Kaleo San Diego Church

“If God has already chosen who he is going to save how should this influence the way we do evangelism?”  (This Blog is intended as an application to the message “Chosen by God” which can be read or listened to on this site).

On Saturday night we talked about the amazing truth that “God saves sinners.”  It is God who, of his own free will and for the praise of his grace, has chosen to break in and save for himself a people who were dead in their sin.  A people who left to themselves would never seek God, never choose him, never believe in him, and never submit to his gracious and loving rule.  But the “God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (II Cor. 4:6).  And so we praise him.  We praise him that he sent his only Son Jesus to die for unworthy sinners like us.  Today I want to take a moment and discuss how this doctrine ought to affect the way we do evangelism.  We will discuss who we should evangelize and how this doctrine ought to make us joyful, prayerful, bold, and humble.  We will also discuss how this truth helps us deal with some of the temptations inherent in evangelism.

1. a.      Why do evangelism if salvation is ultimately in God’s hands? 
   1. i.        We do evangelism because God has chosen to use means to bring about his salvation.  His chosen means is the proclamation of his word.  Romans 10:17 says, “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” And just a few verses earlier Paul has made clear that the message is only heard when people go out and preach it (Romans 10:14-15).  Isn’t that how God choose to save us?  Through using someone else to tell us about Jesus or to give us a Bible, etc?
2. b.      How should we do evangelism?
   1. i.        Joyfully.  We do evangelism joyfully because we are so overwhelmed by the beauty of the God who has raised us up from the dead and has given us life through the sacrifice of his only Son that we feel compelled to proclaim this “good news” to others so that they too might come to know our beautiful savior.
   2. ii.      Prayerfully.  Our evangelism is saturated with prayer because we realize that salvation is ultimately in the hands of God alone.  As long as we are convinced that our methods or our presentation can lead directly to salvation we will always spend the majority of our time and effort improving these things.  However, when we realize that unless God is present to open the eyes of blind sinners when we preach nothing will ever happen we find ourselves driven to prayer as we plead for God to come and open eyes and save sinners. 
   3. iii.    Boldly.  We preach boldly because we know that if God chooses to come and open the eyes of the blind that he can save absolutely anyone.  So, we do not despair when it seems that we are preaching to people who are completely hard hearted because we know that we serve a God who raises the dead.  Just like Ezekiel preached to the dry bones and God chose to come and breathe life into them so we can boldly preach to those who seem beyond hope knowing that God is able to save anyone.  Paul speaks about how the Spirit’s presence in his ministry makes him very bold in II Corinthians 3:12 where he writes, “Therefore, since we have such a hope we are very bold.”
   4. iv.    Through proclamation.  Whatever else goes with it evangelism must included the verbal or written proclamation of the Gospel.  God has chosen to save people through the means of his word (Rom. 10:14ff). 
3. c.       Who should we evangelize if “No one can come to Jesus unless the Father draws him?”  We should evangelize everyone who is breathing.  While it is true that only those who God the Father draws will ever come to Jesus we have no idea who those people are.  As long as God is granting people breath we should proclaim the Gospel to them.  We must take our cue from Jesus who proclaimed the Gospel liberally to everyone who would listen and called all to come to repentance.  The call to repentance is for everyone.  There is no one who we should refuse to graciously proclaim the beauty of the Gospel to in the hopes that God might draw them to repentance.  In Acts 17:25 we find that each breath is a gift of grace from God and if God is graciously giving people breath then we ought to proclaim the Gospel to them praying that the reason God has given them breath is so that they might use it to come to repentance and begin to worship God.  Everywhere in the Bible we see that the call to repentance is universal, there is no discrimination in our proclamation of the Gospel.  As long as someone is breathing we never try and determine if they are ‘elect’ or not.  We must heed the warning of Deut 29:29 which says, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children.”  God has not chosen to reveal who the elect are and it is dangerous and totally unacceptable for us to be trying to figure it out while people are still breathing.  If they are breathing we proclaim the Gospel to them.
4. d.      How do we deal with rejection? 
   1. i.        Two temptations and their solution.

(a)   Frustration.  The first temptation is to become frustrated with the person since it seems so obvious to us we just don’t understand how they can fail to get it.  Often times this frustration will lead us to want to give up on a person.  You see once we have given a person the best possible presentation of the Gospel we can and they have rejected it, it is tempting to think that we have nothing more to offer them.  However, when we remember that salvation is all of God and that they are blind and dead and without hope unless God works a miracle in their lives we find that we are better able to understand their rejection.  So, we don’t get frustrated with them because we understand that they are blind and in desperate need of God’s help if they are ever going to be saved.  We also know that the issue is not our presentation and even if we can’t ever give them a better presentation then we have we keep giving them the same one praying that God will choose to accompany this one and open their eyes and bring about salvation.  You will be surprised that often when one of your best presentations of the Gospel fails God might use a much lesser presentation of the Gospel to save that same person later on.  Let your frustration drive you to prayer and do not give up on anyone as long as they are breathing.  No one is beyond God’s ability to save so pray to the God of hope that he will come and give hope to the people that you feel tempted to give up on.

(b)   Despair.  Sometimes when we present the Gospel and we are rejected it can lead us to despair.  We can feel that there was something wrong with our presentation and that’s why they didn’t listen.  If only we knew the answer to that question they threw at us.  If only we had used different verses.  This failure can often turn people off from even trying to evangelize.  They will hear their pastor speak about his success or someone else and they will think, leave the evangelism to them because I am just not cut out for it.  However, when we understand that salvation is all of God and has nothing to do with how eloquent our presentation we can find encouragement.  God uses his word through his Spirit to save.  You and I must bring his word, he must bring his Spirit.  If we have brought his word and salvation has not occurred it is simply because God in his sovereignty has chosen not to bring his Spirit that particular time.  So again we can’t be driven to despair but instead must be driven to prayer because we need Him to come and to join with his word to bring salvation.  If you ever want to hear an example of God bringing his Spirit to save someone even through what we would call very poor proclamation of his word read about C.H Spurgeon’s conversion.

You see both of these things occur when we think that salvation is something that can be had apart from God call.  You see if salvation was something humans could choose on their own then every time you experienced rejection you could either blame yourself (despair) or the other person (frustration).  But since salvation is from God we must turn to him and let rejection drive us to prayer.

How do we deal with success

1. Temptation of arrogance.  If we forget that salvation is all of God we will find that when people accept the Gospel that we can grow arrogant.  We can become puffed up by how many people we have led to Jesus.  Now this can only happen if we think that other peoples’ salvation has something to do with us.  However, when we remember that salvation is all of God it will keep us from growing arrogant when God blesses our ministry and awakens dead sinners to repentance.  Instead of arrogance we ought to be overwhelmed with gratitude when God chooses to bless our evangelism and draw people to himself.  We ought to be overwhelmed with gratitude that God had chosen to allow us to participate in something as beautiful and eternal and glorious as the salvation of a sinner.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to post them on the comment section of this blog or email me at .

Peace,

Tim Cain