Win the Lost at Any Cost

Intro:

Last week we learned:

“God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God has chosen what is insignificant and despised in the world-what is viewed as nothing-to bring to nothing what is viewed as something, so that no one may boast in his presence” ().

God uses the weak, insignificant, and the nobodies in the world to carry out the work of ministry.

Ex: Moses, David, Disciples, etc.

The Proclamation of God’s Word

He uses us to “Make Disciples who Make Disciples.”

Think about Jonah: His message to Nineveh was negative. However, he faithfully proclaimed his God-given message and had great results. In some way God worked through that message.

We must come to realize the power of the Gospel is not ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit.

The first step is to “Win the lost at any cost!” Let’s see what Paul has to say about it:

I) What person can God use?

How Paul Preached?

A) One who is Willing to Go (v1)

Paul said, “

The early church took the Great Commission seriously. They began at Jerusalem and they went. On the street corners and in the market places, whenever and wherever the message needed to be heard, they ‘declared it publicly and house-to-house.’

It seems today that somehow that divine commission has lost some of its urgency. Instead of winning the world to Christ we have become content to gather regularly and talk about winning the world.

B) One who is willing in spite of their Inadequacies

Paul confesses that he was with them in ‘weakness’ and ‘fear.’ He understood the natural fear we have of confronting someone with a message that we are not even sure that he wants to hear.

For God to work through us, we must humble our self and rely on the source of strength.

He did not clothe the message in great eloquence (v1)

His technique

II) Where is the Power?

A) Evangelism is to be done with Dependency

The Gospel—

We must trust in God rather than our self. It is to be done “in demonstration of the Spirit’s power.” It is, after all, God who “gives the increase.”

The Power of Paul’s Preaching

The Holy Spirit—

III) What is the Message?

There was once a great conviction that gripped the church of Jesus Christ—that Jesus Christ is the only savior of humankind and that apart from Him people are lost and doomed to destruction.

So important was this to Paul that he said, “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.”

In our sophisticated society we seldom find salvation worth talking about any more.

The church is involved in too many other things that come at the expense of the proclamation of the gospel.

Ours is not the age of rejection of the gospel. It is the age of the unproclaimed gospel.

Conclusion:

How many of us in the room today have spoken to a lost person about Jesus Christ in the last week month, year, in the entire time we have been a Christian? If not us, then who? If not now, then when?