The Gospel Scope & Evangelism

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The Gospel Scope & Evangelism

April 24, 2022

As we take a look at the scope of the Gospel we move to our first topic in the series, namely evangelism. There are clear implications in scripture laid out concerning what evangelism is. We hope this encouraged you and reminds you of the work of an evangelist!

Key Texts:

* Matthew 28:18-20

* Acts 8:26-40 ; 21:8

* Matthew 3:1-2

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Transcript

God changes the world through families. That's what R.L. Dabney says is true revival. That which takes place in the family realm.

That's the promise of the new covenant in Malachi 4-6. That God will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. He blesses the righteous up to a thousand generations.

And he visits the iniquities of the fathers and the children to the third and fourth generations. So it's progressively God shows his favor progressively more towards the righteous to a thousand generations. And he curses the wicked to only three and four generations.

Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life. That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life.

Whether you serve him or not. Whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him. He is the Lord of your life because God has given him a name that is above every name.

So that the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow and tongue confess that he is Lord. Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron. And I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible.

[Music] Jesus came up and spoke to them saying all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth go therefore and make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe all that I commanded you and lo I am with you always even to the end of the age. Matthew 28 18 through 20. This is the For the King podcast and I'm your host Rocky Ramsey joined with my co-host and brother Bryce where we proclaim the edicts of the king over all his creation that Yahweh reigns.

Our topic today is the gospel and evangelism. Our topic is the gospel and evangelism. So what is evangelism? Our first text when we start off with the day to start building our case here on what evangelism is and how it's related to the gospel would be Acts 21 8 where we see the name of Philip the evangelist.

So it says on that day we left and came to Caesarea and entered entering the house of Philip the evangelist who was one of the seven we stayed with him. So this is one of the seven of the deacons that are chosen at the beginning to help with the daily offering for widows. The apostles didn't have time for that.

So one of there are seven men chosen. Stephen being one of them but Philip an evangelist is chosen which is again the office of Deacon is very high calling. We've minimized it in the church and I want to read a short story about Philip and Acts 8 26 through 40 that articulates what evangelism looks like.

So here we go. An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying get up and go south to the road that descends from Jerusalem to Gaza. That is a desert road.

So he got up and went and there was an Ethiopian eunuch a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians who was in charge of all her treasure. And he had come to Jerusalem to worship and he was returning and sitting in his chair and was reading the prophet of Isaiah. Then the spirit said to Philip go up and join this chariot.

Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said do you understand what you are reading. And he said well how could I unless someone guides me. And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

Now the passage of scripture he was reading was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before its chair is silent so he does not open his mouth. And in humiliation his judgment was taken away.

Who will relate his generation. For his life is removed from the earth. The eunuch answered Philip and said please tell me of whom does the prophet say this.

Of himself or of someone else. Then Philip opened his mouth and beginning from this scripture he preached Jesus to him. As they went along the road they came to some water and the eunuch said look water what prevents me from being baptized.

And Philip said if you believe with all your heart you may. And he answered and said I believe that Jesus is the son of God. And he ordered the chariot to stop.

And they both went down to the water Philip as well as the eunuch and he baptized him. When they came up out of the water the spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away and the eunuch no longer saw him. But went on his way rejoicing.

But Philip found himself at Azotus and as he passed through he kept preaching the gospel to all the cities until he came to Caesarea. That's Acts 8, 20, 60, 40. So we see here this man this evangelist that's how he's dubbed.

That's what he's known for in the early church. We know in Ephesians 2 we see the they call it the five-fold ministry prophet evangelist, teacher, preacher and apostle. Right or shepherd and apostle.

In a different order than that. In a different order. I didn't say it in the correct order but those are the five offices that are laid out there.

They're called like the five-fold ministry of the church. Earlier on in Acts 1 we see the foundation is laid by the prophets and the apostles. Therefore those offices have ceased.

So we still have evangelists running around and we still have shepherds running around and teachers running around. We still have these kinds of men running around. And Philip was one of them in the early church.

And we see the book of Acts is basically commentary on how the early church was spreading. How it was conducting itself. How the apostolic teaching was being played out in the early church.

Philip being one of the seven deacons is an evangelist. That's his ministry. So he's going out and proclaiming the good news to the poor, to the lost, to the needy.

And even here we see in this story to some man, a eunuch, a very high up in this Ethiopian hierarchy. He was a eunuch that had over all the treasure of the queen under his belt. He was managing it.

And he's reading a scroll of Isaiah. And if we're talking about evangelism here, that'd be pretty easy. Connecting point with somebody.

If you're on a college campus somewhere and there's a student walking around with the scroll of Isaiah. That'd be a pretty easy entry point to the gospel. But every man being made in the image of God, we have a contact point for any human that we talk to.

And an avenue for the gospel in that. So Philip capitalizes on this. And the main point that I wanted to draw out of this text is that he preaches Jesus to him.

And who is Jesus? He's the king of the kingdom of God. So there's a lot that goes into that. He's not just preaching individual salvation to the eunuch here.

The Ethiopian eunuch. He's preaching Jesus to him. He's telling him about the king.

He's proclaiming the king. Yeah, and so this is the point of evangelism is that it is something which corresponds to the word of God. You don't try to reach some point of neutrality in order to get the person to believe that there is a God.

So you move them from atheism or agnosticism to the, you know, there is a God that exists. I just don't know if it's the Christian God. And then you keep trying to meet them on neutral ground.

No, the point of evangelism is that you share the gospel of the kingdom. That Jesus Christ came and was bird of the Virgin Mary. That he was the incarnate second person of the Trinity.

He became man on our behalf. He led a perfect sinless life full of righteousness and truth. He expounded the whole old covenant, what it meant, what it was leading up to and pointed towards.

He went to a cross in humiliation in order to actually receive his exaltation. And the reason for him going to the cross was to redeem his people. That's what the word Jesus means, to save his people from their sins.

Yeah. So Jesus then died as a substitute. And then after three days, he rose from the grave and ascended to heaven at the right hand of father, where he ever lives and pleads for his people.

And the important thing that we get in Acts chapter 8 is Philip overhears the eunuch actually reading out of Isaiah 52 and 53. That's the portion that he just happened to be on. And this is referring to the suffering servant of God.

So we get the content of the gospel has to do with the person of Christ. You don't have any gospel if you don't have the person of Christ. So that's your starting point.

That's what you do when you evangelize is you tell them that Jesus Christ died and rose again for sinners. That if you repent and believe in the gospel and that's exactly what Philip asked, asked, said to him, "If you believe with all your heart, you may." Referring to going down and getting back, being baptized. And the eunuch's response was, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." Yep.

And what a glorious profession that is. This is what the gospel proclamation looks like. You preach Jesus to them and they believe on Jesus and in so doing, they are then baptized.

That's what it looks like. Yeah. That's evangelism.

That's literally evangelism in a nutshell. It's not an altar call. It's not telling somebody that Jesus just loves them and they find the way they are.

He preached Jesus to them, the true King, and said, "Come be baptized. Give up everything else. Give up your culture.

Give up everything you came from and come be a part of this kingdom. Come join Christ." And that's what he does. So again, it's centered around his word.

It's centered around the person of Christ revealed in his word. Right. And the goal is to baptize and disciple the nations.

That's what evangelism is. Right. Yeah.

And that bleeds so well off of what Rocky read by Matthew 28, what's called the Great Commission of Christ. Because you see this exact playing out in Philip's proclamation to the eunuch. He preached the gospel to him and then he baptized them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Yep. So that's literally what evangelism is. You preach the gospel to them.

They're baptized. They're admitted into the church and then you teach them to obey all that Christ commanded of them. Yeah.

Right. Obviously, Philip was taken away by the Spirit. He would have stuck around and discipled this man in the church.

But Philip had a mission. He was one of the seven. So he had other things he needed to do by the grace of the Spirit.

But that doesn't take away that this man did most likely be a part of the church. Maybe went back to his homeland and shared the gospel with started a church. And maybe they sent missionaries to come join him or something like a Timothy kind of sort to put things in order.

I mean, who knows what actually happened. This is really the only account we get of what happened to this man afterwards. Who knows? But he would have been discipled and taught.

And I'm sure the time Philip had with him, he did teach him the ways of Christ and said, "Go and live in this." Yeah. Just wanted to make that point. We are to teach them the commandments of God.

We're not just supposed to disappear like Philip did. That was a unique situation. The Spirit takes him away.

Anything else you want to add there? That's okay. Yeah. So point being, the kingdom of God is central here.

So when we do evangelism, it's centered on the Word of God and it's centered on Christ. Which is why we started off again, guys. We started off talking about sociology because we do want to preach atonement to people.

We want to teach justification by faith alone. We want to teach that to people. And that's what he said.

He said, "Believe and you can go be baptized." Right? He preached justification by faith alone to him. Have faith? Okay. Well then yes.

So who's another famous evangelist in the Scriptures? Well, Matthew 3, 1 through 2, John the Baptist. Now in those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea saying, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." So if evangelism entails a call to repentance, that's also a very big point. It's not as explicit in the Acts 8, but Philip does through the scroll of Isaiah.

It's clear that he's coming to bear the sins of his people. There is a call of repentance from sin. In that scroll, I'm sure Philip walked out.

It's not explicit in that text, but John the Baptist is very explicit. He says, "Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand." So evangelism entails a call to repentance. And we call people into the kingdom of Christ, not to a future heaven, a kingdom now.

Evangelism is saying, "It's not come, be a part of this ritualistic church thing." And then we're just waiting for Jesus to come back and take us into his glorious presence. There's a sentence that's true, but you call somebody into the Christian faith now to be a part of the kingdom now, to have a king now, and to be saved now. Today is the day for salvation.

Yeah. And that's a little bit different from what John the Baptist is saying here, because he's saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He's not saying it's here.

But not out. He's saying it's coming. But for us today, we enter the kingdom of God through the new birth, right? When we're born again, which is the goal of evangelism is to convert the nations to God.

It's to essentially get the nations born again, essentially. And that's why Paul says in Colossians 1.13 that he has translated us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of his beloved Son. Exactly.

Right? So that's what conversion is in a nutshell. Being born again as you're entering into a new kingdom as an infant of that kingdom, and thereby you grow by grace. Yep.

So the calling to that is repentant for this kingdom of heaven is at hand. But for us today, what we say is the kingdom of heaven is here. We say that the kingdom of heaven is literally upon you.

It's coming and it is here with Christ the King. And all men everywhere are commanded to repent and believe in the gospel. Yeah.

Exactly. Amen. So what are some concise statements that we can trust about evangelism? As we think about evangelism, the way Bryce and I are portraying it here, how we think it's portrayed in the scriptures, how do we think biblically about evangelism? Well, we always are presuppositional.

We let the scriptures dictate how we evangelize. We don't take in psychology or we don't go out and try to do a survey or do some weird tactics to get people into the kingdom of God. We just, it's very clear what we do.

We just go out and we preach repentance in the kingdom of God through Christ is here. That's what we do. So we don't adopt foreign practices.

So we're trying to define evangelism based on the scriptures. And that's why we're looking at examples of how it's done. So here's some trustworthy statements.

You cannot be doing evangelism if you are just preaching the good news to people, you must call them to repent. Evangelism entails that you're taking them, like Bryce said, you're being transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light in Christ. That's what evangelism is.

And that's what we see in the text that we just went through. You must center your message on Jesus Christ as Savior. Well, let's back up real quick.

So that first point brought up, you cannot be doing evangelism if you are just preaching the good news. And that's an oxymoron. You can't preach the good news if you don't have repentance.

That is no gospel. Yeah. And that's what gospel means.

So people act as if they're preaching the good news when they put "Jesus loves you" on their bumper sticker. But that is not any good news at all. And obviously what Rocky is saying, like the good part of what the gospel brings.

That's obviously what Rocky is saying. But really, we shouldn't even be using that language because there is only good news in one thing. And that is the true gospel of Jesus that preaches repentance and faith in Christ.

And that is the merit and grounds of your salvation because you believe in the one who worked for your salvation. Yeah. So really, there is no good news that you can even preach if you don't have repentance.

Exactly. That's a false news. It's a false gospel.

Yeah, there was a... when I was in getting my undergrad in college, we were out doing evangelism and sharing the gospel and stuff. And there was this girl out there with us. And when people would walk by, she would just be like, "Jesus loves you!" That's all she'd say.

Like, "Mission accomplished." And I was like, "Do you know what you're saying? Like, you're just telling people that are dirty, rotten sinners, disgusting in the eyes of God, that Jesus is just fine with them the way they are. Jesus just automatically loves you." Yeah. They are hearing it as Jesus thinks, "I'm fine the way I am." There's a special love, Jesus... Like, Christ and I went through this when we did our adoption in this last series, the gospel and adoption of sons.

There's a very special love God has for his people. Don't tell people God just loves them the way they are. He does not.

He hates the way they are. He absolutely hates it and abhors it. He hates the wicked.

He doesn't, yeah, just hate the way that they are. He hates them. He hates them.

He's going to send them to hell. He's not going to send their sin to hell. He's going to send them.

So you're doing something very wicked by just saying Jesus loves you. You have to tell them the bad news. Jesus hates you and he can love you if you repent.

Yeah. And that doesn't mean that's the only way that you proclaim that message. Yeah, you don't have to just go around saying Jesus hates you.

You need to articulate that at some point though. I tried to and I'm sharing the gospel with people like, "Hey, you need to know though God's wrath is upon you if you don't repent." Exactly. Jesus does.

He's not happy with you right now. He wasn't happy with me before I started following Christ. Yeah.

And then that's where you want to be consistent with people and say it's not that I'm special. Remember that as I preach the gospel to you, remember, I'm not saying I'm special. God hated me before I repented.

Right. You need to do the same. Right.

Because they're going to hear it as, "Oh, you think you're special." Yeah. Right. Like, okay, so the second point I was going to make, you must center your message on Jesus Christ as Savior.

So we see Philip the great evangelist given to us in the Scriptures. What's he doing? He's preaching Christ to the Ethiopian unique. He's preaching Christ to him.

Yeah. That's very important. You can't preach the gospel by telling people a little bit of history about Jesus or... Right.

You must tell them what he did, what he was doing. That's why we just went through that whole series again, guys. The content of the gospel includes... Yeah.

So, to yourology, you need to walk them through why they needed atonement for sin. Preach Jesus to them as Savior. Not like some false Jesus or, again, like we're saying, "Jesus, I just love you the way you are." Right.

Or, "Jesus, I was a good moral teacher." Or, "Do some works and you can get into heaven." Yeah. Jesus as he is. Yeah.

That kind of Jesus. And that's not to be confused with the pietism of our day that teaches that Jesus is the... Or rather that all that the church is supposed to do is preach the gospel when they gather. We're talking about... You're supposed to preach the gospel to a pagan nation outside of the church walls.

Yeah. So we're talking about a different preaching. We're talking about the preaching out there.

Yeah. The preaching to your neighbors. Yeah.

The preaching to some random person on the side of the street, to your co-workers, to your mother-in-law, your father-in-law, your cousins, your uncles, any of that. That's what we're referring to. This is outside the church doors is what we're talking about.

Exactly. But the central message of the hope of Christianity is about the Lord Jesus. It's about what he has come to do as a surety to guarantee our salvation.

Exactly. So that's ultimately the goal of Angel. Your message is centered on Christ as Savior and as King.

Yep. Exactly. Third point, trustworthy thing about evangelism.

And the last point, you must teach them. Yeah. You do not just evangelize and then leave if they repent and believe in Christ.

This was the big flaw of the Billy Graham Crusades. This is the big flaw of evangelism in the 20th century. Right.

There was no lasting discipleship. There was no root. People would get their emotions aroused by... I mean, honestly, it goes back to William Carey and his methodology.

It's seeker friendly, getting as much people into the kingdom as quickly as possible, and then just no lasting discipleship happening to the people. Alter calls, all that methodology. Are you sure you're thinking about the right person? William Carey? You mean Charles Finney? Charles Finney.

I'm sorry. Charles Finney. Charles was meant to say not.

Not William Carey. I'm sorry. Not the great missionary.

I'm sorry. I said the wrong guy. Charles Finney.

Charles Finney. The revivalist. The revivalist.

I'm so sorry. I totally said the wrong name. It's like saying that evil hair take Charles Spurgeon.

I know my bad. Charles Finney. He was the bird.

Thank you for saving that there. He needs some milk. I need some milk.

I need some whiskey. Maybe a pipe too. But that guy, Charles Finney, seeker sensitive, alter call, all that birthing out of the earth, it wasn't a second great awakening in America.

Charles Finney. That guy. Not William Carey.

Not William Carey. But that's the methodology. I mean Billy Graham, I don't really like him much.

But that was the flaw of his methodology is get like 70,000 people in an arena, share their gospel with them, and then everybody leaves and goes home. That's not evangelism. Honestly, it's not because you teach them afterwards.

Conversion without discipleship only leads a person to find out at a future date that they're apostate. Yeah. You have to have discipleship or there's typically no real conversion.

Yeah. Because you're leaving a woe to him who falls down and has not another to pick him up. Exactly.

Right. You're leaving a person in an apostate state, which is not helpful. Well, it's really sad.

There's a person that I've shared the gospel with multiple times who profess faith in Christ. He told me and my wife, we sat down with him and he said that he's a Christian and he's believed on Jesus. He's repented of his sins and I didn't disciple him.

Because I shared the gospel with him, it was my responsibility to disciple him. I left him as he is and he's right now apostate through my sin. Right.

Yeah. That happened to me too in college as a guy. Should have been more faithful too.

Yep. So it's a big mistake. It'll leave the discipler a hole in your heart.

Right. It won't. It doesn't.

It's not Godly by any means to just leave that person to Satan. Yeah. Satan will sift them like wheat.

Oh yeah. You're supposed to be like Christ to them in a sense and pray for them, keep them. Yeah.

The people you disciple, the people you say. And that's honestly the hard part of evangelism is, oh, somebody, well, now I need to disciple them of the faith and get them in a church and rooted in the gospel. See, that's such a good point because it's so easy to go out and preach and evangelize.

It's very hard to spend time and disciple a person. Yeah. That's a real work.

Discipleship has more longevity. If you do that, you've been given to mere revivalism that teaches that you're just looking for the movements of the Spirit, the conversion of the souls like Rocky, San, those who come up to the altar. And if it's devoid of the discipleship, then you are just propounding and proselytizing an apostate church.

Exactly. And there's nothing wrong. I don't think there's anything wrong with, okay, you do one bowl.

You go out downtown somewhere in your local city, you proclaim the gospel. Somebody does repent. Yeah.

It's like you don't need to keep going out there week on, week out preaching the gospel. Although we need people to do that in the world. But if you get enough people that have repented and you have nobody you can kind of maybe hand them to to disciple them, it's your duty.

So don't be like, oh, well, I need to go out there for the glory of evangelism, street evangelism. It's like you had somebody repent. You need to spend some time with them first before you get back out in the field.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, that's just fundamentally gay. You're not doing the hard work.

Yeah. You're acting as if you are something special by going out and preaching. Yeah.

If you're not discipling, you're disobeying God in another direction. Exactly. So we need to have a healthy balance where we are going out and preaching the gospel because that's a major problem.

We do not have people who preach the gospel out of the church doors. Yeah. Not trying to knock that.

But I hope you guys see our point. It's the balance you want to have where you are going out and preaching the gospel, but you're also discipling the people who come to faith in Christ. Yeah.

If you actually make some converts out while doing evangelism, it might be prudent to maybe take three weeks off instead of on Saturday mornings going out and doing street evangelism. It might be prudent to maybe spend the next three weeks doing a small Bible study with those guys, getting them plugged into your church around some godly men. And then once you don't have the bulk of the discipleship, you can have other men finally.

Then it would be smart to do that. Yeah. And I think that was good with- And then there comes a person who says, "But nobody else is out to preach in the gospel.

I need to do that." Yeah. If you are trying to carry the burden on your own, you are effectually saying that Christ is unable to extend the borders of his kingdom without you. Yeah, exactly.

Right? He doesn't need you. He extends his kingdom through the conversion of souls and families. And when you convert a person, you've just converted a whole lineage.

Yeah, exactly. So why don't you try to break down, disciple that lineage where his children and his children's children to a thousand generations will be birthed in generational righteousness and faith. And they go out and preach the gospel and disciple the nations too.

Yeah, exactly. Right? You've got to be thinking legacy. You've got to be legacy minded.

And that's how Jesus was. Exactly. Again, everybody knows those models.

You look at the exponential growth of one faithful disciple versus Billy Graham, 10,000 quote unquote converts. Yeah. You make one faithful disciple, that is exponential growth.

You evangelize to 10,000 people and nobody remains in the faith. Yeah. That's not exponential growth.

And that's why Christianity destroyed Rome and why 12 men upended the world because Christ put his Holy Spirit inside of them. Yeah. There's exponential growth and making one faithful disciple.

Yeah. And another point too, discipleship does not always look like you meet together at a coffee shop at 7 AM when you really should be going to work. And you just sit there and you kind of talk about the Bible a little bit and then you kind of go your way.

Like that's not what we're referring to. We're talking about deep intentional teaching of God's word through maybe it actually is sitting down with them and actually walking up through the scriptures, but just showing them how to live as a Christian. Yeah.

Right? Taking them out with you. Exactly. Stuff like that.

Yeah. Having them come over and help you, I don't know, demo something in your backyard and build something and you teach them the faith while you're doing that. Yeah.

Have them over for chess or for dinner one night. Just hang out. Yeah.

But. See the way you interact with your wife. Right.

So you display them the commandments of God, but again, you also have to teach them. You have to be talking with them and discipling them in that manner. Exactly.

Okay. Let's finish up with, again, we started off talking about how pietism and churchianity is some of our big foes as we continue to talk about the gospel. How has pietism and churchianity destroyed evangelism? I'm going to walk through these real quick and then we're going to wrap up.

Here's some pietistic lies concerning evangelism. You teach them Jesus. They make you feel joyful and comfortable after you believe in Him.

That's the lie in evangelism. You'd say if you teach them about Christ and you tell them it's just going to make them feel all warm and fuzzy. Oh yeah.

Just follow Jesus and like you'll have joy. Yeah. And there's a hint of truth there.

You will. But you also have sorrowful. Sorrowful, you always rejoiceful.

Rejoicing. And that's the one thing I think I did really well with Bryce. When Bryce first became a Christian, I told Bryce, I said, this isn't just going to be some awesome thing.

It's amazing that you have salvation now you've repented. Yeah. But you have to put your sin to death and your whole life is going to get it's going to suck at times following Christ.

Right. It's hard to follow Jesus. You got to pick up your cross.

So tell them that. Don't give them some pietistic lie that it's just it's just like this amazing. You're going to look like a holy righteous person.

Everybody's going to be envious of you. You're going to abstain from all these sins and then look like an amazing saint. It's like, no, you're going to struggle with sin.

You're going to get bloody. You're going to get hurt. People make fun of you.

They will spit on you. You'll maybe be sad for some time that you're losing friends. You might struggle with doubt.

I don't understand this part of the Bible right now. And then eventually God will reveal that to you. So keep going.

Following Jesus means knowing he exists but not repenting of your sins. It's a big pietistic lie. It's just inward devotional with God just sitting out reading your Bible.

Oh yeah, I believe that this is true. But then not it never hits actually in your heart. It's a false piety.

Right. And you don't your obedience isn't from the heart. It's something that you just wait for your heart to be right.

And then you obey. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Here's some churchianity lies concerning evangelism. Evangelism is successful if you can get that person into a church. Oh, I go to church every Sunday.

This guy, I evangelize, he comes to church with me every Sunday. He's a faithful disciple. That is not the mark of a faithful disciple.

Yeah. The guy you might be bringing to church every Sunday, you might not spend any time with him outside of coming to church. And you think that just because he comes to church and hears preaching and sings some songs, that that's a faithful comfort.

That is not a faithful comfort. Because he's not living like a Christian for the rest of the six days. That's the lie of churchianity.

Evangelism has to take place through a church ministry. That is not the truth. You proclaim the gospel along the way, wherever you go at work to your kids.

Yeah. You proclaim the gospel wherever you're at to your friends that don't know Christ. Yeah.

You don't just wait till you, you know, oh, hey, we're going to do this homeless ministry. We're going to go to some homeless people and preach the gospel. Right.

You don't just wait until some ministry outreach to preach the gospel. To be an evangelist. Evangelism only happens on the mission field.

No, it does not. We live in a pagan country. We keep sending out missionaries to all these countries when our own house is being destroyed.

You got to get your house in order before you can send out people into the world. Right. The church in America is not in order.

There's heresy rampant. Paganism is rampant. Secularism is everywhere.

New age spirituality is everywhere. Homosexuality, fornication, all this stuff. Yeah.

Evangelism does not only happen in the mission field. It has to actually happen here. You guys, here's the truth.

The whole earth is the mission field. The blessed are the gentle for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew five, five, the sermon of the Mount.

Yeah. So the whole earth is the mission field. You don't have to wait until you're a two week long mission trip to some foreign country to be an evangelist.

Or you don't have to wait till you go through seminary. You don't have to wait until you're ordained by the church. Exactly.

You don't, you just, you're commanded to do it now. Yeah. You wait until what you've repented and believed in Christ, every single Christian.

Like, and here's what we want, guys. We want the lay, we want a bunch of beastly laymen evangelists. The laymen is supposed to be like, I get the deacons are too, but the laymen is supposed to be the evangelists.

What's that? Well, the elders is building up the church so that they can go out and evangelize properly. The elders are geared towards the church. They're supposed to, they're building up the church.

They're exhorting the church. They're building it up. That's like the main function of an elder.

And that's not to say that elders don't evangelize. They do. They do.

Yeah. You know, Paul commands Timothy to do the work of an evangelist. Yeah.

Timothy was an elder though. He's a missionary. Timothy? No, Timothy was an elder.

We can talk about that afterwards. Okay. But, my point is the laymen are evangelists, the deacons are evangelists.

So these are the lies of Piedesim and Churchianity. Any last point you want to make, Bryce? Are we good? Um, yeah, I think one last point that we ought to make is discipleship begins. We have to hit all the spheres of God's authority.

We have to recognize that we are to be discipled ourselves. We are to know the scriptures intimately and deeply. We are to know the word of God so that we can teach the word of God.

So that's the first basic prerequisite. Yeah. Secondly, discipleship is something that is intended for your family.

You need to be discipling your family specifically if you're a husband. Yeah. Right? You need to disciple your wife and you need to disciple your kids.

Because a lot of times nowadays we see kids who run around and they're apostate. They're not actually believers. And that's one of the main problems that we see.

We have men who act as if they're patriarchs and men who act as if they are these great preachers or great men of God. Yeah, their wives dress like whores and their daughters are loudmouth and disobedient. Yeah.

Right? That's the main problem. We need to disciple our families. And then, and only then, once we have dealt with our house, once we have dealt with our responsibilities, may we go and disciple the nations.

No, that's a good point. I'm glad you made that. You got to keep the spheres, the importance of the spheres in check.

Yeah. Make sure you do not neglect your family to do street preaching or to do discipleship with some young man that you think is going to change the world. Oh, this young guy, he's on fire.

He's more important than my son. No, no, no, no, no. Do not ever.

God changes the world through families. That's what our old Dabney says is true revival. That which takes place in the family realm.

That's the promise of the new covenant in Malachi 4.6 that God will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. He blesses the righteous up to the third or sorry, he blesses the righteous up to a thousand generation and he visits the iniquities of the fathers and to the children to the third and fourth generations. So it's progressively God that shows his favor progressively more towards the righteous to a thousand generations.

And he curses the wicked to only three and four generations.

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