How do I lead someone to Christ? I love this question. It's so good. It comes from a listener named Brooke. "Pastor John, hello. For our online church services during the coronavirus season, I volunteer to reach out to people who have contacted us to let us know that they want to trust in Christ.

Yet I don't really know how to do this. I've grown up seeing people walk through a written prayer, but I wrestle with the doctrine behind the idea that you can simply pray this prayer and you're good. When someone says they're ready to accept Christ, how do you lead them?" Great question.

Great question. It is. Oh, that every Christian was ready and eager to declare the good news and to lead people into saving faith. So thanks for the question. It's very good for John Piper to go back and rehearse the basics of the gospel and the practicalities of a phone call like this or a Zoom chat or sitting across the table six feet apart maybe to share the gospel.

It's helpful to have a simple plan. If we were all God, we wouldn't need to have a simple plan. We could just overflow spontaneously. We're not God. The picture I would like to use for my simple plan is that we all need four treasure chests. And I call them treasure chests because they're just packed with more than we could share at any given time.

And that's good. We don't need to share everything in every treasure chest all the time. The reason I choose the term treasure chest is because Jesus said, "Bumping into the kingdom and being ready to walk into the kingdom and be saved is like a man who stumbles across a treasure chest hidden in a field." So our job as shepherds that lead new sheep into the fold is to unpack treasures.

So before I give you my four treasure chests that you put in front of you on the table when you're talking or on the phone table, maybe the first thing I would say to a person—a total stranger—say that I've just called up to follow up would be something like this.

I am so excited because you are about to enter into the hardest and happiest way of life that there is. Now they might be puzzled by that statement, and it might issue in a little conversation, but I think it strikes a very crucial balance. Hard and happy, hard and happy.

You could explain from Psalm 37, 4, it's a happy way. Delight yourself in the Lord. The Lord is worthy of our joy. He wants us to be happy in him. In his presence is fullness of joy. At his right hand are pleasures forevermore, Psalm 16, 11. And from Matthew 16, 24, you might explain that Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." You might say a few words about taking up the cross is not a vacation.

It's where you die. It's where you suffer. In other words, you will say to them, "Jesus will lead you through some very hard things. Through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom," Acts 14, 22. The reason for starting that way is the double truth, and they're both so crucial, is that the gospel is spectacularly good news.

I mean, it's good news. News, news, news, really good, good, good news. The best news in the world. And we need to strike that note loud and clear. I am about to tell you the best news in the world. And Jesus said, Luke 14, 28 to 33, "Be sure to count the cost.

You don't want to go out against an army that you can't beat, and you don't want to build a tower you can't finish. You need to tell everybody this involves total devotion to Jesus Christ who was crucified." So that's one possible way of starting the conversation, happy and hard.

And you can follow up maybe later with lots more about what that means, because I think so many people are drawn into the Christian life with some naive prosperity notion that things are going to get better for them when in fact they might get worse in many ways, even though the joy is going to go down deeper than they ever imagined.

Then I would begin to unpack my four treasure chests of biblical truth. There are four great realities that you need to know in order to be saved by Jesus Christ, and that's what you want. You want to close with Christ, receive Christ, believe Christ, engage with Christ, have Christ, and there are four things you need to know.

And you can name your four chests with four words, and here's the basic simple plan—God, sin, Christ, faith. I've remembered those for decades. Oh, how they have served me so well—God, sin, Christ, faith. Those are my four chests of truth, and I call them treasure chests because every chest has dozens of passages of Scripture and dozens of ways to talk about God and sin and Christ and faith.

And I don't want to give the impression that there's a one-size-fits-all presentation of the gospel. You have four chests. They're full of Bible truth, and our job is to trust the Spirit to guide us and then take out of each chest one or two Scriptures to show those riches to your new friend.

So let's just walk through them real quick. Treasure chest number one, truth about God. Everything starts with God. Everything starts with the greatness of God, the glory of God. You might start with His holiness or His justice, because what we need to clarify here in this first treasure chest is that everything else is not going to make any sense if we don't have some sense of who God is and what He's like and how sin, which we're going to talk about in treasure chest number two, how sin is against God.

It's not just against people, and we can't do that if we don't know who God is. So I like to start with God's glory, because Paul's going to define sin out of treasure chest number two as a falling short of God's glory. So I would like to say to my friend Isaiah 43,6, "Bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone whom I called by my name, I created for my glory." And I would say to them, "You were created, you exist to glorify God, to make God look glorious.

You were created to show God's glory, His greatness, His beauty, His worth. That's our duty." First Corinthians 10, 31, "Whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." That's treasure chest number one. Treasure chest number two, sin, truth about sin, namely, all of us have failed to live for the glory of God.

You have, I have, everybody has. Romans 3, 23, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," which I think means Romans 1, 23, "We have exchanged the glory of God for images." All of us have preferred other things to God. And so we've made the glory of God look worthless.

We've dishonored God in so many ways, which means we've chosen the way of death. Romans 6, 23, "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." And sin isn't just things we do, it's the way we are. We are by nature, Paul said, Ephesians 2, 3, "Children of wrath like the rest of mankind." None of us escapes this condition.

None of us escapes the penalty of death and judgment and hell. "Whoever," Jesus said, John 3, 36, "does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." So without salvation, we're all sinful by nature and we're all under God's wrath. That's treasure chest number two.

Here's treasure chest number three, truth about Christ. The saying is trustworthy, deserving of full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That's why this phone call is happening. First Timothy 1, 15, "Everything up till now is designed to make Christ and his way of salvation appear as great and beautiful and wonderful as it really is.

God sent his Son, his divine, eternal Son, to bear the punishment we deserve." This is the heart of everything. This is the most glorious news in the world. There's no way we can save ourselves from our sin and from his wrath. So here's the wonder, Romans 8, 3, "God has done what the law could not do by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh." God condemned sin.

He punished sin. The death of Jesus, his Son, is our punishment. All the sins of all those who would ever be united to Christ by faith were punished in Jesus. So he says, "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ." This is spectacular news. No more guilt, no more punishment, no more wrath, no more condemnation, eternal life, peace with God forever.

Romans 6, 23, "The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." That's treasure chest number three, Christ. And here's the last treasure chest, truth about faith. I think it helps at every point, by the way, along the way, to make these as personal as possible from your own experience.

I might say my favorite verse in the Bible to help explain how to receive all of this is Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. "By grace you have been saved through faith." This is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of your works, so that no one may boast.

In other words, you can't work for your salvation, can't earn it. It's a free gift. You can't deserve it. It comes from God's grace or God's love. Just a few verses earlier, it says, "God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved." That means that even your faith is a gift of God right now in this moment.

If you are reaching out to take Christ, if you are ready to have him as your Savior and Lord and the treasure of your life, you are a miracle. God has made you alive. It's called new birth. Trust him. Speak to him. Tell him all your heart. Declare your faith to him.

Welcome him as your friend. And you might ask at this point, "Do you have any questions?" Of course they're going to have questions. You have to decide how long you're going to talk. And you might draw things to a close either by inviting them to pray or giving them the option of dealing with God in private.

I've done it both ways. Send them away to pray. I said, "You need to get alone with God and deal with him on the basis of everything you've heard so that I don't do any manipulating here." And I remember one wonderful night at about 11 o'clock in my office, a man was just so ready.

I forgot to send him away because he was just, "Oh, I want to get this over." And oh my, it was glorious the way it got over. But I didn't put words in his mouth. I mean, I've already put a hundred words in his mouth by sharing the gospel.

You'll suggest some texts that they should read when they hang up. Maybe some places to go in the Bible, giving them particular scriptures. You may welcome them into a discipling relationship with yourself or with somebody else your church has arranged or invite them to a class. You want to encourage them to think about baptism and prepare for baptism in due time.

And you're going to warn them that the devil is real and will put them to the test. You're going to say, "Resist him firm in your faith," and you're going to leave them with a promise. And oh my, there's so many you could choose. Maybe you'll leave them like this.

Hebrews 13.5, "I will never leave you. I will never forsake you so we can confidently say, 'The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can men do to me?'" Incredibly simple and clear and glorious outline. Thank you, Pastor John. Well, on Friday, we talked to new believers about how to first approach the Bible.

It seems like a very intimidating book. It is an intimidating book with lots of places where you could start. So how do we approach the Bible for the first time? Come back for that. That episode really pairs nicely with this one. It's going to be on Friday. But thanks for joining us today on the podcast.

For our feed, our archive, or to send us your own question, go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Up next time, we're going to talk about John chapter 6. There you'll remember that Jesus miraculously fed 5,000 hungry mouths with five loaves and two fish. And the next day, Jesus told that very same crowd, "Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you." So the question for all of us is, well, then should we labor and work to buy bread?

Should we work at all? Or should we just trust God to supply all of our bread needs supernaturally? The answer to this question actually sheds a lot of light on what it means to work 9 to 5 as a Christian. So that's the topic. Up next time on Wednesday when we return, I'm Tony Reinke.

We'll see you then. www.TheBusinessProfessor.com www.TheBusinessProfessor.com www.TheBusinessProfessor.com