Living in the New Covenant - Evangelism

Too far to the side, you'll hurt my neck, actually, is what will happen. You need this microphone on here? So that's better. Well, good evening. My name is Michael Coughlin, and I live in Columbus, Ohio. I really live in a city called Pickerington, if you've heard of it.

It's just on the southeast side of Columbus, Ohio. and as Adam said, I came here to preach and one of the things Adam asked me to preach about when he heard me preach a message last year was about evangelism. And so because, so if you don't know my story very well, I have always, like since I got saved, I've been very evangelistic. I just it was a natural thing for me to just go out and tell people what had happened to me and to tell them about Jesus.

And I did it like totally fearlessly. I actually didn't know it was supposed to be like something you were afraid of. I was just so naive, like that's just how I was. And I had no Christian upbringing. I didn't know what I was getting into when I became a Christian. I I just believed and I had no idea like all the rest of this stuff.

So when people tell you you've got to count the cost, you do, but nobody told me the cost. So I just signed up and I've learned it along the way. But so because I do so much evangelism, I didn't want to be a person who was pegged as just a guy that preaches about evangelism all the time. Like I only have one message. And so I've almost tried to avoid it.

But I'm really excited because we're going to talk about evangelism tonight. And it goes exactly with the song we sang. Because what I want to exhort you to tonight is, and the topic is living in the new covenant. That's the theme, I think. And so what I want to talk to you about is how you being in the new covenant requires you to evangelize. And you should want to.

And I want to give you some practical tips. but then also through your worship of Christ, you are building evangelism yourself even by worshiping Christ publicly, by doing it as your family, even coming to a retreat like this. When you go to work next week and someone says, hey, what did you do this weekend? You know, you're going to tell them what you did, hopefully, and it's going to be, well, I went with my church to a retreat and we did this and that, and then they go, well, why did you do that? and it gives you a chance to maybe tell people about Jesus simply because you're worshiping Him.

And so that's what I want to do. And then tomorrow, just to prep you, tomorrow night we're going to talk about suffering, something that also is accompanied with being in the New Covenant. It's promised to you. And they actually do go hand in hand. We'll see a little bit. But I want you to turn to Psalm 98. so just to get maybe some technical details out of the way just so you don't know me one of the ways Adam and I met is we both have podcasts on the Bible Thumping Wingnut Network and so I have one called Be a Berean and so I just try to exhort people to look into the scripture and to see if the things they're hearing are true and so you're welcome to subscribe and listen to that I was going through a series for a while where I was going through an atheist website where this atheist had all these common objections to Christianity, and I was responding to them and trying to give people ideas of how to answer those types of objections.

And then in the middle of that, I became a church planter, unintentionally. It wasn't my plan, but I became a church planter last July and planted a church that I'm the pastor of. and so I've been really busy since then and I haven't been doing as much podcasting but in the last few weeks I've been recording some of the teachings I've done at church and putting them on my podcast and so I have a page on sermon audio if you like sermons and I have a website called thingsabove.us where I blog with a team of guides I blog probably less than, probably two, three times a month right now but there's a lot of old articles on there I went through every verse of Psalm 119 a couple years ago. And so that, you know, you could do a daily devotional on it for half a year if you wanted just from my blog post.

But you're welcome to do that. But we'll look at Psalm 98. And are you guys in ESV mostly, church? We're like home in the HCS. Oh, okay, okay. So I'll just tell you this.

I have Psalm 98 memorized because a lady that we know wrote it into a song. And my whole church, we sing it like once a month as part of our worship. So if you want, I can send you over the MP3. It's ESV, if you don't mind. And it's really fun to sing. In fact, I was singing it before I came to dinner.

But let's just read through this psalm and then we're going to go through it and I'll tell you how this relates to evangelism and the new covenant. Psalm 98, a psalm. So just a note for people as you're reading the Bible. The little notes that come at the beginning of the psalms, like according to the Gittith or a Psalm of David. That's actually part of the inspired scripture.

So when you read the Psalms, don't skip that. That's actually part of it. Oh, sing to Yahweh a new song, for He has done marvelous things. His right hand and His holy arm have worked salvation for Him. Yahweh has made known His salvation. He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations.

He has remembered His steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God Make a joyful noise to Yahweh all the earth Break forth into joyous songs and sing praises Sing praises to Yahweh with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody. With trumpets and the sound of the horn, make a joyful noise before the King Yahweh. Let the sea roar and all that fills it.

Let the rivers and the world and those who dwell in it. Let the rivers clap their hands. Let the hills sing for joy together before Yahweh. For he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity. And so the first thing I want you to notice here that I notice is a very new Christian going to a church that was, I'm trying to say it nicely, it was a church I had to leave for some reasons.

But one thing that happened at this church that I went to was we would go to church every Sunday and they would have what they called big teaching or something. It had a cool name. I don't remember now. It was like a hip church thing. But we would go to church and we would have teaching and we wouldn't sing any songs. And I thought it was a little strange but I liked it.

I didn't want to sing songs at the time yet. And I thought it was strange though. When I asked people why, they said, well because there's no command in the New Testament to sing songs. Which I didn't know that, yes there is. Most of you are probably thinking Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5. So certainly these people had something missing there.

But they thought that in the New Testament we didn't sing songs. And I remember, as a somewhat new believer, reading through the Psalms in the 90s. And a lot of the Psalms in the 90s up to Psalm 100 really go together nicely. Like if you start at like 95 and read to 102, they really go together. It's almost like one little story. You should read them together.

And a lot of them repeat the same theme. But you know, in this Psalm, one of the things I noticed as a new believer was that in verse 3, at the end of verse 3 it says, all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. And I understood at the time that at the time of Israel, when Israel was getting delivered from various things that they would be delivered from, that they would have sung the salvation of God for, there was no way that all the ends of the earth had seen God's salvation.

The Israelites being delivered from the hands of some enemy in the Middle East. There was no internet. It wasn't like they had guys on horseback traveling the world to share these things. And so you have to ask yourself, did David or whoever wrote Psalms, did they just use it as some kind of euphemism or a metaphor, a figure of speech? Or were they literally writing from God's perspective because he's inspiring the scripture?

And this is a psalm that's actually to be understood in a new covenant context. Where we realize that, hey, in the new covenant with Jesus Christ rising from the dead and his blood being shed for people, now this message is spread throughout the earth. And we haven't reached every people group yet. But really the whole world has had Christianity start to spread to it.

And so I see this psalm as something that is talking about specific things in Israel, but also it's very applicable to the life of believers in the New Testament, in the New Covenant. And so when we get to verse 4, it says, Make a joyful noise to Yahweh, all the earth. break forth in a joyous song and sing praises. So to me, that blew away that church's doctrine that we shouldn't sing.

You know, I just thought, well, you know, this psalm is applicable and it says sing so we should. But what you notice is that we're making a joyful noise and singing songs and praises with lyres and melody and trumpets. And we're actually making loud noises. There's nothing about what's happening in this psalm that it's like secret church, you know? Like, this is about proclaiming the God of our salvation and to boldly do it loudly.

And I think that sometimes we suffer from fear of man and we're afraid to say what he's done for us because we've learned that, well, there's certain places where you could get, what do we say nowadays? We say we could get canceled, right? And there's probably people in this room who, and maybe we'll talk about suffering tomorrow. I'm laughing at all the pregnant ladies, because I remember Adam saying, we've got to do this in March because there's all these pregnant ladies.

And I'm starting to notice them now. But I've been around enough births now. I think I could do one if we had to, but I don't want to. So let's try to hold off. But I've been there enough times in the room now. But what I want you to understand is that we're making this noise.

And some of you in this room may end up making that noise and suffer a little bit for it. And that can be scary. You know, if you're the person that brings home the money for your house, that feeds your wife and your children, and you know that by opening your mouth at work, it could change all that in a moment, in our culture now, that's a scary thing.

I'm not going to pretend it's not. but what I'm going to do is I'm going to exhort you that if Jesus Christ could take on human flesh be born of a virgin live the perfectly sinless life that you and I could not live obeying God law in every jot and tittle fulfilling the law perfectly in His flesh and then suffering the penalty that people like you and I deserve for our law truly dying in the flesh, suffering the wrath of God for sin, and then raising from the dead. If He could do that for you, we can do what He's called us to do, and that's to tell people about them. If you have a, you'll see me in my Buckeye shirt tomorrow, if you have a favorite sports team, some of you, some of you have maybe a doctor that's helped you a lot.

A lot of people love their chiropractors, I've noticed. You know, we all have things we're happy to brag about, okay? People like, there's things in their life they're happy to share, right? You get a good recipe, you tell people about it. What I believe is that everybody here, you're all evangelists. the question is, what's your message? Because every one of you is opening your mouth and you're telling people something.

Are you telling people about the Lord Jesus Christ? So, if you look at the end of this psalm where it says, verse 7 then, so first we have all these instruments we're to use to make noise about God. Verse 7 says, Let the sea roar and all that fills it, the world and those who dwell in it. Let the rivers clap their hands and let the hills sing for joy together. before Yahweh, for He comes to judge you.

The whole creation actually worships God. It's sometimes kind of hard to... This is not actually really metaphorical. The creation actually worships God. The creation groans in the pains of childbirth waiting for the deliverance from the curse that the creation itself is under. And we groan with the same groans.

We want to be delivered from the curse we're under as well. but then look at what happens at the end it says that let all these things happen before Yahweh for he comes to judge the earth and it says he will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity and now we get into what I think becomes the message that we are supposed to try to tell people and one of the hardest things about telling people about Jesus Christ is not telling people hey did you know God is love and Jesus is love and he came and then we have Christmas presents and then we can color eggs and, you know, all the things we do in the United States because Jesus came. That's not actually the difficult part. The difficult part is telling people the reason why Jesus Christ came is because he will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity.

So the old saying is before you can get someone saved, you've got to get them lost. And you live in a culture where telling people that they have sinned against a holy God and that God is righteously going to execute His justice upon them, that's really offensive to people. And unless the Holy Spirit brings revival, the best you can hope for is maybe to be hated by people that you actually are loving with the gospel.

So it's a very difficult message, but if we believe what the Bible says, we're going to share it. In Psalm 96, if you go back a page, it's a very similar psalm if you read it I told you read through the 90's and like the early 100's they all go together pretty well but in Psalm 96 just one thing I want to point out in verse 10 he says say among the nations Yahweh reigns, I say Yahweh when it says Lord it's just my way I think I'm translating it better than the ESV translators so you can learn about that if you want but he says, yes, the world is established. It shall never be moved.

He will judge the peoples with equity. So again, we have this warning that he's going to judge, but we're actually to say among the nations throughout the whole world, God reigns. So we're announcing that there's a king, and his name is Jesus Christ. So not only is he the God that came to save people, and he's the baby in the manger, and everybody likes to talk about that, and people, even non-believers will say like, yeah, happy Easter.

They may not get what it's supposed to mean, but they'll even assent to the fact that there really was a guy who died and rose again. I mean, people think that can happen. It is a little bit out of the ordinary, but there are people that believe it even if they don't believe in Jesus. But when you tell them Jesus is the Lord, he reigns, he's king supreme, that's offensive to people because when you announce that, that means they're accountable to him. and so I find it interesting that he says yes the world is established he says it shall never be moved but when the apostles preached the gospel in the book of Acts do you remember what it said they did? they turned the world what? does anybody know? in Acts 17 they turned the world upside down so in the Psalm 96 it says the world will never be moved but when you preach the gospel you turn the world upside down So if you turn to 1 Timothy, I'll try not to make you jump around too much, but I found that a lot of people like when they're told to go through the Bible and read things that are Christian, so it's okay.

But in 1 Timothy, we want to answer the question in chapter 2, to whom should we give the gospel? So you have this gospel, Jesus Christ died for sinners, he rose again so that sinners could be forgiven. the only way that you can be forgiven by a holy God is by the blood of Jesus Christ that he offered on your behalf and you have to believe in him and you don't add any works to it and you don't take away anything that he did and that's how a person can be saved and if you're in this room I hope you know that if you don't know it tonight's the night don't harden your heart tonight's the night to get saved if you're a little kid in here don't count on anything but Jesus Christ don't count on you being a little kid or whatever you need to believe you need to turn to your Lord although don tell the kids but I do think God has a special place for the real little ones if something happens but I don know what that age is so I preach to all of them But in 1 Timothy 2, Timothy says in verses 3 and 4, talking about praying for all people, but the key verse I want to get to is 4. He says, this is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior.

This is praying for all these guys. He says, who, God, desires all people to be saved. and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now, I don't know if this is a bad word here, but I'm a Calvinist. Is that a bad word here? Okay. Well, I'm a Calvinist, so if you're a Calvinist and you think I just contradicted the election or something, I didn't.

This is the Scripture, and I think God does desire all people to be saved in at least one sense, that He desires people from every tribe, race, tongue, and nation to be saved. So we can have the argument about every individual person if somebody wants, like there's people that believe different there. But the point is this, that if God wants people to be saved all over the world, we have to go all over the world and tell people how to get saved.

And the way to get saved is through the preaching of God's word, through the sharing of Jesus Christ with people. There's no other way that someone can get saved but to hear the name of Jesus Christ and believe in it. And so if you have, let's just say you have a neighbor, or you have a co-worker, and you're not sure if they're a Christian. You have a few options.

One option is, well, I'll assume they're a Christian because it might offend them if I start asking them questions and maybe they'll be offended that I don't believe they're a good person or something like that. And if that person turns out to be a Christian, you may have missed out on some sweet fellowship with that person. Maybe they need a church to go to and you could have invited them to your church, right?

If they turn out to be a non-Christian and you didn't say something to them, they're going to end up in hell. They're going to end up being punished for their sins. And you were the person that was in a position to go and tell them about Jesus. If they turn out to be a non-Christian, and you, oh wait, if you reach out to them, that's right, if you reach out to them and they turn out to be a Christian, they'll be your friends and you can get to know them and have fellowship and if they're a non-Christian and you decide to reach out you may end up having a new friend out of it too they may respect you afterwards but you may actually help a non-Christian to know Jesus and so you really want to think about the fact that you may be the person that God has put in someone's life to tell them about Jesus and so we preach what do we preach?

We preach the gospel okay when I say preach you can teach the gospel you can some people will say share the gospel like they'll just talk to people about it you don't have to stand in a corner and preach or whatever and you can sing the gospel some of you are probably very talented singers every church I know has a bunch of them and some of you if you just sang songs that tell the story of Jesus, there's people who would hear it. You go out during Christmas, you can sing Christmas carols, no one's going to be bothered by it. Like literally, we can sing Christmas carols for an hour at Ohio State, and people walk by, and they'll just kind of smile and clap, and then I'll start preaching, and it's like, shut up!

I'm saying the same thing we just said in the song. I'm just shouting it or whatever. So there's different ways that you can share the gospel with people. and so the message is the gospel who you give it to is anyone you can and you really want to prepare your heart for that so you should be praying for opportunities we believe God's sovereign and God is providential and so if you pray that God gives you people in your life that you can tell about Jesus Christ he will and the way you'll know is that you'll be walking away from someone sometime and you'll realize like, oh, that was the person that God sent to me.

And that's how I learned it. Like, oh, I need to stop what I'm doing. And I need to try to care about that person's soul more than hurrying up to get my gas and getting back in the car. More than hurrying through the store to get the milk and the butter or whatever it is. And then just getting home. Like I need to think about my life as evangelistic.

Ray Comfort says, he doesn't go to the store for milk. He says, I go to the store to share the gospel with people, and while I'm there, I buy milk. But what he's showing is that if you make it your priority, if you make it your way of life, it just comes naturally to you. And so one of the ways that you can share the gospel, so methodologically, is through gospel tracts.

And so we use the word tract. I have no idea where the word tract comes from. I would have called it a card if I would have invented these. But they were called tracts before I became a Christian, and so I just call them tracts. So you can, I call them Jesus cards, but anyway. So I brought some of my gospel tracts.

I've got a box of them there, and you guys can take as many as you want to help encourage you. But I'm going to give you a couple examples of how you can share the gospel while you're just out worshiping God in your heart all the time. While you're at the grocery store, when you're at the homeschool co-op, when you're picking up kids at sports, when you're coaching sports, when you're doing, I'm a sports guy, so what are other things people do?

Like music lessons, if you're gardening, whatever it happens to be, bring gospel cards with you, bring gospel tracks with you. And then, you know, like today I was at a rest stop. I handed out five of them. I'll never see those people again. But God providentially made it so five people received gospel tracks today from me in the middle of Pennsylvania for no reason other than Adam asked me to speak.

And I just happened to have them in my pocket, which I forget to do half the time. But it was my priority. I was thinking about it. And so I brought two tracts that I'll share with you. And what a tract is, is it's a little card that has the gospel on it. And it has enough information, hopefully, that a person can understand their sin before God and understand what would need to happen for them to become a Christian.

And so it's very succinct. It's not intended to be a theological treatise on anything. You hope it's error-free. You get it proofread, not only for typos, but theological errors. But it's really just the basics, right? Some people call it mere Christianity almost.

And so this is a little bigger one that fits a couple paragraphs. And it just tells people, I'll just read the headings. It says, there's nothing more important. and then it talks about considering will you spend eternity. And then the second one says, but God demonstrated his love and it describes what Jesus did. And then at the end it says, you must be born again.

And it just has a little bit of support for some of these things. And then on this side, it actually just has my website on it because then people can contact me if they believe it or if they just want to argue, whatever they want to do, they can get a hold of me. And so if somebody called me and said, hey, I was in Carlisle, PA, and I got this card, I could say, well, call Adam.

I know where it probably came from, right? And so these are pretty easy to hand out to people if you just hand them to people. People usually take them. You can go to crowded areas and hand them out real easy, like football games is where I go to a lot. And any place there's people lining up, fairs. and most of the time you can hand these things out and people won't bother you.

You know, you just, when you're leaving a store, you can give them to people, things like that. But this one's a little bigger. And if you want to take them, I've got like a box of them and like, just take them. And if you want to take it and rewrite it a little and create your own, that's great too. Put your church on this side of it someday, you know, whatever you want to do.

And so, so these are bigger and they hold more information. but then I also have these little ones that people really like and I like them too they're business card size so they fit very easily anywhere you want to have them and this says thank you on it I don't know if you can see it it just says thank you on this side and then on this side is another custom gospel message which is much shorter I had to cut about a hundred words out to fit it and it's kind of fine print so some people they can't read them it's so fine print but what I do I carry these thank you cards around with me. And whereas these ones, people sometimes reject because they figure out, oh, you're one of those people that's handing out cards and they kind of walk by you like you're icky and you're like, okay, I'm just a human being still. But these thank you notes, people love them.

And so you go through a drive-thru, you go to the store and buy your groceries, somebody holds a door for you. Literally, if you actually have a heart of gratitude, which living in the new covenant you should when people do things for you any kindness at all hand them a thank you note and most people just they say thank you and it's like well you're welcome but like I was thanking you and then it gets weird but the point is is that you can give these out really easily and on the back it says I gave this card to you because I appreciate what you've done for me and then it says I care about you and want to tell you something important and it just gets right into the gospel And it's not like sugar-coated or anything like that. I mean, it gets them right into what needs to happen so that they'll know who Jesus is.

But it's very easy to get these in people's hands. And if you believe that people are hopelessly dead in their sins until the Holy Spirit works on their life so that they will be granted faith and believe the gospel, and if you believe that the way the Holy Spirit, the method He uses is the gospel, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and then also to the Greek which really just means anyone if you believe those things then getting somebody the word of God written so they can read it is one of the most important things you can do And God uses it There's stories of people who found... There was a story I read the other day of a guy who said his dad was in a phone booth calling his mom, and he picked up a tract and read it and believed it.

And the guy's a pastor now, so this guy was in a phone booth, read a tract, and now he's got a kid that's a pastor, you know. And so God really works through these things. And there's other ways. You can talk to people. You know, some people don't like conversations as much or whatever. But when you go out, you can just strike up conversations with people.

You can wear a T-shirt that says something like about God. And a lot of times someone will say something to you about it. And then you can have a conversation. And so if you structure your life around worshiping God in all that you do, you know like Romans 12 says to offer your body as a living sacrifice which is your spiritual worship if you're living that way like just use an example you go to the grocery store if you're on your way to the grocery store and in your mind you're worshiping God in your mind you're singing praises to the Lord with the lyre and the harp and all these things are going on in your heart you're singing a song to the Lord in your heart if you're worshiping Him, it's going to be totally natural when someone says like, hey, how are you doing?

Or what's going on? Or whatever. Instead of talking about the weather or the latest news or whatever you saw on Facebook, it's going to be natural for you to say, well, the Lord is good. This is something He did today. He made the sun come up. Because He did.

When somebody says, what'd you do this weekend on a Monday at work? How many times have you opened your mouth and said, well I got to worship the Holy God on Sunday that's not our thing that's like normal to us so when people say what did you do this weekend we think about well what did I do Friday night and then Saturday I cut the grass and we went to a ball game and then Saturday well we watched a movie and you kind of think about it that way but if you reorient your thinking around worshiping God and saying among the nations Yahweh reigns and constantly worshiping him, and realizing what it took for you to be allowed to worship him, the blood of his son, Jesus, then the fact that he lets you wake up on Sunday and go to church and worship him is the most amazing thing of your week every single week. The fact that anybody stands up and preaches the word to you on a weekly basis, and you have fellow brothers and sisters that want to be around you and talk to you, that's a phenomenal thing, and God's worthy to be praised for it.

And if you're excited about that, it'll come out your mouth. So part of what I'm saying is that evangelism isn't about getting some rules from some guy that doesn't go to your church. And he rolled in here and he wore a collared shirt and had a big leather Bible. So he must know something. And so I got to go do what this guy told me. And oh, and he gave me these cards.

So if I just pass them out, I'm doing the right thing. Evangelism comes from your heart. and it starts with love for Jesus Christ. It starts with your daily devotion to Him, and your worshiping Him through your prayer, and through studying His Word, and trying to commune with Him through the fellowship and the breaking of bread with your brethren, and the sacraments, or whatever you call them, ordinances, and the baptism, and the Lord's Supper, and doing the songs together.

And you do those things, and then it's just natural to tell people about them. And so that's what I want to encourage you to do. I want to encourage you to tell people about Jesus because He is worthy to tell people about Him. In 2 Corinthians 4, you can turn there. I just want to finish with a thought for you. You're worshiping God.

You're telling people about Jesus Christ because you love Him so much. You desperately want to see people saved. You're praying, God, give me souls. God, give me souls. Give me people in my path who you will save and you will bring into our church and you bring them into the greater church where maybe they live somewhere else and you praying for these things and God gives you people and what will happen I think inevitably I hope it's not inevitable, but it seems like a lot of people reject the message.

And that can be discouraging. And it can be very hard to go out and do this. Like, I can tell you with all seriousness that I have preached to at least a million people. And I can count maybe less than ten people that have come to the Lord in my time of doing that. And that's because I'm a street preacher and I just preach out on the street at football games.

And, you know, I was telling Matt I preached in Spanish. Was that you I told? Yeah, I preached in Spanish at a Barcelona game a couple of years ago outside a soccer game, you know. And got the same response there as I get in the United States, you know. People were cussing me out in Spain. I just didn't know what they were saying with their hate.

So that was kind of nice. I just said, gracias. I'll tell you a quick funny story. I was in Spain, in Barcelona, and I'm out there preaching. The other thing is I almost never preach alone. But I'm in Spain all by myself, so I'm like, I'm just going to preach.

So I go out and I'm preaching in Spanish, and I don't know Spanish really well. actually when I went to Mexico I actually learned enough Spanish that I preached in Spanish without notes but in Spain I was just reading my gospel tract in Spanish so I'm standing there preaching and I'm reading the words and I know what it says but I don't know anything else and the policia come up to me and they start talking to me in Spanish and I'm like no hablo espanol because I don't And the cop's like, I don't remember the word, but he called me a liar in Spanish because he's like, you're speaking Spanish. And I was like, no, no, no. And I said, leo.

I kept saying, I read, I read. And he's like, oh, okay. And I just told him, I'm just reading. I don't know anything but what I'm yelling. I'm just yelling what's on this card. And he said, well, you're scaring people.

And I said, well, you know, I'm sorry. and scaring people. And I didn't want to spend a night in a Barcelona jail and miss a flight home or whatever, so I kind of quit after that. But anyway, that's a funny story. But the point is, you may not get a lot of people that believe. Or you may not get a lot of people who believe right away when you tell them this message.

They may even reject you for it. But the temptation then will be to change the message a little bit. the temptation will be to maybe not talk so much about the fact that they're a sinner or maybe not focus so much on how holy God is so that people don't reject you so much. That's the temptation that comes when we're sharing things from God's word is to soften the blow a little bit.

And what I want you to be encouraged by in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul says, therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God. You only have a ministry by God's mercy. You actually deserve to be in hell right now. So your ministry you have is by God's mercy. He says, we do not lose heart. And I just want to tell you, don't lose heart either.

Don't lose heart. He says, we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. we refuse to practice cunning and listen he says or to tamper with God's word he says but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God he basically just says hey you know what this gospel has been given to us we are not authorized to change the message simply because people reject us or even have hurt us or if you've read any church history have killed believers for preaching this. You know the reason we have English Bibles is men died so we could have them.

I mean, like we're reading in English right now because people died so we could, you know. And he says, if our gospel's veiled, it's veiled to those who are perishing. So if you preach the gospel to someone and they don believe it because they not one of Christ sheep Which is sad But then he says In their case the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, the glory of Jesus Christ, who is the image of God.

But then the corollary of that, or converse of that is true. When the gospel is not veiled, it's not veiled for those who are Christ's sheep and so when you're out there sharing the gospel and you're getting tired and you're handing out these cards and I have purchased at least 100,000 of these or more I don't get a lot of people that I know have responded with belief, it gets hard, it gets tiring, but the thing is when you get one so we'll back up one time, first of all God's worth it, if nobody ever believed preaching His gospel is worth it because he's worth it. But from a human perspective, if you see even just one person who believes, it's meaningful to that person that you went out and you did the work.

And to that person, they're so grateful that their soul was worth maybe all of the difficulty that you faced to get to the point when you actually were with them. And so I don't want you to lose heart. And because you're not losing heart, I don't want you to worry about needing to tamper with the message. So say among the nations Yahweh reigns. If the sea and the hills and the earth are singing for joy about this great God, how much more should you who have been redeemed do so?

And so I want you to be encouraged. One of the concerns when you preach is that people just hear like law and legalism. Right? So I don't want people to leave and think, oh, he just gave me a new task and I'm going to do it. I want you to think about it from your heart's perspective. I want you to think about it from the perspective of, in my heart, am I sanctifying the Lord Jesus and making Him holy in my heart?

And what does that mean? If I'm doing that, it's going to be my natural thing to want to go out and share the Gospel. And so always go back to those basics when you find doing the things you know that God wants you to do difficult. Go back to the basics of communing with Him and reminding yourself of His great salvation He's given you, which should motivate you to those good works that He has provoked us to in the New Testament.

So let me pray. And then remember, I'm going to leave these tracks here for the next 24 hours or so, so take what you want and then I'll just take the rest home. I've got lots more. Don't worry about me. I've got lots more. Father, thank You that Your Word is always true.

Thank You that Jesus Christ has always been God and that Your salvation was always known to you. That all this time that we read the Psalms and the Israelites did their things, that they were ultimately singing of the perfect salvation that Jesus would come and He would do the work that He did. And so, Lord, thank You that we can learn from the example given in the Old Testament and thank You that the New Testament gives us the encouragement we need to go on as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of Jesus Christ.

And so help us, Lord, to be encouraged while we wait for Him to come and to do the things that we know we should do, like tell people about Jesus. Help us to do it, even if we're afraid. And I ask your protection, Lord, as we do this, that you would go before us and prepare hearts of people to hear your word and that we may see the salvation of God and that we may get to rejoice with people as they believe in Jesus.

In Christ's name I pray. Amen. I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.