Self Evangelism

Introduction

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Every time I come here, and it’s been several times now, I think it couldn’t get any better than it did the last time. And every time it does. And the reason for that is because of you. It’s because of the people. What the gospel is all about is the people. It’s what we’re all about as gospel preachers. It’s what you’re all about as a disseminator of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s about the people. And that’s the reason Jesus came into the world. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. God so loved the world, that’s metonymy of the container for the contained. He loved the people.

That’s what it was all about. You’re so special. This church has had a special place in my heart for many years. And you’ve done nothing whatever to diminish that this year. Thank you for having Norma and thank you for having me. And as has been pointed out on numerous occasions, she will be back if you want her back, which means I’ll get to come too. So that’ll be nice. I I just am impressed with what you’re doing in this congregation. I’m impressed with not only what you’re doing, but some of the plans that you have on the stove. I think that you’re going to see new things happen that are going to be good for the church. And then your continuance in the things that are old and the things that matter will make you a strong congregation.

Brother Barry and Brother Duncan, Brother Hindley, Brother Harkrider, Brother Klein are men of great character, men of integrity, spiritual integrity. And they’re leading you in a great way. Look to them. Let them shepherd the flock. They recognize the difference between the shepherd mentality and the cowboy mentality. A cowboy drives the herd, a shepherd leads the sheep. And they’re leading in a wonderful way. I’m glad to have been here this week, and I’m glad to see all the Hawk Riders again. I’ve known most of them through the years. They’re very special people and a special family to me. Thank you for all your kindness and consideration. Those of you that have had us to dinner, please be aware that I’m leaving a bigger preacher than when I came.

I want to say, too, how disappointed I was that Brother Harkrider left out one of the old Testament writers, Hezekiah. He didn’t put him in. And if you didn’t get that, you better get your Bible out and look around. It’s good to be with you and good to have this wonderful opportunity. I said to you from John 3 16 that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Now I want you to notice the next term. That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Paul says that all have sinned, Romans 3 and 23, and come short of the glory of God. That creation that we talked about a while ago was intended to glorify God. When a man sins, he separates himself from God, and as a result, he ceases to fulfill his original plan, his original design.

He does not glorify God anymore. All have sinned, Paul says, and come short of the glory of God. God created every person. And what life is all about is every individual person. You can’t live for somebody else, and nobody else can live for you. It’s up to you to equip yourself with the various and sundry things that God has given you in order that you might glorify him. I am very happy about the statements that Paul gives us by way of explanation of our origins and what God expects in Acts chapter 17 as he preached before the Areopagites. And he said, In him we live and move and have our very being. Now, I I want you to pause and look at that with me for just a moment.

He says, Every person is the offspring of God. Every person draws life from God Almighty. In him we live. Without him, we don’t live anymore. We are living because he has determined that it be so. We are living because he set into motion a way to give life. And then we move. In him we live and we move. You make choices once you come into this world and reach an accountable age. You really do it even before that. Because you have a sense of ought. You decide which way you’ll move. Somebody wants to move this way, another person wants to move this way. We very often move in accordance with our talents, in accordance with our opportunities, in accordance with the accident of our birth and time.

But we all move because we decide to move. That speaks eloquently to me about the personal integrity that is necessary to be God’s child. And so he says, You have a sense of ought. In him we live and we move, and we have our very being. No two personalities are exactly alike. We have identical twins at the church where I preach in Pasadena. They’re very different. They’re identical in looks, and they’re, I guess their structure is very much the same. Their bodies are the same, but they’re very different in demeanor. They’re very different in deportment. They’re very different in talent. And that’s the way it is. No two people are exactly the same, and the reason for that is that God created us. In him we live and we move and we have our very being.

Now, do you know what that does? That reduces everything in life to an individual responsibility. And that’s where it belongs. That’s where it belongs. I am very impressed with the church. I’m impressed with this local congregation. But I must say to you that this is not what it’s all about. The church, ladies and gentlemen, is not an end. It’s a means to an end. It’s an edification society. It’s a place where you come to get your recharging in your batteries. It’s a place you come to get your motivation so that you can get out here on the road and get going again. It’s a place where you come to cleanse yourself from the world by worship with God. It’s a place where you come and offer your filial feelings to the Father and at the same time draw energy and draw kinds of impetus to go out here and live in a world that is given over to filth and putridity.

And so it is ours to understand that we have a personal individual responsibility to God. And as we found out, one of those personal obligations and one of those personal responsibilities is to teach others what to do to bring their individual character into accordance with the will of God. So what we do is we teach other people. And everybody has that same responsibility. Everybody ultimately is a teacher of some sort. You’re living a life that teaches. You’re living a life that gives you the opportunity to articulate to the world round about you the things of God, both in the way that you live and in the way that you talk. And those things are what make it possible for you to give that information that you have from Christ’s gospel to those round about you.

And so we’ve been talking about evangelism. Evangelism is a very personal thing. We sometimes talk about personal evangelism. I’ve got news for you. There ain’t no other kind. It’s all personal. It’s intended for persons and it’s intended to be done by persons. And so it’s a very individual thing. We talked on Friday night about Paul and how he felt about that. How that he said, I am debtor both to the Jews and to the Greeks. That argues to his responsibility, which he felt very keenly. And then he said, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. And that argues his passion for the gospel. He said, I’m prepared, I’m ready. Let me have the opportunity, Lord, and I’ll go preach the gospel to Rome.

I’ll give them what they need as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he said, thirdly, I am passionately involved with this gospel to the extent that I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for I recognize it as his power for the salvation of men’s souls. And that was Paul’s initial reaction to his responsibility. It is emulative. We need to replicate those same kinds of attitudes in our life. Personally, we ought to feel obligation as a debtor. We ought to feel the privilege that is ours to distribute the message of the risen Savior. And we ought to feel passionately involved in it. It ought to be such a passion in our lives that very few things have anything that are better to us than pre teaching other people.

Unless it might be the worship and service that we perform before God. All of it is done by persons, by the individual. The next night we talked at some length about the idea of silent discipleship. That is, you teach with the way you live. Let your light so shine before men that others seeing your good works may glorify your Father which is in heaven. Jesus said that in the mountain message in Matthew chapter 5. And he said, Your salt and your light. And we pointed out the fact that the salt needs to get out of the shaker. It needs to get out of the building, get out here into the world. And we talked about the light that needs to shine. We don’t let it just be behind some barrier.

We want to let the light shine. Then this morning we talked about the attitudes that precipitate gospel preaching. And we made the observation that the scripture says, Go ye therefore and teach all nations, and the scripture says, as many as were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word. That’s persons. As many as were scattered abroad, went everywhere preaching the word. Every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess. That’s person. I uh was talking with a person one time about uh her lack of attendance. And I said, We’ve been missing you. And she said, Well, Earl’s been there the whole time. You can’t nobody’s going to attend for you, and nobody’s going to answer for you. Every knee is going to bow and every tongue’s going to confess.

1. Self-Evangelizing: Study to Show Thyself Approved

And I want to tell you, we better get used to that idea because what we do here below is what’s going to determine what we do up there. We need to be ready. So tonight, as our culminating lesson, I want to talk with you about personal evangelism. But not the way you think. One of the things that we neglect, and the reason we don’t do personal evangelism, is we’re not doing enough self-evangelizing. We’re not personally evangelizing ourselves. Study to show thyself approved unto God. A workman that needeth not to be ashamed, handling aright the word of truth, says the Apostle Paul to the young preacher in 1 Timothy 2 15. Study, give diligence to show yourself, to show who? Yourself approved unto God. Why do you study in order that you might evangelize yourself?

In order that you might teach yourself, in order that you might learn from your own constant contact with the will of God, in order that you might have such an intimate association with it that it regulates every area of your life, ranging from your attitude to your disposition to your inclination, all the way to the work that you do. This is the kind of attitude that I want to talk about. Personal evangelism. Listen to me, folks. We don’t need more programs. We need more people. We need people who are converted to Jesus Christ. We need people that understand that they live and move and have their being in Christ. And that they are responsible. The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou and to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.

How do you do that if you can’t haven’t taught yourself? Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman, singular, that needeth not to be ashamed, handling aright the word of truth. We need so desperately to learn to handle a right the word of truth. That Greek word to choose there is an interesting word. I found in Aristotle one time a situation where he quoted somebody as saying that they had little children. And he said, I apportioned out the food. Which meant that he gave to the weakling the pablum that he needed, and he gave a little better to the teenager, probably a pile of it, and then he more and more as it went along. He gave the right things. That’s the handling aright. That’s a portioning out properly the word of truth.

But you can’t apportion it out if you don’t give diligence to have it in your heart. As I said to you this morning, if you can’t tell somebody what you did to be saved and point them to the scriptures that show that it’s so, you need to sit down and look it over. You need, first of all, to be so ashamed that you say to yourself, I repent. I’m not going to allow that my ignorance or the word of God to be that way anymore. I’m going to make it right. That’s personal evangelism. That’s teaching yourself. You teach yourself. So I tell you, we live in a world of what I’ve chosen to call cultural confrontations or cultural contradictions, probably more aptly stated. There’s a strong tendency in our age toward self-justification.

2. Cultural Contradictions of Our Age

There is a strong tendency in our age toward human rationalization, self-rationalization. There is a strong tendency in our age for the acceptance of mediocrity. Those things bother me no end. They bother me, first of all, in my own life. I’m afraid as I look back over my life, that I’ve been too quick to accept mediocrity. I’ve been too quick to just say, I’ll take this shortcut over here. Instead of digging down to do what I should have done, sometimes I just did a superficial part of it. You ever have that trouble? Don’t you fib to me. The fact is that’s a common problem. Everybody has that. And we live in a world where it’s acceptable. All you have to do is say the right things. All you have to do is wear the right things.

All you have to do is say it like everybody else, and you’re acceptable. That’s poor, ladies and gentlemen. P O R E poor. We ought not to be that way. We have that human standardization. That human standardization that says I have to wear the same thing he wears and she wears and they wear. And as a result of that, we’re easily influenced when it comes to talking like they talk, to walking like they walk, to being where they be, to drinking what they drink, to eating what they drink, to wearing all the things that they drink or the lack thereof, and as a result of that, we give in to the world. We give in to the world. We must not do that. And when somebody calls it to your attention anymore, self-justification.

I’ll take care of that. We live in a world where, if we’re not careful, we’re more concerned about how we look than how we are. We live in a world where we’re more concerned with what people think about us than what God knows about us. You hear that? We’re more concerned about what people think about us, how we dress, how we talk, how we look, than we are what God knows about us in our heart. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. He, if his heart is right, is not going to worry so much about what people think. Sometimes we’re more concerned about who we are than what we are. We need to be more concerned that way. Sometimes we’re more concerned about having than about giving.

3. The Principle: Thou Condemnest Thyself

We want so much to have more. We want so much to accumulate more that the first thing you know, we don’t give to anybody. We’re grasping, we’re avaricious, we’re looking for something all the time. And we’re more concerned in many instances with the here and now than we are the hereafter. Now then, I’m through with the introduction again. I want to read a passage to you that sets forth three things a principle, an illustration, and an application. And it’s found in the second chapter of the book of Romans. The apostle Paul in the book of Romans brings every man under the condemnation of God. And he does it with such vividness and such beautiful alacrity. And he says, in that position, all the Gentiles, because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, neither were thankful, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient.

And he condemns the Gentiles. Now the old Jew is going to say this. Ah, yes, you are so right. Those Gentile pigs, they need that kind of real strong preaching. We need to tell them, look, here’s what you’ve done. And he lists all of the things that they did. But I want you to read with me from chapter 2. He says, Thou therefore art inexcusable, O man. Whosoever thou art that judgest another, for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself. For thou that judges doeth the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. And thinkest thou this, O man that judges them which do such things and doest the same, that thou shall escape the judgment of God.

We better be careful. When we teach people, you ought not to do that, we’re not doing the same thing. That’s the principle he wants us to see. We can be guilty of what we condemn in other people. But he said, You better be careful because the judgment of God is for all. Everybody. And in chapter 3, he’s going to say in no uncertain terms in verse 10, as it is written, there is none righteous, no not one. And the reason there’s none righteous according to this application is the fact that they were condemning in others and then doing the same things themselves. Now he does not say they did it to the same extent. He does not say that it was as bad, maybe in its uh final applications as theirs was, but he said, You do the same thing.

4. Thou Art Called a Jew; Thou Art Called a Christian

The illustration is seen in chapter 2 in verse 17. Behold, thou art called a Jew. And makest thy boast according to the law. Substitution, please. Thou art called a Christian. And you say, I’m I’m a Christian. I do what’s right. And knowest his will and approvest the things. I have I have abilities to distribute the word of God. I can do that. Knowest his will and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law. And art confident that thou art a guide of the blind, a light of them that are in darkness. I love how he says that. Oh, I think I’ve stepped in that path. Oh, you’re so bright. You’ve you’ve chosen, you’ve chosen the right way, and you’ve read the right things, and you quote the right things, and you say the right phrases, and you go to the right place, and you get all of this.

5. Thou That Preachest Not to Steal, Dost Thou Steal?

He said, Thou art confident that thou art thyself a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes which has the form of knowledge and not the truth of the law. Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself. That’s the principle. The illustration comes now. He says, Thou that preachest a man should not steal. Dost thou steal? We condemn the thief. Here is the application. He has given us the illustration now. He says, Thou that teachest another, do you not teach yourself the same thing? Do we condemn the thief and then turn around and steal? Oh, you say, I wouldn’t do that. Do you ever steal time from God? You ever take that talent which God gave you that could be used for the glory of God and dedicate it to something that is worldly and secular and corporeal?

Do you think that you steal from God when you make an excuse for not being at the services? Do you steal his worship away? Do you not see that personal evangelism is just as important as going out here and teaching somebody outside of yourself? You have to teach yourself on the inside. And when it says, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another. And so much the more. If you don’t do that, you can make all kinds of excuses. Excuses, ladies and gentlemen, are little more than a lie. Excuses given ostensibly to explain the fact, in reality, distort the fact. They don’t tell the truth. And excuses won’t work with God. He knows the hearts of people.

Do we steal from God? How about giving? Do we steal from God with our money? Do you purpose in your heart to give in 1 Corinthians 16? We’re told that we ought to give with a purpose in our heart. Do you give cheerfully? Or is it a hard thing for you? On and on we could go with that. We need to understand that if we’re not careful, we can steal from God. I love what Amos does in Amos chapter 8. And he describes the Jewish people outside the gates, and he said, When will the Sabbath day be over? So we can get out here and make some money. When will the time come when we can put our scales out here and bob them in the direction so that we make a little bit more?

6. Adultery, Idolatry and Breaking the Law

We can change the scale. All that is is stealing, folks, no matter what you say about it. So we need to be careful. We condemn the thief. We condemn the adulterer. Somebody says, Well, I’ve never committed adultery. Know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity with God is predicated, or prefaced rather, by this statement. Ye adulterers and adulteresses. Know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity with God. He calls people who are friends with the world adulterers. That’s his people.

You can’t hold on to the world with one hand and hold on to God with the other. You can’t serve God in mammon, he says. It is impossible to do that. And so we need to understand that when we condemn the adulterer, we may very well be condemning ourselves. Don’t fool around with the world. Don’t caress it. Don’t have intercourse with it. You can be an adulterer in that sense, in the way he applies this. And then we abhor idolatry, don’t we? Oh, I would never worship anybody but God. He says, Now that says a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? We’d never do that. Well, what about Ephesians 5 and verse 5? He says covetousness is idolatry.

We talked about that earlier in the week. Brother Harkwriter agreed with me, and between the two of us, we’ve been preaching about a hundred years. We’ve never one time had anybody come and sit on the front seat and repent of being covetous, but I’m going to tell you right now, it’s one of the really pervasive sins that exists among Christians today. We’re so interested in piling up this world’s goods that we’re taking away from God. And so we not only commit adultery, we not only steal, we’re at the same time idling. We’re worshiping an idol. We’re worshiping what we can get. He says essentially the same thing. In Ephesians chapter, uh, in Colossians chapter 3 and verse 5. He lists covetousness among all of those heinous crimes that he lists there.

That comes between you, that which comes between you and God is an idol. I don’t care what it is. It doesn’t make any difference what it is. If it’s something that creates a barrier between you and God, and it makes no difference how subtle it is, how small it may seem, or how insignificant it may seem to you. If you put something between you and God, it becomes covetous. You cannot serve God and mammon, he said. You either serve me with the whole heart or you don’t serve me at all. You can’t give me a half-hearted kind of service. You can’t give me a service that just is convenient. At times you want to do it, and at times you don’t want to do it. You can’t do that.

Consistency is a part of Christianity. And teaching yourself personal evangelism on the inside of who you are is a part of being a Christian. We condemn lawlessness. Listen to what he says. Thou that makes thy boast of the law through breaking the law, then it dishonors thou God. He says, you can give yourself over to somebody else if you’re not careful. And in doing so, you break the law. Let me ask you this. Do you ever cheat on your income taxes? I uh, for several years now quit making a list of resolutions for the new year. I make one. And I make that resolution about October, I start working on it trying to figure out what I’m going to do. And a lot of times I’ve been three or four years and I’m still working on it.

But I make a new one, so the list is growing. It’s just a little more gradual. But a couple of years ago, I decided I was going to make me a resolution to be wise small. Be wise small. And what that does, in my opinion, is it develops a habitude. It develops a system of habits where you say the smallest things, the seemingly most insignificant things are necessary. Wisdom in regard to those things is necessary to make the cumulative effect a wise person. Let me illustrate. You ever throw anything to the waste paper basket and miss? What do you do? Be wise small. Be wise small. Somebody’s going to have to pick that up. You threw it over there. You go over there and pick it up.

I don’t care if you’re in the mall. You go over there and pick that up. You put your dishes up when you get through eating, or you help with this, or you help with that. This is being wise small. And when you are wise small, the first thing you know you’ll have bigger decisions to make regarding your kids, regarding being married, regarding this, that, or the other, and you will make wise decisions for the simple reason that you’re in a habit of doing so. In little things. And you’ll do the big things the same way. And it’s really stood me in good stead. Thou that say the law is my law. Do you abhor the law by breaking the law? What is the law? I’ll tell you what the law is.

Love thy neighbor as thyself. The law is thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, and soul, strength and body. The law is the perfect law of liberty. The law is the law of God applied to everything. It is God’s expression. Three things are all absolutely necessary for there to be a law. There, first of all, has to be a lawgiver who is possessed of the power to give the law. Secondly, there has to be an expression of the law. And then thirdly, and this is the hard part, there has to be punitive measures attached to the law. It’s not a law, it’s just a wish. And so when we look at those things, we must come to understand that keeping the law in the very simplest matters is what he’s talking about.

Thou that makes thy boast of the law. You say, Oh, I’m a keeper of the law. I love the law. I can quote in Matthew 28, 18, I can quote Mark 16, 16. I can quote Acts 2.38. He says, Through breaking of the law, dishonorest thou God, for the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you. What that says is if you don’t maintain a wise deportment in regard to everybody with whom you come in contact, they’re going to say, Aha, look at him. He says he’s part of the law. He’s not. I went to get some things at a lumber yard one time. And a man’s name came up, and I said, Oh, you know him? I said, He’s one of the deacons at the church where I preached.

Conclusion

He said, He’s a deacon. You’re kidding me. He’s the most filthy mouthed man I ever heard. He’s a deacon. Don’t you see that if you can’t get away with all that, you have to keep the law in the smallest matters, and that includes your own conversation with people. So remember the principle. Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself. The illustration of the principle. Thou that saith, thou, now you shouldn’t do this. Do you do the same thing? And then the illustration always requires the application of the principle. And the application is that God’s going to judge regard to those principles. God’s going to judge. And so what I say to you is that we need people that are converted. We need people that genuinely care for the souls of men.

And I’ll tell you this: you won’t care for the souls of men until you begin to care for your own soul like you ought to. When you finally get to the point that you say, look, I could be lost walking the way I’m walking. Or I could be lost because I don’t even prepare myself to teach anybody anything. I do a little bit of teaching because I have a good life and I try to live right. I do some teaching that way. But if you have the ability, ability plus opportunity equals responsibility. And you need to be putting that to work. And so I say to you again, we don’t need more programs. The gospel gives us ample information about the program. We need more converted people.

And that’s really personal evangelism, private evangelism, self-evelizing is what will make it work. Thank you for listening. There may be people here who owe a duty to God tonight. There may be people that have walked a course of ungodliness all their lives and have never claimed the favor of forgiveness from God. God is ready. Jesus said, Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem. How often would I have gathered you to myself as a hen doth gather her chicks under her wings, but ye would not. He’s waiting for you. Even though you’ve turned your back on him, he’s waiting for you. He’s that prodigal’s father who looked down that long, roamsome road and over and over again said, God help my boy. And he was there waiting for him to come home.

He waits for you to come home. If you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, if you believe with all your heart that he is who he said he was, if you believe that he can save you from your sins, if you will confess your faith in Christ with a penitent heart, a heart that says, I’m not going to walk this way anymore, I’m going to walk this way. And then if you will come and let us baptize you into Christ, He has promised that He will wash away all your sins. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation, and baptism doth also now save us. Don’t you want that? Surely you do. Surely you would not walk away from here tonight in your sins.

I don’t stand before you as somebody who’s always done it right. But I stand before you as somebody who loves your soul. And I’m not able to tell you anything but what I understand to be the truth, so that you’ll come to Jesus. And if you’ve wandered by the wayside, brought reproach upon God and his people, you need to come back and make that right. If you’ll let us know, we’ll help you. While Brother Harkrider leads us and while we stand the same.

Strong in the strength which God was. Strong in the strength which God suffered to strong in the Lord of God.

Take every virtue, take every virtue every grace and for that.