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If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up to Matthew 28. We are in week three of our sermon series Committed. We've been talking about the essential habits of an abundant life in Christ, and what I've been saying over these last couple of weeks is we're taking this time to focus on some of the essential, non-negotiable, super practical commitments that every Christian must make in order to grow in their faith, in order to persevere through trials, in order to fulfill God's purpose and calling for their life, and in order to experience and to enjoy this abundant life that Jesus Christ came to give us.

Two weeks ago, we started off by talking about the commitment to follow Jesus as our Lord, as our savior, as our good shepherd. Last week we talked about committing to a local church and the importance of having a church, having fellowship with other believers to support us, encourage us, and hold us accountable as we follow Jesus. This week we're going to talk about evangelism. Our sermon is called Commit to Evangelism. At the end of last week's passage in Acts 2, verse 47 tells us that the early church, these early Christians were praising God and having favor with all of the people, and the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.

If you're here last week, you remember we talked about how these early Christians were committed. They were devoted to sharing their lives with one another sacrificially. They were deeply committed to one another and the church. But this doesn't mean that they were just a holy huddle of the frozen chosen as we joke about some churches being today. They were a church on a mission. We talked a little bit about how the church can be thought of in the metaphor of a ship. That we as a church, we're not trying to be a cruise ship, we're trying to be a battleship. On a cruise ship, everyone shows up and everyone shows up to be served and to be entertained.

You float around in circles. You wind up right back where you started. On a battleship, everyone shows up to serve. Everyone shows up because we're all working together with same purpose, same mission, and we're going to be spending these next two weeks talking about what that mission is, focusing on what has come to be called the Great Commission and two aspects of that Great Commission. If you're not familiar with the Great Commission, this is basically Jesus' final marching orders to the church, his final instructions that he leaves before ascending to the right hand of the Father in heaven.

We can find it in Matthew 28. This is where we're going to be begin our time today, Matthew 28 beginning in verse 28. This is what it says. It says that Jesus came to them, came to his disciples, and he said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." You see the two aspects of this mission, right? First of all, there's this outward mission.

Jesus says, "You need to go into all the world and make disciples." That's evangelism. That's what we're going to be talking about today. The second aspect of the mission is more inward where Jesus says, "And then you need to teach them to observe all that I have commanded you to do." That's discipleship. We'll be talking more about that next week. Discipleship is focused on the mission of sanctification. Evangelism is focused on the mission of conversion. Already, hopefully, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone's feeling a little bit uncomfortable. I'm surprised.

After last week telling you we were going to talk about evangelism today, I'm like, good to see that some of you came back, because this is not something that we get particularly comfortable with thinking about converting people, proselytizing, things like that. They're not popular concepts in our culture. I don't know if I would use the word proselytizing, but we are going to talk about we do want to convert people to Christianity. We want to persuade people to believe and to follow Jesus Christ. I remember the first time that I ever visited Boston. We were downtown doing kind of the touristy thing.

My wife and I were there. Our son Owen, he was about nine months old at the time. We're walking around in the Boston Commons and we're making our way toward Park Street Station. There's these two younger girls behind us having a very loud, very passionate discussion. One of them was pleading passionately with her friend trying to warn her to never read anything by this author that she discovered named C.S. Lewis and to never read the book The Chronicles of Narnia because she had found out that this guy was actually a Christian and he was secretly trying to convert people with his books.

If you know anything about C.S. Lewis, there wasn't anything secret about it. He's pretty on the nose about everything that he wrote. He was overtly a Christian. Chronicles of Narnia, it's a straight-up allegory of Christianity. He wasn't trying to hide any of that. But what stuck out to me about that conversation was as I'm listening to these girls have their discussion, really what she was doing was she was trying to convert her friend. She was trying to convert her friend to this position of non-conversion.

Providentially, the next morning we got up and we visited Mosaic for the first time and Pastor Jan was preaching on that exact topic, on this idea of the world trying to convert people to this position of non-conversion. This girl was hypocritically doing the very thing that she was condemning someone else, C.S. Lewis in this case, of doing. The question then is, why are we then so afraid to do that ourselves as Christians? Non-Christians do it all the time. People in general do it all the time.

If you believe that something is true and if you believe that that truth matters, well, then it's only natural that you're going to try to persuade other people to accept it and to believe it as well, even if the truth is inconvenient, even if the truth is uncomfortable. Love would compel you to plead with others to accept it and believe it. A good doctor wouldn't hide the truth from their patient. A good doctor will share their diagnosis and prescription even if that truth is not necessarily what the patient wants to hear, because withholding that would be unloving. It would be unprofessional. It could be deadly.

I think part of the reason that many Christians are afraid to share their faith is that we have this fear of rejection. I've shared the gospel with several people in Boston, and more often than not, that's been met with rejection. Every single time it's uncomfortable. But what my experiences taught me is that even though in sharing the gospel, yeah, I have faced a lot of rejection, it usually doesn't come as the form that I'm afraid of. It usually doesn't come in the form of anger or hostility. It's usually just kind of more of a Stoic response of like, "Oh, that's interesting or that's nice. I'm glad that that worked for you, but not really something I'm interested in myself."

It's not the response that I hoped for, but it's also really not a response that should cause us to be afraid to share the gospel in the first place. I say that just to say don't be anxious, don't catastrophize what might possibly happen when you share the gospel because you really don't know. You don't know how they're going to respond. You can't control how they're going to respond. You might be surprised to discover that a lot of people are more open and more comfortable to talking about these things than you might assume. Sometimes we are reluctant to share the gospel out of fear of rejection.

I think most Christians, however, are reluctant to share the gospel out of a fear of failure. I think a lot of Christians, maybe they want to share the gospel, they have a desire, they know that it's something they ought to do, but they're worried about failure because they don't feel equipped. What if they ask me a question I don't know how to answer? What if I say something wrong? We can't control how people are going to respond to the message, but there are things that we can do to prepare ourselves and to be equipped to share that message more effectively when we have opportunities to do so.

That's really what I want to spend our time focusing more on today. Toward the end of our time this morning, I'm going to share just some rapid fire practical tips for evangelism. But to begin with, I want us to just start by looking at three biblical truths, three realities, three things that Jesus equips us with in order to help us overcome this fear of sharing the gospel. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be launching out of Matthew 28, but we're going to be doing a survey of many scriptures that will help us understand these things. Before we begin, let's pray and then we'll jump into the message together.

Jesus, you told your disciples that they should pray to the Lord of the harvest, that the harvest is great, but the workers are few. Pray to the Lord of the harvest to raise up more workers for this mission. Lord, we pray that you would do that. Even right now, Lord, I pray that you would be doing that. Lord, we know that immediately after instructing his disciples to pray, he then sends them out to do the very thing, to be the answer to their very own prayers and to go and to preach the gospel. Lord, I pray that you would help us today to see that you have saved us in order to send us. That you have called us, you have commissioned us, and you have equipped us.

That you do not send us out alone, you do not send us out, but you send us out fully equipped to do what you have called to do. That you have given us the authority of your word. You've given us the presence and the power of your Holy Spirit. You've given us the fellowship of the church. We have everything we need to accomplish this mission together. Lord, I pray that you would give us grace to do so. God, we pray right now that you just bless our time and your holy word this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, the first truth, the first reality that I want us to look at, that we need to understand and believe that's going to help us overcome our fear of sharing the gospel is this, that Jesus equips us and he sends us with both the clarity and the authority of his word. That Jesus doesn't send us out with a long list of complicated religious rights and rituals and rules. We sang this earlier, that it's finished, it is accomplished. There's no work that we can do to further this mission that the message of the mission is very simple. It's so simple that it can be summed up here in just a couple of sentences.

It's so deep, it's so sophisticated that you can spend the rest of your life devoting yourself to it and never master it. There's always room to grow. You can spend the rest of your life studying scripture, growing and maturing in the Holy Spirit. What is the mission? There's a story in the Gospel of Matthew where a religious leader, a teacher of the religious law comes up to Jesus and he wants to know, he wants to ask him, "Jesus, what is the greatest of all of the commandments?" In Matthew 22:37, Jesus said to him, he said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind.

This is the great and the first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depends all the law and the prophets." All the Old Testament, the law, the prophets, they're all summed up on these two things, to love God with everything and to love your neighbor as yourself. The mission of the church is simply this, the Great Commission is to simply live that out and then to teach others to do the same. Repent of your sin. Put your faith in Jesus Christ. Commit to follow him, to obey him, to observe all that he has commanded.

To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself and then to teach others to do the same. The mission is simple, the mission is clear, but that doesn't mean that it's easy. Following Jesus is going to be hard. Taking this message to the ends of the earth is going to be hard. Just taking this message across the hallway, across the street, across the cubicle is going to be hard. We need to understand that Jesus doesn't merely send us out with a clear mission, he also sends us out with clear authority. I think one of the best explanations of these two realities coming together can be seen in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21.

The apostle Paul says this, he says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed, and behold, the new has come. All of this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you and on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

It's very clear the message, that Jesus Christ became sin for us. He took our sin upon himself on the cross. He paid the penalty that we deserve so that we could become the righteousness of God, so that we could be forgiven, reconciled to God through this ministry of reconciliation. That's the message. The mission is then to go with this message and to reconcile people to God. The authority then is that we are not going out alone. We're not going out in our own authority. We are going out sent by the king, sent as ambassadors of Christ for proclaiming this good news about his kingdom. All that to say is don't make the mission overly complicated.

Evangelism simply means to announce the good news that Jesus is king. Human beings are sinners. Jesus is the savior. He is Lord, he is king, and he has now sent us as his ambassadors of his kingdom, sent us to warn the world that he is going to come again to judge the world in righteousness, but also sent to proclaim this good news that the king is coming right now. He's offering amnesty that right now this king has made a way to reconcile the world to himself. He is offering terms of peace for all who would repent, believe, for all who would lay down their arms and surrender, commit their allegiance to him as the good and the rightful king that he is.

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, he put it like this. He said, "Enemy occupied territory, that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, and you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part of a great campaign of sabotage." We're going out as ambassadors on this rescue mission, recruiting people to the kingdom of God. Sharing the gospel is intimidating because it's intimidating to go and to walk into enemy occupied territory. But we do this with a clear mission, with a clear message, and with a clear authority of knowing that we have been sent by the true, the good, the rightful king.

When you're feeling fearful about sharing your faith, remember this, that every time that you speak the words of scripture and share God's word, every time that you proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, that Jesus is not just with you, but as this text just said, he's actually making his appeal through you, calling people to himself to be reconciled, to make peace through his bloodshed on the cross. 2 Timothy 3:14-17 tells us that, "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching and for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."

Every good work that we'll ever be called to do. Scripture equips us for all of that. The first step to overcoming our fear is to know God's word, to know that his word is authoritative and true. It is living and active. It equips us for every good work, and so that we shouldn't be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ because we know it is the power of God unto salvation. Point number two, Jesus sends us out with the clarity and the authority of his word. He also sends us out with the courageous readiness of knowing and of resting in his sovereignty.

Ephesians 6:14, Paul tells us to, "Stand firm, therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace." That God's sovereignty and salvation should replace our fear with this incredible courage and a readiness to share the gospel. Because when you think about this, what does this mean, God's sovereignty? It means that he has the power to save anyone, anytime, anywhere, even the people that we least expect. Nobody knew this better than the apostle Paul himself, right?

I mean, this was the guy who was a violent persecutor of the church. No one ever expected this guy to get saved. He hated Christians. He had made it his mission to snuff out the Christian movement wherever he could find it, and yet Jesus finds him. Jesus saves him. Jesus gave him a new mission and turns him into the greatest missionary that the church has ever seen. Paul knew that if Jesus could save him, well, Jesus could save anyone. Why should he be afraid? Why should he be fearful of sharing this good news with anyone wherever he goes, no matter what opposition, no matter what persecution he often faced.

Consider the life of Paul with me for a moment. Just going to take a look at an episode of his life from the Book of Acts. In Acts 14, Paul is preaching the gospel in Lystra. As he's there, as he's preaching a gospel, this angry mob shows up, drags him out of town, stones him, leaves him for dead. Do you remember what it says what Paul does after he eventually wakes up not dead? It seems like you can go down a whole rabbit trail on this. Reading the Book of Galatians, Paul kind of eludes like maybe he actually died. He has this out of body experience, and then he comes back. We don't know. But he's stoned and left for dead.

He wakes up eventually. He regains consciousness. And what does he do? He gets back up and he goes back into the town where the people just mobbed him, dragged him out, and stoned him and left him for dead. Incredible courage and boldness. He then leaves. He makes his way onto Philippi. In Philippi, he gets arrested again. He's beaten with rods. After that, it goes to Thessaloniki. Again, angry mob in Thessaloniki. Escapes by night to Berea where he's faced with yet another angry mob of people. He goes through Athens, makes his way to Corinth. And once again, we're told that he was met with those people who opposed and reviled him.

I don't know about you, by this point, I'd be feeling a little bit discouraged. Mob me once, shame on you. Mob me 17, 18, 19 times, I must be doing something wrong. I should go take a class on evangelism or something. I don't know. What keeps Paul going? What kept him going was his belief in the sovereignty of God. That despite all the opposition that he faced, all the persecution that he experienced, that in each of these cities, people were getting saved, churches were being planted, lives were being transformed, legacies were being built. In the midst of all of this, in Acts 17, when Paul is in Corinth, God came to him in a vision during the night.

In Acts 17:9-11, it says this that the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision. He said, "Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people." He stayed there a year and six months teaching the word of God among them. Paul understood that there would be many in this city who would oppose and revile him, and yet he would go on preaching the gospel because he also knew that there were many of God's elect, many of God's people here as well. His job was to preach the word. No gimmicks.

No tricks. Preach the word, trust the word to do its work, trust God to draw his people to himself. That's what happened. Trust that Jesus' sheep would hear his voice and follow him. Right before getting to Corinth, Paul was in Athens. In Athens, he met with the philosophers at the Areopagus on Mars Hill. As he meets with them, he's walking through their temples. He's observing all of their idols that they've made to their many gods, and he gets to have this conversation with them. This is what he tells them in verse 26. He tells them that God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth and determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.

That God determined where, when every person would live. So that what? Verse 27, so that they should seek God, perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he's actually not far from each of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, even as some of your own poets have said, "For indeed we are his offspring." Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of men.

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man, Jesus Christ, whom he appointed, and of this he's given full assurance to all by raising him from the dead. See, I don't think that Paul believed in coincidence. I think Paul believed in providence, and this is what gave him this courageous readiness to share the gospel no matter where he was, no matter what kind of opposition that he was facing, because he knew that God was sovereign. I think one of my favorite examples of this is when he writes to the church in Philippi.

At the end of Paul's letter to the Philippians, he's sending his greetings and he tells them in Philippians 4:22, he says, "All the saints send their greetings," then he adds this little comment, "especially those of Caesar's household." At the time, Paul was in chains. He was in prison, maybe under house arrest, and he's chained to these guards from Caesar's household all day. What does he do? He doesn't get discouraged. He doesn't quit. He doesn't say, "Well, I'm here/ I'm locked up. There's nothing I can do." He says, "Well, if I'm here and I'm locked up and I'm chained to these guards, it must be because I need to share the gospel with them.

You think that Lord Caesar has me chained to you? Well, I think that Lord Jesus has you chained to me, and so now you're going to hear the gospel." He begins sharing the gospel with these guards and they end up getting saved. He's just kind of showing how God is flexing here. He's like, "Oh, and by the way, the people in Caesar's household, they send you their greetings that they are now believers, that they are now following Jesus as well." If God puts people in your life, if God gives you opportunities to share the gospel, perhaps that's not a coincidence. As Paul told the philosophers, God's providence determines the allotted periods and boundaries.

Perhaps he's placed you in these people's lives for a reason. We all know this. When you go to school or when you go to work or when you go home and you're amongst your neighbors, that chances are if you are a Christian living in Boston, Massachusetts, you are quite probably the only Christian that any of these people know in the city. Maybe there's a reason that God has put you in their lives. You can't save anyone. That's not your job, right? That's Jesus' department is salvation. Your job is to be a faithful witness wherever he's placed you, to scatter the seed to pray and to trust God, to bring the growth, to bring the harvest.

Trust God with the results. And with this, if you don't see those results right away, don't let that discourage you either. It doesn't mean that you did something wrong. It also doesn't mean that nothing is happening. We can't always see what God is doing beneath the surface when we share the gospel with people. Just an example from my own life, I've shared this before. In a former life as a young college student in the early 2000s, I was in a pop punk band. That was a thing at the time. We were in the Midwest. You had the West Coast punk. You had the East Coast punk. We were trying to pioneer the Midwest Coast punk.

What that meant was we would go to class during the week. And then on the weekends, we would load up our big white conversion van and we would hit the road. We'd drive all over the Midwest playing shows in different towns and cities, and we got to spend a lot of time just driving around on the road, having conversations with one another as members of the band. At the time, none of the other members of the band were Christians. I shared last week that I had grown up in the church, but I wasn't walking with the Lord at this time. I don't really think that I was even yet a Christian at this time. But one night, it's late at night, we're on the road and we get into this conversation about faith and Jesus and Christianity.

For whatever reason, I find myself defending the faith to our bass player and our drummer, trying to convince them that Christianity is true, that Jesus really is God, that he really did fulfill all of these prophecies, and he rose from the dead. We're having this, we're going back and forth. Eventually at one point, the bass player just shut the conversation down. Not in a mean way, but just kind of like a joking like, "I don't want to talk about this. I'm getting uncomfortable kind of way." We changed the subject, moved on, and honestly didn't think about that conversation again for a really long time. Fast-forward several years, we'd split up.

We'd all grown up and went out and got real jobs and still in touch, but weren't living near each other, hadn't really talked to each other for a long time. I get a phone call one day from one of the guys in the band. It wasn't the bass player or the drummer. Actually for a brief time, there was a fourth guy in our band. He was only in the band for a few months after I joined, and then he quit. I really hadn't heard or seen from him again. He called me up because he wanted to tell me that he had become a Christian. He remembered that I had grown up going to church and I was a Christian. He wanted to let me know, "I'm a Christian now. I'm leading worship in my church."

He was all excited. He was all on fire. He's like, "And I want you to know that this all started for me way back because of that conversation in the van." I was like, "You weren't even part of that conversation in the van." Actually, he was sitting in the back. I thought he was asleep the whole time, and apparently he'd been paying attention and somehow some seeds had gotten planted in him that eventually led to him becoming a Christian. He's still a Christian today. He's working in ministry today, and God's doing awesome things through his life. But I share all that just to say, you never know what God does with the gospel after you've shared it with somebody.

Even if you don't see those results right away, it doesn't mean that God's not doing something. Don't get discouraged. Don't lose heart. Just be faithful and continue and persevere. Jesus equips us. He sends us with clarity and authority of his word, with the courageous readiness of his sovereignty, and number three, with the comforting power of his presence. I'm going to read several passages for us, because this is really important. First one is John 14:16-18. Jesus tells his disciples, he says, "I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him or knows him.

You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.: In Luke 24:26, he said to them, "Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon. You, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." Acts 1:8, Jesus again tells his disciples, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

In our passage today, he says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." Something happened on the day of Pentecost that we read about in Acts 2 a couple weeks ago. Something happened that day that had never happened before in the history of mankind. Before Christ in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would come upon people for a time and for a task.

But now what we see is that from now on, all of those who are in Christ, that the Holy Spirit is poured out, that the Holy Spirit dwells in us each personally and permanently. Jesus, he promised in the Great Commission, he said, "I will be with you always to the very end of the age." Obviously he's not here with us physically right now, but that's not what he was talking about. He's alluding to the gift of the Holy Spirit that he was going to pour out on his church after ascending into heaven. Jesus, he talked about this in John 16. In John 16, Jesus was talking with his disciples and he tells him this in verse five.

He says, "Now I am going to him who sent me and none of you asks me, where are you going?" He said, "I'm preparing to go back to ascend to the right hand of my father. But because of I've said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts," which is understandable, right? You just got to spend three years in the presence of Jesus Christ physically. That would be sad to think about him leaving and ascending back to heaven. But verse seven, Jesus tells them, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it's to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you."

I don't know if we can really grasp what a big deal that is. Jesus is literally saying what we have right now as believers, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is in some ways to our advantage that it's actually in some ways we are better off right now than if he had remained physically here with us in the flesh. That when Jesus Christ took on flesh, that he in some sense allowed his presence to be confined by time and space in a human body. But when he ascended into heaven, he poured out the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Holy Spirit of the living God upon every member of his church. That the Holy Spirit is indwelling in all Christians, in all places at all times for all times.

If you are in Christ, what this means is that Christ is not just with you, he is in you. You have been clothed with power from high, scripture says. You have been filled with the Holy Spirit of God, that God is with you and for you. He will not leave you or forsake you. He's working all things together for you, working for you and in you and through you, so you can have courage. You don't need to fear. That wherever you go, you go with the comforting power of the presence of Jesus Christ with you. Paul in Ephesians 3, he just writes this amazing passage. He says, "For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven on earth is named.

That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Holy Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." He says, "And now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen."

It's too much to wrap your mind around. God is with us, that he is for us, that he is able to do abundantly more than we could ask or even imagine or hope to think. Set your minds on these things. If you're feeling fearful, if you're feeling discouraged, before you go and preach to others, preach to yourself. Remind your heart, your soul, your mind that God is sovereign, that God is faithful, that Christ is with you. He is in. He wants his spirit and his power to work through you. All right, well, I said at the beginning that I'd give you some practical tips here at the end, some just practical steps for evangelism.

We don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to go through these pretty fast. Someone told me last week that my sermon had a lot of bullet points. I've only given you three this far, so I'm going to give you seven more. We're going to go really quick. This is another machine gun sermon. We're going like rapid fire through these last seven here at the end, but super practical, just seven tips for sharing your faith. First and foremost, you need to pray before you preach. We read in Ephesians, Paul said, "Stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

And as for shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace." We talked about that readiness of sharing the gospel. But if we keep reading, Paul connects that readiness to prayer. He goes on in verse 16. He says, "In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish the flaming darts of the evil one, take up the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication. And to that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints."

And then he says, "Pray also for me, that words may be given me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak." Paul's pleading with the early church to pray for him so that he can be faithful in this proclamation of the gospel. Paul believed in God's providence and his sovereignty in salvation, but that didn't stop him from acting, from working hard, from preaching, and from praying. Actually it compelled him to pray even more, to pray that God would open eyes, that God would open ears, that God would open doors that give him opportunities to share the gospel.

Pray. Pray for people. Pray for people by name. Make a list. Pray for them privately. Pray for them with your community group. But we all have those people in our lives, we know who they are, and so pray for them. Pray before you preach. Number two, study hard and do your homework if you want to feel equipped, if you want to feel ready and prepared. We read this earlier. I'm going to read it again, 2 Timothy 3:14. Paul tells Timothy, "As for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you've been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work." If you want to feel more equipped to share the gospel, study scripture. If you want to be more ready to answer the questions and the objections that people might have about Christianity, you need to read the Bible, study the Bible. If you haven't done it, get yourself a nice ESV study Bible and just dig in. Learn the scriptures. If you need to, pick up some books on evangelism or apologetics.

You can just go to our website. If you click on I think it's the connect and grow tab at the top, there's a little menu and there's a section there called Explore Christianity. It's a sermon series that Pastor Jan preached several years ago, but it's an awesome and it's a timeless series. He just goes through some of the most common objections and questions that people have about Christianity, to show that Christianity really is true and ways that we can defend our faith. If that's something you think that would be helpful, do it. Do your homework, study hard, prepare yourself, and most importantly, study God's word.

Number three, don't go alone. Evangelism is a team sport. When you look at the life of Jesus Christ, almost everything he did, he did in community. You almost never see Jesus in a one-on-one situation. He's almost always surrounded by other people. Sometimes it's three, sometimes it's 12, sometimes it's more than that, but he's got a community of people around him. When he sends his disciples out, he doesn't send them out alone. He sends them out minimum two by two. When we read about Paul in his letters, he's traveling with an entourage, right? Everywhere he goes, he's got Timothy, he's got Silas, he's got all of these companions who are with him.

Don't think that evangelism can only happen in one-on-one conversations. A lot of times it doesn't. A lot of times it's beneficial to do evangelism in more of a communal setting. Just purely practically, if you're going to hang out with a Christian friend, invite one of your non-Christian friends along. Or if you're going to hang out with a coworker, invite one of your Christian friends along. If your community group is getting together and have some kind of party or hang out, that might be a good time to invite a friend, a neighbor, a classmate, a coworker, someone who you might just want to spend that time with other Christians.

You can love that person, witness to them together as a community. Don't go it alone. Number four, connect before you correct. When Paul was in Athens, he reasoned with the philosophers. He quoted their own poetry. He displayed knowledge of their culture. He connected with them. He met them where they were, and then he did his best to lead them to Christ. In homiletics, we call this contextualization, which is a big fancy word for just like don't be a weirdo. Be a relatable, normal person. Don't be the person who shows up in a three-piece suit with a briefcase full of charts and graphs and pulling everything out.

Don't be the guy with the megaphone and the sandwich board telling people to turn or burn, get sanctified or chicken fried. Be a real person. I'm not saying don't talk about sin. I'm not saying don't talk about hell, don't talk about God's judgment. We need to talk about those things, and those things are real. What I'm saying is those things are real, we need to be real, right? We're just sinners saved by grace. We don't go into these conversations with pride, with self-righteousness. We don't approach people condescendingly. We speak the truth and we speak it boldly, but scripture says speak the truth in love.

Be relatable. Show some emotional intelligence. Be humble. Be respectful. Be gentle. Show that you genuinely care about these people. That they're not just projects, that they're people, they're souls that we love, that we are concerned for. One just super easy practical way of doing this, if you find it hard or awkward to begin conversations about your faith or Jesus or Christianity, is before you dive into telling people what you think, just simply ask them what they think. Like, hey, do you have any kind of religious background? What do you think about the meaning of life? What do you think about Jesus Christ?

People love to be asked questions. People love to talk about themselves. When they're done talking about themselves, more often than not, they're going to turn around and they're going to ask you the same questions. They've just given you the opportunity then to share the gospel and to tell them, "Well, this is what I think. This is what I believe. This is how Jesus saved me and changed my life." It's cliche, but it's true. People don't care what you know until they know that you care. Now, Paul put it like this in 1 Corinthians 9:19. He says, "For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.

To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win more Jews. To those under the law, I became as one under the law, though not myself being under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law, I became as one outside of the law, not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside of the law. To the weak, I became weak that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that what? So that I may share with them in its blessings." That's what it's all about.

We have experienced the blessing of salvation, of a relationship with God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ, and we want to share that blessing with others. Peter put it like this. 1 Peter 3:15 says, "In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and with respect." Connect before you correct. Number five, point people to Jesus. Peter said always be prepared right there. There's preparation involved. Be prepared to share the reason for your hope. I would encourage you at some point to write down your testimony and keep it up to date from time to time.

But as you do, keep this in mind. If you read your testimony and your testimony is all about you, if you read your testimony and you come out looking like the hero, you probably did something wrong. That's probably not a testimony, that's more just a self-help book. You didn't save yourself. I didn't save myself. Your testimony should be focused on the one who did save you. Your testimony should be focused on what Jesus has done for you, not so much on what you have done for him. So that when you get the opportunity to share the reason for your hope, it becomes clear to everyone that the reason is Jesus.

He's your living hope, that he is the hero of your story. That's really what we're doing in evangelism, right? Our job, help people see that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. That Jesus is the hero of history. That Jesus is the hero of our story and help them to see that Jesus could be the hero of their story as well. Make sure that you're pointing people to Jesus. Number six, call for commitment. At some point, you have to make a call to action and make that clear for people. Faith comes by hearing the good news, but true and saving faith moves people to action. You have to talk about that. Talk about repentance and faith.

Talk about baptism and the importance of getting plugged into a local church. Help them to see those next steps when they are ready to commit to following Jesus. If they're not ready, then number seven, the final tip, is just trust God with the growth. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3:6, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God's the one who gives the growth." At the end of the day, your job is not to save anyone. You can't do that. Your job is just to be faithfully there witnessing, planting, watering, praying, trusting God to bring the growth, trusting God to bring the harvest. All right, well, today is a special day.

We are going to be celebrating communion together today. Communion is one more way that we as a community proclaim the gospel together. This is what Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11:23. He says, "I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it, and he said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way he took the cup after supper saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.' For, he says, as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."

The way that we celebrate communion here at Mosaic is hopefully as you came in, you're able grab one of these little cups. If not, feel free to just raise your hand right now. The ushers will be happy to bring one to you wherever you're sitting. Inside here, the bread represents, as we just read, the body of Christ. The cup represents his blood that was poured out so that we could be forgiven. This is a time for us to remember, to reflect, to celebrate the gospel of Jesus Christ. That we did not save ourselves, that we are sinners.

And that because of our great sin, the only hope we could have of salvation is for Jesus Christ, the perfect spotless lamb of God, the Son of God, to come, to take on flesh and to give himself through his death on the cross, taking our place, taking the punishment that we deserved, paying that penalty, paying that debt that we could never afford to pay our own. That he did that for us, and that we can receive that by repenting and putting our faith in him as our Lord and Savior. That when we do that, we are forgiven. We are cleansed by his blood. We read this earlier, that he became sins so that we might become the righteousness of God.

That our sin is accounted to Jesus. He pays for that on the cross and his righteousness is accredited to us. We are now able to stand before the Father cleansed, holy, righteous because of what Christ has done for us. That is what we remember, that's what we celebrate, and that's what we give thanks to God for right now. If you're here today and you are a Christian, we would welcome you to celebrate communion with us right now as we partake of the elements together. If you're not a Christian, or if you are a Christian who is living an unrepentant sin, we would ask you to refrain from this part of the service.

It's not going to do anything for you. There's nothing magical about this, apart from faith in Jesus Christ and walking in repentance for Jesus Christ. Scripture actually warns us and Paul continues in the very next verse, verse 27 of 1 Corinthians 11. He says, "Whoever therefore eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Therefore, let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself."

If that is you, as we would say, refrain from this. Better would be to spend this time right now to repent, confess to God, and he will be faithful and just to forgive you. If you've done that today, if you have given your life to Christ and made that commitment today, or if you are a Christian walking in repentance and faith, we would invite you to join us now as we celebrate communion together. Let's pray and then we will move. God, we thank you for this great hope that we have, this living hope that we have through Jesus Christ, our risen Lord and Savior. We thank you for the many blessings that we have, for the abundant life that we have in Christ as we follow Him, our good shepherd.

Lord, I pray that you would give us a joy and a burden and an urgency and excitement to share this good news with others, to share in this blessing with those that you've placed into our lives. I pray that you would open people's hearts, that you would open doors of opportunity for us in those moments, that you would give us grace, that your Holy Spirit would speak through us to be faithful witnesses to you and to all that you have done wherever we have opportunity to do so, Lord. I pray that in doing so, that you would continue to draw many to yourself and add to our number day by day those who are being saved.

All of this is possible only because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you for the cross. We thank you for your sacrifice, for the amazing love and grace that you have poured out on us. We didn't deserve it, but we worship you and we thank you for extending it to us. I pray that you would bless our time of communion right now. In Jesus' name, amen.