Remember These Four Things
One of the things I find to be the most frustrating and discouraging about being a minister is evangelism.
But then I remind myself four things, four things I told myself when I decided to start preaching, four things that keep me trying, four things that overcome my fears in approaching people.
These four things I remember will help you too, because I know you too get discouraged.
I truly believe people want to evangelize but decide it is too difficult.
Write these down.
There really is a hell.
A. I think sometimes we forget that there is a hell. We need to be reminded that it is real.
B. Society makes fun of it; profanes it; doesn’t believe it but it is real. ("I know there ain’t no heaven and I pray there ain’t no hell.")
C. The same Bible that talks about the reality of heaven talks about the reality of hell.
D. II Thess. 1:7-9
E.
There really is a place of everlasting destruction. It is real.Hell really is a terrible place.
F. It is not just a corner in which the delinquent child must sit.
1) It is not a spanking that God gives the hand of one who has been naughty.
2) It is a terrible, horrible place.
G. Think about its horrors.
1) Jude 13- Blackness of darkness forever.
a. It is so black, so close, and so thick; people will feel as though they are wrapped up in chains of darkness (II Pet. 2:4).
b. Are you afraid of the dark? Are you claustrophobic?
c. Hell will be so dark, so black, it is beyond human experience, it is outer darkness (Mt. 8:12; 22:13).
2) Mt. 13:42- Wailing and gnashing of teeth.
a. It is a place where people will be sitting there listening to others scream out in their fears and torture.
b. The Bible says, people in their despair will wail.
c. Have you ever heard wailing? It is a long mournful sound from deep inside. It almost sounds like the wind.
d. Can you imagine sitting there in the darkness, listening to people groaning on and on, wailing on and on and on and on?
e. You would want to grab your ears and scream, "Get me out of here!"
f. But then you realize it is not just their wailing you hear but your own.
3) Mt. 5:22; Mt. 13:42; Mk. 9:43; Rev. 20:14; Rev. 21:8
a. Have you ever touched a hot skillet or a hot coal? Remember the pain?
b. Have you ever climbed up into am attic on a hot July day, trying to find something? Remember how you almost fainted from the heat; remember how it was almost impossible to breathe? How it got to the point you finally had to come down and get a breath of fresh air?
c. But in hell, there is no breath of fresh air; it will be breathing total flame.
4) Now some maybe saying, "Oh, Jim, Don’t be so dramatic. Today we are too educated, too sophisticated to be talked to this way. Talking about hell is out of place.
a. Is it?
b. Then why was God the one who wrote these descriptions?
c. I am not trying to be negative. I am just trying to get you to think.
People really are lost.
H. Too many among us do not really believe it.
1) There are too many people we know (friends, co-workers, and relatives) that are too kind and gentle to be lost.
2) We ask, "How can they be lost?"
a. Surely not those who are sincere, who are honest, who are trying?
b. Surely not those who are faithful, maybe in a manmade religion, but still church going and Bible toting?
I. But brothers and sisters the Bible says people are lost. Like it or not, the Bible says people are going to hell.
1) Isa. 59:2
2) Rom. 3:10; 3:23; 6:23
3) One sin will cause a person to be lost.
J. Brethren, we have become insensitive to people’s lostness. That is because we have lost the reality of their lostness.
1) People’s good neighborliness has dulled it. We have forgotten our next-door neighbors are lost!
a. I know they are happy.
b. I know they are successful and blessed by a loving God.
c. I know they are sweet people.
d. I know they are good people and "wouldn’t hurt a fly."
e. But they are still lost if they have not come in contact with the blood of Christ.
2) A lot of "good" people will spend eternity in a horrible place.
a. Sin separates us; only the blood of Christ can save us.
b. The only way we can come in contact with the blood of Christ is in baptism (Rev. 1:5; Acts 22:16).
3) When our neighbors, co-workers, friends, and relatives die, if they are not Christians, they don’t back just to dust, they don’t just go to some "Never Never Land", but to a very terrible place!
We really are the ones sent to rescue them.
K. Do really believe the first three points?
L. What do you think Jesus was talking about in Mt. 10:32?
M. Acts 5:42
N. Have you wondered why with everything Jesus said in the great commission, there is no reference made to personal evangelism in the epistles?
1) It was a way of life.
2) Not an on again, off again program but a lifestyle.
1. Do you love your soul?
2. Do you love your neighbor’s soul?
3. Think of the wonderful, loving, brave person who cared enough to talk to you about your soul? What if they hadn’t?
James Pharr
Lenoir, NC