Sharing the Gospel

Title: Sharing the Gospel

What this is all about: Evangelism

What I want you to know: How you live your life reveals what you believe about God.

What I want you to do: Turn everyday conversations into gospel conversations

How I want you to do this: Prioritize God first with prayer and personal Bible study.

Series: Acts of Harvest

Text:

Date: 2-18-2018

Pastor Mike Ellis

Introduction:

Today we will continue in our journey through the book of Acts, through the lens of harvesting.

The theme comes from which says;

John 4:35 CSB

“Don’t you say, ‘There are still four more months, and then comes the harvest’? Listen to what I’m telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, because they are ready for harvest.

This is also where we find the title of our preaching series “The Acts of Harvest”

To this point in Acts we have read about some amazing and wonderful things happen.

People being saved by the thousands, some selling off their property to support the poor, all of them being devoted in prayer and breaking bread with one another.

Responding to the call of serving one another, and fulfilling the great commission, with making disciples.

Last week we looked very closely to responding to our call and we saw through a parable that Jesus gave that we are responsible for the gifts and resources that God has given us.

This entire look at the book of Acts has undeniably shown the importance of the Holy Spirit in all aspects of the early church as well as today, and so we continue.

Read

Acts 8:26–40 CSB

An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip: “Get up and go south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is the desert road.) So he got up and went. There was an Ethiopian man, a eunuch and high official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to worship in Jerusalem and was sitting in his chariot on his way home, reading the prophet Isaiah aloud. The Spirit told Philip, “Go and join that chariot.” When Philip ran up to it, he heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, “Do you understand what you’re reading?” “How can I,” he said, “unless someone guides me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the Scripture passage he was reading was this: He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who will describe his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. The eunuch said to Philip, “I ask you, who is the prophet saying this about—himself or someone else?” Philip proceeded to tell him the good news about Jesus, beginning with that Scripture. As they were traveling down the road, they came to some water. The eunuch said, “Look, there’s water. What would keep me from being baptized?” So he ordered the chariot to stop, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him any longer but went on his way rejoicing. Philip appeared in Azotus, and he was traveling and preaching the gospel in all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

1. Valentines Shooting

2. What is important

Lexi and praying for things to get better.

3. How We Spend Our Time

The way you live your life reveals many things about who you are.

Today we live our lives as if we are busy.

And if we are not busy, we will find something to make ourselves so.

Today it is easy to see that people are always thinking in the back of their mind that someone else will take of …, or that they don’t have time for …

What is it that you don’t have time for?

I find this interesting.

We find to time to sleep in.

We find time fishing, hunting, camping, etc.

We find time for the many activities that we put our children in.

We find time for vacations.

We find time for Television, Facebook, Youtube…etc.

We find time for work, and career.

Let’s work through this.

How many hours of sleep do you get?

How much time do you spend at your job?

How much travel time do you have?

You have likely already used well over 2/3 of your day.

Somewhere between 16 to 20 hours perhaps.

What do you do with the rest of your time?

Statistics say that most people spend the rest of their time with the following

TV watching takes up about 4 hours

Social Media takes up about 2 and half hours

Acts 5:31–32 CSB

God exalted this man to his right hand as ruler and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”

How do you spend the rest of your time?

Be honest with yourself here for just a minute.

Look back on what was just said.

What do you spend most of your time doing?

What do you spend most of your time thinking about?

When you get up in the morning, what drives you to move forward through the day?

Does your life look any different than that of the rest of the world?

4. And just what is it that you do not have time for?

What is it that you are leaving out of your life?

The two most important activities of all,

Prayer

Personal Bible Study

So why does this matter?

5. The way you live your life reveals what you believe about God.

Do you believe His words?

Do you take His commands seriously?

Who are you discipling right now?

Who has God put in the folds of your life?

Anyone?

Do you want this to change?

Change your priorities.

Prayer and time spent in His Word needs to be first.

Specific prayer, targeted prayer.

6. Turn everyday conversations into gospel conversations.

Acts 4:20 CSB

for we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

You will speak about what is important in your life.

7. 3 Circles

God’s Design—Brokenness—Gospel

God’s Design

Genesis 1:31 CSB

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. Evening came and then morning: the sixth day.

God has a design for every area of our lives—our families, marriages, money, sex life, work life and just plain life. God designed us to be in relationship with Him, but we have all departed from that design.

The Bible calls this sin. We’re born with a sinful nature, so sin comes naturally to us. There is no one who gets it right all of the time. We all sin and fall short of God’s perfect design (). This sin leaves us in brokenness.

Romans 3:23 CSB

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Brokenness is easy for most of us to understand. It feels like broken relationships, addiction, depression, discouragement, guilt and shame. We all want out of brokenness, so we try to fix it (squiggly lines out of brokenness). We medicate it with drugs or numb it with alcohol. We strive to be better people, hoping that somehow, someway, our good will outweigh our bad. We look for ways to alleviate our pain. When we do that, we just get more and more broken. This feels like a bad thing, but in many ways, brokenness is a good thing because it’s the way God gets our attention. When we feel broken on the inside and everything is all messed up, we know something needs to change.

The Bible word for change is repent. Brokenness is what gets us ready to try God’s solution, which is to repent and believe the gospel.

The change we really need comes from Jesus. God sent Jesus to live a perfect life, die the death we deserve, and be raised to life again, proving He is who He says He is and can do what He says He can do. Jesus came to forgive our sins. When we repent and believe in Him, He gives us His Spirit who helps us recover and pursue God’s design.

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Genesis 3:15 CSB

I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.

Genesis 3:21 CSB

The Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.

John 3:16–21 CSB

For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.”

1 Corinthians 15:1–4 CSB

Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preached to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 CSB

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf: “Be reconciled to God.” He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Then Jesus sends us right back out into a broken world to tell others how to find their way out of brokenness.

Conclusion:

There you have it.

Evangelism 101

It is as simple as telling someone what happened.

I want you to go home and practice this.

Write it down as you go.

Make the 3 circles and speak through them.

The Holy Spirit empowers effective witness

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He convinces people of their need

John 16:7–11 CSB

Nevertheless, I am telling you the truth. It is for your benefit that I go away, because if I don’t go away the Counselor will not come to you. If I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment: About sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; and about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.

He brings people to new birth

John 3:5–8 CSB

Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit guides believers in witnessing

Acts 8:39–40 CSB

When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him any longer but went on his way rejoicing. Philip appeared in Azotus, and he was traveling and preaching the gospel in all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

Witnessing and spiritual warfare

Revelation 12:11 CSB

They conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; for they did not love their lives to the point of death.

Witnessing and persecution

Witnessing results in persecution

Revelation 1:9 CSB

I, John, your brother and partner in the affliction, kingdom, and endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.

Supernatural help to face persecution

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Witness is promoted by persecution

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