And so because it's our last session, the people who are bringing snacks are actually going to be bringing dinner. So dinner will be served between 7 and 7.15. So if you come at 7.16, there will be no dinner for you. Okay? So 7 o'clock, please come on time at 7 o'clock because we are having dinner.

If we start dinner at 7.20 and we don't finish till 8, we're not going to be able to do our last session. So please come at 7 o'clock if you want to eat. I hear it's going to be delicious. 7 to 7.15. Okay. All right. So anyway, just come early.

We're going to have dinner here. So don't have dinner. Just come and have dinner. And then as you guys are eating and having fellowship, we're going to be doing our final session. Okay? And then after that, after next week, we're going to be taking, I think, three weeks, maybe four weeks off for the Christmas and then the first or second week of January.

And then another session is going to start. Okay? All right. So today the topic, today and next week's topic is going to be on... Okay, this is not it. Sorry, I got the wrong notes. Oh, shoot. It's an evil laugh. Okay, hold on. I found it. All right. Okay.

Today's session is going to be on evangelism. And again, a lot of this stuff may be review for a lot of you, but again, I think it's important enough that we understand, you know, where all of our ministry philosophy and theology, where the rubber meets the road, a lot of times you'll see in the preaching and in evangelism.

You know, depending upon what the church believes and what the theology is, you're not going to see a whole lot of difference in the way that we sing. You're not going to see a whole lot of difference from church to church in the way that we pray, even in the fellowship and the activities.

You're not going to see a whole lot of difference. But where you will see the distinction is in the preaching and in evangelism and how you view evangelism, how you practice evangelism is where a lot of the theology kind of gets played out. So I want to jump right into it.

So today and next week, we're going to be talking about evangelism. First of all, this has to work. I don't know if that dongle is plugged in. Okay. Okay, there you go. So the first, so the way I have it, I don't have, I just kind of left spaces for you to take notes as we're going along.

Why evangelize? I mean, it's a pretty straightforward question. It's one of those, no duh, you know, the Bible tells us so. But again, understanding the heart of God, understanding all of scripture, evangelism is directly linked to lordship. Typically when we think of lordship, we think of time management, we think of finance, right?

And we think of those two things. But when you take a careful look at the scripture, lordship basically means that somebody else who is above you is dictating or telling you their priorities. So whatever they desire, whatever their priority is becomes our priority. So if he is Lord, what is his priority?

What do we see in scripture? Right? So spending of money, time management, all of these things are under the umbrella of the bigger picture of what God is doing in his history. Right? So primary motivation for, dang it. Okay, maybe it's the battery. You know what? It is the battery.

This thing is, yeah. Do you have battery? It is the battery. Because this is not. Huh? Triple A. This is a triple A, right? Oh, this is double A? Huh? Yeah, do you have triple A? Two. Okay. It's triple A. That's triple A. Alright, good. Okay. Alright. So, this is the Bible.

Alright, good. Okay. Alright. Sorry about that. Alright, so why evangelize? A, the whole Bible is a recorded history of God pursuing sinners. Right? So if you were to understand the theme of the whole Bible, we have to say in one word, it's a holy God pursuing sinners. Old Testament all the way to the end of the New Testament.

The Old Testament, just a quick overview of the theme. It starts, again, obviously in Genesis with the creation and the fall of man and the promise of a Savior. The seed of the woman that's going to come. All of Old Testament history is a fulfillment of that prophecy in Genesis 3.15.

Right? So how does he fulfill it? He establishes the nation of Israel, Genesis chapter 12. Right? So where and how is the seed going to come? It's going to come through the nation of Israel. And then the giving of the law in the book of Exodus chapter 19 to 24 gives the basic outline of how this is going to be fulfilled.

So the giving of the law is to set up for the need of what he is going to come and do. Right? So this starts from the very get go. Man falls. The Bible doesn't describe a whole lot about what happened before they fell. Because that's not what the Bible records.

It's not a recording of what heaven will be like. At least not as a whole. We have bits and pieces of that. But the reason why creation happens and only two chapters we hear about what happened in the creation and then right after, Genesis chapter 3, it's the fall because all of the rest of the Bible is about the fulfillment of this prophecy.

Okay? And how is it going to, the nation of Israel, Israel is given the law and law reveals what this Messiah is going to do. Creation of the tabernacle, right, basically teaches how does it, what kind of relationship does sinners have with the holy God. And then after the giving of the law and tabernacle, the rest of Israel's history is about the failure to live up to the commandments of God.

Right? So this is all happening consecutively. He makes a promise. God establishes Israel, the channel in which they are going to come. He gives a law, the tabernacle, all of it to establish the blessings and curses and the rest of Israel's history is all about how they fail to fulfill the commandment of God and how now curse is upon them.

And they serve as an example to the rest of mankind. Right? After that comes the prophets. The prophets come and they give warning because of the rebellion against God. And then the prophets almost always end with a promise of restoration of the remnant of God's people. In a nutshell, this is Old Testament.

I just gave you a broad outline of all of the Old Testament. Any part of the Old Testament you read is going to be under one of these umbrellas. Okay? So the point that I'm trying to make in the Old Testament is the whole of Old Testament, whether it is historical, whether it is the giving of the law or poetry or the prophets, all of it is about a holy God pursuing sinners.

We come to the New Testament. Jesus fulfills that prophecy. Right? So Genesis begins with the promise of the Messiah coming and New Testament begins with the fulfillment of that promise. Right? Jesus calls his disciples and when he calls them he says, "I will make you fishers of men." Because this, again, is in the context, it wasn't the beginning with Jesus' ministry.

This is all of Old Testament. God's been pursuing to make fishers of men from the very beginning. Right? Jesus trains his disciples to preach about the kingdom. Matthew 10, verse 1, the primary message and primary preparation for the disciples is to go preach about the kingdom. Obviously that Jesus' death and resurrection is a fulfillment of all the prophecies.

And then he gives a great commission. After he has accomplished his work, his ministry purpose for his disciples is to continue the work that Jesus has been doing. Jesus came to fulfill the work that God's been doing and then he sends his disciples to take it further. The whole book of Acts is a fulfillment of that great commission.

Book of Acts begins by saying, "You will be my witnesses, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the remotest part of the world." So the book of Acts, the 28 chapters are outlined by their period in Jerusalem, a period in going to Samaria, and then a period of going to the remotest part of the world.

So the whole book of Acts is a fulfillment of the great commission. The next book, the book of Romans, is a detailed analysis of the gospel message that they are to go proclaim. And so rest of the epistles about how the gospel came into the different regions. So how important is evangelism to lordship?

Shoot. Sorry. I messed up. I should have taken this off first. So how important is evangelism to the great, not only the great commission, but to lordship is directly linked. It doesn't matter what kind of steward you are and how great of a time you use and how giving you are and all of that, but God's primary work is pursuing sinners.

If we're good stewards and good people and good moral people, outside of the context of pursuing sinners, then we can't properly say that he's our lord because our lord is doing this work. Right? He can't be farming, farming chicken and then you decide to be farming goats. You know what I mean?

Anyway, that didn't really fit. It sounded good in my head. You can't be doing different work. That was my point, right? If this is God's work, if this is everything that we know about our God in the old Testament and new Testament is revealed to us in the context of pursuing sinners, what does it mean to be joining his kingdom?

Right? It's to be joining his work, joining what he's doing. So evangelism is a direct part of lordship. We can't call him lord and savior if he's just lord saying like, "Well, I give my tenth, so therefore he's my lord." Right? So evangelism is a big part of that.

So not only is that important, if you are not engaged in evangelism at some level, it's very difficult to understand the Bible, right? It's very difficult to understand the Bible because the Bible is written in the context of pursuing sinners. So it's almost kind of like you don't, you miss the whole point of what the author is trying to say if you're not engaged, if your mind is not engaged in evangelism.

So all of scripture is written, all the epistles are written in the context of bringing sinners to Christ, establishing churches. Evangelism is talking about suffering. Suffering is in the context of expanding the kingdom of God. Persecution is talking about in the context of expanding the kingdom of God. Purity in the church is written in the context of pursuing sinners in the kingdom of God.

So everything that we know about scripture is in the context of pursuing sinners. So if we're not actively pursuing sinners, you're trying to understand God outside of his realm. If you want to, okay, I had another illustration. If you want to understand Kobe Bryant, you have to understand basketball.

All right, that's better. All right. So you can't know everything about Kobe Bryant and then know nothing about basketball if you really understand, because that's how closely tied who that person is with basketball, right? So if you really say, "Oh, I know everything about basketball and then Kobe Bryant, somebody, and then somebody says, "Oh, he's a basketball player." Kobe Bryant's a basketball player?

You don't know anything about him then, because that's his identity, right? That's my point. Okay. All right. So why do we need to evangelize? I think that's not anything new to us. But to what extent this is important, I think that's something that we need to be reminded of.

The second thing I want to cover is then who should evangelize, right? Now we know that evangelism is important. There is, and I think, my guess is most of you are sophisticated enough to know that you're not going to say evangelism is for the pastors or missionaries or elders or deacons or just select few people.

I think everybody, if not, most of you will agree that it is for everybody. But for whatever the reason, even though we say that, we kind of have a lesser degree of a calling depending on what you are, right? Well, who should evangelize? First and foremost, God established the church.

First and foremost. Now the reason why this is so important is because evangelism has to lead to something, right? Remember we talked about that before about the kingdom and we talked about the church, that salvation is transference of one kingdom to another kingdom, right? So evangelism has to be connected to the church.

If somebody accepts Christ, and I remember reading a statistics years ago, that Billy Graham statistic, they said that out of all the people who come down and raise their hand, only 6% of them ever make it to the church. And out of the 6% who make it to the church, very few of them remain after a year.

So according to their statistics, less than 1% actually continue to walk with the Lord. And again, this was a statistic from many, many years ago. I don't know if that's still true, right? But if that's the case, that means 99% of the people completely missed the whole point of the gospel.

If they heard the gospel and say, "Well, I believe in Jesus," and they just walked out, right? Because the scripture says in 1 Timothy 3.15, sorry, it's so small. It looked big on my screen. Okay, "If I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in a household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth." So the pillar and buttress of the truth was not an individual or group of people, but the church.

Matthew 16.18, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Again, I've mentioned this before, but when we talk about gates of hell shall not prevail against it, for years I understood this as kind of like a, you know, you gather in the church and Satan can't attack it, but if you look at the language, the gates is not the church, it's hell, right?

That the gates of hell will not be able to withstand the church. So who's on the offensive? It's the church. And hell is on the defensive, at least that's the way Jesus described it. So the church was established to what? Reconquer what was lost. So church was not meant to be a fortress to kind of hide in.

So he says, "I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not be able to withstand it." Right? Acts chapter 2, you know, the early church, when the first converts come to Christ, it says, "And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved." You see how people were being saved, and when they're being saved, it's described as, "Oh, they got saved and they just got added to the kingdom." It says, "They got added to their number." The church was growing, right?

So the first thing that we know is that church as a whole, the collective body of Christ has been called for evangelism, right? Not just the pastor, not just a few people, but the whole church. So the church, and I remember having this conversation with a young pastor with a brand new church, and the church is growing, and one of the things that I was really convicted by, especially in the last few years, our church has been around almost 20 years.

And some of you guys are new to the church, and some people have been here for 10, 15, and very few have been here all 20 years. But just like anything else, after you've been in one place for a long time, everything gets old. Like everything gets old. The fellowship gets old.

Everything sounds similar, and sometimes just because it's different, it sounds better, right? And so how do you keep that excitement and that passion and the vision when you have the same thing, same person, same group for 20 years, right? And I think the challenge that we have is the church, the calling for the church is always the Great Commission.

Always the Great Commission. It's not just in the beginning part where you're church planting. Now usually when you first church plant, that's when everybody's excited about evangelizing because they want to see new people come to the church. But for some reason, after a church gets to a certain point, it's kind of like, "Okay, that's enough." You know what I mean?

You don't say that, but you feel that. We have already people. I don't even know the people who are already here. Are we going to add more people to this? Well, the early church had 3,000, and then another 4,000. So the purpose of the church is for world evangelization.

So whenever somebody asks me, "How big is okay? At what point do you stop?" It's like, "When we reach 7 billion people." When our church is 7 billion and the whole world is reached, that's when God says, "Okay, that's enough." Until then, our vision will always be the Great Commission because that's His vision, right?

It doesn't mean we're going to have 7 billion people. I understand what the question is, like how do you manage the church and all that. But again, as far as the vision is concerned, we have to function like a church, brand new church plant every single year. Again, Ephesians, "To me though, I am the very least of the saints.

This grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of mystery hidden for ages in God who create all things so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places." So through what?

Through the church, right? Manifold wisdom. What did you talk about the manifold wisdom? The gospel. To make it known when? This was according to eternal purpose. This wasn't inaugurated by Jesus Himself. This was God's intent always through the church, right? And you see glimpses of the church in Israel's history.

How God breaks the whole body of the Old Testament saints into tribes and then to families and then groups. Basically, those were pre-church, right? Number two, or letter B, under who should evangelize. B, different gifts were given to build up the church. The various people in the church. There are certain things that I'm able to do because I'm the pastor, I have a mouth, I was trained a certain way and so I can evangelize by preaching and teaching and shepherding and managing the church.

But I'm only one person, right? I mean, of course, we have various leaders. But in the church, there are certain people that are better reached by you. Much better reached by you. And this is the honest truth and I'm not just saying this. If I saw, personally, if I saw somebody like me coming to me to evangelize, I would not be very receptive.

Because I'm a very skeptical person. If somebody's good at selling something, I'm automatically turned off by it. Usually when I meet a salesman who is saying all the wrong things and won't make eye contact and tell me exactly how much they make and what kind of profit they make off of this and it sounds like they're not good at their job, I tend to let my guard down a little bit and trust them better.

But if somebody is smooth talking, he got his presentation down and this guy sounds like a salesman, my immediate reaction to him is I don't trust anything that comes out of this guy's mouth. Because I don't know if that's genuine or not. That's me. I'm not sure if that's how you are.

But that's how I am. I'm a skeptic by nature. So somebody like me will not be very effective with somebody like me. As an example, right? Evangelism, a lot of people think like, oh if you're a pastor and you know how to talk and you know how to present, you need somebody like that to be effective.

There's a lot of people like me that wouldn't listen to people like me. And that's why God has given various gifts to various people. There's certain kind of personalities that you have and it's not all outgoing. This is not like high school where you have the cool kids and the non-cool kids.

God has given gifts to everybody to serve a purpose because the whole world needs to be reached, not a certain type of people. So if you only let people with my kind of personality to evangelize, you're only going to reach a portion of the population. So in order for evangelism to be effective, it has to be the whole church using their various gifts to reach out to various people.

So again, it says, "And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry." Right? It's not just simply equip you so that you would know theology, it's to equip you so that you would do ministry. So the purpose of all of this is not simply so that we can get on the same page and say, "Ha, we're all thinking the same way." It's to equip you so that you can serve better, evangelize better.

Right? You can reach out to other people better. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. So everything that God has given us, he gave us for the purpose of sharing. Right? Not simply for us to enjoy, but for other people to enjoy. So again, this is something that I've noticed.

And I've noticed even with the Welcome Team, that there are certain people who are, and I've shared this before, don't be offended, I've noticed that awkward people tend to, okay, my definition of awkward, awkward people tend to gravitate toward awkward people. That's what I noticed. You know what I mean?

Awkward meaning like, they're not the most outgoing people. Right? And they got somebody who's like, "Oh, really bubbly and comes to, hey, come sit with us, come to our party." Like, "Yeah, yeah, you give me a headache." But I've noticed that people who tend to be a little bit more shy and not as social, they tend to be better with other people who are the same way, because they feel more relaxed with that person.

Right? And I see that even in the Welcome Team. Right? So even evangelism, there are people at your work that would probably, you're probably the best person to share the gospel with them. And a lot of times we're thinking, "Well, I'm not gifted in speaking, and I'm not good at saying this.

What if I, you know, fumble through my words?" And maybe there's somebody in that group like me, trusts you better because you're not so good. I don't know if that came out right. But you understand what I'm saying, right? You understand what I'm saying? So in God's design, God designed it that way.

There's no one particular gift, one particular person that will be effective doing everything. Every age, for whatever the reason, we have a tendency to think evangelism and mission is for young people. You know, and once you have kids and you get a little bit older, that's not for us.

Like this is missions. Right? Like I said, you know, if this is the heartbeat of God, until the day we die, it is our calling. And I've met people, some of the people that I've been the most challenged by in evangelism are, you know, again, like very early on, right after I became a Christian, I think it was either second or third time I ever went street evangelism.

I met a man who was about 86 years old, just standing on the bridge with a pocket full of tracks, Bible tracks, waiting for somebody to come and stand next to him because he doesn't have the energy to move around. So I ended up, cause he was standing on the bridge.

I ended up just trying to share the gospel with him. And then he waited until about, I was about halfway done, you know, and then he took his, all his tracks out and he showed it to me and he shared with me what he was doing. He lived in a nursing home nearby and this is about as far as he can walk.

And he would stand there and this was in Oregon. He would stand there and wait for some young people to come and stand on the bridge because that's, it has a really nice view on that bridge. So he would just stand there until people come and then he would start conversation and share the gospel with them.

You know what I mean? And I remember that, that was one of the first, you know, first or second time I was out evangelizing and that just made a deep impression in my heart. You know what I mean? So a lot of times it's like, you know, the inability to do it a lot of times is in our own head, right?

First Timothy five, one and two, do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father, treat younger men like brothers, older women like mothers, younger women like sisters in all purity. And again, in the, in the scriptures, there's descriptions, not simply for young people, but older people.

So there are times in my life when everybody in my life was at least 10 to 12 years older than me. When I was in college, all of my roommates, right? So they're all now in their early sixties. My roommates back in college. And then after I graduated, I became a youth pastor.

So the rest of my life, everybody was younger than me, a lot younger, but there are different periods in life where you're going to be surrounded by a bunch of younger people, a bunch of older people and a lot of times with your peers, right? But the danger that we get into is when we are only looking for our peers, right?

We should be looking for partners for ministry. So whether they are 15 years younger or 20 years older, if our goal in life is to glorify God, you can't say you can only glorify God with people between, you know, three or four years in that middle range, right? It's good.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with having friends. There's nothing wrong with that, but that can't be your primary goal. Your primary goal has to be to glorify God and to partner with him. So I can partner with somebody who's 19. I can partner with somebody who's 60 or 70 if we're doing the same thing, right?

So we can't have this mentality that I want to first meet my friends between the age of 25 and 30, and then I'll decide what I'm going to do, right? No, you're going to, I think our priority should be find partners that we're going to be running this race together with, right?

And I guarantee you, if they're on the same page, it's a lot easier to fellowship and connect with people, whether they're 20 years younger or 20 years older, if you're on the same page, pursuing the same thing. You can have a bunch of people exactly the same way, same background, you know, same culture and have nothing in common.

If your pursuit is Christ, if they're not pursuing it, right? Every age, I'm not going to read this whole thing, but Titus 2, 1 through 7 talks about older men and older women and our attitudes, and again, a church should always have as a goal the whole community, right?

So every once in a while, somebody would ask me, "Who's your target group in ministry?" I always had a problem answering that question because the target group is whoever comes, right? So whoever is in Irvine. I can't say my target group here is collegians at UCI because that's not the church.

That's a portion of the church. The church is the whole community, right? The collegians are a small portion of that, but you can't say my target is just collegians. My target is just, you know, this age group of people, right? Every stage of believers. This is another thing that sometimes people get caught up in, it's like, "Well, I'm just a new believer.

What can I possibly do?" Sometimes the best person to reach out to non-Christians is the brand new believer because your testimony is brand new, and you know what it's like to be a non-believer better than anybody else because you were just there. And then what happens to a lot of people who become Christians for a long time is they get disconnected with the world, right?

And even if you want to evangelize, you don't have any non-Christian friends in your life. First, you shouldn't be like that, right? Mature believers should make every effort to be in the world, not be of the world, but to be in the world, right? So if you're a student and you have an opportunity to do a project together, don't gravitate toward other Christians.

You know, take that opportunity to do projects with non-Christians and interact with them because that's how you're going to evangelize. I mean, I've tried every form of evangelism. Street evangelism, street preaching, you know, going whatever. I mean, I've tried every form of evangelism that you can possibly think of.

The most effective evangelism is lifestyle evangelism with people that you know. That's the most effective. It doesn't mean that it's the only way. I think street evangelism has its place. Even street preaching in certain places has its place, but the most effective is always with the people that you rub shoulders with on a regular basis.

Those are the people who are going to be the most open to you, right? And so, again, for mature believers, it's our responsibility to make every effort to engage the non-Christian world. And also for brand new believers, you're in a position that's probably, you know, best position to be able to reach the non-Christians, right?

And you know, this one thing that a missionary said always stuck with me is like, "The land of the blind, one-eyed man is king," right? If you know what I'm saying. Like, "The land of the blind, one-eyed man is king." You don't have to be a PhD in theology to teach a bunch of people who just got their Bible, right?

The whole world doesn't know Christ. If you know Christ, you're an expert, right? You may not be an expert in the church, but you're an expert in the world, right? So you're not evangelizing the church. You're evangelizing the world. So you know better than everybody else outside the church.

So we can't say, "I'm not prepared. I'm not trained," because you know better than the other person, okay? And we need, so that, again, the point of all of this is everybody, with every gift, right? How should we evangelize? This we'll get into a little bit further into our ministry philosophy.

Evangelism should not be approached like an event, but a way of life. Sorry for the tiny words, but that's what it says. Evangelism should not be approached like an event, but a way of life. Typically, we ask questions like, "Do we do evangelism?" I mean, that's a legitimate question, right?

But evangelism shouldn't be an event that we do Thursday night at three o'clock, right? In fact, the term that we should be using are, "Are you a witness?" Are you a witness? And if you're a witness, witnessinging happens 24/7, right? It happens 24/7. Every opportunity we get, we try to be a witness.

But when we turn witnessing to an event on campus on Tuesday between 12 and 1, once we did it, we're done. I did evangelism, right? Again, there's a place for that. I'm not saying that there isn't a place for that. But primary form of evangelism, the most effective form of evangelism, is lifestyle, right?

That we are a witness. We're not just witnessing. We are a witness, right? The Word of God is the primary avenue in which the Gospel and the Church is established, right? I apologize about the small letters. I even tried to make it bigger, and this is how it came out.

The Word of God must be preached in season and out of season, right? Romans 10, 17, so faith comes from hearing and the hearing through the Word of Christ. So if you want to be properly trained in evangelism, the most beneficial thing that you could do is know the Word of God, right?

Know what the Word of God says, right? That's the best, because that's the primary avenue in which somebody comes to Christ. So if you're great at talking to people, but not great at leading them to the Word, then, you know, I remember in seminary, I heard this story. This is when the Seeker Friendly Movement was just coming in, and I remember this lady was sharing a story about a good friend of hers that ended up walking away from her faith.

And the reason why was she accepted Christ. If somebody doing evangelism, the Church had all these events and outreach things, and then she became a Christian and came into the Church, and then she heard the evangelism training that they were having, how to market the Gospel and finding out what their needs are and meet their felt needs and then target them at that particular time.

And they were doing all these different techniques. And then she, again, true or not, she felt like she was duped. If they used that technique to target my heart, then maybe my response wasn't genuine. That's what she started thinking. And again, we can't just blame that on the Church.

I mean, if her faith wasn't genuine, it wasn't genuine. But when she found out the techniques that the Church used to get her to accept Christ, it basically cheapened her experience, that it wasn't genuine. And I remember back in seminary, listening to that, thinking, "Yeah, I mean, that's exactly how people would feel if that's how they came." It's like, "Oh, we're going to target them and make dinner for them every Tuesday night, and then if they do that, maybe they'll be more receptive, and then we're going to pounce when they're suffering." And then, you know what I mean?

And imagine hearing all of that years later and thinking like, "Huh, it was all just marketing." You know what I mean? And then they start questioning whether their faith was genuine. So primary form is, again, it's foolishness to those who are perishing, but it's a power of God for those who are being saved.

He said to him, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead, that even if they see miraculous things, if they do not pay attention to the ordained Word of God, they won't respond." This is Jesus' words.

Preach the Word, be ready in season and out of season. In season and out of season. That's the part that always sticks with me. In season, where they respond, out of season, where they don't respond. Whether they thank you or don't thank you. Whether it seems to bear fruit, doesn't seem to bear fruit.

Stick with the Word. Right? And there's always seasons. There's nothing that you're going to do in life that if you do that, the same result is going to happen every single time. Nothing. Right? Nothing you do in life will be—you'll get the exact same result every single time. You don't.

Right? So in preaching, there are seasons. Sometimes it's winter. Sometimes it's harvest. Sometimes it's spring. Sometimes it's fall. But if you're preaching and all you're looking for is summer and harvest, and then, "Oh, maybe it's not preaching." Right? "Maybe we should stop watering because I just watered today and there's no fruit.

Maybe what we should be doing is digging or doing something." You know what I'm saying? No, you water, you water, and you water because you know that the watering ultimately leads to the harvest. Right? So it may not be in season. That's why it says in season and out of season.

God has ordained the preaching of His Word to bear fruit. All scripture is breathed out by God and proffered for teaching, for reproof, for correction, training, righteousness. For what? That the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. Every good work. And that's referring to evangelism, bringing the gospel to the world.

Right? So if you want to be trained as an evangelist, right, before you learn apologetics, before you learn about the latest arguments, the ontological argument, the cause and effect argument, I'm not saying those have no any place. I'm saying before that, our primary place that we need to commit to is God's Word.

Right? Then ultimately, by shining the light of Christ through our lives. We can be very effective evangelists and sharing the gospel and doing all this stuff if they see the church as hypocrites. They don't care. Right? I mean, even if they're curious, they'll shut down that curiosity if they don't respect the church.

Right? I'm not saying we should fake it, but if our lives don't match the things that we proclaim, it nullifies everything we have to say. Right? So God calls us to be the light. Right? In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Right? Do all things without grumbling or questioning that you may be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the Word of life. Right? So our life does matter.

And I, you know, every once in a while I'll hear somebody say, "Well, God uses donkeys." Right? Yeah, he uses donkeys, but God didn't call you to be a donkey. Right? God called us to be the light. Right? God can use rocks. God can use anybody if he wanted to.

He even used Judas. Right? But does that mean that God is okay with us being Judas? Of course not. God wants us to be the light. Right? If we want to be used for noble purposes, what does he say? Right? Get rid of ignoble things. Right? So that we be prepared for every good thing.

Okay, I'm not going to go through this. I went through this, I think, in the very beginning. Right? Man-centered revenge. I'm just going to read it. Man-centered evangelism attempts to make the Gospel the most attractive to most people because their primary goal is to get people in. God-centered evangelism focuses on representing God and his message accurately.

Right? Because we believe that true fruit is going to come from careful and accurate presentation of the Word of God. Man-centered evangelism ends, justifies, any means. So if getting them through the door is the primary goal, do whatever it takes to get them in. Right? So that's where the marketing comes in.

How do we get these people to take this product and make it theirs? That's man-centered. God-centered evangelism emphasizes the fact that God has ordained the means as well as the ends to bring about salvation of his elect. So always remember, even Jesus wasn't fruitful everywhere. Not by human standard.

Right? Jesus was rejected. The three years of ministry, the majority of the people who saw his miracles rejected him. So we think that if we follow this pattern, that we're going to bear fruit in this way all the time, he's going to get us in trouble. Right? He's ordained the means as well as the ends.

Man-centered evangelism focuses on simply confession. Right? God-centered evangelism focuses on conversion. True followers of Christ. All right. When should we evangelize? There is nothing more we need to carry out God's plan of salvation. Everything that we need for life of godliness has been given to us in the knowledge of his son.

Right? Meaning, the ball's on our end. Right? We're not here waiting for God to do something. He says, "No, God's saying you do something." Everything that you need to act has been given to you. You've been given the word, you've been given the Holy Spirit. Right? So when we come before God, like, "Give me, like I'm waiting for God to do something so that I can do something." Right?

So we say, "Well, everything that you need has been given to you, so what are you waiting for?" There's, it might be that our motivation is lacking. Right? Not because God didn't answer our prayers or God's not doing something. Right? It's because we've given our energy to other things.

Right? Maybe there's a lack of appetite for God because that appetite that God gave you for him was satisfied with something else. And we're waiting for God to do something and God's saying, "No, everything that you need has been given to you." Right? And sometimes, sometimes the best thing that we can do is to obey and act.

Right? Now is the favorable time, behold now is the day of salvation. When he says now, okay, and I want you to understand, Paul is not simply talking about now as in that particular time. Now meaning everything that God has been preparing to bring salvation to mankind has been finished.

Right? So we are at the end times. Right? So when he says now is the favorable time, meaning that we're not waiting for the Messiah, we're not waiting for the Son of God to be revealed, for his death, his resurrection, we're not waiting for the Holy Spirit to be given.

He said everything has been given, it is finished. So he says now is the favorable time. There's nothing for us to wait for other than the final judgment. Right? He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for your sake. And so we're living in the last times.

Right? We're not supposed to be waiting for another revival, another thing to come. Everything has been given to us. Finally brothers, pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored as happened among you. Right? That this should be the attitude of every Christian.

To not just kind of, you know what, when I'm not in school anymore, you know, when my children are a bit older, or when my business is a little bit, you know, settled down, or make this kind of money, or you know, when I'm not so busy. Right? He said, at least in prayer, right, and it is in mentality that we, this is something that God calls us to do.

This should be our priority. And ultimately we are called to be good stewards of our time. Colossians 4.5. Direct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the best use of time. So the opportunities that you have, you know, sometimes, I know a lot of you guys envy my job. It's like, oh, I would like to wake up and read the Bible all day and just fellowship with people.

Awesome. It is awesome. Right? Sometimes I envy you. And the reason why I envy you is because you're surrounded by non-Christians all the time. Right? You're surrounded by non-Christians all the time, and you have every opportunity, right, and to be able to share the gospel with them, and go out and lunch with them, interact with them.

In order for me to do that, I've got to go on campus and get awkward looks from students. Or go to the coffee shop and be a creeper. So I, sometimes I envy, you know, that you have, that you're out there and you're with non-Christians all the time. But he said, every opportunity that you get.

You know, there's a good part of being a pastor too in evangelism because sometimes they'll open, they'll just open up to me. Tell them I'm a pastor and they just kind of like, like, I don't know what it is. Maybe they grew up Catholic and they just start confessing.

I've had that happen to me on the metro. You know, this guy looked like he just came out of jail. And then I, literally, he's the kind of guy that you wouldn't sit next to. I mean, he's a rough looking guy. And I went up to him and tried to share the gospel with him.

And he just started bawling. And he just started, for about an hour and a half, I was on the train with him telling me about how his wife cheated on him and all this stuff. But again, that kind of stuff happened because, you know, I'm a pastor. So there's a benefit of that too.

But again, because I'm not out there all the time. Right. But, you know, be wise with what you have. Probably opportunities are all around you if you are, if you just open your eyes. Right. If you have a fertile heart that is eager, you know, you don't need to be going out and going to coffee shop.

I bet you they're around you. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but wise, making the best use of time because the days are evil. Right. Again, the older I get, the more precious time becomes. Right. Money, sometimes you get a lot and you lose, it comes and goes.

Sometimes you get a lot, sometimes you don't. Time, once it passes, it's the end. Right. So when you're single, it's like you're always, I mean, it's not just singles, like every stage in life you're at, you're always looking to the next stage. Right. You're always looking to the next stage and then that looking to the next stage causes you to be ineffective where you are now.

Right. There's things that you can only do as a single that you can't do. Ask the married guys that you can't do once you get married. And that's an opportunity that's never going to come back. There's things that you can only do as a young couple that don't have kids.

Right. There's only things that you can do because you don't have kids. Make every opportunity. And there's only things that you can do when your children are young. And when they get past that age, you can't do that. Right. So every stage in life, there's things that are uniquely gifted to you.

But if you see that as a burden, just waiting for you to be delivered to the next stage, that stage is going to have another burden that you're waiting to be delivered by. And then you're going to end up spending the rest of your life thinking that way. Right.

Every stage of life has something unique. And there's people around you that need to, you know, need to hear the gospel that you may be the best person. You are in that stage. Right. Paul says, "I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost for a wide door for effective work is opened to me.

And there are many adversaries." Okay. And I want to share a little bit about our church philosophy in the way we do missions. People ask me all the time, like, "Did you have a heart for China? Did God give you a special heart for India?" No. Okay. The reason why we started going to China is because the door was opened and there was a need.

And I happened to be an ESL teacher at that time for five years and wondering, "What am I going to do with this?" And the door opened. And I remember, those of you who were with us in the very beginning of China, remember I shared with you guys many times, you know, like, it's not for me to pick and choose, like, "Well, these people, I don't even, I have a heart for these.

I don't have a heart for those people." I have a heart for, we should have a heart for whoever God has a heart for. Right? India is a very strange place, you know. And I talk to people and it's like, "Oh, that's, you know, I don't like going to India because everything's so strange." Yeah, it is strange.

And really it is very, you know, unlike the United States. Then why are you still wanting to go to India? Because there's a lot of unreached people in India. And that's it. That's the only reason. If the door gets shut, we won't be going. Right? So we're committed because there's a need and that's the only reason.

And if there's a need and we move forward, since I've been going out, this is like my fifth time going out, I think this January. God has been growing my heart for them. But I didn't go there because I had a heart for them. I went there because the door was open.

Right? And I think evangelism is no different. If we target people we have a heart for, a lot of times you're not going to have a heart for anybody. Right? God will give you the heart as you obey. God will give you what you need. Right? God doesn't make you the best parent before you have kids.

God will give you the strength to stay up all night after you have the kids. Not before. God will give you the strength when you have the kids. Right? So that's typically how it works. When you obey, God will give you the strength. Right? If you're waiting for God to do something for me to move, God's like, "I've already given you everything.

You need to move so that I can come alongside." Right? All right. Okay. There's a lot more but I'm just going to end it with this. And let me just explain the discussion questions real quick. Is there someone you have been praying for to come to Christ for a long time?

If so, how have you tried to share the gospel with them in the past and what did you learn from those attempts? Right? Were you successful? Were you not successful? What are some things that you said or didn't say? Maybe you can glean wisdom from each other in the way that you approach somebody and kind of take some time to share about that.

What is the biggest fear in sharing the gospel with people you are familiar with and acquaintances around you? Okay. So this one is for people that, again, typically we have a harder time sharing with people that we've become familiar with. And it's almost easier to share the gospel with strangers than with those people, like family members, coworkers.

So what is the biggest drawback to that and how can we encourage each other to have courage to do that? Okay. And third, who is the one person that you haven't shared the gospel with that you would like to have an opportunity to share with? Take some time to consider practical steps that you can take to implement your plans and pray for each other to keep one another accountable.

So this is somebody that if you had one opportunity to share the gospel, is there somebody that you're thinking of? You haven't shared with them yet. And again, this is not just to think about it, but to make practical plans. Even if it's just giving them a note, even if it is, you know, I want to invite them to the Christmas service so that they can hear the gospel.

Make a tangible plan so that you can implement this as an application. Okay. So let me pray for us and then I'll leave you to your discussion.