The Crystal Clear Gospel

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

We're gonna continue our series on Acts, the gospel movement. We started last week in Acts 13 and 14 and that's where we're gonna continue today. We're gonna keep moving through. Last week we looked at ministry, kind of the ministry side of it, the shared ministry. We talked about how it was difficult. We talked about how it was joyous and we talked about how it's always shared. If it's in the gospel, it's always shared. In that respect, ministry kind of reflects the gospel. So we said the medium, the ministry medium heavily influences the gospel message. There's a way to be right that is wrong. There's a way to share the gospel or there's a way to minister in the gospel that doesn't reflect the gospel at all. So we talked about maybe like tricking people with the gospel or trying to coerce people to become disciples. That's not really how Jesus did it. That's not really reflective of the gospel.

Today we are gonna cover the same two chapters but we're gonna be looking at them from a different angle because as you look at Acts 13 and 14, you see a lot of people change on the spot. You see a lot of people change on the spot. So they woke up that morning. They didn't really have a plan to completely revolutionize their lives. They didn't really think like, oh, I'm gonna be part of this movement this morning. Like they just woke up, it was a normal day and then they encountered something and they were completely changed. You see that happen all over Acts 13 and 14.

And truly this is how we all come to faith. None of us in here that follow Jesus were born Christian. None of you were born Christian. I don't care who your parents are. Nobody's born a Christian. Everybody makes a decision to become a Christian and so all have been changed. We all have been changed in some capacity to some degree. And so today we're gonna study how all these people changed in Acts 13 and 14 because although they did not change the same way, there is one common thread that kinda goes throughout Acts 13 and 14 and that is that they were all changed with an encounter with the crystal clear gospel. The crystal clear gospel. And when we experience the gospel, when you and I, when we experience the gospel with crystal clarity, we are changed. When anybody experiences the gospel with crystal clarity, when they can see it for exactly when it is, they are changed.

Anytime, in fact, anytime in your own life, anytime you experienced significant spiritual growth, it was because you experienced the gospel with crystal clarity. For some of you, maybe that happened growing up, right? Maybe some of you were in a family and you saw mom and dad or maybe you just saw mom or just dad and they loved Jesus. They were devoted to Jesus, they followed Jesus. And for you, that was an experience with the gospel. You saw that in their lives. They displayed to you the crystal clear gospel. They weren't perfect people. They didn't display it all the time, but you saw the gospel play out in their lives. And for some of you, you got a different, that's a different story. Maybe you were even religious, I don't know. Maybe you kind of came at this to where you were kind of a religious person, but then you saw the gospel alive in somebody else and that changed you.

That just woke you up on the inside. You came alive. You might have said, you might have known the right thing, like, I believe in Jesus or yeah, he died for my sin or whatever. Like you know kind of some facts, but when you came to face to face, and I know some of your stories, I know this is exactly what happened. You come face to face with a person or with a group of people, and they truly love the Lord in a way that you never thought possible, in a way that you didn't think people actually lived out like on a day to day basis, and it rocked you. It changed you. You are different now because the Lord used that. What I'm telling you is that the same thing that happened in your life is the same thing we see in August, in Acts 13 and 14.

And then you have people that are experiencing the crystal clear gospel and they are changing. And that informs us, that tells us something. So to pick up where we left off, Acts 13 and 14, before we kind of jump into all that, we need to remember that in Acts 13 and 14, it's describing the events of what we call Paul's first missionary journey. In Acts 13 all the way through 18, Paul takes three missionary journeys, which means he leaves the church at Antioch or wherever he is, he leaves kind of home base. He goes through, he shares the gospel in all these different towns. So we looked at it last week a little bit, but he goes to Perga, he goes to Antioch, Little Antioch, Iconium Lystra, Derby, and then backtracks through all of those places and then comes back to Antioch. And that's kind of his first journey. He takes two more of these, and they're completely different

and we'll kind of talk that through. But he's going about seven different cities in nine months and in each place he starts in a city center. Or in this case, in a lot of these cases, it was a synagogue, right, where Jews come, they come together, they read the Old Testament, they pray, they do all these. So he goes to the synagogue and he preaches and he teaches to anybody that would listen. And those that respond, he disciples, he's trained.

But also there are these kind of these unplanned run-ins that would happen, okay? So for example, like on the island of Cyprus where they go first, so where it's, you know, where you see that first red line, they go to the island of Cyprus. And when they do, there's a magician there, his name's Elimus, Elimus the magician. We looked at him last week and Paul curses him with temporary blindness. And so we see in Acts 13, 11, okay? It says, and now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and this is Paul talking to the magician. And you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time immediately. Mist and darkness fell upon him and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand. Look at the very next verse, verse 12. It says, then the proconsul believed, this is a government official proconsul, then the proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred

for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord, okay? So you have the proconsul, he's been hearing the teaching of the Lord, he knows, like he sees, he understands kind of the gospel, but when he sees Elimus the magician blinded, when he sees God's power go out, he believes he's changed immediately. Look at, we're gonna skip on to Acts 14, nine through 10. This is a disabled man that Paul is talking to and he's listening to Paul. So it says, he listened to Paul speaking and Paul looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made well, said in a loud voice, stand upright on your feet and he sprang up and began walking, okay? Look at the very next verse, verse 11. It says, when the crowd saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycanium, because they were in Lystra, the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men, okay?

When people, when people see a powerful demonstration of the gospel, okay? When they see a powerful demonstration of the gospel, they are changed, okay? Many of you have experienced a powerful demonstration of the gospel and I'm not even talking about like angel lifeguards coming out and saving you. You know, we have that story with Daniel Oster. I'm not even talking about these sensational things that are like once in a lifetime or twice in a lifetime things. I'm talking about even just everyday like demonstrations of power. For some of you, your story is that Jesus came to you and pulled you out of depression. That depression would have ended your life. You're totally convinced of that. And Jesus came and rescued you out of depression. Or some of your stories that the Spirit led you to option A instead of option B. And you found out that option B later would have been

a complete train wreck and you'd have gone to jail. Like something really catastrophic. But the Spirit led you to option A. You didn't know at the time, but the Lord was guiding you on that. Or maybe, maybe, for some of you, God orchestrated your life and had you meet somebody that you didn't expect to meet. But when you met them, like the trajectory of your life just changed. It just took a right turn and you just kind of went off in a different direction. Had you not met that person, had God not orchestrated that meeting, your life would have been totally different. What you can see in retrospect is that the Spirit of God was at work in you. Very rarely though do we see all of the effects happen in real time, right? The story that I was referring to earlier is that Daniel Oster, one of our pastors here, was young, he was leading his first youth ministry camp,

leading his youth ministry to go to camp. And so he's like, what, 19? You're just super young, 20. And he's out swimming, he sees one of his guys out there, big guy, big kind of O-Y men guy. Can't swim, starting to drown. Daniel goes out there to try to save him. That guy's like pushing Daniel underwater. So, and Daniel keeps looking back at the beach and it just keeps getting further away. And he's like, I'm gonna die out here. This is my first youth camp and we're both going to die. This is not gonna be okay. And then out of nowhere, some dude, some very, very strong dude apparently, puts both you and the other guy kind of under his arms and just like swims, just swims back to shore and puts you both on the beach and then you never see him again. You never heard from him, you never know nothing. And so that's miraculous, right? Like that's something you're just like,

hey, that's the Lord taking care of me. Like you believe that, right? Like that's legit. Some of you have those stories where you can kind of see it in real time. Much more often, much more often, you can see it in retrospect. Much more often, you can see it much later. Whenever I was in our Himalayan mission trip and Drew Ivey and I, where is he? There he is. Drew Ivey and I, he did announcements. We were paired up and we were just in the middle of this place in India where it's just like an outdoor, kind of a garden place. And so we're out there and I am sick at this point in the trip, I am sick. This is like day one of us being in kind of this new place, right? We don't know the language, we don't know the customs, not really. And we're definitely like two white bread Americans just hanging out. So we're conspicuous by our existence. And so Drew Ivey and I are going through

and we're supposed to share the gospel and we're like, okay. And Drew's already, Drew's sandbagging already. He's just like, I can't believe, he was tired, he didn't know the language. He was like, I was supposed to share the gospel. What's going on? And I'm sick and not feeling it. I'm super, I'm exhausted. You know, some like 30 hour trip to get there anyway.

We were both not in the mood to share the gospel. We were not feeling it. And so I just felt prompted to pray in that moment. I was like, okay Lord, I don't, like I'm sick, I'm hating this. Drew's not excited. We don't really have a strategy here. We don't really know what to do. So all we're gonna do Lord, we're gonna sit under this tree. And there were like hundreds of trees to sit under. Okay, so we're gonna sit under this tree. There's nothing special about this tree, it's just here. And if you want us to talk to somebody, then you're gonna have to bring them to this tree. And we just sat there and kind of rested. We were exhausted, it was hot. We sat there and rested and sure enough,

this guy comes by, it's family. And he had a cat in a backpack. It was just kind of a very strange, I know that sounds weird, but it was like a cat kennel that you just kind of put. And I thought, wow, that's wild. And had like little breathing holes. I mean, it was really, really cute, and a Persian cat. And that really intrigued me. And I'm that guy who will just be like, hey, tell me about the, I don't care, I'll do that. And so I did, I was like, is that a cat in a backpack? And he's like, yeah. And so I figured out in that moment, we could talk. He spoke English. He was sitting under our tree. And then his whole family came. And as we're just talking, and I was trying to figure out like a way in, and the guy comes back, and he's like a teenager. Teenager comes back to us and says, do you wanna have lunch with us? Okay, Lord, cool, we're gonna have lunch with these people.

And we had just eaten a lot of food. But you can't not eat food. So we'd say yes, we'd love to eat food with you. And so I was able to share the gospel with the teenager, who was the only one who knew English, I think. I was able to share the gospel with him while we're just stuffing our faces full of like kebab and rice and whatever. But that was miraculous. That was a miraculous thing. We sat there, we prayed, we asked the Lord, if you wanna come, if you want us to talk to somebody, you're gonna have to bring somebody. And the Lord did. And you might say, well, I don't know, Drew, what are the odds of something like that happening? I honestly don't know. And you could tell me it's common, that's fine, I don't care. But I will tell you, that's what we prayed for, and that's what we got.

That is a demonstration of the gospel. It's a powerful demonstration of the gospel. And when it happens to you, when it happens to you, it's different than hearing about it all the time, but when it happens to you, you know it. It's a powerful demonstration of the gospel. When people experience a powerful demonstration of the gospel, when they see it, even sometimes when they just hear about it and they believe it, they are changed on the spot. They're changed on the spot. It might take a couple of months to work it out in their own mind, but they're changed, whether they like it or not. They're like, I've just experienced something that did not fit my worldview. I've just experienced a reality that I was not previously aware of. And now I'm, so they're kind of dealing with it in their mind, but they're changed. Now they can make choices on that, they can reject it later, they can do whatever,

but they are changed in that moment, they are changed on the spot. And again, we're not talking about like the disappearance of inoperable diseases, okay? It doesn't have to be this big thing that like makes a TV show all the time, or like walking away from a head-on collision without a scratch. Those things happen, and I'm not saying they're invalid, I'm just saying, when we're talking about powerful demonstrations of the gospel, it doesn't have to be dramatic.

And it doesn't even have to be something that you're aware of that's happening right in that moment. Sometimes you can see it in retrospect. And so when Jesus does something in your life, when Jesus does a powerful demonstration of the gospel, whenever he answers prayer, whenever he does things, whenever he leads you to option A instead of B, whenever he introduces you to somebody, here's my encouragement, say it clearly. Say it clearly. Speak about this demonstration. Testify to God's specific goodness in your life to your coworkers and to your family. And I say specific, and I mean it, don't just be like, you know, God's been real good to me. Well, I mean, okay, great. To be honest, like I could throw a rock and, you know, hit a conversation where that's happening. Somebody say, oh yeah, God's been good to me. Yeah, God's been good. Look man, specific, how has God been good to you?

What is an instance of a powerful demonstration of the gospel? What is a way that God met you in a moment where you either feel like you didn't deserve to be met or you didn't expect God to meet you and God's grace and his kindness to you was overwhelming in that moment. Do you have a moment like that? I'm banking that most of you do. You have a moment like that. And maybe you couldn't see it at the time, maybe you can see it in retrospect, that's fine. Maybe you need to think about it and remember.

You ever read the Old Testament and read how they built altars everywhere? Like it's so-and-so was hanging out and they built an altar and then so-and-so you know why they built an altar? So they wouldn't forget. For some of you, maybe you should revisit some altars in your life, maybe you should revisit some times in your life whenever God's been faithful to you. Maybe you've forgotten them, maybe they were that long ago, I don't know. But they're there, powerful demonstrations of the gospel. So tell them, tell them about the answered prayer. Tell them about the healed relationship. Tell them about the mercy that you didn't expect. Tell them about the struggles that are being resolved right now. Tell them about it, speak up. And you're not always going to see that person change. You're not always gonna see, like it's not like fire's gonna fall from heaven and they're just gonna be like,

oh, tell me how to be saved right now. Like that's not, I'm not saying to expect that. I'm saying that sometimes they're going to change and you're not going to see it immediately. And so this is one way that we see people change in Acts 13 and 14. These powerful demonstrations that make the gospel crystal clear. They make it clear in a way that you, maybe you didn't even expect.

The other way that you see is actually found in the majority of the text in Acts 13 and 14. The vast majority of those two chapters is preaching. It's sermon text. And there are three different instances of preaching in these two chapters. I'm not gonna cover the whole thing, but I'm gonna put out some differences in them. Look at it with me. Look in Acts 13, verse 17. This is the beginning of his sermon to the Jews in Little Antioch. So he goes to Little Antioch. Little Antioch is about 50,000 people. We've got Siza Burleson. They have one synagogue.

And all the Jews are at that synagogue and Paul goes to that synagogue and he begins to preach to these Jews and look how he starts. He starts by citing Israel's heritage, their Jewish heritage. This is what he brings up. He says the God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt and with uplifted arm he led them out of it.

In this sermon, Paul starts there in Egypt. He goes through the 40 years of wilderness. He goes through the land of Canaan. He goes through the king Saul and then the king David and then he's onto Jesus. But why does he refer to all these details of Israel's heritage? Because he's talking to Jews. He's talking to people that are gonna feel that. When you bring up the 40 years in the wilderness, they got stories, they got traditions, they got memory, they got like cultural memory of being in that moment. When you speak to Jews in the first century about the 40 years in the wilderness, they're connecting with that on an emotional level. It's not a small thing. The Exodus was a big deal. And look, as he shares about Jesus in the resurrection, same sermon, as he shares about Jesus in the resurrection, look at how he frames it. Look at verses 38 through 39, so you gotta kinda skip down.

It's a great sermon but we're not gonna cover the whole thing. But look at how he frames Jesus in the resurrection. He says, let it be known to you therefore brothers, that through this man, Jesus, the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you and by him, listen, by him everyone who believes is freed from what? Freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. Look, you wanna share the gospel with somebody of Jewish heritage in the first century, you start talking to them about being free from the law of Moses and you have their attention.

That's who you're talking to. Paul is tailoring the message of Jesus to a Jewish audience specifically. And I want you to compare that now that we've just seen that. I want you to compare that with how Paul preaches at Iconium. And we actually don't get sermon texts for this. We get one verse. But look at the verse. Acts 14 verse one. It says, now at Iconium, which is just the next town, at Iconium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and look, spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. It's interesting that it puts it that way. What he's saying is, in Iconium, Paul probably didn't preach the same sermon that he did in Little Antioch. He still preached the gospel, but it wasn't the same way. He preached in a way that both Jews and Greeks believed. Well, tell me about Greeks. Well, Greeks were like, they were involved with wisdom and philosophy.

A lot of them were Stoics. But if you started talking to a Greek and you say something about, you know, like we can all be freed from the law of Moses, well, you're not touching their heart on an emotional level at all. They're not connecting with that. They don't care. They might think, oh, okay, that's, I mean, that's good for the Jews. What about me? But what he's saying is that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. The impression, at least a little bit, at least tacitly is, that he's not preaching it the exact same way. Compare that still with how Paul preaches at Lystra, okay? So people at Lystra, whenever we talked about the disabled man, this is where that is. It's in Lystra. Paul has just healed this man who was, it says crippled from birth, right? He just healed him and he's walking. And the Lyconians are starting to say, oh, these guys are gods

and they're starting to worship him, right? They're starting to worship Paul and Barnabas and they say that Paul is Zeus and Barnabas is Hermes. I don't remember, I think those are the two gods that they started saying. Look at what Paul says in response to that. Look at what he says. It's verse 15, Acts 14 verse 15. Here's his response to the Lyconians. Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men of like nature with you and we bring you good news. Okay, hang on just a second. He just said, hey, we're not gods. We're actually heralds and we're bringing a message. Okay, we're preaching a message. Here's the message. That you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.

Okay, he is clearly sharing the gospel here but where's Egypt? Where's Moses? Where's the 40 years of the wilderness? Where's David? Let's keep going. Look at the next two verses, verses 16 and 17. It says in past generations, God allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways yet he did not leave himself without witness for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. Paul is gearing him up to hear the gospel right here but he's not talking about some heritage that Israel has with God. He's not talking about even the same way probably that he was preaching at Iconium. He's talking to them here. He's saying look, here's the witness that God left you. What was it? Was it the Torah? Was it the Old Testament? No. Was it the Exodus from Egypt? No. Was it any of the prophets? No. What is it? Rains from heaven, fruitful seasons,

satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. He's going Romans one on them, right? He's saying look, you can look out in nature, you can look at your own experience and see God's goodness to you. That's a strange approach, right? It's very different than what you see in Little Antioch. It's still different than what you see in Iconia. Now it's different here. And look, it's not just in these three. It's all over. Look at how Jesus preaches the gospel to the woman at the well versus how he preaches the gospel to Nicodemus. It's totally different, right? It's totally different. What's happening in these three scenarios? In these three scenarios and in many others, even that Jesus does, we're declaring the gospel but we're doing it in context. We're declaring the gospel in context. In other words, we're explaining the gospel in a way that people get, in a way that people feel in their bones,

in a way that people connect with their own personal history. It's important. Lystra could not get Israel's history, so Paul had to explain it in a different contextualized way, and it mattered. Look, our aim, our aim with the gospel is always crystal clarity. Because when people, when people experience the gospel, when the gospel is absolutely clear to them, when there's nothing in the way, when you can see it for all of its beauty, again, people change on the spot. People change on the spot. The ideas are challenged, their fears are elated, they begin to look at Jesus in a new way, they begin to reconsider everything they've experienced before because now, maybe for the first time, they see the gospel with crystal clarity. There's nothing in the way, there's nothing between them and a relationship with the Lord. The question kind of begs in their own hearts, well then why am I over here?

Why am I doing all these things in rebellion from the Lord? Why do I not have a relationship with God? Because when the gospel is crystal clear, it begs those questions, it speaks to people's hearts. And so if we're gonna be a part of that, if we're gonna see that happen, then we need to make sure that we are speaking it, we are referencing, we are talking about God's powerful demonstrations, but we're also adapting to the context of the people that we are speaking to. You are experiencing contextualization right now because I'm speaking in English.

All over the world, the gospel's preaching a lot of different languages. Well why? Who determines the language? The culture. Wherever you are, that's the language that you need to speak. It's important. But more than that, go one level deeper. I'm gonna use illustrations, examples, I'm gonna use things that hopefully, that hopefully you're gonna understand. I work really hard to do that actually, so whenever it doesn't happen, I'm pretty disappointed. But the reason I do that is because, not because I want you to like me, I do that because I want you to see, I want you to experience the gospel with crystal clarity. I don't want there to be anything between you and a full-bodied understanding of what it is to participate in life with God,

in abundant life. And when the gospel is clear, those things happen. Let me just give you some examples. If you are declaring the gospel to someone and they don't have any biblical understanding at all, like they don't really crack the Bible, and you start in Exodus or Leviticus, buddy, look, all scriptures got breathed, okay? All scriptures got breathed, but don't start in Exodus, okay? Don't do that. Maybe start in John, okay? You gotta be a little more strategic. If somebody doesn't understand the fact that there's an Old Testament, then you should probably begin with Jesus, right? You should probably begin with like his life in ministry. That's a good place to start. And it doesn't, by saying that, I'm not discounting other parts of the Bible, I'm saying know your context. Does that make sense? I'm saying be smart about how you're declaring the gospel.

So if you're, for example, if you're telling your coworker about how the Lord has delivered you from anxiety, from crippling anxiety, from couldn't get out of bed anxiety, if you're talking to your coworker about that, and then you're like, okay, I need to use an illustration, like you're okay, like, but you bust one out from like Zephaniah II, okay? Probably not the move, okay? You guys don't even know which metaphor I'm talking about, do you, from Zephaniah II? It's a trick question. There is no metaphor in Zephaniah II. But if you bust that out, they're gonna get lost, does that make sense? Like you need to understand the people that you're speaking to almost just as much as you need to understand the gospel that you're speaking. Now, it doesn't mean that you like can't share the gospel at the line at Starbucks or at the grocery store or door to door or whatever.

That's not, I'm not trying to say don't do that. What I am saying though is that even when you do that, you need to understand the context that you're in. The way you talk to a neighbor is different than how you're gonna talk to a close friend is different than how you're gonna talk to somebody that you just met at a coffee shop. Those are different contexts and you need to be able to speak the gospel in all three of those instances. So if we wanna see change,

and that's kind of a given, but maybe I should just say, our church, we are a family just as much as we are a movement. And I say that very often and I think you know what I mean when I say family, spiritual family. I think you get that. I'm sure there's maybe some detail we can fill in there. But let me just tell you about movement very quickly. We are part of God's kingdom movement where he is redeeming people to himself. God is calling people through us into abundant life and abundant relationship with him. The movement that we are a part of requires us to proclaim and demonstrate the gospel as part of that, as a basic fundamental part of that. The reason that you are part of the gospel movement now is because somebody demonstrated and declared the gospel to you. If we want to see change, if we wanna see kids' lives in Burleson schools changed, if we wanna see marriages in the surrounding area healed,

if we wanna see people delivered from addiction, if we wanna see real change, if we wanna see people that were selfish become selfless, if we wanna see people that were orphaned spiritually become part of a family, if we wanna see that change, then what we need to do is we need to up the clarity. We need to up the clarity. If we wanna see change, we need to up the clarity. In other words, we need to focus our efforts on making the gospel clear. And let me tell you how that's different than what a lot of times what we try to do. Because we get sidetracked. Sometimes we think that we need to up the volume. Okay, sometimes we think we need to up the volume. So I've heard people say this, and it comes from a great place.

But in an effort to evangelize like all of Burleson or something like that, I've heard people say, well, why don't we just like put the gospel like on loudspeaker and just, you know, just tell as many people as possible all at once, right? So if we crank the volume, then more people will hear it and we'll see more change. But that doesn't exactly work. It doesn't exactly work. In fact, it could be said that Burleson right now is the result of people trying that for a really long time. Where it's been a lot of volume, but not a lot of clarity. And those aren't opposites, but they definitely aren't the same. So we say, hey, look, Jesus loves you, and we put it on billboards, and you guys ever see that going on the interstate? You see big billboard, you know, it's got like a Bible verse on it, and it's like, repent or go to hell right now. Like, you're like, okay,

I was just trying to have a road trip, and now I'm, okay, cool. It kind of hits you. Like, I'm not saying that's never ever worked. Okay, maybe it has. Maybe somebody has a testimony about how like, I was just driving on the, I was just trying to have a road trip. I was gonna go, you know, on this like trip of debauchery, and then I saw that billboard, and now I'm following Jesus. Okay, fine, okay, I get it.

What I'm trying to say is, that's high volume, but it's not high clarity. High clarity though, is always personalized, you see. If it's just about volume, then Jesus would have had a different kind of ministry than investing in 12 guys, and then saying, okay, go make disciples. I'm gonna help you from heaven, okay. I'm gonna give you the Holy Spirit. If it's about volume, then why didn't Jesus just invent a megaphone, because he could have, and just like yell it to as many people as possible. He didn't do that, because he had to make it clear first.

Something else that we're trying to do, and again, this is coming from a good place. Instead of upping the clarity, we try to up the credibility, okay. Meaning, we leave declaring the gospel, and we leave powerful gospel demonstrations to the experts, right. To people that have a lot of credibility, to people that are very smart, that are theologically trained, that are eloquent, okay. But let me just help you understand this, okay. As a 46 year old white guy, okay. As a dad, I'm not going to be able to make the gospel as clear to someone who is a teenager than a teenager. I'm not gonna be able to make the gospel clear to somebody in their 80s, as well as somebody else will in their 80s. Now it doesn't, look, that's not a cop out, okay. I'm gonna show the gospel with people that are five years older, and five years younger than me, okay. I'm gonna show the gospel to anybody

that the Lord brings, okay. But what I'm telling you, what I'm telling you is that if we leave it all to experts, if we leave it all to the experts, it's gonna be the same results as trying to up the volume. You can't up the credibility enough to convince somebody the same way that whenever they're your coworker or they're your friend and they see your life change, they see you grow. And I don't mean dramatic turnaround. I mean you being faithful, praying through things, talking about it with them. You just talking about how the Lord's been good to you. Even like I've been in this season and it's been really tough, but the Lord's been really faithful. The Lord's spoken to me about this, that, and the other. And it's just really been a healing process for me. That testimony from a coworker, from a person that you see every day, a testimony like that goes way farther

than some erudite theologian who gets up there and can make your head spin with all these 25-cent words, okay. We need to up the clarity. The volume, that's gonna raise and lower kind of on its own. The credibility, we can't get enough experts to say what we need to say from the heart. We can't do it. We must seek ways to demonstrate the gospel with power. We must seek ways to testify, to talk about with our coworkers and our friends and our neighbors about what the Lord has done and we need to pray toward this end. Something that Daniel Osher and I,

what we talk about, we've been having a lot of conversation in this past year. We've talked about his role, okay. Like what's he gonna do, right. Because he's a pastor here, but his appetite for preaching is just not, it's just kind of lower. It's just not super, he's not like, man, if I could preach every week, that'd be so great. That's not what enters his mind, okay. However, however, when we talk about his role and talk about how the Lord has gifted him, one of the things that we're both really excited about is helping our church become way more invested in prayer. Last week we had, Daniel Osher came up and led us in a prayer time where he kind of worked through scripture and we all prayed together. Look, we wanna help you guys do that, but also just generally, we want our church to become a praying church.

We wanna seek the Lord together for the things that matter. One of the things that you can begin praying for even now is the opportunity to demonstrate the gospel in power. And it doesn't always feel like it. You don't always feel like, ooh, I got something from my coworker. This is just gonna like hit him over the head with the gospel, like it's gonna be so, for you, it's just being faithful to testify as to what the Lord has done. So we must seek ways to demonstrate the gospel. We also must seek ways to declare the gospel in context. Listen, you have to know people to be able to speak to them. And sometimes to know somebody, you have to take the time to listen.

If you are surrounded by people that you do not know, maybe that first step for you is to listen to where they are. If you got a bunch of coworkers, you don't really know any of their backstory, that's kinda on you. I mean, maybe they're super private, that's fine, leave them be. But most people tell you about where they grew up, tell you about their heritage, tell you about if they're involved in a church or not. One of my first go-to questions, even before they find out I'm a pastor, because that's a fun moment. And they're like, oh, you're a pastor? And they like review the last 15 minutes of the conversation, make sure they didn't say any cuss words. But for you, you're not a pastor. For you, whenever you're having that conversation, it's really easy to say, oh, did you grow up? Around here, did you grow up in Burleson? They're like, oh no, I wanna, you know.

And it's really easy to say anything like, did you, what was your spiritual heritage like? Did you grow up? Like, you know, everybody, a lot of people in Burleson are Christian, are you Christian? Tell me about that a little bit. And just listen, just listen. You're gonna learn a lot by just listening. And the more you listen, the more you're gonna be able to just understand, like, just where somebody needs to hear the gospel, or an opportunity to talk about it a little bit more. But if you're listening, you need to do that. Moments will open up, and you can share the gospel. Now, there's one more component to this, and I just wanna speak to it very quickly. The other component to this is confidence. I can tell you all day from up here with a microphone, that you need to declare the gospel more, right? I can tell you that, oh, you need to testify more. Okay, and that's still true.

It doesn't make it untrue. However, it also does not always instill confidence. Part of the reason that we do life groups at our church, life groups are three or four people that meet every other week. And when they do, when they come together, they work through material that helps build confidence in you as you minister to other people, right? It's different than a home group. Home group is a place to kind of belong. It's a place to connect with people relationally. It's a place to, you know, we're gonna, you got like, I don't know, anywhere from eight to 25 people in a home group, right? It's a bunch of people in a home group. Life group is smaller, and the point of a life group is so that you can gain confidence in ministry. Look, my hope for every single one of you here, every single one of you here, is that you would have confidence in ministering to the people around you.

Because I believe that will make the, that will create the greatest gospel clarity that our church can create. Let me say it again. The hope that I have for each and every one of you is that you will be able to minister to the people around you in confidence. Because I believe that is the best way to create gospel clarity, to see lives change. It's the best way. An Easter event is great, but it's not the best way. A VBS is great, but it's not the best way. It's not as strategic, it's not as targeted, it's not a waste of time, but it's not the best. The best is you, ministering to people that are immediately around you. And here's the secret, it's not just you. Whoever you're ministering to, they know other Christians. Some of those Christians are also ministering to them. Man, what a great moment that would be for you. What a great moment that would be in the life of somebody else when they hear you

and they hear in your words, they hear a powerful demonstration of the gospel. And they're changed in the moment. And sometimes they say it and sometimes they don't. But like a week and a half later, they'll come to you with a question. You'll be like, hey, you remember how you were talking about how you were really depressed after this death in your family and you'd really know how you were gonna go on and you didn't know if things were gonna be the same? And you felt like God met you in that moment. Would you tell me more about that? Okay, if that happens to me, my day is made. My week is made. I mean, that's exciting. That is what the Lord is calling us to do. Get a vision for that now in your own life. You don't need to leave it to the experts. We don't need to up the volume. Our church does not need to buy a billboard, okay? We're not gonna do that. We can't afford it, okay?

Even if we could, we shouldn't afford it. Deacon, are you listening to me? We should not afford it. The best way, the best way is you. Let me just say one more thing about confidence. And maybe this is just, this is pretty granular. I'll say it anyway, it didn't matter. Your first time is always gonna be scary. Your fifth time is still gonna be scary. When I share the gospel with somebody, I still get nervous. I'm a paid religious professional and I get nervous about sharing the gospel with people. It's perfectly acceptable. It's perfectly acceptable to be nervous about sharing your testimony with somebody that is perfectly acceptable. This is why we need to pray, because it's not in our own power. If you're relying on yourself to do all that I've just said, like I've just given you the grocery list, and you're like, okay, now I'm gonna go home and do it. Okay, you need to do it with the Spirit's power.

We need to pray toward that end. You need help doing that. You need a church body around you helping you do that, encouraging you doing that. As I pray, I'm gonna lead us in prayer. I'm gonna be back there with those couches and those couches and those chairs are and those lamps. I'm gonna be back there. If you want prayer, if you want help with that, just come on back during our last song or even after the service, you can come talk to me. But right now I just really want us to pray and ask the Lord for help. Would you pray with me?

Lord, thank you. Thank you for this commission that you've given us. Thank you for what we see in Acts 13 and 14. We see people change on the spot. What a great moment that is. I pray that you would give us a hunger and a thirst for seeing people change on the spot, people that maybe you've brought to mind even as we were looking through Acts 13 and 14. I pray that you would help us to see the life that you're calling us to live, that you would give us courage and confidence. That's your name that we pray, amen. Would you please?