Errant Evangelism, Part 1

If we are entering into God's redemptive plan and purpose for our local assembly, will there be a clear response among the people that we affect? Yes. Will it always be the response we want? Go even deeper than that. Is it always the response God wants? It is not up to us to do what we do based on what response we get. We do what we do because He is worthy, because He is to be honored, because He is incredible. And it only right that the lips and mouths and lives of men and women all over this world should be honoring and glorifying Him. That is why we do what we do. We don't do it with an eye on the response.

This response-oriented ministry is another one of the flaws in the way we’ve been led to think. By way of illustration, let me mention a personal example. I’ve gone to preachers' fellowships many, many times and had preachers say something along the lines of:

“How's it going in that small work you've got going over there?”

“Well, it's going very well.”

“Tell me about the growth.”

“Oh, the growth is miraculous.”

“Really? How many people have you added in the last month?”

“I'm not sure if we’ve added any.”

“Well, what do you mean? I mean, come on, what are you talking about? How do you measure success in the ministry? Don't you measure it by outward growth?”

“No, absolutely not! Where did you get that idea from? That's not a biblical idea. That makes no sense at all.”

God is not in the majority, folks. He's not all excited and pumped up about numbers. He never has been. Luke plainly tells us, “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” One; and God is beside Himself with joy. That's incredible. It has nothing to do with numbers. So, we are not aiming at a specific response! What we're aiming at is the privilege of honoring and glorifying Him while we're in this world, because when we move on to the next realm of our relationship with God, we're all going to honor and glorify Him. There won't be anybody there who doesn't. But we get to do it down here where nobody wants to, and that means no matter what the response is. But there was a clear response among the people.

In verse 43, it says, "And fear came upon every soul." Are you all right with that? Now, many people say, "That's not fear. That's not what that means." But that is exactly what it means. Fear came upon them. Fear. The Greek word there is phobos. It is the same word from which we get our word phobia. Is it okay with you that one of the results of true evangelistic work is fear coming upon people? It better be all right with you. We better stand in fear of the God whose son we murdered by our sins, because every man is going to give an account of himself to Him.

Peter was very clear about that here and later, and so were the apostles all throughout the early days of the church. Paul, Peter, John, James, all the way through.

Now, when he's talking about the fear of God among God's authentic people, it is not a craven fear of feeling the need to run and hide. But we come to the Book of Revelation chapter 6, and it begins to talk about the Lamb on the throne, and it says, “The kings of the earth and the mighty men of the earth and the rich men of the earth and all these men began to run and hide, begging for the mountains to fall on them.” That's fear. And what were they fearing? The Lamb on the throne. Genuine redemptive labor is going to point to the Lamb on the throne, not to the desperate neediness of a lost world.

This is where we've made our gravest errors, folks. We are not preaching Him for who He is. We have turned the divine Son of God into a ‘salvation fetish.’ Instead of going to them with this giant ‘God-ordained Band-Aid’ to fix everything that is so fouled up in our lives, we must point them to the Son of God who has been hated and rejected by men of all generations and was killed by lost religious sinners. We have slaughtered Him. We didn't want anything to do with what He said. Nevertheless, He is the Son of God, and God raised Him from the dead, and all men are going to stand before Him.

Instead of talking about whether or not the sinner wants to further investigate what might be available to him with regard to his horrifying estrangement from Christ, we start talking to them something like this:

“You know you've got this drinking ‘problem,’ and drugs have messed you up. You're estranged from your first wife, and there’s all these problems, and life is like that under the sun, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, it’s awful.”

“Wouldn’t you like for God to fix it?” Well, Jesus will do that for you.”

It is horrifying to preach or do personal work like that! As we have clearly seen, the apostles never did that, never.

The biblical Gospel confronts men with who God is, and one of the clearest and most important responses is fear. There better be fear. But we wipe that off the slate, and we bring [another] Jesus to them on a silver platter trying to spoon-feed them a Christ who is a great problem solver and loves them so much He just can't even notice their sins and so on.