedule. And so you do nothing. Recognize that God isn’t calling upon you to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Maybe He’s calling you to reach out into your world and to the creatures to his creation that you come in contact with. So start small. Let your light shine. Be willing to explain why you are the way you are and why you believe the way that you believe.

Find someone who needs to hear the gospel and point them to our YouTube channel and say, would you listen to that sermon and let me know what you think. Do something. I believe there are three main obstacles that keep us from sharing the gospel. One would be a fear of inadequacy. What if they ask a question I don’t have an answer to? What if I say something wrong? Start small. Overcome that fear of inadequacy. There’s something that you don’t have to do at all, and you don’t have to have every answer, but you can do something. Second might be a fear of rejection. Nobody likes to be rejected. But recognize, as Isaiah said, his word will not return unto him void. Every time you share the gospel, every time you do something to share God’s word with the lost and dying world, you’re succeeding.

Conclusion

God’s word is doing what it intended to do. And then maybe the third obstacle is we don’t know where to start. And to that, I would simply say, just start. Be willing to fail. Be willing to maybe do it, not the best way. But to grow into that knowledge and that ability and that willingness. And so do something. Challenge you this coming week to do something, small as it might be, to share the gospel, to extend an invitation to someone to come and to hear the gospel or to study, maybe with someone else. And let’s encourage one another to be engaged in this great work. And I hope that in some small way you found some motivation to be motivated to serve, to love, and to spread the gospel this morning.

Could you respond to that gospel right now? Can we help you as you come to Christ and to his saving grace? Then let it be known right now, as together we stand and as we sing.