Evangelism is Job #1

I have been involved in helping evangelize the country of Haiti for about 7 years now. And I wanna tell you a little bit about that. Haiti, was in the news a little while back. It's an island, or rather it's a country that shares an island with the Dominican Republic. It's about a 100 miles southeast of the tip of Florida, it's just off of Cuba, just a little south of Cuba.

It's actually smaller than the state of Oklahoma, but it has a population of 6 and a half million French speaking people. I mean, can you imagine? They're just jammed on half of this little island here. The people there practice mainly voodoo and the official religion is Roman Catholicism. Now hardly any missionaries want to go there because, first of all, it's French speaking, so the language communication is a problem.

And it is so miserable, so miserable and dangerous for infectious diseases. Not many people want to go there because there's nowhere to stay. Usually missionaries have a place they can stay, there's nowhere to stay. And they can't stay among the people because it's too dangerous to catch infections and diseases. And I know because when I went there with Bud Richards in 1993, I was sick for 6 months after I came back.

And Bud was sick for a year. He'd just gotten over his problems that he had while visiting there. Well, the one bright spot about this place is that these people are really hungry for the gospel. I mean, there is real enthusiasm for the gospel of Jesus Christ there. And there's also a network of aggressive young Haitian preachers who are baptizing literally hundreds of people every single year, and they are planting new testament churches all over the country, especially in the southern part.

In all the villages, these Haitian preachers are going in, they set up a meeting, they baptize a bunch, they set up a church, and they begin training young men to go out into the other villages. So that's really a bright spot. My work is I help them by raising money to supply them with Bibles, which they don't have, and other resources, which they lack. And I also assist them by finding people who will help them to build the church buildings in major centers throughout the country. Because there's just no cash, there is no cash.

The average salary there is about $300 a year. So, there's no cash to build anything or to buy anything. Also, this year, I'm going to be producing French language video tapes to train young preachers and church leaders there in the French language because, as you know, I speak French. And at Oklahoma Christian University, they have a television studio, so I'll be producing a series on the book of Acts or on great Christian doctrines or on the book of Romans, but all in French and sending these videos down there and they will be using them in the preaching schools and in the churches to train the churches. Now, on February 4th, one of the most dynamic of these Haitian preachers will be our guest speaker here in Choctaw.

He speaks English. He's bilingual. His name is Jean Elmera. He will preach the lesson, give us a good sermon because he's a good preacher. I'll be giving a little bit of information about his work and how the Choctaw church has been involved in it the last couple of years.

After his lesson, we will be taking up a special contribution for the work in Haiti. And we've done this for the work in Russia and we've done it for other places. This Sunday, we're going to be doing it for the work in Haiti. I want you to begin thinking right now about the special offering that we will be taking up because Paul tells us in II Corinthians 9:4, when he was going to pick up a special collection, he wrote to them and he said to them, I want you to be prepared. I want you to be prepared.

Well, I want us to be prepared for that day. No last minute. Oh, wait a minute. I've got some change here. I want us to be prepared to be thinking about how will I contribute or will I contribute to this particular work?

Now, the money that we collect will be used to finish the building of the largest meeting place in Haiti. It'll hold about 3, 000 people. And if anybody's ever done mission work, you know that building a building that'll hold 3, 000 people on a Caribbean island has never been done. Well, this one is being done. It's half finished, as a matter of fact.

They still have to put the roof on it and some electrical gear and so on and so forth. It'll be the largest meeting place of the churches of Christ anywhere in Haiti and anywhere in the Caribbean. And it'll also be the center for training young Haitian preachers who will be educated there in the capital city of Port au Prince. Now, I've been with you for a little over 2 and a half years, and this is the first time that I have really come to you on behalf of this particular work. I have preached and I have raised money in support of this work in many other places.

I've gone to Eastside and Dale City, I've been everywhere preaching about the work in Haiti. And this year, thanks be to God, we've raised over $60, 000 to send towards this work, but not one dime of it has come from Choctaw, and that was on purpose. I did not want to take advantage of my position in the pulpit to ask the brethren here to do something before I went other places to show that this was a valid work. Now the elders, and Steve Howes, who manages our finances, oversee the collection $60, 000 has all gone through the Choctaw congregation and we account for the money and we send out reports to tell the other congregations how we've spent the money. Brother Howes is the one that cuts the checks and makes them out to the Haiti church and we make sure that every dollar that comes in here goes to Haiti to make sure that the work continues, to give some accountability to the brotherhood.

So far, that's been our only responsibility, to collect the money, make sure it's well spent, and to keep track of it. On 4th, we will have an opportunity also to contribute to this work. I want you to remember that this year, the only money that can go for special collections is money that we give over and above our normal budget figure. So we have a special challenge on the 4th. Not only do we have to make budget $3164 in other words, if today we had made the special collection and we collected $2, 400 and then we collected, say, another $800 for Haiti, that $800 would go to make up what we did not make up for our budget.

And I think that's fair, I don't disagree with that. The elders feel that we must, first of all, take care of our responsibilities here in Choctaw. We have to take care of business here at home before we do things domestically or internationally. I think that's wise and prudent. But I want to remind you that on 4th, when we take up our special collection, we have the 1st meet budget and then, and only then, can we contribute towards the work in Haiti.

Now, I could go on and give a lot of reasons why we should give and why we should give generously, and I think you know them. But there's really only one reason, and that's the one I want to teach on tonight. I wanna give you this background first. But the only reason that we give for this type of work is because evangelism is the number one responsibility of the church.

Evangelism is Job #1

Ford had this thing, quality is job #1? Well, in the church, evangelism is job number one of the church. All the ministries in the church are necessary, And all the ministries are important. And all the ministries must work together.

But the first ministry instituted by Christ was evangelism. In Luke chapter 10:1, he sent out the 70 to do what? To have fellowship? To take care of the poor? To distribute communion? No. He sent them out to preach the good news of the kingdom. That's the first ministry that Jesus established. And after his resurrection, evangelism again was the first ministry that he established. He told them to go out and preach the gospel to the entire world (Matthew 28:18-20)

Now again, all ministries are necessary, all ministries are important, but none of them would exist if there wasn't evangelism. The other ministries come into effect once the evangelism ministry has begun to be fruitful. I mean, when I went to Montreal after finishing in college, and Lise and I came back to Montreal and we wanted to plant a church there, we didn't start with a fellowship ministry. We didn't start by serving communion to each other.

I started by putting an ad in the paper and starting a telephone ministry, and people calling in for, it was called the daily gospel. And people would call in and hear a one minute message from the gospel. And if they were interested in more, they'd leave their name and address on my phone. And that's how we made contacts. And we did a TV outreach. And then when people were converted, then we met in our home, and then we had fellowship, and then we started serving, and then we bought a building, everything came after that. But first, there's got to be evangelism before anything else can happen. Sometimes we forget that when we have a very established congregation like here in Choctaw.

And evangelism is done in a lot of ways: personal work, pulpit ministry, friendship evangelism, bible correspondence, media, whatever, Outreach, VBS. There's a 100 different ways to do evangelism.

And evangelism is also done at various levels. We have local evangelism in our own town. We have domestic evangelism, that's evangelizing our country. And we have international evangelism, and that's to the world. And did you know that each and every congregation is responsible for evangelism at all three levels?

We are mature as a congregation when we understand that as an independent congregation, we are still responsible for evangelizing our city, our country, and the world. Evangelizing China isn't just the responsibility of some other church. We're responsible. We have to be active at all three levels. Now here in Choctaw, we are active in evangelism in many different ways.

And we are responsible at every level. We evangelize locally. We have many programs for outreach. And we evangelize internationally. We have the Bible Correspondence courses that evangelize in Africa.

And we have Brazil, we have missionaries in Brazil. And we also have this Haiti work, as an example of our international evangelizing. Now in Haiti, we provide resources and training for local churches. We don't have a part In Brazil, we have people there actually doing the work. And in Ghana and Nigeria, what do we do?

We send resources over there so that they can do the work. And in Haiti, we do the same thing. We provide resources and training and in Haiti they provide the manpower and the actual work. But each is a vital element in the total objective of reaching the 6 million people that live in that particular country. It's easy to ignore people that we don't know and understand.

We watch them on TV starving or in Bosnia. You watch them on the news and you say, 300,000 people were displaced from their homes, and you see them trudging along with their wagons with their mattresses, and the cold, and the slop, no food, crying babies. And then they'd say, Well, it's time for Jay Leno. And we switched the channel.

Did you realize 300,000 people that don't have a place to live I mean, I have a cold, and I've had one all week and sinus and I feel crummy. But I've got medicine. I've got a warm bed, a sympathetic wife. Brethren are saying, how do you feel? I can leave early from work and kind of get a nap so I can try to feel better.

But imagine if I felt like this, but I was living in Bosnia and I had to sleep under my car or something. 300,000 people. It's easy to ignore people that are far away. They're different than we are. They have a different color of skin. They don't talk our language.

It's like they're almost not human. It's easy to forget that. But Jesus does not permit us these kinds of excuses in carrying out the number one mission of the church. We cannot go before the Lord and say, Well, Lord, I didn't do it because, well, their skin color was different. I couldn't relate to them.

See, that won't work. If evangelism is job number 1, then we shouldn't let these kinds of things get in the way of getting the job done. So, in my last part of the lesson tonight, I want to remind you of a couple of reasons why the Bible makes the ministry of evangelism the number one job of the church. Evangelism is job one because it's a command. It's a command of the Lord.

Jesus said in Mark 16 verse 15, Go into all the world. He didn't say, Would you please go? If it's convenient, would you go? If you've got nothing else to do, would you please He didn't say that. He said, Go.

A simple imperative sentence, a command. Bringing people to Christ is not a suggestion, it's a command. Jesus trained his apostles for the do you ever realize why he trained the apostles? He trained them with a specific purpose that they would go out and evangelize. That was the specific point of his training.

Not that they would be counselors, not that they would be, Peter refused to serve tables or get involved with benevolence work, not because he didn't have a heart, but because he said, I have not been called to this. I've been called to preach the gospel, the ministry of the word. Jesus trained his apostles for this purpose. And then he gave them a command to do it. And then he told them to teach others to obey his commands.

And that included the command to evangelize. Now, not everybody can preach. Not everybody can knock I wouldn't be good at knocking doors. Know what I'm saying? I've done it, but, boy, if there's something I hate, there's knocking doors.

I admire Lewis. Lewis meets somebody he doesn't know, And I don't know how he does it. Within 10 minutes, he's already got this guy talking about the gospel. Boy, he has the gift. Certainly one that I don't have.

Do you have to drag me kicking and screaming to knock on a stranger's door? Oh man, Not everybody can do that. Not everybody. Not everybody can teach. Not everybody's got the ability to sit down and teach somebody the ABCs of the gospel.

But everybody can give in some way, can become involved in some way, in the effort to save souls. I've mentioned that there are a lot of different ways. When you're teaching your child, when you're reading your child a bedtime story, and that has something to do with our Lord Jesus Christ, you're involved in evangelism. Every time you say to your neighbor, your neighbor, I'll bring little Johnny. You have him come with us.

We'll bring him to Sunday school. That's not spectacular, but that's evangelism. Every time we have friend day and you say, well, you invite your brother in law's cousin or whatever and say, Come on to friend day. That's evangelism. It's not fancy, it's not dynamic, but that's evangelism.

Evangelism is not a matter of choice or talent. It's a matter of obedience. It's not, If I have the talent to do it. It's, Will I obey the Lord and find a way to do it? Some preach, others invite friends to church, others bring Christ to their children, others give money.

But everyone in some way must evangelize because it's a command given to all of us, not just a few of us. Evangelism is job number one because it's what the world needs. Do you ever think about that? You know that song, Dusty Springfield, What the world needs now is love, sweet love. You know, you hear that song?

Right? Old East Station? That's a pretty song, it's not true. What the world needs now is Christ. That's what the world needs because only Christ brings the kind of love that we really desperately need.

We don't need more romance in the world. We need more of Jesus. You see, God doesn't just command evangelism. He lets us see why evangelism is so necessary. Evangelism is necessary for the lost.

We need to realize that people will suffer eternally or will be blessed eternally, and the difference between the 2 is Jesus Christ. The Bible specifically teaches condemnation for unsaved sinners. We're all sinners. The only difference is some are saved sinners and some are unsaved sinners. That's the only difference.

Jesus believed and taught about hell. As a matter of fact, if you go through the New Testament, Jesus is the one individual that taught the most about hell. Not Paul, not Peter, Jesus. He is the expert about hell and he's the one that taught the most about it. Matthew 5, Matthew 7.

In Mark 16:16, he said that faith was gonna be the difference. Those who believe and are baptized, they will be saved. And those who disbelieve, and of course, if you disbelieve you won't be baptized, those who disbelieve they will be condemned. I mean, how clear can it be? In Acts, chapter 4, verse 12, Peter says that only those who are in Christ will be saved.

Saved from what? Well, saved from hell. That's what. And in Romans, chapter 6, verse 23, Paul says that sinners who die without Jesus Christ are lost. The world needs to hear about Jesus Christ, not because Jesus will stop wars, or because people will be kinder and gentler to each other.

I think that that's certainly going to be a byproduct of Christianity. But people need to hear about Jesus Christ because if they don't, they're lost forever. Some people say to me, Why did you go into preaching? Did you like public speaking? is that why you went in there?

If I liked public speaking and if that's the only thing I wanted to do, I would have become a weatherman, or a TV news person. Yeah, right. Could have got a lot of work in Oklahoma, I'll tell you. No, I became I'll tell you what, the number one reason why I became a preacher, the turning point in my life, was when I was absolutely convinced that if you didn't have Christ, you would be lost forever. I mean, you know, in my mind that that is the philosophical the moment of crisis for me was like, if that is true, then what am I doing selling soap?

And I was working for, Smith and Nephew, and they make Nivea cream and all that kind of stuff. That's very good, we all need Nivea cream. But I said, Why am I doing this? If soils are really lost, I need to get out there. Actually I remember in my mind I said, Well somebody needs to get out there, and a big finger from the sky said, Well what about you?

Don't ever say that. Somebody's got to do something, because that somebody may end up being yourself. The world does not need another conference, and the world certainly doesn't need another concert. The world needs Christ. Now I always say to young people, I like to encourage young men to go into preaching.

I always tell them, well, being a lawyer is a good thing, but the world can do without another lawyer. And being a businessman is a good thing, but the world can do without another businessman. But the world always needs another preacher. The world always desperately needs another fool who'll go out there and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, not only the lost people need to hear the gospel, but the saved people also need it.

Do you ever think about that? The saved people need to hear the gospel over and over and over again as well. In Romans chapter, 10, I want to read you a passage. Interesting passage. Paul says this.

Listen. He says, But what does the word say? Excuse me. The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith which we are preaching.

That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. Now, a lot of people think that this passage refers to what you have to do in order to be saved. They say, Oh, Romans 10, what do you have to do? You have to believe in Christ to be saved.

That's, in context, that's not what this passage is talking about. If you want to know what you have to do to be saved, you have to read Acts chapter 2, verse 38. There Peter says, If you want to be saved, repent and be baptized. And that's how you're gonna be saved. In Romans chapter 10, what Paul is talking about is that he is reminding people who are already saved that they need to hear the gospel coming out of their own mouths in order to remain saved.

He's talking to saved people. He says, You people who are saved, you want to stay saved? You need to keep on believing, you need to keep on confessing. That's how you're gonna stay saved. A lot of people are weak in their faith.

You know what they say to me, they have what I call a spiritual malaise. A malaise is a French word, malady/sickness? They have a spiritual sickness, they have dryness of the spirit. You have dryness of the skin. Some people have dryness of the spirit.

They're getting nothing out of their religion. Okay? They've been working at it a long time, getting nothing out of it. They're weak in their faith. They doubt God's power and they doubt God's love.

And you know what? They feel this way because many times they don't hear his words coming out of their own mouth. A lot of times they blame it on the preacher. And they go from church to church trying to find some new preacher who will kinda, get them cranked again. And what they don't realize is they don't need to hear the word, they need to hear themselves preach the word.

It's gotta come out of them. That's the secret. You can't just take the Word in. The Word's gotta be coming out of you too in order to make a complete, mature person. We need to hear ourselves confess Christ.

We need to hear ourselves proclaim the gospel almost as badly as the lost do. Because it's what saves them and it's what keeps us saved and strong. I mean, there is nothing more exciting than sharing your faith. I mean, think about the last time somebody asked you a question about church or your faith and you had to, Oh boy, your palms got a little sweaty, and you, Oh, wait a minute, now I've got an answer for that.

Or somebody you invited to church finally came forward and was baptized. How excited you were. Of course. Lewis tells me, man, that's personal evangelism, that's what keeps him going. That's what keeps him going.

That's what keeps Jim excited. Personal evangelism. And then finally, evangelism, job number 1, because it is a mark of the New Testament church. See, the New Testament church has distinguishing characteristics that separate it from human churches, What I call human churches, man-made churches. The church of Joe. The church of Bob. The church of this community. Those type of churches and the church that belongs to Jesus Christ are differentiated because the church of Christ is designed according to the pattern that's in the Bible. Well, evangelism is a mark of the New Testament church.

There are several different characteristics that are unique to the New Testament church. For example, the New Testament church uses only the Bible as its religious authority. Matthew 28, Jude 3. A lot of churches use a lot of different things. But the New Testament church is the New Testament church because it uses only the New Testament as its guide.

The New Testament church, for example, has only Jesus as its divine Lord and Head and no other human or spiritual leader. Oh, there's so many more. So many more characteristics to describe the New Testament church. New Testament church, autonomy of congregations, plurality of elders. New Testament church does not use instruments of music in its public worship.

That's how you can tell the real McCoy. Now, the point of this is that we often fail to mention that evangelism is also a key feature, a key characteristic of the New Testament church. You see, unfortunately, some people think that you have to take communion, or, if you support orphan homes, or, if you use modern songs. They think that's what makes up the New Testament church. They're wrong.

They're unbiblical. I don't care how many cups you use to take communion, so long as you're bringing people to Jesus Christ. Because evangelism in the church is what makes it a new testament church. Not the style of your songs, or how you spend your money. I always smile when people go out of town, they call up, they want to find the church.

And they always call and they say I'll get a call, Well, we're from Tennessee and we're looking, we're coming into worship. And we just, they want to know they're gonna be in the right place. And they say, When you have communion, how do you I have to tell them, Well, we pass around a lot of little cups. Oh, okay. And do you have more than one person, leading your songs?

No ma'am, we only have one song. Oh, okay, they're trying to find the New Testament church, but in 17 years, no one has ever called me and said, Are you an evangelistic church? Not one person has ever asked me to find out if we were the true New Testament church, if we were evangelistic or not. They wanted to know, how do we take communion?

Or do we have an organ in the building? They figured that's the way God's gonna find His church. Boy, are they in for a big surprise. Well, in Choctaw, we are growing. We are growing.

I mean, there have been 4 people who have put on Christ in baptism, 3 people who have been restored. 15 people have placed membership and that's this month alone. And the month is not over yet. So we're off. I mean, the Lord is blessing us.

He's blessing our work. He's blessing the different ministries because I see that the deacons, the elders, everybody, ministers are busy in each ministry. I also believe that this growth will continue if we remember that evangelizing our town, evangelizing our country, evangelizing our world is our primary job. And all of our ministries serve this goal in one way or another. They say that, in Texas I hate to use a dirty word but in Texas isn't it strange?

A French Canadian who's got a green card with an Italian name is making a joke about Texas and Choctaw. Man, I tell you. No one can ever say that God doesn't have a sense of humor. I'm the proof of that. Well, they say that in Texas, there's a law that requires that if a doctor goes by the scene of an accident without stopping to offer help, that doctor can be charged with manslaughter.

And the reason for this is because the doctor has in his hands the power to save lives. And if he doesn't use it, he can be charged. Well, the Christian, I believe, is under the same kind of law. Because within our hands is the power to save souls. And we will be held accountable if we don't use this power in some way.

Each day we have different opportunities to demonstrate our faith. Each day we have opportunities to confess Christ. Each day we have opportunities to invite someone or teach someone. And each day God provides opportunities for each of us according to our talents and according to our maturity. On the 4th February, the Lord is providing to our church, to every single person in this congregation, a chance to make a big difference in the country of Haiti.

I pray that you will be prepared. Now this sermon was not the gospel. I didn't preach the gospel. I preached about the need to preach the gospel. But tonight, if you've not been doing this, if you've not been preaching, if you've not acted or lived in the way that, you can give a good witness, if the way that you have lived has denied the presence of Christ in your life and given a bad witness, then I encourage you to come forward and repent and become a bright and shining star once again.

And if through this lesson you have realized that you are not saved and the consequences of that will be eternal, And you wish to be baptized or restored, placed membership, whatever. We encourage you to come forward and make your wishes known as we stand and as we sing.