[Audio of this message may be heard here.  The manuscript is below.  Note that the sermon was not preached from the manuscript, so there may be slight differences between the two.]

Just Once Before I Die
The Implications of the Gospel, Part II: Evangelism

Acts 20:24
But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

As if on cue, the following headline arrived in the mail a few days ago.  It was on the bottom of the front page of the July 30, 2009, issue of The Christian Index:

“Baptists face further decline without renewed evangelism emphasis”

The story drew attention to some recent findings arising from research conducted by LifeWay Research.  Here is what it says:

“Southern Baptist membership will fall nearly 50 percent by 2050 unless the aging and predominantly white denomination reverses a 50-year trend…”

The article went on to quote Ed Stetzer, the director of LifeWay Research, to the effect that our “rate of increase has been declining by 0.06 percent per year, and the membership change trend line has now passed into negative territory.”  To give you some perspective on this, just over fifty years ago, the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention were growing (by 4 percent, for instance, in 1951).  Not anymore.

Stetzer says, “If the 50-year trend continues, projected membership of SBC churches would be 8.7 million in 2050, down from 16.2 million last year…Using U.S. Census projected population figures, SBC membership could fall from a peak of 6 percent of the American population in the late 1980s to 2 percent in 2050.”  I will not belabor the point that the 16.2 million figure is itself a fiction, no matter how official it may be.  The reality of our decline is even more shocking than we can imagine.

The article then quotes Cliff Tharp, an SBC statistician for 35 years.  Listen to what he said:  “We have been slowing in our growth and have now passed into decline.  We are right at the top of the arc and beginning to go down.”1

We are beginning to go down.

We are beginning to go down.

We…are…beginning…to…go…down…but listen to me:  we don’t have to.  We don’t.  We really don’t.

We could reverse this decline.  We could stop this historical drift.  We could.  We really could.

How?  Simple:  we get on our face before God and we ask Him to burn the selfishness out of us, to burn the short-sightedness out of us.  We get on our face and we ask God to burn the bad priorities out.

But that’s not all.  We then ask God to give us a renewed heart for the power, beauty, and wonder of the gospel again:  that gospel through which we came to know Christ and that gospel on which we Christ builds His church.  We ask to plant the gospel of Jesus Christ in the charred remains of those false idols we used to value so that it can take root and grow again.

But we don’t just ask.  We beg.  We plead.  We wrestle with the angel and we refuse to leave until God has broken us and built us again around the gospel.

Last week we saw how the gospel, when it takes root in our lives and becomes the central content of our vision, draws us in and compels us to worship. 

So we come in and around our central conviction and we offer up our praise to God.

But this morning I want to show you that this is not all, that this cannot be all.  Not only does the gospel establish our fellowship and empower our worship, it then extends through and beyond us, reaching the world.  Think of it like this:

The power of the gospel is not a contained power.  Rather, it is necessarily a shared power.

This understanding of evangelism could, I believe, have a revolutionary effect on how we view evangelism.  On this understanding, evangelism is not an action we have to get guilted into doing, it is a reality that grows where it is planted and a conviction that shines where it has been ignited.  To be an evangelist, then, means to be a gospel-centered believer.

So when we say that a New Testament church is “an authentic community around the whole gospel for the glory,” we are saying that the church is to be a worshiping and sharing community. 

The reason this model does not mention worship or evangelism specifically is because, properly understood, these two realities are in the gospel.  To be gospel centered, in other words, is to worship and is to evangelize.

I believe that this was the apostolic understanding of evangelism, and I think we can see this in the fascinating and heart-rending words of Paul in Acts 20:24:

“But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”

Let’s unpack this amazing verse as we consider how to embrace a model of New Testament evangelism.  I think we see some very simple but very powerful truths in this verse:

I. Evangelism is a simple matter of priority:  what do you value most?

Here’s a simple truth in life:  we project what we value.  In other words, what we treasure most will, in time, define us and what defines us will, in time, be shared, either willingly or unwillingly, with the world.  People around you will eventually know who you are and what you treasure.

Paul speaks in Acts 20:24 of his values.  We are getting a glimpse into Paul’s priorities.  There is one popular value he rejects as unimportant, namely his own life.  And there’s another value he embraces:  “the gospel of the grace of God.”  It was this valuing of the gospel that propelled Paul forward in his amazing life of witness and ministry and it is only a revaluing of the gospel in our own lives that will do the same.

Here is where we pastors make a horrible mistake:  we are always trying to guilt people into sharing their faith.  We are always trying to manipulate the church into evangelizing.  But I have come to believe in my heart of hearts that the greatest way to mobilize a congregation to evangelize isn’t to try desperately to get people to see evangelism as necessary but rather to try desperately to get believers to see the gospel as beautiful.

I am convinced that if the beauty of the gospel doesn’t compel you to share the good news with your neighbors, then nothing well.  A sermon might shame you into saying “Jesus,” but only the gospel can make you see the beauty in saying “Jesus.”  A training program might equip you to know what to say, but only the gospel itself can make you want to say it.

Please understand me when I tell you that the only hope I have of our church becoming a missionary church is a renewed awe over the gospel.

If we can come to see the cross as beautiful again, we will treasure it and we will share it.

If we can come to see the empty tomb as shockingly good news again, we will value it and we will share it.

If we can come to see the body of Christ as valuable again, we will desire for people to know the sweet fellowship we have here and we will tell them of the church’s Lord.

It is a terrible thing when the church does not treasure the gospel enough to share it.  Even the world sees the hypocrisy of such negligence.  Consider the following letter, allegedly written by a young lady to a pastor whose church was near her home:

Pastor,

Last Sunday I attended your church, and I heard you preach.  In your sermon you said that all men have sinned and rebelled against God.  Because of their rebellion and disobedience they all face eternal damnation and separation from God.

But then you also said God loved men and sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to redeem men from their sins and that all those who believe in him would go to heaven and live with God eternally.

My parents recently died in rapid succession.  I know they did not believe in Jesus Christ, whom you call the Savior of the world.  If what you preach is true, they are damned.

You compel me to believe that either the message is untrue, or that you yourself don’t believe this message, or that you don’t care.  We live only three blocks from your church and no one ever told us.  You hypocrites!

Signed:  ___________________________

Do we treasure the gospel?  Do our actions tell the watching world that the gospel is true?  That we value and treasure it?  Enough to share it?  Enough to offer it to those with whom we live?

Paul said in Romans 15:20 that “I make it my ambition to preach the gospel.”  It was his ambition because it was his treasure in life.

What is your ambition?  It will determine the course of your life.

Do you treasure the gospel?  Do you value it?  Is it your great priority in life?

II. Evangelism only becomes effective when it outweighs self-preservation.

Paul says,

“But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”

Did you hear that?  He not only embraces the value of “the gospel of the grace of God” as his ultimate treasure, he also, unbelievably, rejects the great god of his time and ours:  self-preservation, comfort, and survival.

People in every age have been consumed with their own survival, their own safety, and their own comfort.  Only in rare instances will human beings abandon self-preservation for a higher good:  to save one of their children, for instance, or to rescue a spouse, or even to die for a dear friend.  But even this isn’t always the case.

We cling to life in frantic fear.  Our own culture seems to be a culture horrified at the thought of death, as evidenced by the bizarre efforts we undertake to maintain the appearance of youth.  We are a people without a cause that outweighs our own preservation.

The New Testament church, and many believers both ancient and modern, felt that the gospel itself was worth dying for.  It wasn’t that they had some masochistic desire to suffer, it’s just that, as a matter of fact, the good news of Jesus Christ was a greater treasure to them than mere self-preservation.

Faced with the decision to compromise on the gospel and survive or stand firm on the gospel and die, many, many, many of them chose the latter.  They reckoned it better to die with Jesus than to live without him.

But something strange and frightening has happened in churches today:  we haven’t abandoned the gospel, we have simply devalued it.  We haven’t rejected Jesus, we’ve just redefined Him in such a way that we can convince ourselves we’re following Him while all the while we’re holding onto our own lives.

Evangelism only becomes effective when the beauty of the gospel outweighs our fear of death itself.

Let me ask you a simple question.  I do not want you to answer it quickly.  I want you to think about it.  Here it is:  would you die for the gospel?  Would you die for the gospel?

I believe that we will not become missionary Christians until the gospel is more important to us than our lives.

Jim Elliot died for the gospel. 

Jim Elliot was speared to death on January 8, 1956, by the Waodoni people of Ecuador who he was trying to reach with the gospel.  They speared him and his friends to death and they left their bodies beside the river and in the river.  He valued the gospel more than his life.  It was a chance he was prepared to take. 

Elliot had prayed that God would raise up a generation of believers who were willing to die for the gospel, who treasured it more than their own safety.  On October 27, 1949, he wrote:

“I have prayed for new men, fiery, reckless men, possessed of uncontrollably youthful passion – these lit by the Spirit of God.  I have prayed for new words, explosive, direct, simple words.  I have prayed for new miracles.”2

“Fiery, reckless men, possessed of uncontrollably youthful passion – these lit by the Spirit of God.”

Until we become such, we will not become missionary Christians.

III. Evangelism only becomes authentic when you can’t do anything else.

“But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”

“If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus.”

Paul was a man on fire, a man who had been ignited by a grand vision of Christ crucified and risen again.  He did not contemplate and calculate his evangelism, rather, he could not do anything else.

Evangelism only becomes authentic when we cannot do anything else.  We only share Christ with passion when we are horrified at the thought of not doing so.  Sharing Christ then becomes less of something we decide to do and more of something we simply must do. 

We have seen Christ!  How can we not speak His name?!

In 1 Corinthians 9:16 Paul exclaims, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”  But that “Woe to me!” is not a fear of punishment.  What he means is that failing to preach the gospel would mean failing to be who he was in Christ.

We share the gospel because it is engrafted in our souls.  Its message is our life.  Its power is our experience.  Its goal is our ambition.  We proclaim Christ because cannot help but do so.

William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, spoke strongly to those believers who claimed to be believers but did not feel called to share the gospel:

"'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world."

I agree with Booth.  Look Christ in the face. 

It is the most beautiful face you will ever see.  It is the face of one who gave Himself for you.  It is a face that once was crowned with thorns for you.  It is a face that once sweated drops of blood as He knelt in Gethsemane.  It is a face that received the slaps and blows of men who rejected Him.

Look Christ in the face and see Him now.  It is a face bathed in light and glory at the right hand of the Father.  It is a face of power and love and of judgment.  It is a face of salvation and of wrath and of grace.

It is the face of our Lord Jesus.

And if the face of this Jesus will not compel us to speak, nothing will.  I repeat:  nothing will.

1. Rob Phillips, “Baptists face further decline without renewed evangelism emphasis.” The Christian Index (July 30, 2009), 1.
2. Daniel L. Akin, Five Who Changed the World (Wake Forest, NC: Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2008), 95.