Evangelism God's Way, Part 7

The point: Trinity Baptist Church must fulfill the mandate to communicate the Gospel to all peoples, as expressed through home-based evangelistic Bible studies.

The analogy of a tree with soil, taproots, trunk, branches, and leaves is used as a structural framework for the sermon series on evangelism, helping to organize the various components.

with a view that those who embrace that message will become disciples of Jesus, will declare that attachment in faith, love, and submission to Jesus by the ordinance of God, and the promise of baptism. And then he gathered into structured, visible communities of disciples, committing themselves to a ministry of instruction that will teach them all things whatsoever Christ commanded through his apostles. That mandate rests upon Trinity Baptist Church this morning. And there is one expression of our desire to be obedient to Christ, we are in the midst of preparations to begin six bi-weekly, geog...

4:08 - 5:37 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And as someone has very cheekily said, when God would convey his saving word, he did not give us a picture book, he gave us a word book.

Martin quotes from Arthur Hunt III's book to highlight the cultural shift towards visual imagery and away from authoritative words, contrasting it with biblical evangelism.

And how do they hear unless someone is sent and brings the message? A word-based, a word-framed message. And as someone has very cheekily said, when God would convey his saving word, he did not give us a picture book, he gave us a word book. And in a book, a man-authored book that I recommended some months ago in a Sunday School class called The Vanishing Word by Arthur Hunt III, he has tremendous insights captured even in the subtitle of his book, The Veneration of Visual Imagery in the Postmodern World. And many in our day are accommodating their presentation of the gospel, they are accommod...

20:20 - 21:49 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Evangelism is communicating with words God-revealed truths.

Martin recounts being told he was 'more a Bible teacher' than an evangelist in the late 1950s, illustrating a common, unbiblical concept of evangelism as anecdotal storytelling rather than word-based exposition.

But in its essence, evangelism is communicating with words the God-revealed truth that is found in the Holy Scriptures. I can remember too many years ago, we're talking about the late 1950s. Ancient history, kids. Ancient history.

28:08 - 28:33 Read in full sermon

Driving home: We then are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did entreat you by us. We beseech you, in the stead of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Martin vividly describes Jesus's passionate invitation in Matthew 11:28-29, emphasizing the love and yearning in His voice as an example of the 'entreaties' that accompany the Gospel.

When Jesus sets Himself forth to sinners, how does He do it? We sang a hymn based on one of the most moving answers to that question. As Jesus looks out and sees people burdened down with all the legalistic trappings of Phariseeism, weighed down with accusing consciences, unable to get out from under that heavy yoke, He says, Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden. How do you think Jesus said it?

48:43 - 49:16 Read in full sermon

Driving home: We then are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did entreat you by us. We beseech you, in the stead of Christ, be reconciled to God.

This example illustrates the immense love and humility of Christ in taking on true humanity, even learning basic things like the Hebrew alphabet, to underscore the depth of love behind His gospel entreaties.

What must His voice have expressed when all the loving heart of the second person of the God that caused Him voluntarily to leave the immediate presence of His Father, and all the adoring worship of angels and seraphim and cherubim, and come to the dark confines of Mary's womb? When that heart that moved Him to say, Lo, I come to do Thy will, a body You've prepared for Me, I take it there in Mary's womb. Love that moved Him to live among us, to pass through all the stages of normal human development, the infinite reservoir of all wisdom of whom Scripture speaks when it says, In Him are hid all...

49:34 - 51:01 Read in full sermon