Can I Be Saved If I Never Evangelize?

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00:00:04.000 | Good Monday, and thank you for listening to the podcast. As Christians, we love the good news that

00:00:09.760 | Jesus Christ has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

00:00:16.720 | 2 Timothy 1.10. This salvation is a great gift to us, but it's not the greatest gift. The gospel

00:00:25.680 | is precious to us because the greatest prize of the gospel is that we get God. We get God.

00:00:36.000 | He becomes our Father. He becomes our all-satisfying Friend. He becomes our Protector

00:00:44.640 | and our Provider. He is the prize of the gospel. We saw that back in APJ's 1079 and 1604, a precious

00:00:55.680 | point that we will return to next time on Wednesday, actually, in APJ 1934. But first,

00:01:03.440 | today's question, because with such wealth in the good news, surely we should find ourselves

00:01:08.880 | willing and eager to share this gospel with everyone we come into contact with, right?

00:01:15.200 | Well, no, we often don't. Gospel opportunities arise when we say nothing, and so we're left

00:01:21.840 | inside a tension of our own making, claiming to love something that we hesitate to speak about

00:01:28.640 | with others, and bringing into question the authenticity of our own love. If we truly

00:01:36.320 | loved the gospel of Jesus Christ, why wouldn't we more eagerly share it? That leads to our

00:01:44.560 | question today from a candid and anonymous young man who simply asks this. Pastor John,

00:01:50.560 | here's my honest and straightforward question to you. Will I go to hell if I never evangelize,

00:01:59.040 | not even once? First, let me agree with this young man that there is such a reality as hell,

00:02:11.040 | and people really do go there. It is the righteous judgment of God, and no one in the Bible spoke

00:02:24.480 | of it more often than Jesus. For example, he said to the Pharisees, "You serpents,

00:02:32.320 | you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?" Matthew 23, 33.

00:02:41.920 | And the apostle John spoke of the one who will—and this is probably the most vivid description of

00:02:52.480 | hell in the Bible from Revelation 14, 10, and 11—"They will drink of the wine of God's wrath,

00:03:01.440 | poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur

00:03:09.360 | in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their

00:03:14.800 | torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night." That's a horrible description,

00:03:24.960 | both for its length and its intensity. So the question is not—the reason I just underlined

00:03:33.760 | that is because I think there are people who would hear a question like his and say,

00:03:38.960 | "He's so stuck on that fundamentalist myth of hell." The question is not based on some tradition

00:03:47.920 | or some marginal sectarian belief. The reality of hell is terrible. It belongs to the core

00:03:55.120 | message of what the gospel of Christ saves us from. Now, back to the question. Will I go to hell

00:04:04.960 | if I never evangelize? And the answer to this question goes something like this.

00:04:10.800 | Nobody goes to hell for any particular thing that he does or does not do.

00:04:20.320 | Rather, a person goes to hell because the things that he does or does not do

00:04:29.520 | give sufficient evidence that he's not trusting in Jesus Christ as his treasured Savior,

00:04:38.480 | treasured Lord. We are saved by faith, not because of deeds (Ephesians 2.8 and 9).

00:04:47.120 | We are justified by faith, not by works of the law (Galatians 2.16). If we believe on Jesus,

00:04:57.040 | we have eternal life. We don't come into judgment. We've passed from death to life (John 5.24).

00:05:03.040 | But faith is the kind of experience, it's the kind of reality in the mind and the heart

00:05:11.120 | that gives rise to love for other people. Galatians 5.6, "In Christ Jesus, neither

00:05:17.840 | circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but only faith working through love."

00:05:25.200 | Saving faith is the kind of thing that works through love. Or as James says, "Faith,

00:05:34.560 | if it does not have works, it's dead." It's not real. It's not saving faith.

00:05:39.840 | Therefore, people are not in hell simply because they did bad things or did not do good things.

00:05:50.160 | They are in hell because the things they did or did not do confirmed the rebellious,

00:05:57.360 | unbelieving condition of the heart. Matthew 15.19, "Out of the heart come evil thoughts,

00:06:05.760 | murder, adultery, sexual morality, theft, false witness, slander, and so on."

00:06:11.120 | So back to our question, "Will I go to hell if I never evangelize?" The question now becomes,

00:06:19.600 | "What is the condition of the heart that does not evangelize?"

00:06:25.520 | There are some passages of Scripture that connect being a Christian with the use of the mouth

00:06:33.760 | for Jesus' sake. 1 Peter 2.9, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,

00:06:42.080 | a people of God's own possession, that you may proclaim." This is why you are chosen,

00:06:48.720 | why you're a Christian. "That you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of

00:06:55.040 | darkness into his marvelous light." We are saved from darkness to light to make the excellencies

00:07:02.800 | of God known, to declare them. Or Romans 10.9, "If you confess with your mouth

00:07:10.640 | that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved."

00:07:15.120 | Why would that be? Why would it be the confession with the mouth that leads to salvation?

00:07:22.880 | And Jesus gives part of the answer in Mark 8.38 when he says, "Whoever is ashamed of me in my

00:07:29.600 | words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes

00:07:36.880 | in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." So the question is, what does our silence mean?

00:07:46.240 | Does it mean that we don't see or savor the excellencies of the one who called us out of

00:07:54.880 | darkness? Does it mean that we don't really believe that Jesus is Lord? Does it mean that

00:08:02.320 | we are deep down ashamed of Christ? These are the real questions. The question is, why am I silent?

00:08:12.560 | That's the question. Why? Maybe the most helpful thing—and I want to be helpful here, I don't

00:08:18.560 | want to just indict—the most helpful thing I can do for our young friend is to make a few

00:08:25.360 | practical suggestions for moving forward. He's young, and he's got time. He's not consigned like

00:08:33.120 | a 90-year-old who looks back and says, "I've never done this." First, remember that the word

00:08:40.400 | "evangelize" is an English word built on the Greek word euangelizima. You can even hear "evangelize"

00:08:48.400 | and "euangelizima," they sound the same, which means "speak good news," especially the good news

00:08:55.280 | of what Jesus has done in dying for our sins and rising again and forgiving us through faith.

00:09:01.360 | The word "evangelize" or "euangelizima" is not limited to speaking the good news to unbelievers.

00:09:11.360 | Let that sink in, young fella. It includes speaking to believers. So Paul says in Romans 115,

00:09:21.920 | "I am eager to preach the gospel," evangelize, same word, "to you, you Christians who are in Rome."

00:09:29.440 | Now, that's a great place to start. Speak of Christ to fellow Christians. Tell the good news

00:09:38.080 | to Christians. Tell them what you saw in your devotions this morning. Tell them a good promise

00:09:45.600 | that's been helping you through some tough times recently that Christ made to you and bought for

00:09:51.680 | you with his blood. Tell them what God has done in your life, what he's doing. Remind Christians how

00:09:58.080 | precious Jesus is to you and ought to be to them, how the good things that come into our lives are

00:10:05.280 | owing to his death, Romans 8:32. And if you're too young—I don't know what age we're dealing with

00:10:12.720 | here—if you're too young and inexperienced to, say, teach a class, a Sunday school class, or

00:10:20.240 | have a small group or young people, then volunteer to be an assistant in a class, say of children

00:10:29.040 | or small group, and ask the teacher or the leader if from time to time you could give a witness to

00:10:37.600 | the young people or the children or the small group of what Christ did in your life, how he

00:10:43.200 | saved you, and what he's been doing in your life since you've been following him, what you're

00:10:49.040 | learning from him. Now, I make those suggestions about evangelizing fellow Christians, telling them

00:10:57.520 | the good news that they already love, because I think that's the normal way we make ourselves

00:11:07.360 | ready to speak more naturally to unbelievers. We should grow up talking of Christ and his value

00:11:14.640 | and his goodness to believers. Here's one last suggestion. If you have a friend who is an

00:11:21.120 | unbeliever and you find it awkward turning normal conversations to Jesus, consider this.

00:11:30.720 | Just ask him point blank if you could have lunch together or whatever you do to hang out one-on-one

00:11:40.320 | and that you'd love to have a conversation with him about some important things you've been

00:11:47.040 | thinking about, praying about, and you'd like to hear some of his thoughts and tell some of yours.

00:11:54.000 | In other words, just ask him for permission to share what means the most to you. That really

00:12:02.320 | is easier than turning a movie conversation to Christ. I think one of the reasons it is so

00:12:09.840 | difficult to evangelize in our day is that our conversations are almost never serious.

00:12:16.560 | It's very difficult to take a lighthearted movie or music or athletic conversation and say,

00:12:24.160 | "Oh, by the way, there's some life and death issues to talk about." It doesn't work. It's

00:12:28.560 | the transition that just seems so weird. So you've just got to be real with people and say, "Can we

00:12:34.480 | just have a serious moment?" But in the end, the great issue is what's going on in your heart.

00:12:42.640 | Deal with Jesus. This is my closing encouragement. Deal with Jesus as a real person. Go down deep

00:12:50.800 | with him in his word as you pray over it and apply it to your life. Be utterly real with Jesus

00:12:58.560 | until he becomes very precious to you. And then when you speak of him, you will feel real

00:13:07.360 | because you are real. Very helpful, practical steps to get started here in sharing the gospel

00:13:13.760 | for the first time. And by talking of Christ and his value and his goodness to believers,

00:13:19.440 | very practical first steps here. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for joining us today.

00:13:25.520 | Ask a question of your own. Search our big archive or subscribe to the podcast,

00:13:29.920 | all at askpastorjohn.com. Well, what makes you the happiest? What are you most after? What's the

00:13:42.560 | one main thing that if you got it would make you most joyful for the longest time? What could make

00:13:50.000 | you happy forever? Every breathing human being on this planet is on a quest to find this fountain

00:13:57.760 | of joy. The whole Bible assumes it, and the Bible answers the question too. And it's an answer I

00:14:03.520 | sort of gave away at the start of this episode as well, but we need the reminder. I'm your host,

00:14:07.920 | Tony Reinke. That's up next time on Wednesday. We'll see you then.

00:14:12.320 | [END]

00:14:13.360 | you

00:14:13.440 | [END]

Can I Be Saved If I Never Evangelize?

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