The sermon titled 'The Profile of the Evangelistic Church' explores the essential characteristics of an evangelistic church, emphasizing that it is not an elusive concept but a reality grounded in Scripture. The speaker highlights the importance of receiving and being established in a pure gospel, which then sounds forth as faith spreads. The sermon stresses the need for churches to follow the Great Commandment to love God and neighbors, leading naturally to fulfilling the Great Commission. The speaker discusses the necessity of genuine repentance for past failures in evangelism, rather than superficial resolutions, and identifies two critical levers for success: love for God and fear of God. The sermon encourages churches to foster an environment of prayer, fasting, and dependence on the Holy Spirit, as exemplified by the church at Antioch. Furthermore, it acknowledges the role of gifted evangelists in local churches to inspire others, while cautioning against immature zeal. The sermon concludes by urging believers to take actionable steps toward evangelism, learning from both successes and failures, and striving for progress through God's grace.

Our Father, I pray that you would come in a mighty way, sending your Holy Spirit to teach us. I pray that you would stir us up in our hearts, O God. I pray that you would come and make us what we are not. Father, we have such a lack, But we have hope even in our lack because you are God. We are the work of your hands and you can do anything with us that you desire to do.

This gives us confidence, this gives us hope when we might have despair when we look at what we are in our own strength. Come and be mighty, O Lord. Come and show yourself to be our God, to be the one who gives us progress in the faith. Oh God, fall upon us. Paul writes this in his first letter to the church in Thessalonica.

This is 1 Thessalonians verses 5-8. Paul writes, For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance, as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake. And you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the Word in much affliction and with joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became examples to all in Macedonia and Achaia who believe. For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place. Your faith toward God has gone out, so that we do not need to say anything.

Paul in writing to the Thessalonians introduces all the generations after them who would read this letter. He introduces us to the church. It's a people who have received a pure gospel through Paul and they've been established in that pure gospel and then the gospel has sounded forth. Their faith has gone out. The evangelistic church is not a mirage.

Have you ever felt like it was a mirage? Have you ever had a sense of our own corporate failing and weakness in the Great Commission. So you've seen the failings in your own life, and you've seen the failings in your brothers and sisters who occupy a local church with you. And you've looked out across evangelicalism, and you've seen churches doing the wackiest things in the name of evangelism, things that have no footing whatsoever in the scriptures and you've said, Where is an evangelistic church? I don't go to one.

I don't see one It's like a mirage in the desert that just seems like it's out there, but when you walk to that spot. There's there's nothing there It's not a mirage Paul has seen the evangelistic church with his own two eyes. He's planted them. And they exist. And we can look in the New Testament and obey the things that we see in the New Testament and be made by God to be an evangelistic church.

So this is the topic that we are speaking of today. It's the profile of the evangelistic church that is out there on the horizon, not as a mirage, but as something that is real, something that can be planted, something that can be brought forth by God. Oh God, give us this testimony. May it be that men and women who are filled with the Holy Spirit decades from now would point and say, I saw with my own two eyes an evangelistic church. A church that received a pure gospel, that was established in that pure gospel, and that the gospel sounded forth from them, that their faith went out in every direction.

God may it be that Hope Baptist and Sovereign Redeemer would fit a beautiful profile for an evangelistic church that we see in the New Testament. So I gave this two days ago at White Under Harvest. Why did I get picked to give this talk? Is it because I'm helping to lead a church that's the profile of the evangelistic church? So you can say, just go look at Sovereign Redeemer and do that and you'll be the evangelistic church.

No, that's not why. That's not why. Here's my honest self-assessment. I think it's an assessment that would be shared by everyone else at Sovereign Redeemer. It's not false humility.

It's true humiliation. And it's this, that two years ago we were pitiful. And two years later, because of the grace of God, we're mediocre. You say you got picked to speak at a conference because you're mediocre? I thank God that I'm mediocre.

Because I was pitiful. And it means that God in the last two years has done something among us. He's come and given us progress and given us hope that because of what we've seen with our own two eyes in the last two years, that two years from now, we might be able to look back and say, we're not too bad. You know what? Two years ago, we were only mediocre.

And that God would continue us in the trend line that he's put us on. I praise God that at least in the last two years he's given us progress. May he continue to give us progress as we learn and repent and press on toward that for which Christ Jesus has taken hold of us. So we can at least see that God is at work. It gives us hope to aspire that This beautiful picture that is set before us in the New Testament of evangelistic churches that God has done that and God can do it again here if we'll follow Him and obey Him.

Now here's a warning about the message. There's a lot I won't be talking about. It's a big topic and I only have an hour. So there are many things that are crucial under the heading of the profile of the evangelistic church. And I'm not even going to touch on it.

I'm not even going to talk about it at all. Here are some examples. It needs to be a true gospel. The landscape is full of false gospels. And so when you talk about an evangelistic Church, it has to at least be a presupposition that we're talking about a true gospel and not all the false gospels that are being propagated.

Or how about this? Churches need to be predominantly converted people. You can't talk about the propagation of the gospel until you have a regenerate membership, mostly saved people in churches. How are we going to be an evangelistic church if we're not even born again? Or how about this?

That evangelism is just a sliver of the Great Commission. Evangelism is just the starting line. And that the Great Commission is so much more than just evangelism. And that discipleship has to be hot on the heels of evangelism to have this full orbs picture that the Great Commission actually is. So I'm not talking about any of those things, and there's a bunch of others that we could probably name.

I'm not talking about those either. I'm just presupposing that a healthy church has some sense of these things. There are many things that I won't be talking about, but hopefully as we go through four New Testament texts that have a direct bearing on the profile of an evangelistic church, then at least those things would be very helpful, even though I'm not comprehensively treating the subject. Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 22. We've gotten really familiar with Matthew 22.

Praise the Lord. In Matthew 22, Jesus is asked a question by a scribe. He's asked what the great commandment is. We will begin reading in Matthew 22 verse 36. So an expert in the law, a teacher of the law, is posing this question to Jesus.

Matthew 22 verse 36. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Now we're talking about the Great Commission, right? Why am I going to the great commandments? Here's why.

The great commission is a natural, inevitable outflow of the great commandments, not a separate category. The great commission and the great commandments are not separate categories. We cannot continue to think of them in isolation as if they're disconnected entities that have nothing to do with one another. How far from can the truth actually be from that? To the extent that we obey the Great Commandment and the Second Commandment, which is like it.

We have nothing to worry about in the category of the Great Commission. It will flow out of our obedience to God in the Great Commandment in the second. As we love God, and as we love our neighbor, we'll find ourselves engaging in the Great Commission with all the passion in the world. In other words, if we'll obey the great commandment to love God and the second, which is like it, to love our neighbor, we will find ourselves launched into the Great Commission with a tremendous amount of momentum. And we won't have to have conferences on evangelism because we'll be loving God and we'll be loving our neighbor.

And that will be generating things in our lives. Can it be said that we love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind that we have this all-consuming love that Jesus is describing here, and yet we are silent. Can it be that we have this all-consuming love for God, But His praise is never on our lips in hour after hour after hour after hour after hour of conversations with the lost and we are never telling them about this great God whose love is consuming us. How could this be? How could this be?

Of course not! Do you know what that means? It means that your love for God isn't what you thought it was, and my love for God isn't what I thought it was. Can it be that we love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves and yet we are so governed by the fear of man that we won't even speak to him about his soul, can that be? Of course not.

We started in 1 Thessalonians. Paul talking about a church where the gospel has sounded forth, their faith has gone out. That was chapter 1. Now Listen to what he says in a verse in chapter 2, 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 8. Paul says, So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives.

Because you had become dear to us. Can you tell the Thessalonians have been trained by Paul? Can you tell this evangelistic church has been trained by the apostle Paul, who is not just coming with words, but is coming to share his life with them because they have become dear to him, because he has affection in his heart for them. Paul is driven not by duty, he is driven by love. He is ready to share his life with them.

When we are giving the gospel we are not just giving words, we are saying I want you to be my brother. I want you to join my family. I want to share my life with you. It's loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. So when we are talking about the Great Commission, or at least the start of the Great Commission, evangelism, We start here so that we understand our failure.

So that we understand why it is that the Church of Jesus Christ needs conferences on the Great Commission. It will not do to simply say we need to make progress and then make some resolutions of how we're going to do better. It will not do to do that. It will not do to simply say, evangelism has been a shortcoming for us. Now let's do some stuff.

That is so far short of what we need. We must repent. It's the great commandment and the second commandment, and we've not obeyed the great commandment and we've not obeyed the second commandment. These are mighty sins brothers and sisters and we own those sins. Mighty sins.

If you haven't obeyed the great one and you haven't obeyed the second one, what have you done? And so to skip repentance and just say, oh shucks, we need to do better. Let's generate some activity. How long is that going to last? How long is that going to last?

How long is that going to last? Because we've missed the root of the problem. And the root of the problem isn't what programs we do or don't have. Isn't what we do or don't do on Tuesday night or Wednesday night or any night. It's our hearts.

It's the condition of our hearts. We've thought we loved our God, but we haven't as we ought. We thought we've loved our neighbor, but we have not loved our neighbor as we ought to have loved our neighbor. And so we must own our sin and repent and fall down before Almighty God and say, God, I have not loved you. And I have not loved my neighbor.

I have loved myself. Have you ever seen a church do that? Skip over the repentance and say, let's get this going. Let's get moving. What's the first thing they do?

They hire an evangelism pastor. What's his job? Whip up the troops. Let's get some activity going. Isn't this how it works?

The reason we struggle with evangelism is we've been disobeying God. That's why. And repentance is required. In Luke 7, Jesus is invited to dinner. He's going to Simon's house for dinner.

Simon's a Pharisee. Simon loves the law. Simon loves theology. Simon loves a hundred different things, but Simon doesn't love Jesus. There's a woman there.

She's nothing like Simon. She knows very little of the law. She knows very little theology. She doesn't know about the other things he loves either. And yet she has been forgiven much.

And she is to be found at Jesus' feet weeping, weeping, because she has some sense of what she's been forgiven and she's wiping his feet with her hair. And Jesus ends up saying, Simon, do you see this? Do you see this? She has a sense of her sin. She's been forgiven much.

And it makes her weep. It puts her at my feet. And you know all this. You love all these things, but you have no love for me, you have no sense, you've ever been forgiven of anything, and your heart is as hard as a rock. Which have we been?

Have we been Simon who have many loves but very little true affection for Jesus Christ, very little sense that we've been forgiven of things? Or are we this woman who weeps? Because she knows she's been forgiven of ten thousand sins and she feels free And it makes her cry when she thinks about it. Friends, brothers and sisters, this demands a response. Can we just let this go by and just resolve to do better.

Until we do this, until we repent and own our sin, forget any meaningful progress in the category of the Great Commission. Just forget it. Write it off. Repentance is required to begin to take the subsequent steps that God would have us do. It has to be the first step.

Here's one thing I've learned. And it seems to apply in every category of life. It applies in business. It applies in home life. It applies in church life.

Here's what it is. Success or failure depends on just a couple of big levers. Here's what I mean. So, in any category, success or failure has a thousand levers. And if you pull 998 little of the levers but you ignore these two big ones, you'll fail anyway, even though You've got a really, really high percentage.

But if you pull big lever A and big lever B, and even if you ignore so many of the other levers, you'll still be successful because all things are not created equal. This is one of those. That's why it's called the great commandment. That's why it's called the second that is like it because they're massive levers. And in so many different categories, if we'll pull that lever, love for God and love our neighbor, we'll find that even though we've not been maybe what we should have been in so many other spots, that it covers a multitude of sins.

And we can be successful anyway by pulling this crucial lever. Love for God and love for neighbor is like that. So we begin with love. Now consider Matthew 10, 28. Consider Matthew 10, 28.

Now, consider Matthew 10, 28. Jesus says, And do not fear those who kill the body that cannot kill the soul, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Jesus is talking about the fear of God. And He is saying, don't worry about men who are out of options once they have killed you. What more will a man do to you? But God's not like that.

God has options. After he's killed your body, fear Him. Because your soul will live eternally. So fear God and think nothing of man. That's what Jesus is teaching.

Evangelistic churches, Together, corporately, as a group, have gotten hold of this and have been taught to fear God. Why don't we share our faith? Why not? Because we are petrified. Because we fear circumstances and we fear men, but we don't fear God.

We don't even really know why we are petrified, do we? Only that it seems really scary to ask someone that might think poorly of us about their soul. But when we learn, when we've been taught to fear God, then God is large to us and man is shrinking by the minute. Man is just getting smaller and smaller and smaller. We can't even think anymore why we bother to be afraid of Him.

When we've been taught to fear God, God is large. Brothers and sisters, this is what we need. We need to be taught by God to fear Him so that this fear of man which has governed us, which has controlled us, this fear that we've served, will shrink and shrink and shrink. And we'll say, how foolish, what was that even all about? Why did I even do that?

This is what we need God to come and do among us. Here is what we are going to find. As God teaches us the fear of the Lord, we are going to find this. As we share our faith, we don't die. Nobody dies.

And those fears were silly. Those fears were inconsequential, and we never should have served them. Are you willing to serve the fear of man for another decade? Ask that question to yourself. Answer it.

Are you willing? By the grace of God, I'm not willing to serve the fear of man for another decade or another year or another minute. May God give us this conviction that we will not bow down to that idol for one more second of our lives. Back to our big levers. I believe these are the two big levers.

Big lever number one is love. Love for God and love for neighbor. If we pull it, we'll be so far towards success in evangelism and engaging in a healthy way in the Great Commission. Big lever number two is the fear of God. If we'll pull that lever by God's grace, we'll be so far towards success in evangelism and in healthy engagement in the Great Commission.

So how are we going to do that? What's the antidote to these diseases we've been suffering from? We're going to stoke those fires. The love of God and the fear of God and the love of our neighbor ought to be fires that are burning in our souls. And there are ways to stoke those fires.

And it's the simplest things. It's being in the presence of God through prayer. Isaiah 6, this holy man comes before God and he is undone. Don't you have a sense that we need to be undone before God? Isn't this a sign that we fear Him?

To be in the presence of God is to be growing in the fear of the Lord. Let's go be in His presence. He's invited us to come. Let's go be in His presence and learn to fear Him and learn to love him. You know those things don't pull against each other at all.

To be in the presence of God, to enjoy the presence of God, to have fellowship with Almighty God, makes us fear Him and love him at the same time. Isn't that true? Let's read our Bibles prayerfully. Not as an academic exercise, not to puff up ourselves through an increase in knowledge, but to study the works of our God, and to know Him, and to come prayerfully before His book and say, oh God, teach me to love you through the things that you've done for your people. Teach me to fear you.

Are you surprised? Did you think I was going to come here and talk about technique? It's not technique. It's not technique. It's not technique.

It's not technique. It's not technique. It's not technique. It's not technique. It's our hearts.

It is fearing God. It is loving God. It's not technique. And if we'll get these two things right, if we'll be taught by God to love Him, to love our neighbor, and to fear Him, We'll be so full that we'll be overflowing into the Great Commission. This is what has to happen among us, brothers and sisters.

Turn to Acts 3. So first we had the love of God and the love of our neighbor. Second, we had the fear of God and our need to grow in it. Now we are going to look at an evangelistic church in Acts 13. This is the church of Antioch.

You get to be called an evangelistic church if you launched Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey. That qualifies you, Can we agree? You're an evangelistic church if you sent out Paul and Barnabas to change the world and turn it upside down. Acts chapter 13 verses 1-4. Now in the church that was at Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers.

Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaan who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then having fasted and prayed and laid hands on them, they sent them away. So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia. And from there, they sailed to Cyprus.

I look at this text and I say, this is a strange and wonderful mix. This is a church that's waiting. And at the same time they're waiting, they're ready. I'm almost never like that. When I'm waiting, I'm procrastinating.

When I'm waiting, it's because I'm not ready, but not the church at Antioch. They're waiting, but it's so clear from the text that they're ready for action. Aren't they ready for action? So In this text we see where a mighty work of evangelism didn't result from quote, evangelistic activity end quote. Or did it?

Or maybe we need to redefine the terms as the Bible defines the terms, and begin to think that ministering before the Lord, earnestly praying, fervently, perseveringly praying, and fasting, and waiting on God is evangelistic activity. I think that's what Acts 13 is teaching us. This is evangelistic activity. We've thought we needed to generate a bunch of motion. And maybe we would have been better off ministering before the Lord and earnestly, fervently, perseveringly praying.

And maybe we should have been fasting. And maybe we would have more evangelism and engagement in the Great Commission if we'd have been still before God, as the church in Antioch was. The church at Antioch was not Martha clattering around in the kitchen with every pot and pan. The church at Antioch is Mary sitting at Jesus' feet wanting to hear from Him. Depending on the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit speaks to them. And they hear. And they obey. They are ready for action. They are waiting.

But they are ready. So when the Holy Spirit speaks, Paul and Barnabas are gone. They lay hands on them, they fast and pray and they send them out. And then what does verse 4 say? So being sent out by the Holy Spirit.

So men had a part to play but it's really the Holy spirit doing something in and through this church. Are our churches characterized by this spirit? Is Hope Baptist and Sovereign Redeemer, are these churches characterized by the spirit? No. So here's something from my studies that is a gap for us that we need to consider and that we need to cry out to God that he would help us with.

We might have some measure of this but it's not the measure that Antioch had. It isn't. May God teach us to minister before Him and to pray so earnestly, so fervently, so perseveringly, and to fast and to wait on him and to be at his feet as an efficient way to engage in the gospel. It sounds so inefficient, doesn't it? What are they doing wasting that time when the Great Commission is before us?

It's not a waste of time. Do you think it's a waste of time? After you've seen what Paul and Barnabas did then, it's no waste of time. It's the most efficient thing we can do. I think we need to retrain our brains.

That's what I think. I think this brain needs to be retrained. Churches don't dare just launch a program to get some activity going. There's so much more here in Acts 13 than just generating activity. Where are the churches who will do this?

Where are they? Where are the churches who will think there's no better use of time than to minister before the Lord and to fast and to pray and to seek God, to lay siege to heaven and say, God, we will not let you go until you bless us. We will not stop praying, stop seeking you until you will speak to us, until you will tell us what to do, how to do your work, where to go, who to send. God we're not leaving until you speak to us. You know that's not disrespectful at all.

You know God desires that. You know God has charged us to ask and to seek and to knock and promised us we have great and precious promises. Number one was to love God and love our neighbor. Number two was to grow in the fear of the Lord. Number three is to retrain our brains about what it means to be efficient for evangelism and to think of ministering to the Lord and fasting and praying and waiting on God as evangelistic activity.

Number four, turn to Ephesians 4. Turn to Ephesians 4. Now the first three are like almost everything else in this way. Duty is ours, but results are God's. Almost everything in life is that way.

God has given us a duty. We need to be faithful. We need to obey. But at the end of the day, we are still totally dependent upon God. And it doesn't mean, it doesn't matter what we do, but it does mean that it really really really matters what God does.

Number four is not like that. Number four, we don't even have a role to play in this one. We are completely, 100% dependent upon God and it doesn't matter what we cannot do for ourselves what we see in Ephesians 4. I'm going to begin reading in Ephesians 4 verse 7 and I will read through 12. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore he says when he ascended on high he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. Now this, he ascended, what does it mean that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is also the one who ascended far above the heavens that He might fill all things. And He Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. The text is not saying that Evangelism is the exclusive domain of a few gifted people.

A thousand times no. That's not what Paul is teaching. Evangelism is the domain of everyone who names the name of Christ. The Great Commission is given to every Christian in every geography and every time period since the minute it was given. We are duty bound with the giving of the Great Commission.

So this is not a restriction of the Great Commission to the gifted. Not at all. But it is saying that God gives local churches this gift by putting a special gift on certain ones of his sons and daughters. Certain ones. Not everybody has it.

I do not have this gift. Not a gifted evangelist. And yet, the command of the Great Commission is to me. But God, in His mercy, in His wisdom, has sent people who are gifted in evangelism to help me learn to do what comes so naturally to them. You know it doesn't come naturally to me.

You might be like that. Probably you're like that. Most people don't have this gift. But God has given to some of his sons and daughters this gift. And you know them when you see them.

Evangelism is oozing out of their pores. And it's so natural to them. And when you see them in action, you say, that's disgusting. That makes me sick. Why has God done this?

God has done this as a blessing, as a gift to local churches so that people would be there who can lay down a pattern so that we would learn to do what we're duty bound to do, but what doesn't come naturally to us. What a blessing that God has sent evangelists, gifted evangelists into his local churches. You've heard this expression. A rising tide lifts all boats. When the tide comes in, all the boats rise with it.

That's what this is in Ephesians 4. God sending the gift of evangelism upon certain sons and daughters and then placing them in local churches is a rising tide that lifts the rest of us boats and helps us to do the things that doesn't come naturally to us. But they help us by laying down a pattern through their gifts. And we can watch them and do some semblance. I'm not claiming they bring us up to their level.

But I am saying that the pattern that they lay down gives us something to see so we can do some semblance of what they are naturally able to do. And we learn, and we make progress, and we obey. Two sides to this coin. Let's talk about the wonderful side first. The wonderful side is obvious.

It's that God has sent us, these people in our midst, to pull us out of our comfort zone. We were so comfortable not being evangelists, not having the gift of evangelism. And then God shatters all of that by sending evangelists into our midst. And they give us all kinds of discomfort because we see them obeying God in this category. And it comes flooding to mind how disobedient we are being.

And they lay down a pattern and they help us. They help us. They help us be uncomfortable. There's nothing more fearful than being comfortable in your sin. And so they shake that comfort.

They give us discomfort. And they lay down a pattern to help us. There's a not so wonderful side to that coin sometimes. Many of these evangelists are young zealots who are on fire but they are not very wise yet. Have you Ever met one of these blessings to the local church?

They are on fire. They are consumed by this gift that God has given them. But it hasn't been mixed with very much wisdom yet. And so they've gotten in their brains a certain formula. Evangelism equals street preaching.

Evangelism equals passing tracks out on the sidewalk four nights a week. And if you don't do it, you are the most shameless, shameful compromiser on the face of the earth. And They've not learned thoroughly about progressive sanctification yet. They've not learned that God brings along his different children at a different pace and different categories. So we're not all at the same point on the curve at the same time.

It doesn't work like that. That's not how God works among His people, but they haven't learned that yet. It's progressive sanctification. In different categories, He brings along different ones of His children, and He's the one who has to do it. We stand or fall to our own master, not to each other, right?

And they've not learned that the church has different gifts, and not everybody has their gift. And It's good. A body that's just mouths is a monster. A body with just mouths or just eyeballs or just ears is a monster. You need to have ears and eyeballs and hands and feet and legs and arms and on and on.

And we don't all have the same gifts, and that's a blessing, and that's good, not a curse. They haven't got their arms around that yet, because they're not fully mature yet. And it's like Paul who had the gift of singleness. And in 1 Corinthians 7 he says, I wish everyone were single. He's so excited.

He sees the blessing of singleness because he's been given the gift of singleness. So he says, I wish you all were single. Now that's not the best plan for the propagation of the human race. That sounds like a one generation strategy to me. But Paul has been given a gift by God, and it's a blessing.

And he says, so I wish you all were single, but Paul is mature. Paul has learned about progressive sanctification. Paul has learned about the diversity of gifts. So in 1 Corinthians 7, he concludes the thought by saying, I know everybody didn't have that gift. God gives different gifts.

So Paul can revel in that. Now, what should the mature do When God sends them someone who is consumed by passion for the gift that God has given them, but they don't have a lot of wisdom yet. They should just act mature. Just act mature. We don't have to freak out and get defensive when that happens.

We just need to act mature. And the mature ones come up to the blessed zealot that God has sent to that local church. And the mature one puts his arm or her arm around that one and says, I want to give you some spectacles to look through that you've not looked through yet. I don't think you're seeing your brothers and sisters right. It seems like you might be despising them because they don't have the gift of evangelism.

So look through these for a minute. And the left-hand lens is progressive sanctification. We're all making progress at different speeds, and we better not despise each other over that. Or we're going to be at odds a lot. And the right lens is different gifts.

And you know what? There's a lot of beauty to that. Don't despise that we have different gifts. God sent you here to help us, and you're helping us. So God bless you in your ministry.

And we want to speed you on in your ministry. And you're helping us. You might not even know how much you're helping us by pulling us out of our comfort zone. You're causing a lot of holy discomfort, and we praise God for that. Don't despise us.

Don't despise us. Wouldn't be right for you to do that. Act mature. Here's the truth. To whatever extent that they need the wisdom that the mature can give them, can impart to them, to whatever extent You need the zeal times 20, times 50, times 100.

They need what you have, mature person, mature member of the body of Christ. They need the wisdom that you have. You need the zeal so much more. Oh, that God would send us more and more and more unwise zealots into our midst so that their zeal could rub off on us because our hearts so quickly grow cold. It has been a blessing when God has sent us zealots.

We need to grow in wisdom. It's been a blessing because it's jolted us, and it's been a bucket of cold water in our face to say, I used to have that zeal. Where's that zeal? Why don't I have that zeal? What does that mean that I don't have that zeal?

Thank you, God, that you've sent us a zealot. This is what has happened to us at Sovereign Redeemer. This is what has happened to us. Sovereign Redeemer Community Church is the most evangelistic church that I have ever been a part of in 30 years of being a Christian. And it's not me.

I'm not leading this. I'm being drugged behind. Because I don't have the gift of evangelism, but I'm praising God for it. It started with a bad idea. Okay, so I'm going to give you a window into my brain, Not into a window of what I publicly said The man came to me who's in this room and whose name is Jim Santel's, but we won't we'll keep it anonymous A man came to me and said, I want to do outreach in this parking lot.

I want to buy a trailer and a gas grill. I want to serve hot dogs to people who will come and sit down and eat with us and let us share the gospel with them. That's a stupid idea. That will never work. But we're doing nothing, and that ain't Nothing.

That's something. So maybe we'll learn something. Let's not do nothing. Let's do something. And let's serve hot dogs in the stupid parking lot.

And maybe the next idea, we will have learned something and the next idea will be better. Jim, you were right. I was wrong. And 10, Tuesday night, after Tuesday night, after Tuesday night, after Tuesday night, 10 or 15 or 20 people who we have no connection with in our community, absolutely none, never met them, never would have met them, will come out and eat a 50 cent hot dog with us and sit around and talk with us about whatever we want to talk about, including the Gospel. It's unbelievable.

It was a great idea. Here's what we learned. Evangelism is self-feeding. Evangelism is self-feeding. Here's what I mean.

You power through the fear of man, and you blurt it out, the Gospel, to this person. And you don't die. In fact, exactly the opposite of dying. It's exhilarating beyond almost anything else you do in this life. You hear the Gospel from your own lips.

You're reminded of the glory of sinners being set free from sin that would send them to hell just by the things that you hear your own lips say. And you're forced to tell them how kind God has been to you, how faithful He's been to you since the day He put His hand upon you. And you hear it and you're reminded and it gives you such joy. Now, after you've done this, are you more likely or less likely to do that again? You're 100 times more likely Because it's been such a blessing.

You didn't die. They didn't rise up and smite you for saying the gospel. And you've been blessed by the interaction. Maybe more than they were. And you're looking for a target to share the Gospel with.

God's been kind to you and giving you this opportunity. And it's been a blessing to you. It's self-feeding. Janet and I have an ongoing joke. For many years now, this happens once or twice per week in our house.

I'm sitting around doing nothing. Reading, whatever. She's working. She's a busy beaver. She's always in motion.

And it makes it a bummer when you're doing nothing. But this is the dynamic of our home. Sometimes I'm sitting around doing nothing and she's working away. And she'll say, hey, Could you do this or that? Just related to something she's working on.

She'll ask me to do something. And now, inevitably, I'll start the joke by saying this. Now remember, I've got my feet up. I'm doing nothing. She has not been still for a moment all day.

And she asked me to do this or that. So I inevitably say, do I have to do everything? And she inevitably replies every single time, no, just something. This is how it is with evangelism in our churches. Do we have to do everything?

Do we have to convert everyone by sundown? No. But we do have to do something. We do have to take a first step. Things that are self-feeding and gain momentum like that, you do have to start.

You do have to start. And so now, it's not just the parking lot, although it's still the parking lot. Now, another man has said, individually, I've been doing some witnessing at the government subsidized housing. Not the place I was eager to take my children. It's the roughest part of Wake Forest.

I want to do something similar down there on Saturday night. I want a Bible study in the middle of this neighborhood on Saturday nights. Would you support that? Yeah. Different group of people doing that.

And Saturday mornings at the abortion clinic, different group of people out there with a sound system preaching the gospel and appealing to women as they go in to kill their babies. Don't kill your baby. This is the image of God. Jesus Christ has come to liberate you from the sins of your past. Don't go in that door.

And a nursing home. A night of the week. A service. Widows. Widowers.

Abandoned by everyone. They're getting the gospel, they're getting the gospel. Different group of people. Pro-homosexual rally downtown. Group of guys want to go out there and preach the gospel on the streets.

Reason rally in Washington D.C. The atheists are gathering. Group of guys can't get in the car fast enough to share the gospel with a bunch of atheists. It's just been feeding on itself. Now, I think we would say, hey, all these things could be more and better than what they are.

So this is not to pat ourselves on the back. This is to point at the faithfulness of God to put us on a trajectory where we're making progress. So none of these events are what they ought to be or what they will be in the future, if God would give us grace and more progress. And yet, we're doing something. And it's raising our sensitivity to it.

So we're not saying, hey, let's do a bunch of evangelistic events, and this is the end point. No, but these are things that are raising our sensitivity to this, so that when we're talking across the fence to our neighbor, or having people from work to dinner, That we're ready. We're ready to give the gospel. And most of this, almost all of this is being done as families. In other words, we're not splitting up to do this.

We haven't decided that we're done with family discipleship and now we're moving on to evangelism a thousand times no. May it never be that we would say it's one or the other and now we're moving on from family discipleship. We've got a new thing that we're doing. We're doing it from a base, a foundation of family discipleship in the worship of God in our homes and we're taking that on the road as families almost exclusively, Overwhelmingly it's as families. There are two added benefits to that.

The first is without saying a word we're communicating to our children that we are deadly serious about obeying God in the category of the Great Commission. We are deadly serious about stopping this pattern of disobedience in our lives and doing something. And secondly, we are training the next wave of evangelists. Son, be right here while I speak to this man about his soul. Daughter, be right there on the hip of your mother when she speaks to that woman, words that she's never heard in her life.

And they're learning and they're observing. And it will be so much easier for them than it is for us because they will have seen it. They'll be ready in a way that we weren't ready. Now is there a place for training? Yes.

All manner of great resources out there that will help you with technique, that will help you be clearer in your presentation with the gospel, that may help you be more effective in your gospel engagements. But that is a lousy substitute for doing something. Brothers and sisters, we can't train until the end of time. The training that we need is to get across the table from an unbeliever and start talking to them about what God has done for us, about the peril that they are in, and the solution provided in the person and work of Jesus Christ. There is your training.

There is more training and it will help you. But it is a lousy substitute for doing something. A few concluding remarks. What is the profile of the evangelistic church? The Bible defines it.

The Bible defines every category. The Bible hasn't defined it and we've got the wrong definition. An evangelistic church is where people have received a pure gospel, they've been established in that gospel, and then it's sounding forth. Their faith is going out, as we see in 1 Thessalonians 1. An evangelistic church is one where the people are growing in the great commandments.

They are learning to love God more. They are learning to love their neighbor more. As Jesus commands us to in Matthew 22. An evangelistic church is one where the people are growing in the fear of God. So their fearing man lasts by the minute.

Because the fear of God is a controlling fear. It's a controlling fear. It subjugates all those other fears. Your fear of circumstances, and your fear of man, and your fear of a thousand other things will shrink to nothing because it will be put under the feet of the fear of God. It's a controlling fear.

So they're beginning to be controlled by a different fear. An evangelistic church is a church ministering to the Lord, praying fervently, fasting, waiting on Him. Like we see in Acts 13, they are more merry than Martha. They are more inclined to sit at the feet of the Lord and listen than they are to clatter around in the kitchen with the pots and pans and generate a bunch of activity. The profile of the evangelistic church is one where God has given gifts.

He has made some of his sons and daughters evangelists, giving them the gift of evangelism so that the ones who don't have that gift would have something to see as they strive to obey the Lord more. Close with Romans chapter 1 verse 16. I'll close with Romans 1 verse 16. Romans 1 verse 16, Paul writes, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. For it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek.

Let's pray. Our God, I thank you for the gospel. As a man adopted into your family through the power of God for salvation, I thank you for the gospel. Where would we be without these words of life? We know the answer.

We can't bear the thought that we would have been separated from you, O God. I pray, God, that you would press these texts of scriptures on our souls. I pray God that you would give us a mighty repentance. Oh God, I know how I've seen how great my sins have been against you. Forgive me, God.

Forgive us, Lord. Conform us into the image of your Son. This is a precious image. We're nothing like him. Oh God, come and do what we're not able to do.

God, I pray that you would make it so that in years to come, We would look back and see progress and be so thankful that you've not left us in our disobedience, but you've confronted us in our sin, that you've given us the gift of repentance, and you've given us progress in our faith, and that you would fill us with so much love for you, and so much love for our neighbor who is now what we used to be, dead in sins and transgressions that you would fill us to overflowing. And this would be so evident in our corporate life together. Make us evangelistic churches. We don't just pray, God, that you would make me obedient in this area. You would make us obedient churches, oh God, in our corporate life together.

May we be known as those who received a pure gospel, who were established in that gospel, and whose faith sounded forth in every direction. May it be so in the name of Jesus Christ. Do it for the glory of your Son, for the glory of your own name, in Jesus' name. Amen.