Well, I was a Southern Baptist preacher. This is true. I am not any longer. You stop being that officially when you tear up your ordination papers.
I needed that ordination because of my own insecurity in my younger days. But after a while, the Lord got hold of me, and I could not figure out what I was anymore. So there was no sense carrying around human ordination.
One day, with a lot of gusto, I stood up in the assembly and tore up my paper. I said, “Now I’m just Brother Dana.” I feel like the Lord has enabled me to minister more since that time than before, when I had the paper. You understand that?
Anyway, I also do not think that I am an evangelist. I sometimes find myself doing the work of an evangelist. Paul tells Timothy, “Do the work of an evangelist.” So we do not really know if Timothy was an evangelist, or if he was just told to fill in the shoes there.
I feel like I end up doing the work of an evangelist many times because it is like the Lord has a whole line in the army standing up here and says, “Okay, who’s going to evangelize?” Everybody takes one step back. Believe me, I do not step forward. But something happens, and everybody says, “I’ll pray about it. I’ll think about it. I’m going home.”
So I have found myself in all kinds of strange and interesting situations. Recently, I have done an absolutely absurd thing, but I felt God was in it, and sure enough, He is.
On Tuesday nights, we rent out a secular theater in the middle of the town where I live. It holds 650 people, and we have a gospel meeting. We do skits, videos, and a lot of music. We preach the gospel every week.
We have been doing that since October, and only two people have gotten saved. But I want to tell you something: there are people who are not Christians who come to that meeting every week, and they are stunned by the reality of Christ. Now, I think that is significant.
Our understanding of evangelism should not be, “Okay, we give it one shot, rake in who we can, and quit.” A real understanding of evangelism is that we faithfully witness and watch the Holy Spirit capture somebody’s life, begin to convince them, and begin to show them.
We sit there every Tuesday night, and there is a fellow up on the soundboard. He is a secular man. I will not even tell you about his lifestyle, but this man is just not in the Lord. He is up there working the sound.
We say, “Okay, let’s stand up and sing ‘I Will Call upon the Lord.’” This guy stands up. We were so amazed. We said, “Okay, now everybody clap at this point,” and the guy is clapping.
After about the third meeting, he came up to me and said, “Dana, what you said really meant something to me.” Now, he does not even know what is going on. I do not know if he has heard the gospel, but something is stirring in his life.
He flies all over the United States, but he always makes it a point to be home on Tuesday because he wants to be part of the meeting.
Who can outguess God or know what is going on? We just need to faithfully witness. We call that meeting Good News Tuesdays. It is kind of fun. If you remember that, pray for it. We need a lot of prayer on that thing.
I would like to share with you, for this Saturday night, Sunday morning, and then, Lord willing, next weekend, some thoughts about evangelism—some thoughts out of Scripture, and some thoughts that I have regarding it.
My hope is that you people have been chewing around on this thing of evangelism so long, thinking about it and praying about it, that God has got you just about to the point where, if somebody just says, “Go,” something is going to happen.
That is just what I hope will happen. I wish I had something profound to say, but unfortunately, profound is not a word in my dictionary. Just keep it simple. I will share with you some things that I know, and I hope it precipitates that which the Spirit wants and has been wanting for a long, long time.
Father, I make that my prayer. I know I come to the One who is able to do tremendous things, the Lord of the harvest. You have a way of raising up harvesters that just makes us unable to say anything other than, “Here am I; send me.”
Lord, we pray that You will cast Your spiritual net over all of us and capture us for Your purpose and Your glory. We commit these times into Your hands, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I would like for you to turn to the Gospel of Matthew. We are just going to look at two verses to begin with tonight.
I really do rejoice in being here with you. When I find an individual who has a burden for lost people, I rejoice in that. Even more so, to find a company of God’s people being exercised over this thing—this is really precious. Really precious moments.
It is also wonderful when I feel that the spiritual reality is that harvesting is already going on. That makes it even more wonderful.
I do not know all the things that go on here. I hear secondhand about the sisters’ meetings on Friday, where I think the sickle has gone in a few times and harvested for the Lord. It is exciting to see what God is going to do.
It is wonderful to get together with God’s people and talk about matters such as the gospel. When we begin to obey the Lord in this matter of evangelism, it puts us all on the edge of our seat. We have to depend on the Lord, and He comes through. Some Christians just plain wake up as the Lord arrests us in this matter.
I would like for us to look at Matthew 3, beginning in verse 1.
Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, saying,
“Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
For this is he that was spoken of through Isaiah the prophet, saying,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
Make ye ready the way of the Lord,
Make His paths straight.”
John the Baptist—that was his message.
Now, in Matthew 4:17, this is the summary statement that Matthew makes regarding what Jesus did after John the Baptist was put into prison.
From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, “Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
We have a goal in mind here. I want to share with you a practical goal. The longer-range goal is that we, as the Lord’s people, could engage in outreach, compassion, and the gospel all the time.
But I also have a short-range goal, and that is a gospel meeting next Sunday morning. I want to explain the kind of gospel meeting we are going to have so that you will all understand.
Next Sunday morning, things are going to be different around here. First of all, the meeting is only going to be an hour long, which is a miracle in itself. I understand Harrison preached for an hour and a half the other week.
One hour, me.
We are planning to have a couple of four- to five-minute testimoniettes, three songs—deep songs, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” and the others—and special music. I am going to bring my guitar and sing a song, preach the gospel, and then we are going to have a time of response, all in one hour.
Now that sounds simple enough. Now comes the punchline: your involvement.
Brothers and sisters, I want to tell you what I feel, and then you pray about it for yourself. But I want to encourage everyone here to bring somebody next Sunday.
We are going to see an amazing work of God’s providence—a miracle. If you will be open to it, God will put somebody on your heart this week, get you to invite them to this meeting, have them say yes, and you will pick them up, bring them to the meeting, and sit with them.
This is a miracle.
Nobody here is too old or too young. Everybody here should seriously consider that the Lord wants you to bring somebody next week.
Can I be honest with you about the Lord’s goodness? We can come up with the best gospel meeting here next week, sing great songs, preach the gospel, and if no lost people are here, then what happens usually is that Jesus invests about two ounces of Holy Spirit. We all feel good, and it was a blessing.
But if lost people are here—if there are a hundred adults here who do not know the Lord next Sunday—watch out.
We could have the lousiest meeting. I could lose my place and not be able to preach from laryngitis. The singer could break a string on the guitar. The testimony could ramble on for half an hour. Yet the Spirit of God would be here in such a powerful way that people would be absolutely glued to the heat as the simple truth about Jesus is declared.
That is how good God is.
One of the keys is this: Christians need to take it seriously, especially this matter of bringing somebody to the meeting. If you bring somebody to the meeting, we are going to see something happen.
Now, does that make you just a little bit nervous?
Some of you already have somebody on your mind. You have been doing your cultivating work. Now this is harvest time. Next Sunday is Harvest Sunday.
I am not a farmer myself, but while I was going to school, I spent some time out in a farming community, and I learned something. The time that the farmers worked the hardest was harvest time.
When harvest time came, they hardly even slept. They worked all through the night. They put lights on their tractors and literally harvested through the night. They worked day and night, and when they finished their farm, they went over to their neighbor’s farm. They all joined in and harvested that farm.
Harvesting time is spiritual work, and we need to be exercised. Thank God, you all are exercised already about this whole matter. Now, let us see what happens.
Here is my point. I will talk about it a little more tomorrow, because an amazing miracle happens: when somebody starts praying, coincidences start happening.
Do you ever notice that? When you stop praying, coincidences stop happening. I am talking about coincidences with a capital C.
When somebody is willing and says, “Okay, Lord, I do not know exactly who I should ask for this thing, but if You will put somebody on my heart, I will check it out,” watch out.
Into your little heart will come, “How about Charlie Gonzalez?” It is probably going to be somebody you would not choose naturally—the person you do not get along with at work, the person you think least likely to succeed in this Christian business. The Lord may put them on your heart.
I am serious about this now. Wednesday night—this Wednesday night—let us be specific. I do not think we ought to be ambiguous all the time.
When I see God move wonderfully in gospel meetings, do you know what happened at the prayer meeting before? We bring out a blackboard and write down the names of the people who are on your hearts to invite. We put them on the board, and we pray specifically for these people.
There is spiritual warfare involved in getting them here. If you just invite them and they say yes, but you do not pick them up, I have learned by now that eighty percent of them will not come.
There is a lot of spiritual flak out there in the atmosphere to prevent people from coming. Next Sunday may be the coldest day in Richmond’s history. I do not know. The enemy monkeys around with all kinds of thermostats and various things.
Listen, folks: spiritual warfare is what we are engaging in, and we are getting on the front line. You start thinking about somebody and praying about somebody. We get specific and say, “Hey, this is my boss here, Joe Fates, and we need to pray for him.” Something starts happening to this guy Joe.
There is the challenge out in front of you. Throw down the gauntlet. See what happens.
If you really try, and somebody comes to your heart, and you really invite them, and they say yes and then say no, and you come next Sunday without somebody with you, that is perfectly all right. We will let you in.
I will be at the door checking—but I will let you in.
It is exciting, because the Gospels come alive. People sometimes say Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are baby stuff, and then you go on to the epistles and the deep things. When you are really just about to be raptured, you read Revelation and go.
I think the Gospels, although it is true that they share the basic facts about Jesus, are deep revelations, and they are exciting. When we start gospeling, it is as if the Gospel comes alive. It is Palestine, too. It is an experience all over again.
Suddenly, the Lord of the harvest is moving among people. Suddenly, the Spirit of God is going out as a convincer, a convictor, and an illuminator. Suddenly, the great Evangelist stands in our midst: the Lord Jesus Himself.
Let us never forget who the great Evangelist is—with a capital E. That is Jesus.
When He comes and stands in our midst, when we are committed to this matter, I say it is gospel time. Suddenly, it is as if there is an awakening of gifts of the Spirit that function in the body of Christ.
When you look at 1 Corinthians 12 and the various gifts of the Spirit, most of those gifts are utilized primarily for outreach: gifts of miracles, gifts of healing, discernment of spirits. These are used also in the body of Christ, but have you ever experienced this?
I am not a spiritually dynamite person. I do not go around saying, “I have this gift and that gift.” But I will tell you: when you get out there on the firing line and are witnessing to somebody who is not a Christian, God does all kinds of miracles.
My history of miraculous occurrences is basically centered around those moments when I was reaching out to somebody who was being drawn by the Lord. God did miraculous things—whether it was getting somebody a job through prayer, or an actual physical healing in somebody’s life.
Sometimes I cannot get rid of a headache as a Christian. But I find somebody who is really sick, and they are not a Christian, and God pokes my heart. I say, “We are going to pray for you, and if the Lord heals you, you will know it is the Lord.” Sure enough, God touches them, and they know it is the Lord.
So much of that which lies dormant and latent within the church is ready to explode into life. But it is when we are out there on the firing line and, as the Scriptures say, we bear witness of these things, and so does the Holy Spirit whom God has given to us.
This is what Peter and John said before the Sanhedrin. “We are witnessing about these things, but you do not listen to us. It is the Holy Spirit behind us who is healing that lame man there at the temple.”
It becomes an exciting time when the gospel starts going out.
Here is my question to you: What is the gospel?
Gospel means good news. Now, what is the good news? Is it the gospel of our salvation?
There is a phrase. Does anybody know where that is in the Bible—“the gospel of your salvation”? Is that in the Bible, or is that something we made up?
Ephesians 1—that is where it is in the Bible. Okay, would you come up and speak the rest of the message?
Ephesians 1:13 says, “Even after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.” But this “of your” is important.
What we have done is make the gospel of salvation—as if the salvation message is the content of the gospel. That is not really true. The gospel leads to salvation. When somebody hears and responds to the gospel, it leads to salvation. Within the good news, certainly, is this whole matter of how we can be saved.
But if we narrow it down, somehow we lose out.
If we narrow it down to this—“God has a plan for your life, but you have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. God sent Jesus to die on the cross and rise again, and if you accept Jesus in your heart, you will be saved”—that narrows it down an awful lot.
What is the gospel? We have to go back.
What was the good news that John the Baptist preached?
“Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
What was the good news that Jesus preached?
“Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Wait a minute—is that good news? “Hi there, boy, repent.” I do not see them laughing. This is not hilarious news.
To understand this, we have to go back to Palestine. Lance could take us back to Palestine. I will have to take you up to New York and imagine we are in Palestine.
Here were some religious Jews. All dry religion had become politics. Religion had become legalism. The poor, the oppressed, the unharvested—just common people—were getting nowhere with this whole religiousness.
Suddenly, out of that desert of religious experience came a man named John.
John said something that had been said before, but he said it in such a forceful way that it got people’s attention. What he said was this: God is still alive, and He is still in control of this whole thing. He has a kingdom, and it is right here. It is almost here.
“I am checking my watch, and I hear the footprints, and it is almost here.”
People said, “What do we do? All this time we have been settling around. We have been tithing mint and cumin and doing a lot of stuff. You say there is a big kingdom out there?”
John said, “Yes, sir. That kingdom has a God who is just and righteous and loving and powerful.”
When God comes among people, He brings equality. Poor people who are trodden down by the rich—there is inequality in this world, suffering, and disease. When God’s kingdom comes, and it is right here, He is going to straighten all that out.
That was good news to those people.
John went everywhere preaching this three-pronged sermon:
John did not say, “If you repent, the kingdom will come.” He said, “If you repent, you will enter the kingdom.”
People said, “Show me the water. I want a God who is just. I have had it with these religious leaders and these hypocrites.”
John would tell them, “Let me tell you the truth about God. He is fair and square with everybody.”
People said, “Hooray. Give me a J.” I mean, they got it.
He said, “You need to repent if you want to enter into this kingdom. It is right here. It is within earshot. It is within eyesight. It is right upon us.”
The people got a witness to it because it was true. They knew John was like Elijah. He woke the people up.
This is good news: God is around. We did not think He was around. It looked like a game. We were saying God was around, but He was not. We were all still sick, oppressed, and especially spiritually dead.
Now you say that spiritual life is reality.
Then John said, “Right around the corner, the King is coming—the King of the kingdom.”
A kingdom is made up of two things: the King and the subjects. The King is the center of the kingdom. When the King comes, John said, He is going to establish justice, righteousness, love, and power.
John said, “He is right around you. He is in your midst. You do not even know Him, but He is walking right now in Palestine.”
People got so excited. “Really? We have got to be baptized. We have got to start looking for Him.”
Then John the Baptist said, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” Some of his disciples really got excited.
Jesus came along and began to preach this same kingdom. Boy, it was good news.
Jesus got up there and spoke that so-called Sermon on the Mount. He started telling people what reality was. Every word that dropped out of His mouth, people said, “I knew that was true. I knew it was true.”
God is still alive. He cares for the poor in spirit. He cares for the humble and the brokenhearted. He demands honesty and justice. He wants me to be faithful in my marriage. He demands an inner, heartfelt love for Him and not just external stuff.
Everything Jesus said, they said, “Amen. Amen. Amen.”
He spoke, and the kingdom burst open upon the people. Jesus was right there.
This is why it is so exciting. Jesus not only spoke the kingdom; He was God’s big hors d’oeuvre right there in their midst. It was like Jesus saying, “Here, have a little bit. Taste a little bit of kingdom.”
Just come within six feet of Jesus, and you are tasting kingdom. Suddenly, you taste love. Little kids feel blessed. Sick people get healed. The oppressed feel like they have a chance. Women feel like they are equal.
Every time Jesus went somewhere, things happened. He stopped a march to turn around and see who the woman was who touched Him—not out of condescension, but out of genuine love and appreciation for that faith.
Everything Jesus did—it was like He had a radius around Him, a kingdom life. You got within earshot, you were going to get truth. You were going to get love.
He enticed people with parables: “The kingdom of God is like treasure hidden in a field. Somebody found it, and they sold everything they had.”
Some people said, “That is the dumbest story I ever heard.” People without spiritual perception.
But those who were hungry in the dry, dry land said, “This Man is telling us stuff we have not heard for years.”
When was the last time you thought that God was good news? The kingdom was good news.
The only problem is, I know my own injustice. I know my own sinfulness. It makes me stay away from this thing. Jesus said, “You have got to repent.” He said, “You woman, go, and sin no more.”
Everywhere Jesus walked, you saw the kingdom in microcosm.
There are so many appellations of Jesus. Do you know what He is called in Luke 4:18? The gospel preacher.
He stood up in the synagogue of Nazareth, opened the scroll of Isaiah 61, and said:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor.”
The poor just sat on their hands so they would not applaud. What a great day.
He heals the brokenhearted. He gives recovery of sight to the blind. People said, “Oh, man, if this were only true.” Then He did it.
Man, that is gospel. That is good news.
In Matthew 9, Jesus was healing multitudes and teaching multitudes. He looked out over the multitudes and had compassion for them. A rush of tears came to His eyes because they looked like sheep without a shepherd.
It was then that He said:
“The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He send forth laborers into His harvest.”
That is the context of evangelism: a shepherding look. It looks out on broken people.
In Luke 19, after Zacchaeus gets saved, Jesus says that He has come to seek and save that which is lost. He was known as a friend of sinners. Terrible, scandalous Jesus.
He actually got next to sinners and brought them to the truth in such a way that they could walk in salvation: friend of sinners, seeker of the lost.
When we read these things and hear these appellations of Jesus, we should not just look back and say, “Oh boy, isn’t that wonderful about Jesus?”
I would rather that we not only look at Jesus and glory in His compassion and glory in His being a seeker of sinners, but that we begin to sense that same heart within ourselves.
When is that heart going to beat within us? When do we look over the multitude in Richmond and say, “Look at these poor people, sheep without a shepherd?”
Naturally, we are more likely to look at them and say, “What a bunch of goats. They ought to fall off the cliff into the James River.” We do not see with Jesus’ eyes, do we?
Maybe we are not ready for the Gospels. Maybe they are too deep for us. When we really read these Gospels, they ought to bring us to the place where we see this living Jesus walking in our hearts and walking in our lives, making us people who are willing to befriend the sinner in order to bring them to the kingdom.
This kind of gospel has relevance in the church today. In the midst of this so-called secular world that has no need for God, there is still something that has the thunderous affirmation of spiritual forces in heaven when somebody stands up and preaches the gospel in the midst of the secular world and says, “God is still King over this world. He is Lord over your circumstances. He has brought you to this place.”
You would be surprised how many worldly people say, “Yeah, I know it is true.”
When we preach salvation only as some practical antidote for our problems, it is no wonder it seems so weak at times.
The gospel that was preached of the kingdom was not practical; it was essentially spiritual. Yet its practical outworkings were revolutionary every time it truly touched the earth.
Whenever somebody was really taken with the kingdom, they became people-loving people and began, in some measure, to manifest the life of the kingdom.
It is not merely a matter of being practical people who say, “Listen, you need to be saved in order to succeed in your business.” I do not really like that too much.
I like the gospel that says, “God is a King, and He has a business. He is raising up sons. He has already exalted His number one Son, Jesus, into the heavens and made Him King over all things. Now He is building a kingdom, and it is here, right here.”
You and I need to stop in our tracks, turn, receive this Jesus as Lord, and enter the kingdom ourselves. I believe the Lord attests to a gospel like that.
The gospel is kind of exciting. It is amazing to me, when we talk about the Gospel of John, to look at another little picture of Jesus.
In the Gospel of John, there are passages where Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the bread from heaven. I am the light of the world. I am the good shepherd.”
There is one “I am” that people seldom come up with. They usually get stuck. It is this:
“I am the door.”
I believe that is an evangelistic revelation. Jesus said it in John 10, along with, “I am the Good Shepherd.”
It means that only through Him can we come to the Father and come to the kingdom. But there is another side to this “I am the door.” When seen, it helps us understand that Jesus is the very One who enables us to go out, reach somebody, and bring them in.
He is the door for us as well—the door of enablement.
We say, “How can that person ever come to the Lord?” We see Jesus as the door, and they can come to the Lord.
Do you know what the Christians in the Book of Acts preached as the gospel?
They preached the gospel of the kingdom of God and of Jesus Christ. The whole meat was added to the message.
In Acts 8:12, Philip is preaching:
But when they believed Philip preaching good tidings concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.
That is roughly, summarily, the content of what was preached: the kingdom of God and Jesus Christ.
Also, the last verse in the Book of Acts, Acts 28:31, says that Paul was:
Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness, none forbidding him.
There we are: the kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. They go hand in hand.
We need to sharpen our swords to be able to preach the good news of the kingdom of God and of Jesus Christ. That is to be our message.
The unique thing about it is that Jesus is both the Evangelist and the evangelized. He is the good news, and He is the Good Newser.
When we get serious about gospeling, the Lord Jesus—the great Evangelist—shows up and witnesses to Himself through the Holy Spirit.
When we watch Jesus in the Gospels, we see both the message of our gospel and the Messenger of the gospel.
I want to share with you some insights into the method of evangelism. Get ready for a method. You have probably been to one method school or another. So here goes the method of the gospel.
The method of the gospel, as I see it anyway, is to watch the Lord Jesus of the Gospels—to watch Him and see how He moved among men.
Not only to be inspired by that, but to allow the Lord Jesus to begin to move in us in the same way.
In the Gospel of Mark, you see Jesus as the servant. He goes through Palestine on a course proclaimed by the usual conjunction in Mark: “straightway, straightway, straightway”—or “immediately, immediately,” if you have the New American Standard.
Immediately He went there. Immediately He did this. Immediately He met His mother. Then immediately He went to the synagogue.
In the Gospel of Mark, we see Jesus as a servant with authority and power, with the beauty of a life, with love expressed in tangible ways.
This should inspire us as we look at the Lord Jesus. It becomes, in a sense, an understanding of how we evangelize.
Part of our evangelizing needs to be servanthood. We need to have power and authority, and we need to be doing in the kingdom of God. We need to manifest the kingdom of God in our lives out there in the world.
There is the King, Jesus. He lives in the kingdom of God, up in the heavens, as it were. How far did He have to come from His central position on the throne to get out to the edge of humanity and begin to touch lives?
That was a long walk.
Brothers and sisters, here is where we get into rationalitis, intellectualitis, excuse-itis. But it makes no difference what anybody says. The Lord Jesus says:
“Let your light so shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”
Part of gospel methodology is a life of good works and a life of servanthood.
When we come to the place where we hold on to our ruling and reigning aspect and let go of our servanthood, we no longer have time for the riffraff of the world. We are too busy treading the upper stratosphere.
We need to hold on to both. We are a kingdom of priests, but we are also to be servants.
One of the toughest things for Christians is to be servants. Let us just admit it. It is tough to get our hands dirty again once they have been cleaned by the Lord Jesus.
You have to be willing to go out there and listen to somebody cursing all the time, carrying on conversations you do not like, being selfish and in for themselves. You have to put up with that for hours in order to witness to somebody.
People say, “Oh, spare me, Lord. Let me dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
I am sure the Lord Jesus would have rather spent the rest of eternity fellowshipping with the Father and never come down for riffraff like us. But something about Him was willing to be a servant.
He who would be greatest is going to be servant. Mark stands as a methodology of evangelism for us if you see Jesus the servant.
When we see the Gospel of Matthew, we see Jesus in quite another way. Somebody said that the Gospel of Matthew is somewhat similar to the Old Testament Pentateuch.
Matthew 5 through 7, the so-called Sermon on the Mount, is like the sermon given when Moses came down from Mount Sinai. Moses gave the Ten Commandments and the law of God. He came down with the glory of God upon his face from the very presence of God and said, “This is the Lord your God, and He is a very jealous God.”
The people said, “Yes, sir.”
In the same way, the Gospel of Matthew shows Jesus coming on the scene, performing the same actions you see in Mark, but also teaching authoritatively.
He came as, if I may put it this way, the new Moses. He spoke the truth about the kingdom of God.
Whether you read Matthew 5 through 7, the Sermon on the Mount; Matthew 13, with the parables of the kingdom; or Matthew 24, concerning the end times—Jesus spoke as the authoritative Person who had come from the throne of God with a hot and living message.
There is a methodology when we see Jesus as the authoritative prophet who speaks forth the word of God.
We need to stop being chicken.
Gospeling is show and tell. We have a lot of show. “Well, I think I will show my family my lifestyle for fifty years, and then I will tell them what has happened to me.”
But in the Gospel of Matthew, the gospel involves a forthtelling of the truth about God in such a way that it liberates people.
Jesus spoke with authority. In Matthew 21 and 22, Jesus is confronted by His antagonists, and one by one He shoots them down with such irrefutable authority that they walk away with their tails between their legs and do not dare ask Him anything more.
He shoots down the Sadducees, the scribes, and the Pharisees with wisdom from heaven.
Gospeling involves that kind of authority, that kind of prophetic utterance, and that kind of speaking that the world needs to hear today.
Not practical machinations and devices that bring people to salvation by emotionally twisting their arms, or somehow trying to out-argue them intellectually. There is a forthtelling of God that those who are destined for salvation will hear and respond to.
Acts 13:48 says:
And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.
Isn’t that wonderful? As many as had been appointed.
We are not trying to twist the arms of people who do not care anything about the Lord, who have no spiritual perception, and who would rather walk in darkness than in the glorious light of the Lord Jesus. But until we forthtell the gospel, it is hard to know those who love the light from those who love the dark.
A couple of weeks ago, in a Bible study up in Huntington, the sisters got together. A nurse in our fellowship knew another school nurse and invited her to one of these Bible studies.
This sister testified that this was the first person who had ever said yes to her about coming to a meeting. She had been asking people to come to meetings and gospel meetings for years. This was the first person who said yes and came.
This woman came out of the blue into the Bible study. The sister who was sharing that morning began to share how the Lord knows our needs. This woman broke down, began to cry, and got so soundly saved in that meeting that the women still cannot get over it.
All that sister did was share about how Jesus is such a Lord that He knows all about us. It completely unglued this worldly woman, and she was soundly saved right there in that meeting.
Those who are appointed—just give them a shot.
Now, it is not always like that. It is not always as if somebody hears one time and gets saved. It took me ten months of hearing the gospel every week before I got saved.
I got married to a Southern girl—one of the best things I ever did—and moved down to North Carolina. I would go to their Baptist church down there, and they had a preacher who preached every day looking just at me. It was a very small meeting. Everybody knew who was saved and who was not.
They would say, “Now let’s pray for the lost,” and they would all look up at me. Yeah, I knew.
I held out for a good period of time. I had a lot of arguments and excuses, but the Lord kept working on me. I am so glad God’s people were faithful and did not just chuck me out of the group.
When I look in the Gospel of Luke, I see the Lord Jesus as God’s Man who knows men perfectly. He knew what was inside people.
Dr. Luke gives us that peculiar insight. He gives details about the women who went around with Jesus and the people He encountered. Jesus was so perceptive.
It is as if Jesus looked right down through a person’s eyes, right down into their heart, and knew all about them.
Jesus goes to Zacchaeus and says, “Zacchaeus, come on down.” How did He know Zacchaeus was so hungry? He looked at people, and He knew.
This is a methodology. Jesus is the great discerner of men.
Have you ever been in a situation where God gave you a knowing about somebody’s life, and you began to share with them?
I talked with a man a short while ago who was beating his wife. He was up in arms, furious, and ready to kill. His wife had been saved and had come to our fellowship. This man was a top executive for Chase Manhattan, but he was foul-mouthed and carrying on.
I stopped him cold in his tracks. I mean, just like I shot him with a deer rifle. I told him what was in his heart. I told him the truth and where he was full of bologna.
It stopped him dead. He said, “How do you know that?”
Then I began to share with him about Jesus. He did not accept the Lord, but he stopped right there and listened for forty-five minutes while I told him the truth. He knew it was true.
Jesus knows into people. He knows people’s hearts. If we know that Lord Jesus and let Him stir in our lives, we come upon people who outwardly look like the woman at the well, but inwardly their hearts are hungry. You have to get through the veneer, and only the eyes of Jesus can see down in there.
I remember a sister who was so nervous. Sometimes we would go out to the shopping center with the guitar, hand out tracts, and witness. This woman was so nervous, but she went.
She was handing out tracts near a liquor store. A man was walking toward the liquor store, and she handed him a tract.
He said, “I don’t want this tract.”
She said, “But maybe you need it.”
He said, “Oh, I don’t need this kind of stuff.”
Something came into this sister’s heart, and she said, “Maybe you don’t need this, but your family does.”
The guy stopped dead. “What do you mean by that?”
She said, “Well, maybe your family needs to know this Jesus.”
The guy mellowed out and began to listen. The sister shared the gospel, and a few others joined with them. They shared for about ten minutes.
The next thing I knew, I was playing my guitar and looked over to my left. They were on their knees on the sidewalk in front of that liquor store. This guy was crying and asking Jesus to come into his life.
It turned out that he was in the process of getting a divorce. He was so depressed about his family that he was going into that liquor store to get drunk. He got stopped right there by the Lord Jesus.
Jesus knows men. He wants to spot them and stop them before they go through the barricade and over the cliff.
When you look in the Gospel of John, what do you see? To me, I see the power of being.
Jesus, in His divine “I am,” is so powerful and so winsome. The guards came into the garden and said, “Where is Jesus?” He said, “I am,” and they all fell backward like dominoes.
Jesus was powerful in who He was.
It is just being who we are in Christ. It is such a powerful witness. You do not have to show anything, but you have Mark too—you have to be a servant and do good works. Then you have John, with Jesus standing there with an all-knowing sense about Him, going through various episodes of His life, always at rest.
He was working, yet not working—simply doing the things He saw His Father doing.
You see that divine side of Jesus, and you realize that some of the most effective witnessing we do is when we really are who we are in Christ, and when we really are filled with the Lord Jesus.
Sometimes people look at you and say, “Wait, there is something different about you.” They can just spot you in a crowd.
It seems to me that I can almost always spot a Christian in an airport. Sometimes I fly to a place like India, and I do not even know who I am supposed to meet. I walk out through the gate, and there are hundreds of people all over the place.
I look over a sea of faces, and I see a brother. I just know it.
Isn’t that amazing? You can almost see in people’s eyes the being of Jesus.
You sit in a restaurant, the menu comes, you look up at the waitress, and sometimes you can just tell: “She is a sister.” I am not right all the time, but it is amazing how sometimes we can sense the being of God in the lives of people.
This is the gospel: allowing Jesus to be in our lives.
Being involved means servanthood. Being involved means the compassion of a Man who knows men. Being involved means prophetic utterance. Then it involves simply being. The whole thing wrapped up is beautiful.
When we look at the Gospels, we not only see Jesus in these aspects and therefore see, if I may put it this way, a methodology of the gospel. When you take one step back and see the Gospel writers and how they wrote their Gospels, you also see a methodology.
What do you think Mark was trying to convey when he gave us his Gospel? The Lord Jesus—but what did he want to convey about the Lord Jesus?
When I read the Gospel of Mark, I get this impression: all you need to do to share the gospel is let the facts speak for themselves.
Mark is a roll like that: act, fact, event after event. Jesus’ life just stands there, pure and straight.
“This is it.” Mark got this from Peter. This must have been the way Peter preached. “This is the way Jesus was. Take it or leave it. He was righteous, just, powerful, and loving. He went here and did this. He went there and did that.”
The power of Jesus’ life stands alone, without interpretation and without anything more added. The life of Jesus in itself is all the power, beauty, and content you need to bring somebody to the Lord.
I will always remember my only visit to South Korea. I went there about ten years ago and was part of a gospel team. It was my first experience going somewhere where I had to have a translator.
We were in the city of Busan, South Korea. Every day at lunchtime, we would preach the gospel outside a church in the middle of town.
I remember my first day out there. This church had a nice building, but most of the folks had never been inside. I said, “Let’s just go outside on their steps.” They said, “Oh, we’ve never done that before.” I said, “Well, we are going to try it now.”
I would say, “Hello, my name is Dana Congdon,” and this interpreter was really fired up. He would be preaching Jesus while I was introducing myself. He did not want to waste any time.
I told the gospel story. Because of interpretation and because it was lunchtime, I only gave maybe a six-minute message.
I talked about how Jesus walked on this earth with love, purity, honesty, and clear eyes. I talked about how people could not stand that kind of righteousness and that kind of love, so they put Him to death.
For many of these Koreans, it was the first time they had ever heard that. I saw heads literally drop, tears come to people’s eyes, as they heard the gospel story.
I mentioned how cruelly He was killed. If anybody did not deserve to be killed, it was Him. Yet He was killed, and we killed Him because we are the same way.
Then I said that after three days Jesus rose from the dead. Faces looked up. Just the impact of the gospel for the first time on somebody’s heart.
We are gospel-hardened down this way. We have heard the gospel so many times that you twist a dial and hear the gospel. These people heard it for the first time, and the pristine beauty of the life of Jesus itself was all that it took to seriously convict them.
Then we asked inquirers to come to the back, and there would be fifteen, twenty, twenty-five young men coming back every time we preached the gospel—just impacted by the life of Jesus itself.
When I look at Matthew, I see Matthew taking a step back and saying, “Yes, the beauty of Jesus’ life is there. But take one step back and see something: Jesus’ life is filled with providence. It is filled with fulfillment.”
He is in a long line of continuity that started way back with Abraham and moved right through. Matthew wrapped the story of Jesus in the providential moving of God and in the history of God’s salvation.
Everything Jesus did in the Gospel of Matthew says, “This was to fulfill a prophecy.” Everything about the life of Jesus had some prophecy made beforehand about it.
Everything was providentially arranged. He went down to Egypt as a child, came back, and this and that happened. It was seen to be in a great stream of God’s purpose.
The actions of Jesus were there, yes, but in a great stream of God’s purpose in the kingdom. Everything was wrapped up in God’s plan.
By presenting the gospel in this way, Matthew grabbed people who sensed this kind of destiny.
I remember going to a university in New York with a brother who was a completed Jew—a Jew who had accepted Jesus as Savior. He preached the straight old gospel.
We went to a university that was purportedly eighty percent Jewish. We went into the student union building with permission to speak the gospel.
This was back in 1972—hippie days, flower children, “Peace, peace, brother,” and all that kind of stuff.
This brother got up on the microphone and began talking to these Jewish students. Within five minutes there was such an uproar and gnashing of teeth that we could not even go on.
He said, “You young Jewish brothers, men and women, who sit here and say you do not believe in God and take drugs, I want to tell you the truth. The covenant is still in your heart. You are under obligation to God. You know you belong to God, and God’s providential hand is on you. The only way you will come into the kingdom of God is through Jesus, who is the Messiah.”
They got infuriated because they knew the covenant was upon them. They knew God had them in His hand, even though they said they did not believe in God.
The knowing is deeper than the intellect. It infuriated them because this man caught them right where they were.
I talked to one girl who said she did not believe in God. I said, “Contrary to what you are saying, I believe God has been working on you for a long time.”
She said, “Yeah, I know.”
How do you deal with that?
Jesus was not an isolated Savior. He came down in the providence of God to take people providentially and bring them into the kingdom. It is all fulfillment. It has continuity. It has to do with David, the kingdom, the Jews, and now the fulfillment in the kingdom of heaven.
Luke says, “Theophilus, I am writing to you. I want you to understand the things that Jesus did.” Luke shares the actions and words of Jesus, but he also says, “Can I share with you a couple of little tidbits? I would like not only to share the words and actions of Jesus, but also what went on behind the scenes—the spiritual dynamite behind the scenes.”
The Gospel of Luke contains all the passages that mention Jesus praying. It has many references to the Holy Spirit, and then it spills over into the Book of Acts.
Luke is saying, “Look at the life of Jesus, and let me tell you something about this Man. When you look behind the scenes, you see a Man of prayer.”
When the Holy Spirit fell upon Him at His baptism, Luke says Jesus came up out of the water and was praying when the Spirit fell down.
When Jesus appointed twelve apostles, Luke tells us that He stayed up all night before and prayed about it.
When Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus had gone up to pray before He asked, “Who do men say that I am?”
At the Transfiguration, He went up to the mountain to pray.
When Jesus had great success among the multitudes and people wanted to make Him king, He went alone into the mountains to pray.
Luke has Jesus praying in the wilderness of temptation, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying behind the scenes.
Do you understand the spiritual dynamite of a person? How can a man be like Jesus? There is prayer behind it, and there is the Holy Spirit.
The Gospel of Luke starts with the birth of Jesus having to do with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes down at His baptism. Jesus goes into temptation in the fullness of the Spirit and comes out in the power of the Holy Spirit. He stands up in His first message and says that He is anointed by the Spirit.
When the disciples come back and report what has happened, Jesus rejoices in the Spirit. After His resurrection, He says, “Wait for the Holy Spirit.”
Then Luke writes another book. The Spirit comes down, they become witnesses, and they move. That is behind the scenes.
Some people look at Christians and say, “I know there is something different, but what is behind the scenes?”
Part of the gospel we need to share is the spiritual dynamic behind it.
People say, “I could never be holy like you. You are faithful. You read your Bible. You do not smoke. I could never be so holy.”
Many Christians say, “Well, you are right.”
But no, no, no, no. Oh, how people need to hear this.
“Listen, I want to tell you the truth about me. I am just a human being. I do not have strength in myself. When Jesus came into my life, He began to change what I wanted. He made me conscious of Him in such a way that I started praying more. It is not like I beefed myself up.
“The reason I helped that person is not because I really wanted to. I sensed the Holy Spirit telling me to, so I tried to obey God, and He gave me grace to do it.”
If people could hear that—if the world could believe that the power of God could come in and reorder their life—that would be good news for them.
What can you say about the Gospel of John? John got captured by the incarnation.
He met Jesus one day and saw just a man. He took another look and saw a rabbi. He took another look and saw the greatest rabbi he ever knew. He took another look and saw a miracle-working rabbi. He began looking behind the scenes, stayed close to Jesus, and started to see divinity.
It captured him. He says:
“We beheld His glory.”
The Word becoming flesh. “I kept looking, I kept looking, and it did something to me.”
John is saying, “Look at Jesus, and look behind the scenes. You want to see what Jesus is really like?”
John takes events in Jesus’ life and says, “Jesus did many things, but there is a reason behind everything. There is meaning behind everything.”
John became a seeker, looking behind everything.
At the wedding in Cana, Peter says, “What wedding?” John says, “The one where He changed the water to wine.” Peter says, “Oh yeah, great miracle.” John says, “No, no, there is a sign behind that.”
“Jesus changes the ordinary things of life into that which is completely different, new, and transformed.”
John looked behind miracles and saw spiritual significance. He did not call them miracles. What did he call them? Signs.
All life has meaning behind it, John says.
There are people in this existential world just aping their way through life, and they do not sense any meaning. Here is a methodology: if you and I can share a testimony that Jesus puts meaning behind marriage, vocation, and having children—if people can see that there is meaning behind morality, righteousness, and truth—then they will begin to see that the things which now seem meaningless have meaning in Christ.
Now, I have just gone through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John twice. I hope you are not falling asleep.
Can I draw a conclusion from this whole thing? There is a methodology to evangelism, and you know what it is? You have got to know Jesus.
You have got to read the Gospels and see Him walking. Then find yourself filled with the Spirit of Jesus, and you will find yourself doing some of these same things.
The methodology is that there is no methodology.
There is no “Do this, do that, then do that. Come back one more time. If they do not accept the Lord, leave them alone.”
Oh, no. It is a much more spontaneous thing than that.
But it is not just a disorganized, haphazard, “I’ll do it if I think the Lord is leading me” kind of thing. That sometimes is a put-off.
When Jesus of the Gospels really gets hold of us, He begins to change us. He reopens our life to compassion for ugly-looking people. He reopens our life to reexamine the meaning of life.
Frankly, brothers and sisters, we have known the Lord in such a way that we take so much for granted. We have forgotten the initial joy.
I was saved when I was twenty years old. I can remember distinctly the tremendous gladness I had that He had forgiven my sins. I have to honestly say that I so often take that for granted now.
I did not take it for granted on the day of my salvation. Yet I do not think about it often enough, because here is somebody weighed down with sin, and I do not realize that dynamic in their life. I do not share the gospel with them—that there is relief and forgiveness of sin.
We get so far away from the Jesus of the Gospels. I think we need to revisit Him.
Jesus is still the great Evangelist. He is the King of kings, Lord of lords, the great I Am, and He has been given the name above every name. But He is still the manifestation of God’s heart and His love for the world.
We are only going to see that through Jesus.
We have got to come to the place where we stop being smug and making excuses. We need to realize that there is a Jesus who really cares about people.
I remember how this came home to me a few years ago. I was in a meeting, and we were worshiping. I only say this because it meant something to me at the time.
We were around the Lord’s table, worshiping. On this particular Sunday, I was sitting in such a way that there was a large picture window in the meeting hall.
As we were praying and singing, the prayers and singing were not doing much that day. Folks were struggling. There was some reality there, but there could have been a lot more.
Through this large picture window, I saw multitudes of people driving back and forth, walking back and forth—people with boats on the backs of their cars.
Something flashed in me. Jesus was in our meeting, in our midst, receiving our praises and our worship. But I felt as though maybe Jesus, with one eye, was looking out that window.
All those folks on Sunday, whose lives were so purposeless that all they were doing was running out there to put their boats down and take another ride. When their boat gets old, you will see them zooming by with golf clubs on Sunday morning.
This all means nothing to them.
I am not trying to diminish worship or our gathering together in the sincerity of the worship of the saints. But I think sometimes there is a balance in the heart of God.
I cannot speak for Him, but I feel like sometimes He says, “Don’t you care for all those folks who aren’t here today?”
This kingdom gospel is so profound, deep, and rich that we have to ask the Lord Jesus to lead us through it.
Frankly, it is so significant that you cannot say the gospel is for lost people. The gospel is for everybody.
On Tuesday nights, as an example, we set this meeting up, advertise in secular newspapers, and try to bring in lost people. Lost people are coming, but God is bringing in a lot of lame Christians.
I figure it is what He wants. Who am I to say, “Oh look, lame Christians, go on home. I am supposed to speak to people who are lost”?
All over Long Island there are folks roaming around who accepted Jesus somewhere at a Young Life meeting or something. Ever since that day, they have had no church home and no foundation.
They are living in sin with somebody else and have not married them. They are doing drugs. They have problems. They are homosexual, and they are calling themselves Christians.
Every Tuesday night, we have people write responses. I got a note that said, “I am a lesbian. I would like to know what you think about Christian homosexuals. I am a Christian and a lesbian. I would like to know what you think about homosexuality.”
I thought to myself, would it not be a shame if this person really was a Christian, but had so little foundation that she did not even know?
People come up after the meeting and say, “You mean you think it is possible that God does not want us to live together?”
What do you do with somebody? “Of course, you are not supposed to live together, you dodos, unless you get married.”
Well, we have to start with them and say, “What do you think the Lord is saying to you?” We pray about it. If they are sincere about it, they usually break up.
There are folks out there. I cannot believe it. I wonder about a lot of folks who are supposedly born again.
I am not trying to say everybody is having a bogus experience. There are a lot of folks who do not really know the Lord Jesus and are being drawn toward Him.
I suspect that if, by the precious Spirit of God, God begins to throw a net over this Richmond area, there will be a lot of confusion as to who is in, who is out, and who is in between.
But the whole point is that the gospel needs to be declared. There is a kingdom, and there is a King. It is time for the ingathering of those who would come.
I do not know what their titles are—Christian, Methodist, or whatever title they have. The point is: do they know the Lord Jesus? Are they moving toward Him?
I think this should be the center of the gospel that we preach.
May the Lord help us. He is the One who has to capture us. We are pretty slippery eels, a whole bunch of us, when it comes to this matter of witnessing and the gospel.
We have all kinds of safe reasons, often reactions to our own past. May the Lord help us be so honest that we can repent and be the servants He wants us to be.
Lord, we come to You because You are the One who defines the gospel, and You are the gospel. When we think about methods, You seem to blow up every one we have ever seen concocted by man. They are all too narrow. They are all little boxes. They all stereotype You.
But Lord, if You could so present Yourself as we read the Gospel stories—if You can come alive and enable us to see You walking through Palestine, and then shake us to the place where we see You face to face, until our hearts begin to synchronize with Yours—we believe there would be effect.
Lord, we do not ask that we could have gospel campaigns and meetings just to satisfy our sense of guilt. We ask for bigger things than that.
We ask that the very sense of Your being that is called evangelist could begin to be manifest in us—in godly concern and compassion for sheep without a shepherd and for those who are lost.
Lord, I pray that You would help us, as Your Spirit deals with us in these days, to root out all of our excuses and all of our reactions from the past, and honestly just be what You want us to be.
But in honesty, not in rationalization.
Help us, Lord, in these days. We want to really see You in a new way.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.