I thought New York City was in New
York, but I guess it may not be.
It's its own place.
All right.
Well, thank you, men, for a great job
you've done in listening to the messages that
I've been allowed to preach.
It hasn't been a great week.
It's really been wonderful to me.
I'm going to go back.
I told Fred last night I'm going to
go back and write down the names and
addresses of several friends of mine who need
to be getting on the list of the
Bunyan Conference and try to encourage them to
come.
And I think it would be a great
idea if we all pitched in and did
that.
We could increase this mailing list considerably.
I think that would help and expose more
people to this kind of conference.
It's unique in many ways.
So I want to encourage you to do
that when you get back home.
Now, I want to admit right off that
my message today is a bit more anecdotal
than I normally do, but I want to
be very practical with you today and stimulate
us in the issue of evangelism like I
was supposed to do the last two sessions.
So let's turn in our Bibles to the
book of Mark, all right?
Mark chapter 4.
I wonder if we could bow our heads
again and pray and ask for the Lord's
blessing on this and help.
Father, thank you again for this great privilege.
What a joy this has been to be
together and to hear the Word preached.
There is no better thing, Lord, than this
as far as we're concerned.
We appreciate the way you've stimulated us to
action and encouraged us, helped us with problems,
helped us discern things that we were confused
about, gave us broader relationships, and we're just
very grateful for the many things that you
have done.
And we pray now these last couple of
sessions that they will be particularly meaningful to
us for your sake.
We ask you in Jesus' name, amen.
Now, in Mark 4, we are in Mark's
collection of the parables that Jesus Christ gave.
We had already looked at the parable of
the soils, but in a moment we're going
to look at the parable of the seed,
found in verse 26 through verse 29.
Now, you know that when you look at
some of the parables, in particular I'm thinking
of three of the parables here that Jesus
gave, there's a very, I think, marked theme
in at least three of them, which goes
something like this.
The kingdom of God is a living thing
that grows.
The kingdom of God is a living thing
that grows.
And you remember the parable, of course, of
the leaven and the parable of the mustard
seed.
The smallest of all seeds becomes the greatest
in the garden.
And then this parable, which is the parable
of the seed.
So words like expansion and permeation and multiplication,
those kinds of words are appropriate when we
think about the nature of the kingdom of
God.
So let's read this passage here and see
what we find.
Let's read it together in verse 26.
And he was saying, the kingdom of God
is like a man who casts seed upon
the soil and goes to bed at night
and gets up by day and the seed
sprouts up and grows.
How?
He himself does not know.
The soil produces crops by itself.
First the blade, then the head, then the
mature grain in the head.
But when the crop permits, he immediately puts
in the sickle because the harvest has come.
Now we know that there is a lot
of empirical data that the kingdom of God
is alive and grows.
If we just go back to the time
of Christ and look at those 11 disciples
and think about where we are now, even
with all of the false converts mixed in,
we still would have to say there are
millions of people who are believers in Jesus
Christ.
So there's lots of data for us just
to look at.
We just open our eyes and look.
We know that this is exactly right.
This is the way it is happening.
We also have a lot of information in
the scripture from the outset there when Jesus
Christ, before he ascended, told his disciples that
the Holy Spirit would come upon them.
They would be witnesses.
They would receive power when the Holy Spirit
came upon them.
They would be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria,
and the uttermost part of the earth.
He wasn't giving them a command, really.
That's not a command to evangelize.
It's a declaration.
This is what will happen.
And of course we see the unfolding of
that in the book of Acts, so much
so that the apostle Paul actually says the
gospel has been preached to the known world.
And then we see the continuance of that.
You get to the book of Revelation, chapter
5.
You find people in heaven from every tribe
and nation and tongue, a great missionary idea,
isn't it, that God has people in every
tribal group, and they will be in heaven.
So we are somewhere, of course, in between
that beginning prophecy about the work that would
happen through the church and the final fulfillment.
It's an interesting thing.
You never see the disciples in the Bible
kind of worried about the statistics.
We use the statistics a lot of times
to stir up people.
We say, well, we've got 24,000 people
groups, 12,000 have been evangelized, and we
have a great need.
But they never seem to be fretting about
that, do they?
Rather, it appears to me that they see
themselves in the vein of the prophetic fulfillment
of what Jesus Christ declared would be true,
that they get to be part of this
great enterprise that will end well, right?
And in my view, you can answer that.
That's the devil calling.
That's your wife.
Don't tell her.
I said that.
But we are there, aren't we?
We're in the middle, and we're in an
enterprise that is a winning enterprise.
And so we don't really need to fret.
God is not one soul behind in what
He is accomplishing.
He's exactly on schedule.
But it's a thrill, isn't it, to be
part of that?
We don't work out of a sense of
defeat about all of this.
We work out of a sense of optimism.
God is carrying out His great purpose.
He has told us ahead of time what
it would be.
He gives us a view from the end.
We have every reason to be rejoicing that
the work of God is being done.
In fact, we can see such marvelous results
already, can't we, over these 2,000 years
since Jesus Christ said those words.
Now the question is, of course, how does
it happen?
And I believe that this parable gives us
some answers to that, and I've got a
couple of answers to that that are very
simple answers.
And the first one is this.
Look again at the parable.
He was saying the kingdom of God is
like a man.
Here I think of the corporate man or
the church who casts seed upon the soil,
goes to bed at night and gets up
by day, and the seed sprouts up and
grows how he himself does not know.
So the first answer to the question, how
does the kingdom of God grow, is this.
It's a mystery.
He doesn't know, and you don't have a
clue.
You don't have a clue how it happens.
This is a fascinating idea, really, that it
just seems like it all happens by itself.
That's what he says.
The farmer goes out and puts his seed
out there, and before you know it you've
got the blade and then the head and
then the mature grain and the head, and
it just seems to happen by itself.
That's the terminology.
You can't really figure it out.
Now I'm not a horticulturist, and I'm sure
we've made advances in trying to understand these
things, but it appears to me still to
be quite a mystery, even in the realm
of horticulture, that you could take a seed
and it dies in the ground.
It's just an amazing thing.
You take corn, by the way.
I believe I heard the other day that
you get 16,000.
Well, I better not say this, but the
results of putting corn in the ground is
certainly greater than the investment, right?
So you sow that seed and a huge
number of seeds, a huge number of kernels
of corn result from that one seed.
It must be true that this is going
on.
It's easy to see as we look at
it.
But how it happens, we really have to
scratch our heads and say, you know, I
don't really know how God is carrying all
this out and getting it done, but it's
obvious it's being done.
Let me illustrate to you how that might
happen.
Let's say that you teach a class of
10-year-old boys in the church that
you're part of, and you have one kid
that is incorrigible, and he never makes eye
contact with you, and you try your best
to get the gospel into that kid's heart,
but he is just not paying any attention
whatsoever.
In fact, he's only there about two or
three months, and then the kid leaves.
He moves out of town with his family,
and you never see him, and you never
even think of him again.
He's gone out of your life.
Now down the line, however, this boy goes
to college, and while he's in college he
gets depressed.
Things are not going right.
His girlfriend shafted him, and money's not right,
and this, that, and the other.
The grades are not good, and he's depressed
and down.
But he remembers one night when he's thinking
about it all that he knew somebody who
seemed to understand life, and he knows it
has to do with Christ, and maybe he
remembers a verse of Scripture or an idea
or a concept that was taught in that
class, and God uses that little bit of
seed in his life to bring him to
the place where he actually puts his trust
in Christ, because you never hear about it,
but he put his trust in Christ.
He joins a Christian club, marries a Christian
girl.
They have children.
They raise them up in the fear of
God.
A whole generation of kids go on.
Those kids walk with the Lord.
All the kids in his family are solid
and vibrant Christians.
They marry other believers.
A third generation goes on.
You're dead and gone a long time ago.
A fourth generation comes in there.
Let's say we're four generations down the line,
and there has been a great impact to
the gospel generationally throughout this family.
In this fourth generation, one of the young
men who's now a businessman, married, a fine
member of the church, out of this family,
attends a mission conference, and he hears about
somebody wanting to publish a book, let's say,
that he thinks will be helpful for leaders
in New Guinea someplace.
And so he listens to that, and he
says, Well, you know, I've done very well
financially in my business.
I'm going to contribute to that.
He goes up to the fellow and says,
Look, can I put a couple of thousand
dollars toward that book?
And the man receives it graciously, of course,
and he publishes the book, and it's stuck
off in the libraries of little Bible institutes
around New Guinea here and there.
And it sits on the shelf in one
library for 40 years, and nobody touches it.
Dust is built up on it.
Finally, a young man who's away from his
family walks into that library searching for a
good book to read, and he sees that
book, and he pulls it off the shelf
for the first time in 40 years, blows
the dust off of it, checks it out,
and that book revolutionizes his life.
And he becomes the instrument, through the stimulus
of that book, he becomes the instrument to
open up a whole new tribal group to
the gospel.
Now, you didn't know when you were teaching
that Sunday school class that you were doing
global evangelization, did you?
But you were.
But how it happens, you have no idea,
right?
If I can just use my family a
little bit.
My grandfather, we have his written testimony.
My great-grandfather in the 1800s was converted
on a train outside of Little Rock.
He had gone to Indian Territory from Tennessee.
He and his bride, they had two kids.
One of them died.
Had a little girl left.
The woman got sick.
She got so sick that she wanted to
leave Oklahoma or Indian Territory and go back
home and be cared for.
Needed to go back home and be cared
for by her mother.
But on the train outside of Little Rock,
she passed away.
And before she passed away, she was a
believer in Christ, but her husband was not.
Before she passed away, she pled with her
husband that he would put his trust in
Jesus Christ and he would rear this little
girl in the Lord.
The man got on his knees, and he
prayed for a long time while the train
was rolling down the track.
When he got up, he was a believer
in Christ.
The next Sunday, he was there in the
church with the girl in his arms, giving
the testimony that we have, and eventually he
married a second time.
He had children.
About half of them died, but two of
the boys that were left, one my grandfather
and then another great-uncle, they became preachers
of the gospel.
My great-grandfather had those children.
Then my grandfather had two children, just was
able to have two.
A girl who became a fine Christian and
lived for the Lord all of her life.
And then my father, who became a minister
of the gospel.
My father had four children.
All three of the boys are in the
ministry, preaching.
And my sister, my only sister, married a
preacher.
Now in the fourth generation, almost every boy,
at least, is in the ministry.
Some missionary, some preaching in churches or whatever.
Now, that's a strange kind of family to
be in, and I'm telling you we have
some interesting theological discussions.
I'm kind of a nothing in the family,
but my brothers have been rather prominent, and
they've preached all over the world, and I've
had the privilege of preaching many places in
the world.
Do you think that little sick lady on
the train had any concept how many tens
of thousands of people would hear the gospel
generationally through her family?
Do you think she knew that?
She didn't have a clue, did she?
She didn't know anything.
She didn't even know if her husband would
become a Christian.
You see, the Bible teaches us, or Christ
teaches us really, that He will build the
church, and He's putting it together.
And I can guarantee you it's a mystery.
And we delight, don't we, in hearing about
that, and it's a great hope and encouragement
to us.
Now, there's another answer, however, in this text
of Scripture.
Look at this parable.
It says, He was saying, The kingdom of
God is like a man who casts seed
upon the soil.
Well, there's something else in there.
It's not only a mystery, there's not only
a mystery to this thing, there is a
method to it.
And what is the method?
Well, the method is profoundly simple.
You sow the seed on the soil.
It's a sower, to put it like a
preacher should put it, it's a sower sowing
seed on the soil.
That's it.
There is a method, and evangelism and the
growth of the kingdom will not happen without
the method being carried out.
Just turn to Acts chapter 2 for a
moment, if you don't mind.
By the way, let me just say this
while you're turning.
I think one of the things that we
have done wrongly in evangelicalism, in my view,
oh, it's not totally wrong, it has mixed,
maybe it's mixed in a way, but one
of the things I believe that has frustrated
a lot of believers and made a lot
of true Christians anxious about this area of
evangelism, I'll bet it's just mentioning the word
evangelism to most pastors even makes them break
out in a cold sweat because most of
us feel like we're not doing a very
good job at this.
Would you agree with that?
And I don't have any pastors who have
told me, Jim, we have a great church,
we just have a weakness in the area
of evangelism.
They usually always say that.
And most believers feel that a lot.
And I think one of the reasons we
got into this mess, perhaps, is our mentality
about packaging the gospel.
What we've done is we have said that
the gospel is a set of propositions with
transition statements and scriptures attached, and that creates
kind of a fear in the believer.
He memorizes the plan and does his best
to get it down.
We'll have our courses in evangelism and so
forth, and occasionally that's effective, but in the
long run what happens is it creates a
fear in him because he realizes somebody might
just ask a question in the middle of
this presentation, and I really don't know what
to say.
If a guy gets me off track, how
am I going to get back?
Because evangelizing has to do with sharing all
these things and getting all the transitions and
scripture verses in and then asking the big
question at the end.
And we package that.
You see how that can create actually a
frustration.
It works negatively for you, I think, in
the final analysis.
Really, it is far better to talk about
evangelism the way Jesus does, and that is
to sow the seed.
In other words, with the personality that you
have, in the ways that you could possibly
do it, in any possible little or big
way, depending upon the opportunity, get excited about
just planting the seed, throwing the seed out
there in any possible way you can.
God is building His church, but He says
there is a method.
The seed has to get out there.
We have to throw it out there, so
cast the seed.
Cast it every place you go.
Well, we are finding in our church that
this is a very exciting thing, and it
is the most evangelistic church I have ever
been in, but I think one of the
reasons is because we are emphasizing this way
of evangelism rather than the packaged way, and
people feel much more liberty, and we get
very excited about the slightest thing.
People say, Oh, I had just an opportunity
to say a little word here, or I
was able to put this piece of literature
in somebody's hand, and I think they are
going to read it.
Well, great, you are evangelizing.
You are doing what we are supposed to
be doing in evangelization.
There is everything to be excited about, nothing
to be ashamed of in that.
In other words, you see the encouragement level
is far greater, and you need that, by
the way, in the area of evangelism.
I think that is a real piece of
wisdom for pastors to think about this issue.
I really believe I have told you something
important right there, and I really believe that
will help your folks.
You probably have to get over some of
that old mentality to get to that place,
but if you can get there, I think
it is going to help you in a
great way.
Now, let's look here at the passage in
Acts 2, and I just want to walk
through a couple of places in Acts with
you a moment to show you something about
the kind of mentality we ought to have
about the method of sowing the seed.
Look at the prophecy of Joel.
Of course, at Pentecost, Peter is using the
prophecy of Joel, and he is explaining what
has just happened, and in particular, he is
explaining, if you notice in verse 12, it
says, They continued in amazement and great perplexity,
saying to one another, What does this mean?
This particularly follows, I think, the idea of
the tongues that he has just talked about.
Luke has just talked about in the chapter
before this.
So Peter answers.
He raises up his voice in verse 14.
He declares to them, Men of Judea and
all of you who live in Jerusalem, let
this be known to you and give heed
to my words, for these men are not
drunk, as you suppose, for it is only
the third hour of the day.
I always thought that was a strange way
to put it, as if they would be
later.
Surely that is not right.
But it must be more Presbyterian than I
thought.
But this is what was spoken through the
prophet Joel.
Here he gives these.
We have five verses here of this prophecy
of Joel.
Now if you can think of the prophecy
of Joel here like this, it will help
us in evangelism.
Think of the first two verses as a
description about what has just commenced.
Think of the second two verses, 19 and
20, as what will happen at the end
of this period of time and the day
of the Lord is coming, or before the
great and glorious day of the Lord.
And then think of that verse 21 as
a summary verse about this whole period of
time.
Now this is just my take on it.
You may have a disagreement about it, but
this is the way I see it.
And to me, I'm always right.
All right, look at what he says.
It shall be in the last days, God
says, that I will pour forth of my
Spirit upon all mankind.
Of course, we know that that means not
everybody, every person.
That means all kinds of people as is
illustrated by the passage before it with all
the people, the Medes, the Persians from Crete
and so forth, the Arabs, the Jews that
he's mentioned just before.
All kinds of people.
I will pour forth of my Spirit upon
all kinds of people, and your sons and
your daughters shall prophesy.
You young men shall see visions.
Your old men shall dream dreams.
That did happen.
And then verse 18, he gets back to
the subject.
Even upon my bond slaves, both men and
women, I will in those days pour forth
of my Spirit, and he adds, and they
shall prophesy.
And then at the end of the age,
he says, Look, I will grant wonders in
the sky above and signs in the earth
beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
The sun will be turned to darkness, the
moon into blood, before the great and glorious
day of the Lord shall come.
Now, I'll leave it to you to figure
out whether those are actual cosmic signs or
that it's apocalyptic language about political events and
changes.
There are different ways to look at that
passage that conservatives consider.
And then we have this great verse at
the end.
And it shall be that everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord shall be
saved.
By the way, that is not about praying.
It's not about praying a prayer to be
a Christian.
Calling on the name of the Lord is
evoking the name of the Lord or calling
upon the merits of Christ on your behalf
before the Father.
It's tantamount to the idea of faith or
believing in the Lord.
So it shall be that everyone who calls
upon the name of the Lord shall be
saved.
Now, here, as you know, there's been a
cataclysmic change in the world because what's happening
in this passage is that Peter is declaring
a huge difference from the Old Covenant.
In the Old Testament, the Jews, though they
were to be an object lesson to the
world, were not evangelistic.
Really, were they?
And the focus of God's attention was on
the Jews, it seemed.
It certainly didn't seem.
It was true.
And then when we come to this place
now in the history of the world, everything
explodes in every direction because now the gospel
is going to be preached to all kinds
of people and God's Spirit is going to
come upon all kinds of people and those
people themselves will be the propagators of the
gospel.
Both men and women, my bond slaves, shall
prophesy.
And everyone who calls upon the name of
the Lord.
That's a new statement, you see.
That's a new idea in a way, isn't
it?
In a sense, everyone who calls upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved.
This is the declaration he's making here that
is an explanation for what's happening.
And it's an explanation for their tongues here
in this passage because he's describing, when he
uses the word prophecy here, that's a loaded
word, especially in our day, isn't it?
The word prophecy.
But he mentions it twice and it's really
this, I think, very heavy theme in this
Joel passage here.
He mentions it twice because I believe he's
explaining.
You see, on one side of the Pentecost
event, Jesus gives the prophecy where he says,
you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit
comes upon you and you shall be my
what?
My witnesses.
And then on the other side of it,
he gives the explanation from Joel.
This is what this means.
It is about prophecy.
Okay, now, the idea of prophecy here, as
I'm sure many of you know, it's a
looser use of, more general use of the
idea of prophecy.
It's almost the same as saying they shall
evangelize.
They shall speak forth the things of God,
you see, both men and women.
You say, Jim, do you believe in women
preachers?
Yeah, yeah, I do.
I don't believe in women pastors.
But women preachers like this?
Yeah, yeah, I believe.
Men and women, my bond slaves, shall prophesy.
They shall speak out the things of God.
And it is the characteristic of this new
age, really.
It is a new thing about this new
age, I believe, that we live in before
the great and glorious day of the Lord
that men and women shall proclaim and speak
out the things of Jesus Christ.
In that sense, yes, I believe it's true.
I believe men and women can preach like
that.
Amen?
Good, I was hoping you were with me
because some of you were looking kind of
strange and pale there for a moment.
Now, my grandmother was one of the greatest
women preachers I ever knew in this respect.
She would have never been a pastor of
a church.
That would have been repulsive to her.
She thought it was not biblical.
But she was a great gospel presenter.
And she was a little different now than
I believe in some of the decisionism that
she had.
But I have to say, there are many,
many people who come to Christ through her
life.
I never went to her house.
She didn't have a list on the wall
with the butcher and the gal with the
filling station and the name of this person,
that person, the mailman.
She had that list up there.
She would pray for them.
She would talk to them boldly about Christ.
She was really a remarkable lady.
And one time, there's a little legendary story
that gets bigger every year about my grandmother.
But years ago, they lived.
They never had any money much.
My granddad was a pastor.
And they lived by the tracks.
One day, when hobos used to ride the
trains, a hobo got off the train there
in that little southern Arkansas town and knocked
on the screen door in the summer and
wanted some food.
She came to the door.
My granddad was gone.
And so she was obliging.
She wanted to give him some food.
She says, You wait right here, and I'll
go get something for you.
And she went back into the kitchen.
She opened the ice box.
Do you use that term?
She opened the ice box, and she got
out a big piece.
She got out her cheese.
She took a big butcher knife, and she
went to the counter and sliced off a
big chunk of cheese.
And she had the cheese in one hand,
the butcher knife in the other hand.
She was walking across the kitchen into the
living room thinking to herself, How am I
going to witness to this man?
And when she got to the door, she
shook that knife.
She said, Are you prepared to meet the
Lord?
And they said he outran the train.
I don't know if that's true or not.
The last part may not be true.
But at any rate.
But she, in a way, was a preacher
of the gospel.
Do you remember the passage?
Look over in Acts chapter 8 for a
moment.
Look at Acts chapter 8.
I think this is the kind of preaching
we need to recover in a way, don't
we?
In Acts chapter 8, look at this great
passage.
You know, after the stoning of Stephen, when
the apostles stayed in Jerusalem, right?
And in verse 1, the people were scattered
throughout the region.
But the apostles, except the apostles it says
in verse 1 at the end of that
verse.
Because of this persecution.
So these are just the regular people.
Not the super people, the apostles.
But look at verse 4.
Therefore those who had been scattered went about
preaching the word.
In my view, it's probably men and women.
And they were going about preaching the word.
Everybody was preaching the word.
You see, this is the kind of preaching,
I believe, really needs to be recovered.
Especially among our churches who have, I think,
a purer view of the gospel itself.
We need to recover this.
In Acts chapter 6, do you remember that?
And you don't need to turn to it
because I think you'll remember that.
When the apostles, who were the first leaders
of the Jerusalem church as well.
But when things got really busy with all
the people in town because of Pentecost had
been converted and were staying over for training
and whatever.
And they were hanging out there still until
the persecution of Stephen.
You may remember that there was a lot
going on in terms of the feeding scheme
that was being carried out.
And the apostles were heavily involved in that.
So they asked the church to choose six
men.
We typically think of these as the prototype
of deacons.
Six men, full of faith in the Holy
Spirit and so forth, full of wisdom.
And the reason for this was that the
apostles might give themselves to the ministry of
the word and to prayer.
Now probably when it says prayer there, he's
talking about personal prayer.
But it could be like Acts chapter 2
where the article is used, the prayers.
And it might be kind of a synecdoche
for worship.
But regardless of what that means, let's think
about the first idea.
The ministry of the word.
What does that mean?
Now immediately when we hear the apostles gave
themselves to the ministry of the word, what
do we think?
We think as we apply it to ourselves,
I've got to hole up in my study
for a lot more hours than I've been
studying before.
I want you to understand the balance I'm
going to give this.
But just think about this.
That's what we think normally, right?
I've got to get down.
I've got to spend an hour for every
minute that I stand up in the pulpit
so I can knock it out of the
ballpark on Sunday morning.
I've got to work harder.
I've got to work much harder at dividing
the word of truth, studying the word, knowing
what's in it.
But what do you think that meant to
those apostles?
I don't think it meant that at all.
In fact, when you look at their lives
you wonder, did they ever have any time
to study?
You know what it meant to them?
It was the serving of the word.
It was the ministry of the word.
In my view, as I look at the
Scripture, I think this bears this out.
They were so active in being with people.
When they'd meet believers, they would try to
present them complete in Christ and grow them
up in the Lord.
When they'd meet nonbelievers, they'd tell them the
gospel.
They were busy day in and day out
among people serving, serving out the word.
They had been caught up in serving tables,
but they needed to be busy about serving
the word.
They needed to give that out, you see,
wherever they went.
Now they had, of course, the perfect society
or a better society for it in the
sense that, if you've ever been to third
-world-type countries, you know it's just people
are more communal, everybody's milling around, and you
have opportunities that are great.
And I realize we're isolationists here and insular,
and our lifestyles are more difficult.
But this has made a dramatic impact on
me, this idea, that they were actually serving
the word.
They were out among people.
They were actively giving the word out among
people.
Now don't mistake the other fact that we
find in the pastoral epistles that we do
need to be diligent about the study of
the word.
If you're a pastor of the church, you've
got to shuck the corn and get it
ready.
You've got to do the work that you
need to do.
But there's something missing in most lives of
pastors that I know and other leaders.
They don't really get out among the people
very much.
They're not really out.
I'm not talking about scheduling meetings in people's
homes.
I'm just talking about getting out among people.
One time I did a—well, I'll get to
that in a minute.
I'll be practical with you in a minute.
But keep that idea in your mind.
The early preachers, Jesus himself and the apostles,
never stood behind a podium like this to
my knowledge.
They never had rows of chairs or pews
out there in front of them.
That's not what they thought of when they
thought of preaching the word.
The Apostle Paul, if he went from one
city to another city, and it took him
four days to walk between those two cities,
and somebody said, Well, what did you do
during that time?
He'd say, I was preaching the word.
I believe there were weeks that went by
probably where Paul never talked to more than
a handful of people at a time.
But he was preaching the word all the
time.
He was preaching the word, preaching the word
all the time.
Do you see that?
One time a new seminary, a new preaching
professor of Southwestern asked me, What would you
do with a group of guys that you're
going to teach down there about preaching?
I said, Well, there are different types of
preaching I understand.
And you've got men who've learned to be
pastors of churches.
But I think I'd say to them right
from the outset, If you're not preaching several
times a week already, you probably don't even
need to be here.
You know, there is preaching that is to
go on all the time.
You understand what I'm saying?
Are you doing that?
That's the question.
Are you really doing that?
And are you being a model to the
rest of your church about that kind of
thing?
Look at Acts chapter 8 real quickly.
Then I want to try real fast to
do some practical things with you.
Look at chapter 8.
Do you remember the Ethiopian who received Christ?
And Philip went out there and he ran
up to him.
Let me get right to the point.
He ran up and joined the chariot in
verse 29.
The man is reading a passage out of
Isaiah.
In verse 34, you remember Philip gets up
in the chariot with him.
And the eunuch answered, verse 34, Philip and
said, Please tell me of whom does the
prophet say this?
Of himself or someone else?
And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from
the Scripture, he preached Jesus to him.
Now, you say, well, that really can't be
preaching actually because Philip is a deacon.
And he's not a preacher.
And preachers preach, and deacons deke, and there
the twain shall meet.
Right?
And if you can get over that idea,
you say, well, surely this is not preaching
actually because he's sitting down, and you don't
preach sitting down.
You have to stand up to preach.
And if you can get over that, you
say, well, it couldn't be preaching because he's
in a moving vehicle.
Nobody preaches in a moving vehicle.
And if you can get over that, you
say, well, he couldn't be preaching because he
only was speaking to one man.
But he was preaching, wasn't he?
He was preaching.
Do you do that kind of preaching?
I believe that's the kind of preaching, a
kind of preaching that we desperately need to
recover among ourselves.
Now, let me just be practical with you
a few moments to end this time.
One of the things I did a few
years ago was go through the Gospel of
Luke, and I wrote down in my little
commonplace book every observation I could find through
the book of Luke about Jesus' peripatetic movements.
I just wanted to see where he was
going, what he was doing, and I just
write down.
He went over here, and then he went
over here.
I got to the end of that thing,
and I made about a page of observations
from my main observation.
I wrote 14 pages of the movements of
Jesus.
Then I wrote a few summary statements.
Then I summarized the summary, and here's what
I came up with.
Jesus Christ hung out.
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or
reason to what he was doing.
He'd go over here, and then he'd move
over here, and then he'd come back over
here, and then he'd walk down over to
this place, and he'd be with these people,
and then somebody would call him, and he'd
go over here.
He just moved around.
Basically what Jesus Christ was doing, and I'm
sure obviously by design, divine authority, and the
perfect way to do it, but he was
basically, from our view, from the best we
can tell, he was just hanging out among
people, finding those opportunities.
It appears that the Apostle Paul did similarly
to that.
He hung out.
He found groups of people, and he was
always then in that context talking to people
about Jesus Christ.
When I discovered that, again, that's an oversimplification,
I guess, but when I discovered that, I
immediately tried to put it in action.
This opened my eyes in a big way,
and I immediately headed to the coffee shop,
which are built by the devil for the
church.
They are.
You know, everything's really about it.
If you read the Bible, you realize everything's
about the church, isn't it?
Really, it all centers.
So, yeah, that's all out there.
It's part of the plan, and they're made
so that people can sit around and talk.
That's what they like to do.
People are rather chatty in coffee shops.
The first day I went, I had 14
conversations with people, many of them building with
some spiritual input.
And I thought to myself when I got
back to my office, if I'd sat in
my office today, I wouldn't have done this.
And this was extremely important.
And I decided then to do my best.
And I had another job to fulfill.
I'm a pretty busy guy.
You're a very busy person.
I had other things to do, but I
found that I could do some things in
the coffee shop.
That's number one.
So I took my laptop there, and I
took my books there, and I wasn't ashamed
to read my Bible there.
But when I was there, whatever time I
could spend every day, every other day if
possible, my antennas would be up, and I'd
be looking for the opportunities.
I felt that I was on mission while
I was there.
I mean, I wrote one or two of
those books in coffee shops, but while I
was there, I was on mission.
My antennas were up.
You see, I was looking, listening, building relationships,
having conversation, giving out literature, knowing everybody behind
the counter by name so that they said,
Hi, Jim, becoming sort of the pastor to
some people who don't have a pastor, just
hanging out.
I found out I got five or six
of those coffee shops now that I haunt
around in our area.
It really changed.
I'm serious about this.
I like coffee.
I know.
You don't like coffee.
But, you know, I'm serious when I say
I believe it is a biblical thing to
do for us to get among people in
some way.
Another thing that happened, reading the Bible, of
course, is a dangerous thing, but I went
through Acts, and I asked myself the question.
I recently wrote an article on this if
you want to find it on our site.
I asked myself the question, How did the
apostles get a crowd for the gospel?
It's a good question to ask because it's
driven the seeker movement and the signs and
wonders movement, even the bus movement.
It's been a driving question for a long
time.
How do you get a crowd for the
gospel?
Everybody believes the gospel needs to be preached.
How do you get a crowd to hear
the gospel?
I went through the book of Acts, and
I found out three things happened.
One were mob scenes.
They took advantage of riots and mob scenes.
I thought that's not a strategy I really
want to get involved in.
That happened 10 or 11 times or something.
Then apostolic signs and wonders, and that was
something I couldn't pull off, especially at 7
o'clock on Friday night or whatever.
So I see that principally as apostolic confirmation
of their ministry and that sort of thing.
So that happened a number of times, but
there was one clear strategy in the book
of Acts for preaching the gospel.
I don't know if you've ever thought about
it.
I don't think to my knowledge I've ever
thought about it before that seriously, and it
was this.
About 12 or 13 times, depending on how
you count it, the apostle Paul and some
others, but the apostle Paul went to the
synagogues.
Now he didn't go there to worship.
He went there for the purpose of the
gospel.
Several things happened.
You can almost count on what's going to
happen every time Paul goes to the synagogue.
He has an opportunity.
It's a setting where people can talk out
loud and say some things and make contributions.
He would reason with them according to the
scriptures.
Back to Acts 17, it says, So this
was the way he went from the very
beginning right straight through his life.
Even when he'd wipe off the dust from
his feet and say, I'm through with you
Jews, he'd go into the next town and
go into the synagogue again.
Even in Athens where he was so troubled,
he walked through the city and saw all
those idols, and he was grieved in his
heart.
It's the way I feel when I go
in Christian bookstores usually.
I'm just really grieved.
And when he would do that, what's the
first thing that he did?
He didn't go up on Mars Hill.
The first thing he did was go to
the synagogue.
He was an apostle to the Gentiles.
That's where he found his Gentiles, right?
His proselytizing Gentiles, God-fearers or whatever, in
the synagogues.
And this was his clear, absolute clear strategy
in the Bible.
Well, now I cannot make a direct connect
between what I'm going to do and what
I found in that.
Also in the life of Jesus, by the
way.
But I begin to think, where can I
find such a context?
Where I can find people interested in God
who talk about God and give an opportunity
for you to talk about God.
Is there such a setting for me?
And immediately it sprung into my mind the
liberal churches.
And, of course, they don't deserve the word
church really.
So these religious meetings, these liberal religious meetings.
And I began to go then to liberal
churches.
And I would go into the Sunday schools,
perfectly open.
I'm clearly open with them about being a
member of another church, happily involved in another
church, but I'm just curious about what's happening
spiritually in our community and wonder if I
could participate for a while and be among
you.
I found the most amazing potential for evangelism
in those meetings.
I didn't need any transitions.
That's the one hour they talk about God
every week.
And I would come in and be the
only one with a Bible.
And just lovingly wait for the right opportunities.
You have to be careful not to jump
at everything because there are so many wrong
things that are said.
But just waiting for the right opportunities reflected
on the nature of God or the gospel.
And asking a lot of questions, building relationships,
taking guys out to lunch, just getting involved
with these people, clearly a part of another
church, but just getting involved.
I did that even when I had...
Our church meets in the evenings now, but
I did that even when we were meeting
in the mornings.
And now we have eight guys in our
church who go into liberal churches.
Two of them teach permanently in Methodist churches.
I just taught wasted faith in a UCC
church.
The opportunities are amazing.
I mean, it's the best of opportunities, really,
that I can think of, of anything that
we have been done.
And every Sunday evening when we get together
and have our open session where people are
sharing about what's happening, it's loaded with talk
about evangelism, what happens.
We know those groups through that individual, and
we pray for them, and this relationship is
developing.
I'm going to take this guy, and we're
going to meet about this, and so forth.
And it's the most exciting thing that we
have probably ever done in terms of evangelism.
I recommend it as a possibility for you.
All I'm simply saying is this, that at
the end of the day, there is this
great principle which we should keep in mind,
that when a lighted Christian gets in a
dark place, he makes a difference.
He makes a difference, right?
And if men, those of you who pastor
and lead, we're always concerned, how are we
going to do evangelism?
Let me tell you something.
Here's the one thing that I would do.
I would develop, if I'm going to have
a strategy about anything, here would be my
strategy.
I'm going to go through our membership and
talk to family by family, person by person,
and I'm going to help them find a
context where they can shine in a dark
place and make a difference.
If it means joining the Harley Club, that's
okay with me.
But, amen, right.
Wherever it might be.
If it means going to a college and
taking a philosophy class in the community college,
great.
Teach the class for Pete's sake.
They let you teach classes in a lot
of these community colleges.
But finding a place where you can make
a difference and where you can contribute and
get to know people and build relationships, that's
going to make a very significant difference.
I believe it's a biblical pattern for us
to do that.
So you need a strategy?
Think about that.
Think about moving your entire church in that
direction and see what will happen.
There's so many things I could say about
this.
Let me end with this one thought and
we're finished.
A farmer has a vast field.
He takes a seed and he goes out
to acre number 43 and he digs a
little hole and plants that seed.
Then he goes way across his field to
acre number 362 and he digs a little
hole and plants another seed.
And he goes home.
Months pass and before long the whole community
is abuzz.
The John Deere tractors are coming up and
down the dusty roads back and forth.
People are harvesting their goods.
They're taking big trucks of stuff out to
the co-op and so forth.
Things are happening.
The whole community is in abuzz.
But this man is sitting by his fence
looking at his fields, hanging his head.
Somebody comes up and says, well, what's wrong?
He says, I don't understand it.
I don't know.
I don't understand it.
I'm a Calvinistic farmer.
And, of course, you know what's wrong, right?
You know what's wrong.
It doesn't make any difference if you're Calvinistic
or anything on this point.
If you don't put the seed out there,
so lots of seed, you're not going to
have a harvest.
Your church won't see a great return.
And I know that it's absolutely true that
in many cases, in your whole church, a
whole week goes by and maybe nobody has
sown any seed at all.
Maybe you've not sown it.
Maybe you've been faithful, digging in the Bible
and working on it, but you've not sown
any seed any place in the fields.
Don't expect to have a harvest if you
don't sow the seed.
Let's bow our heads and pray.
Thank you, Lord, for this reminder.
Stimulate us, move us, Lord.
Get us to the place where we are
strategizing biblically about the gospel and help us
in the power of your Holy Spirit to
sow lots of seed in our communities.
Pray this, Lord, in Christ's name.
Amen.