Reporting The Good News I, Reporting Life From Planet Earth

We wanna thank you for coming and give you a packet of information about North Way. Won't embarrass you, just wanna give you, go ahead and wave your hand if you're a visitor today. Welcome, folks, and we're glad you're here. Go ahead, ushers, and hand one of these packets to our visitors. Go ahead and do that. Thank you so much for being with us today. Anyone else, if we missed you, just wave your hand. It's good to see a number of you here today. Later on in the service, visitors, I'll ask you to open up that packet and fill out the card that's in there. There's a little three-by-five card. We'd like to receive that at the end of the service from you so you can be thinking about that. Not long ago, one of our elders stopped me in the hall right before a morning service, and he said, with a great big smile on his face, and I mean, this brother has the capacity to make this one of those ear-to-ear jobs, and he said, I've got some good news. He said, the doctors told me that what they thought was the malignant cancer in my lung was just a bit of scar tissue that showed up on the X-ray. He had been up to Cleveland Clinic, had been a big deal, and the doctors were really concerned, and he was delighted, he was thrilled, and he was telling me this was the best news that he'd had in a long time. And I've discovered, folks, that the deeper trouble you're in, the better the news is when it comes to set you free. How about that, students? When you walk in in the morning, and the professor says, I've canceled the test, if you haven't studied at all, and you're in deep weeds, it's a good bit of news to come. Now, the guy that's been there up all night, you know, cramming for this thing, say, what, you know, you canceled the test? See, the deeper trouble you're in, the more you appreciate good news. I want you to think for a minute, what's the last bit of really good news you've heard? Are you thinking? How many of you'd say it'd been quite a while since I've heard some really good news? Well, today, I'm going to begin a four-week series of messages on reporting the good news. Personal evangelism, the good news. You all know, as I do, that the world is full of bad news, and I was tempted to bring in some newspapers, but it is so depressing to read the news that's out there. I want to talk today, in the next four weeks, about the good news and how you're involved in it. Now, right away, when I say personal evangelism, I already can anticipate some of the responses. I know I've got a group of people here today who said, it's about time. I've been waiting for months, years, for you to talk about personal evangelism. I'm ready to be fired up and charged up and sent out of here and touch people for Christ. Now, there's another group of people here that are going to say this morning, okay, I'll listen, I'm open, this might be all right, but I've got some serious questions about some of the methodologies that are out there, and I just might change my news channel if you get going a little too hot and heavy on this thing. And I venture to say there's a large group of you today, when I mention personal evangelism, you think this isn't good news, this is bad news. Because maybe you've been buttonholed or beat over the head or somehow abused by somebody who said if you weren't a personal evangelist, winning three people to Christ by nightfall, you weren't a good Christian. Some of my most memorable experiences in seminary days were when I was told I had to go out and do evangelism explosion. And I remember doing some things, I mean, I just didn't want to do it. Sometimes we're just not there when it comes to confronting somebody. And when you have to, it's like, but I don't want to, but you have to. So you do and it blows up in your face. And how many of you know rarely when you have to do something, does it go very well? Well, if you're here today and you're afraid that somehow after these three or four weeks that you're gonna feel pressure and guilt and manipulation, I want to assure you today, I don't think that's gonna happen. I pray that when we're done with these four weeks, you're going to so increase your expectation of being a successful evangelist that you'll be looking for opportunities to share your faith. How many of you know, all of us want to be evangelists, we don't want to be unsuccessful ones. I mean, if I could guarantee you that everyone you shared Christ with would say, amen, I need that, you'd probably be pretty excited about it. It's the ones that say, would you get lost? Or that's good for you, but I'm not interested. How do we deal with those things? Now, this is the way it's gonna break down. Today, I'm going to talk to you about the motivation. Why bring the good news? Why should we do it? Next week, a very important message for many of you, according to your prayer requests to me, I'm going to talk about sharing the good news with your family, loved ones who don't know Christ, husbands, wives, children, relationships. The following week, I'm going to talk about our church as a reporting team. What is God doing in the church as a whole to send forth the good news? And then the final week, I'm going to talk about the mindset or the mentality of a good reporter. You know, if you go into this with the wrong mindset, you're bound to be defeated. And I'm gonna talk about the way to do that. August the 30th on a Wednesday night, if you're taking notes, I'm going to give you some specific how-tos in terms of personal evangelism. How to do it. If I were to ask you today, how would you lead someone to Christ? I would venture to say, I have no idea. And I'm going to tell you on that night and share with you how you can do that. First of all, let's talk about why we should. Why should I bother to be a personal evangelist? Talk and turn with me now if you haven't already to 2 Kings 6. 2 Kings 6. I was looking through my concordance at all the references to good news, and here's the first one I found. Well, as it starts, you'll see why it was good news. Remember the deep weeds I talked about? Well, it turns out that the King of Aramea had taken Samaria under siege. The Samarian people were the good guys. They were under siege. Now, in the Old Testament times, the way you defeated a people was you forced them back into their city or town, and then you cut them off. You cut off their food supply and their water supply and all their necessities, and you just sat it out. And that's exactly what happened. Here's how bad it got. Look at it with me. It says in verse 25 of 2 Kings 6, There was a great famine then in the city, and the siege lasted so long that a donkey's head sold for 80 shekels of silver, and a fourth of a cab of seed pods, or one Bible translation says dove's dung, sold for five shekels. Now, an 80-shekel donkey's head and a five-shekel dove's dung probably doesn't mean a whole lot to you, but how many think it sounds bad? I mean, it doesn't sound like it's a good scene there at all. Something you can understand, though, is the next couple of verses, because then it says that the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, and a woman cried to him, Help me, my lord king. And she tells the story of how she and another mother were so desperate that they agreed to offer up their children for food. And the one mother offered her child up and they ate it. And the next one came along and said, No, it's your turn. And she said, No way. And how many know that when we are resorting to cannibalism, things are pretty bad. So you get the picture. The city's in serious trouble. Now, seated in that city is the great prophet, Elisha. And he says that this disaster is from the Lord, but it's going to change. And look what it says. Verse one of chapter seven. Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says about this time tomorrow. One day, a sea of flour will sell for a shekel and two seas of barley for a shekel at the gate. In other words, it's going to be flip-flop, totally. There's going to be so much, it's not going to be worth hardly anything. You can buy all you want for a few pennies, is what that's saying. And they don't believe it. And then it says in chapter seven, verse three, there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. And they said to each other, Why stay here until we die? If we say we'll go into the city, that's back into Samaria, the famine is there and we will die. If we stay here at the gate, which is on the outskirts of the city, we're going to die. So let's go out to the enemy's camp, the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we'll live. But if they kill us, then we'll die. So they've got three ways to die and one way to live. Got it? And they decide, well, we might as well take our only shot at living. We'll go to the camp. And when they get out there, an incredible thing had happened. God had sent a sound that so frightened the camp of the Arameans that they fled from their tents. They ran out off of the plane, away from the city and left everything right there in their encampment. It was deserted as though a big hand had come and just swept all the people out. The four lepers got there. They couldn't believe it. They reached the edge of the camp, verse eight says, and entered one of the tents. And they ate and they drank. Right away, they walk in and all this stuff is there. And they start feeding, they haven't eaten, you see. Donkey's head is what they had yesterday. And they're eating all this food and they're drinking and they look and see here's silver and gold and they start piling it on themselves. And they find so much, look what it says, that they went off and began to hide it. They began to stockpile it and pile it up and store it away. And they went back to another tent, it says, and ate some more and drank some more and grabbed some more silver and gold and went and stockpiled it. And what we have happening here are four lepers who have encountered a super abundance of goods. Then something begins to take place. They say this, verse nine, they said to each other, what we're doing is not right. This is a day of, let's say it, good news. And we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let's go at once and report this to the royal palace. So the four lepers decided, hey, this is too good for just us. They went back into the city. They told the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper announced that the king, he didn't believe it at first, but he sent out some officers. They checked it out. And the whole city, the Bible says, went out to the camp of the Arameans and ate and drank and took the plunder. Dear ones, I want you to see, number one, the first reason why we need to report the good news, to be evangelists, and if we can have the overhead on please, is what I'm going to call the super abundance factor. The super abundance factor. That's the first thing that we need to see that would motivate us to be willing to share our faith in Christ. We have so much as believers. The provision is so great for us, just as it was for those lepers. The amount of God's blessing is so beyond what we could ever use ourselves. That just like the lepers realized it was wrong for them just to hoard it, it was wrong for them. In fact, it was a crime to be silent. That they determined they had to tell somebody about that which they had found. Dear ones, can I say to you, we have an inclination, every one of us, when we find a good thing to keep it to ourselves. I remember I told you the story about when the elders went fishing and found a good spot. We had two boats. One boat went out one way and another went out another way and one boat just started getting the fish in. It wasn't long before the other boatload of elders got frustrated, they weren't catching anything and they looked down and said, well, let's go see how they're doing. We looked over there and here's this other boatload of godly men. I remember one elder who said, well, what are you using to catch them with? And one elder said, well, we're using this bait called an eerie deary. Do you have any more eerie dearies? One elder in my boat, I'm so tempted, but I won't say names, looked down and his little stockpile of eerie dearies. No, we're out, we're out. Boat moved off about 20 feet, hooked up those eerie dearies. You see, it's in all of us. We have an inclination to take for ourselves. And dear ones, I remember so clearly this baptism we just had a week ago. Two weeks ago now. Afterwards, one couple stopped me and they said, you know, I just have to tell you, they said, how much our lives have changed since we came to Christ. How clean they felt for the first time in their relationship. How every aspect of life was taking on a new perspective for them. How the more love they felt for each other day by day just kept increasing. And how much happier they'd been in their home than they'd ever known before. And they said with me, you know, what I used to hear about God being good, I now have experienced for the first time. He is good. That little course that we sang in the first days of the charismatic movement. God is so good. He's so good to me. We have a spiritual super abundance. Leave it up there, please. A spiritual super abundance that we just cannot possibly keep to ourselves. We've been given an inheritance in Christ. We've been given promises that say that we're more than conquerors in him who loved us. We serve a God who's just so overflows with goodness. The Bible says, who's laid out plans to bless us. Good works for us to walk in. We have all this abundance of blessing, dear ones. I wanna ask you today, how can you possibly keep it to yourself? You see, if you on a daily basis are in touch with that blessing, I wanna say that I believe it's the basic motivation for all evangelists. Now, listen carefully, church. Wake yourself up today. The basic reason why most of us, and I wanna say this service, most of us rarely share our faith personally is because most of us struggle to hear any good news in our own heart day by day. Are you hearing what I'm saying? My conviction is if you are filling up this little pot, 2 Corinthians 4 said, this little clay vessel, if you're filling it up with fresh truth, fresh blessing, fresh revelation every day, guess what's gonna happen to this little pot? God, it's gonna bubble over. You're not gonna be able to contain it because it's just so much, God just keeps pouring in. But if you don't draw at that well of salvation, if you're not drinking in truth, if you're not soaking in the blessing of God for yourself, guess what happens when an opportunity presents itself? Well, you run to the well and you start pumping like that and there's nothing there. The key motivation in any Christian's life is that he's been given so much that he can't possibly use it all. He's got to share it. You see, when you can tell someone, I used to be this, but now I'm discovering that I am not an alien or a stranger, but I'm a member of the family of God, I've got brothers and sisters, I've got a destiny, I've got a call in my life, I've got gifts to share, that abundance begins to spill over in people's lives. When you're in touch with those realities, it makes a difference. And you can go to somebody and you can say to them, taste and see that the Lord is... I was in a 7-Eleven a couple of weeks ago, just getting a few little groceries together and two ladies, probably in their late 20s, early 30s were there. And I was the only other customer in the store and I couldn't help, and they were talking very freely about one woman's situation and the one lady was kind of straightening the groceries out and the other one was behind the cash register and she was saying, the one out in the aisles was saying to the one behind the cash register, I said, you're too nice a person. You're a beautiful person inside. You shouldn't build your life around what a man thinks. You shouldn't be bound by someone else's words to you. And we're going on and on, and then the other one came back and said, well, I know, but... And I walked up to the cash register, I wasn't going to say anything. And she said, you know, well, what we're talking about is my husband just went out and cheated with somebody and now I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. And I thought I had a counselor here, right? I just want to give you groceries, it's fine, whatever you do. But you see, because of the super abundance of the peace of God, because of the super abundance I had in my heart of the grace of God, knowing that God heals broken hearts, I was able just to give a little word of encouragement. You know, I wasn't able to pull her out and say, well, you know, you need a... I didn't have, I couldn't do that. But I could just, I could plant some seeds of hope because of the super abundance in my life. Dear ones, I believe that this is an increasingly effective means of evangelism. When you have a word in season and out of season, it has an impact. You see, every day I get filled up on the forgiveness of God. Every day I refuel my tanks on his promises, on his hope, on my identity as a believer in Christ. Can I say to you, that's why we so make a point around here of reading your Bible every day. That's why we make such a point of telling you to come to worship. Don't just go and forget about church because you don't want to go on a particular... You need worship, you need communion with God, you need his word in your life. You need to be practicing the disciplines of giving and sacrificing and serving so that when the opportunity comes to evangelize, you're ready to go. I believe God would so profoundly use people in this congregation who are ready to go that it would blow you away if you're really ready. You know something? One reason why I think new Christians are so effective at leading other people to Christ is because they've just tasted and seen. I mean, for them, they haven't encountered all the gunky problems that we more mature Christians have found. They're just walking in the fresh new life of it all and they're enjoying it. And they bump into someone that they was drinking buddy with. And all of a sudden they say, well, wait a minute, I've got something better. Do you know that a new Christian in the first two years is that's the most effective time of their evangelistic opportunities. Those of us 10, 15, 20 years in Christ, when was the last time you led someone to the Lord? You think about it. Why is that? Well, for the most part, we get absorbed in me. And dear ones, this spillover effect, this super abundance, listen, it is particularly important in these days when you see so many people picking at the garbage heaps of meaning for life. They just go and flit a little here and flit a little there looking for something that's gonna fill the void that you know is in their heart. Look past their cars and their houses and their job descriptions. You know that in their heart there's a void because it was in your heart. And their success does not in any way eradicate that void. How many thrills can you try? How many bars can you visit? How many stories of drunkenness can you tell? On my class reunion, 20 year class reunion, the same stuff 20 years ago, 20 years of drinking stories, probably 20 more years and then they die. How many women can you seduce? How many toys can you accumulate before you realize that it's not gonna satisfy you? And so many people that you and I know on the outside have all this stuff going for them, but inside it's not meeting the deep needs of their heart. And what you have, the super abundance of the truth of God, that will touch that point. It will satisfy them. It will meet the deep inner needs. It's great power when a satisfied soul can look at another person and say, taste and see that the Lord is good. The mockers, the indifferent, the people who think you're off the wall, ask them what their life is amounting to. Think about it. What good news can they report? Of trouble in their marriage or rebellion in their kids? Or meaninglessness in life? Or where's it all going? Stop picking there and come and taste and see that the Lord is good. Now, the condition of this is that you realize, church, that you are not, you know, spiritual dirt bags, but you're special creations of Christ. You're beautiful in Him. You have every provision necessary to make a difference. Now, the second motivation I wanna talk about for just a few minutes is one that you haven't heard here for a while and you need to hear it, even though I don't wanna say it. But the second motivation as to why we should report the good news to our friends and neighbors is the reality of hell. Turn to the second passage of scripture. I ask you to put your finger in and second, I'm sorry, Luke 16. Luke 16. Luke 16. We'll start, I won't read the whole passage because most of you know it. Beginning in verse 19. Talk about a rich man who had everything in life. Everything. And then there was a poor man by the name of Lazarus who was seated at the gate of this rich man's house and begged for the crumbs. And at the end of that time, it says in verse 23, you know where he was and so many looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. And so he called him, Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because I am in agony. The guffering with pinpoint pain. Some of you in your lifetime, you receive your good things, while Lazarus receives bad things. But now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, there is a great gap between us and you, a great gap that has been fixed so that those who want to go from here, to you cannot. Nor can you even cross over from there to us. For to be like a rich man, you have a good income. All the stuff of the world, a nice home, and living to be able to have everything is to give you a full sense of security. Don't be charred by their lack of faith. For your God, in his pre-destined salvation, would then choose to spend eternity in the Christ God creator's abode. Why do you think he would pour himself out and that we would be about to be weary and tired of him? Why did he do that? Because he didn't want people to hang up and mourn. In Luke 16.