Mark 1:14-28 part 2

Mark 1.14-28 part 2
Theme: Evangelism

Last week I told you about our Gateway Evangelism Team’s purpose which is to expand a passion within our church to glorify God by sharing Christ with our community, nation and the world. That purpose is not something we invented; it is taught and modeled throughout the New Testament by the Apostles, the early church and the Lord Jesus himself. He modeled it in the way that he lived his life. Jesus didn’t just die for us- he also lived for us to give us a pattern of how a follower of Christ ought to live.

Jesus did not live his life according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (the theory of human motivation that places food and shelter first and the desire for God last). Jesus never strayed, not even for a millisecond from living his life according to his own command to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness in order to truly find happiness and fulfillment. His message of the Kingdom is the answer to the question, how do we seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness? “Repent and believe the gospel!”

I have to add this caveat regarding evangelism: what it is not. It has become cliché in our age to quote some saint who is supposed to have said, “Preach the gospel always and if you have to, use words.” That’s what evangelism is not! In fact, I think it’s a cop-out. Preaching the gospel without words is self-righteous, works oriented moralism- the gospel requires words.

No one is going to look at the way that you helped some elderly lady across the street or served food in a soup kitchen and repent of their sins and place their faith in Jesus Christ and be born again. If anything, they’re going see you fail and say use it as an excuse to reject Jesus.

If anyone could preach the gospel without words, it was Jesus. But Jesus always taught using words and so should we. If Jesus had not spoken, there wouldn’t be much to read in the gospels except “Jesus did this…” “Jesus left and went too….”

Isn’t it everyone’s desire to be able to help people to find happiness? How much more to be able to help them to find happiness and eternal life. Last week when I introduced Mark 1:14-28 I said that it demonstrated Jesus’ three stages (or strategies) of evangelism: 1) there was his strategy to preach to the crowds; 2) his strategy to preach to individuals though personal relationships; 3) and his strategy to preach the gospel as a result of power encounter (the ultimate power encounter being his crucifixion). We looked at part 1 last week (the crowds), so I want us to look at the second stage this week and then next week we’ll look at the power encounter.

Oswald Sanders once lamented saying, “…we are loaded down with countless church activities, while the real work of the church, evangelizing the world and winning the lost, is almost entirely neglected!” I am tempted to say that we should hold no more church business meetings, no more pot lucks, no more desert nights, and no more picnics until one person is added to the kingdom as a result of our preaching.

Strategy 2: Relationship (v. 16-20)
Jesus preached to large crowds, but his preaching was most effective in the individual relationships exemplifying the statement that many are called but few are chosen: the narrow gate.

We call this special or saving grace as opposed to common grace; it’s the effectual calling where God’s elect respond positively to the message of the gospel. It is Christ working through us and the way that we present the gospel in the context of that relationship is God’s means of grace to draw His elect to Himself. It’s a powerful thing that requires building a sincere and trusting relationship as well as a whole lot of prayer.

A Jewish proverb says, “A real friend is one who warns you.” Listen ominous to this poem about friendship and the urgency to share the gospel by D. J. Higgens (a little bit of fundamentalist guilt, but true nevertheless):
My friend, I stand in judgment now
And feel that you're to blame somehow
While on this earth I walked with you day by day
And never did you point the way
You knew the Lord in truth and glory
But never did you tell the story
My knowledge then was very dim
You could have led me safe to him
Though we lived together here on earth
You never told me of your second birth
And now I stand this day condemned
Because you failed to mention him
You taught me many things, that's true
I called you friend and trusted you
But now I learned, now it's too late
You could have kept me from this fate
We walked by day and talked by night
And yet you showed me not the light
You let me live, love and die
And all the while you knew I'd never live on high
Yes, I called you friend in life
And trusted you in joy and strife
Yet in coming to this end
I see you really weren't my friend

Mark’s Gospel might leave you with the impression that Jesus just rolled into town and called the Peter and the other’s cold turkey and (bang!) they just dropped everything and blindly followed him without any effort and we so expect the same thing should happen in our evangelistic work. That’s not to downplay divine encounter evangelism where we share the gospel with someone on the street and they immediately get saved. When that happens it is always because someone else has already sown the seed and God has been causing the increase. Other times, when we share the gospel we may be sowing or watering the seed without ever seeing the fruit- and that is just as important. But it proves the point that I am about to make.

John’s gospel tells us that Jesus had already encountered the disciples in Judea. In fact, the disciples’ eagerness to follow Jesus came about as a result of someone who was willing to tell his friends about Jesus: John the Baptist! Look at John 1:35, “…the next day (after preaching to the crowds), John stood with two of his disciples. 36 And looking at Jesus as He walked, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God!” John lost two of his disciples that day because he told them about Jesus, but he won his friends and that’s all that mattered.

Verse 40 says that one of those friends was Andrew, the brother of Peter: “41He first found his own brother Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah”…. 42And he brought him to Jesus.” We call that friendship evangelism. Jesus was doing the work in Peter, but he used Andrew as the means to draw Peter to himself.

When people turn to Jesus, you can be certain that it is because Jesus has been doing a work on their hearts probably their entire lives. In fact, I believe that my conversion began as soon as I was old enough to struggle with the concept of God and His existence- which I believe was when I was about two and half years old and I laid in my bead and tried to understand a universe that went on forever- I couldn’t and the only answer could be that there was something beyond the universe. Through the years I came to understand that it was God. And that was long before I learned that He actually entered our universe and became a man who died on the cross for my sins. It began with a philosophical question in the mind of a two year old that still confounds the most brilliant PhD’s of our age; I had to become a philosopher first and then a deist before I could become Christian. And there was a whole lot of rebellion mixed into that process. But God’s grace was irresistible and it began to draw my at my earliest age and took effect according to his timing.

Paul says that in Galatians about his own conversion; he says it happened,
15…when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, 16 to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles…. (Gal 1:15).

Another thing we learn from the disciples’ willingness to follow Jesus in Mark 1:16ff is that it does not automatically mean that they were converted. In fact, Jesus’ disciples did not truly convert until after his death. And at one point they deserted Jesus and Peter even denied him during his darkest. I believe that there are people who call themselves Christians and they are no more Christians then were the followers of Christ before Pentecost.

This kind of evangelism rarely produces immediate results. In fact, preaching to crowds and strangers is often much easier than friendship evangelism because when conversion occur it is because the evangelist is reaping where someone else has sown. In many cases, when it comes to friendship evangelism you will suffer years and even decades of abuse and rejection . Be encouraged- Jesus put up with his disciples for three and half years. Don’t give up- the gospel is powerful and sharper than any double edged sword and it never comes back empty.

Excuses
1) People give many excuses for not sharing the gospel with those closest to them. Probably the most common and the one that we all must feel is the fear of being rejected. No one likes to be rejected. It’s like asking a girl out on a date when chances are, unless your Brad Pitt, she’s probably going to say no! But, (men) we all manage to find wives anyway. How many times were you rejected before someone finally said yes? Why didn’t you give up on that too?

I have a friend who’s been nagging me about trying out a new self defense gym. He’s sent me emails and at least two phone calls. I just kept putting him off… politely. But finally, I went and visited and signed up for a free trial. I wonder if people are as relentless with their friends about eternal matters as they are about matters of little consequence: like exercise programs and health fads?

I think the fear of rejection is really a fear of what people are going to think about us. I suppose a really good pastor would stand here and use himself as an example of fearless evangelism, but I guess I’m just mediocre because the truth is I really struggle with fear of being perceived as religious wacko or out of touch, ignorant and backwards. This fear just reveals that we are really man-pleasers who are more concerned with what people think of us than with what God thinks us.

2) Another reason that people don’t share their faith is because they say that they don’t know how to. But didn’t someone lead you to Christ? So you at least know how they did it… right?

I never knew how to be a dad (I had never had one of my own) but it seemed to come naturally to me as soon as we took Petra home and Gerda went out and left me with some diapers, wet wipes and a bottle. It came naturally… instinctively. So does sharing the gospel when you as long as you don’t share Christ like you’re signing someone up to a get rich quick scheme or selling them a used car. You’re not selling anything- your sharing the saviour.

3) Some people give the excuse that they are afraid of losing a friend. But what kind of a friendship is it if you spend the next 40 years together but are separated for eternity? I would rather lose a friend now with the hope of gaining him in eternity than keeping him now and losing him to hell fire.

You know what? It might be that the only reason that person is your friend is so that you can share Christ with them. In fact, all of your friendships may be providentially placed and God is giving you the opportunity to have treasures in heaven and you’re squandering an eternal opportunity over a trivial temporal dilemma. A true friend will see the love that you have for them by the way that you care about their eternal destiny and even if they don’t accept Christ, they will still accept you. Otherwise their friendship is a pretense.

Conclusion:
There are other excuse that people give for not telling their friends the most important life changing soul saving message in the universe (even though they tell them unimportant messages every day like what kind of movie to see or which store to shop at). Other excuses may include laziness; or fear of repetition; or a lack of knowledge (what if they bring up evolution); or because their friends never want to talk about. But those are just excuses. If you got a thousand dollars for each time you shared the gospel, you’d be doing all day long every day.

People sometimes criticize their pastors because their church isn’t growing but they themselves never lift a finger to tell those closest to them about Christ. They bog the church down with activities and make excuses for not sharing Christ and then wonder why the power and the passion are gone. That’s a wickedness for which we must all repent!

The primary responsibility of the pastor is to shepherd the sheep (He must also be an evangelist like everyone else but that’s second to feeding Christ’’s sheep). The sheep are the ones who are supposed to multiply sheep. Some of you work day in and day out with people and you never share Christ with them because of some excuse. I’ll leave with the words of David Brainerd who describes the power he felt when he felt called to go and live and die among the Indians:

…[I] began to find it sweet to pray; and could think of undergoing the greatest sufferings, in the cause of Christ, with pleasure; and found myself willing, if God should so order it, to suffer banishment from my native land, among the heathen, that I might do something for their salvation, in distresses and deaths of any kind. Then God gave me to wrestle earnestly for others, for the kingdom of Christ in the world, and for dear christian friends. I felt weaned from the world, and from my own reputation amongst men, willing to be despised , and to be a gazing-stock for the world to behold. It is impossible for me to express how I then felt: I had not much joy, but some sense of the majesty of God, which made me as it were tremble.