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I haven't done it for a long
time. But I hope that in the next few
minutes that we can all of us get something out of it to profit
in the service of the Lord. So if you will, open your Bible
to the fourth chapter of the book of Ephesians. Hopefully
this will go along with some of the things that Josh has been
teaching. I didn't bring the Bible this
morning that I usually have over there. It's still over there
because I thought I better bring one that's a little bit older
and a little more useful than used a little more. And hopefully
we can glean something out of this that will be beneficial
to each and every one of us. In the fourth chapter of the
book of Ephesians, Let's read the first, the seventh
and eighth verse, and then carry on from there down to the 11th
verse. Ephesians chapter four, verse seven. But unto every one of us is given
grace. according to the measure of the
gift of Christ. Wherefore, he saith, when he
ascended on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. He's speaking here now about
giving the gifts to men. As I read through this chapter
this morning and several times, I've noticed that the gift of
tongues is never mentioned here. But some of the really important
gifts that he gives to men, and it's not, we say, you're talking
about giving to preachers? No, giving to church members.
And it's given to the measure that Christ measures out. Now
then, drop down to verse 11, and we'll see some of these gifts
that he's given. And he gave some apostles, some
prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.
Now, let's examine each one of these gifts that he says he gives.
And since he mentioned pastors, he mentioned everything beforehand.
So evidently there are other people that Christ has given
to his churches for the benefit of the church. And he'll show
us what those things are. First of all, what is the gift
that he's talking about? He gave some apostles. Has New Life Baptist Church got
an apostle? Why? What in the world has happened? Steve, where have you failed? You recall when the Lord called
His 12 together, He named them. And He said, He called them apostles. And you say, whoa. I believe that was the time of
the organization of his church. He called them together. He prayed
over them. And he said he called them apostles. But why do we not have anybody
show up today that is called an apostle? Over in the book
of Acts, your very first chapter, you call Judas fell. When it
came time to elect another apostle, they said it was necessary that
someone take the place of Judas. It was necessary. It was absolutely
necessary to somebody take the place of Judas. And what was
the qualification? It said that he must accompany
us from the baptism of John until this time. Now, is there anybody
in our midst that has accompanied from the time From that time
till now, not one. Well, what about the Apostle
Paul? The Lord called him and named him an apostle to the Gentiles.
And so the office of apostleship has long been gone and has not
been renewed, even though some people claim that they are an
apostle, or they may be a disciple, but not an apostle. That office
has died. You don't find it anywhere else. But then notice the next thing
that he says, not only apostles, but prophets. Now, don't we understand
prophets as somebody that tells the future? Well, they did. And they were prophets. But you
know what? A person that interprets the
prophets also turned into doing some prophecy. You know what? Every time that your pastor stands
up there and preaches to us, he's not telling you everything
that he's doing. He's telling you what the Lord
has done, and what's gonna be the result of this if you do
it, and the result if you don't. He's prophesying. Now how far
we take that prophecy, that's up to us. That's up to us. Then I want you to notice the
next thing that he said. Prophets and some evangelists. What is that? What kind of a
critter is that? Go to any one of the Gospels
in your very first page in either one of the Gospels you got. Go
there, I want you to read something. Either Matthew, Mark, or Luke,
John, either one of them, the very first page. What is the title that he gives
there? I know what it is in my Bible,
what it is in yours. According to what? The gospel
according to Luke. What in the world does that have
to do with evangelism? In my Portuguese Bible, it says,
the gospel according, the evangelium according to John, Matthew, or
Mark, or Luke. The evangelium, what is that? That is the word for gospel in
Portuguese. Where does it come from? It comes from the Latin
language. And so in Portuguese, if an evangelist
is one that preaches the gospel, and by the way, that's the responsibility
of every one of us, he gave everyone else that gift. And you say,
oh, I don't have the gift of doing that. Are you converted? If you've been converted, you
got a story that's entirely different than mine. And if you got saved,
you know what the gospel is. And he tells us over in Corinthians,
he says, this is the gospel that Christ died for our sins according
to scriptures. He was buried and he rose again
according to the scriptures. And those three things is the
gospel. And if that happened to you, Paul says, I'm not ashamed
of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone
that believed to the Jew first and to the Greek. So if that
is the power, that God is going to use for the salvation of people,
the gospel is what it is. And so what is an evangelist?
He gave some evangelists, that should be every one of us. Everyone that has ever been born
again, they ought to have a story that they can tell. In fact,
that was my entire ministry. When I stopped and looked back
over, it didn't matter where I was. I could have come up in
a bunch of people that I thought every one of them was believers,
and if a family walked in that I thought that I had never seen
before, my message was Christ died, was buried, and rose again
for your sinners. And so in this day and age, we
think of the evangelist, well, that's somebody that we're gonna
call in, and a lot of people are gonna get saved. No, it's
one of every church member's responsibility. And we'll see
that it was put into practice in Bible times. All right, and
then what else? Besides a prophet, said pastors. Well, I think we have an idea
of what that is. That's one that God has placed
in our church as a leader. He's not a boss. He's one that
is called to do. And by the way, I might say that
all of these gifts here that he's talking about now could
be in every one of us. I know that he's called some,
he says, he that desires the office of a bishop, desires a
good position. And he gives some qualifications
for those. And so I remember back when I
first started preaching, I said, I don't know what it was, I said
to my pastor, we're not gonna ordain you. He says, you're a novice. Prove
yourself. Prove yourself that God has really
called you. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, about two years later,
I was ordained. I had proved myself. But you
know what? I started in a church that was
just recently formed. That's where I was saved. Why
it was, because someone went into that neighborhood and began
to preach the gospel. A half a dozen or more people
would gather together there in the name of the Lord, and I got
saved there. You know where the next place
went? The assistant pastor said, will you go with me across town
to start another one? Yeah, let's go. Went across town
and started another one. We had a radio program. What
we began to do was preach over the radio along with that pastor.
And finally, a couple came from another city. Said, we want one
of you brethren to come over and start a church where we are.
Well, when do you go? And I said, which one you want?
Unfortunately, they said, we want you. Went across the state
of Florida, started another one. You know how we did it? Preaching
the gospel, preaching the gospel, preaching the gospel. You know where I went from there?
I went further south. I had the opportunity to start
several churches. You know where I started? I started
preaching the gospel. I was an evangelist, I was an
evangelist, I was an evangelist. I heard one of the missionaries
say recently, he says, well, I tried to start a group out
there and said it wouldn't start out, there's a lot of people,
adults came and said, oh, that's all I had was less than five
or six kids. And he says, I went on somewhere else. I said, I've
been through that a hundred times. That's where you start. You start
and you preach the gospel. Kids are capable of hearing and
believing the gospel. But they're not gonna believe
it if they don't hear it. And so every one of us has the responsibility
to preach the gospel. We're gonna see it in practice
in a little bit. And then of course, the office of a pastor,
if you've never been there and ain't done that, you don't know
all that that entails. Every Monday morning, or occasionally
on Monday morning, pastors decided to resign. Don't do it on Monday. You can quit tomorrow. And I'm sure that Brother Steve
has experienced that. I have. And so somebody asked
me one time after I'd been on the mission field several years,
they said, has it ever occurred to you sometime when you're going
further that you're done? I says, which time are you talking
about? It comes into your mind every
once in a while, but don't give up on Monday. Leave it till Tuesday,
tomorrow. And by Wednesday, you're ready
to go again. But we don't know, I perhaps
know a little bit about it, but at least Pastor Steve and several
others may know a little bit about what that is, but he does
call some to be pastors. And I will ask you to not do
this. Don't try to take a position
that you don't have. I remember one young man in a
new work that I started. He wanted to pastor the church.
So I took a boatload of pastors. We went up there to pastor that
church. And one of the pastors said,
we're going to have to ordain him. I said, let's go slow. Let's wait a while. In about
two years, he said to his wife, he says, let's get out of here. He said, there's an easier way
to live than this. Lord never called him. We didn't
ordain him, of course. So it is a special calling. And he's a leader. He's not a
dictator. He tells you what you ought to
do, but he can't make you do it. You can lead a horse to water,
but you can't make him drink. And so it's our responsibility
to follow that. All right, now, why did God call
people to these special ministries? He tells us what it's for. And
I think that this is important in verse 12. He called all these
people in these offices, what's it for? For the perfecting of
the saints. Now, what is the purpose of these
evangelists? What is the purpose of these
pastors, these prophets? It's for the perfecting of the
saints. And then what after that? I want you to notice what the
next thing it says. For the ministry of the edifying of the church. You know the attitude in the
last at least 40 or 50 years has been, we're gonna send our
young men off to college and off to the seminaries, they're
gonna make preachers out of them. They go there, they study for
four years, and haven't learned much of anything. They just begin
to learn how to study the Bible and learn some basic doctrine. And some church says, well, he's
graduated now, said he's going to college. He knows everything,
knows how to do it. Says, we're just gonna let him
do it. And that's been basically the idea. The ministry belongs
to that man. Steve, the ministry belongs to
you. We don't have a thing to do with it. That's not what he
said here. To prepare you for the ministry.
That ministry doesn't belong to him. He's the leader of the
ministry. He's the minister of the ministry. But I tell you what, every one
of us has a ministry. We, the church, has the ministry. For what purpose? For the edification
of the church. Notice on down here in verse
14. No, verse 13. That we all come
to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of
God unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the
fullness of Christ. The ministry belongs to you,
it belongs to you, it belongs to you, and it belongs to me.
It belongs to this congregation. And what is the purpose? Perfect
one another to the fullness of Christ. You've got a responsibility
to help me in every way that you can to be the kind of Christian
that God wants you to be. I've got that same responsibility
as one of you. So we have the responsibility. We are the ministers. The ministry hasn't been given
to the church. It hasn't been given to pastors. He is nothing more than the leader
of that. but each and every one of us have the responsibility
to make everyone else come into the perfect man, woman that God
wants us to be. Come on, help me, will ya? How can I help you? But this ministry was given to
the church, it wasn't given to Pastor Steve. He's our leader. But it's a responsibility of
each and every one to help every member that we can to come to
the fullness of Christ. He predestined us to be children
of Christ. He wants us to be just exactly
like Christ. Why? Look down in the next verse.
That henceforth, henceforth be no more children
tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine. You know what? You question most
Baptists, they couldn't tell you why they're Baptists. I would
say, just off the top of my head, that 90% of them, they are Baptists
because that's where they were saved. They have no idea what
the Baptists believe. Wouldn't have to know how to
stand up. You go over into the book of Hebrews, and he says,
at the time, you ought to be teachers. You had need of someone
to teach you. You can't take strong doctrine. Haven't been
devoted any time to study. That's where you are. Need to
help one another. We're not somebody that just
carried about any wind of doctrine. A good example, I remember back
in the early part of my ministry, some lady that picked up to take
the church, and she said, well, as long as you're preaching
the word, I'll be there. It didn't take about two times
to preach something she'd never heard about until she was gone. Did you ever read the little
book, Why Be a Baptist? Why are you a Baptist? What is
it about it? over there in the book of Hebrews,
all these sisters said, let's leave the doctrines of repentance
toward faith and faith in Christ, and says, let's go on to something
more, said, your baby's in Christ. So it's not only, it's you as
a member of New Life Baptist Church, as well as it is I, as
well as it is for Steve or anyone, it's due to us to know why, if
somebody asks you why you're a Baptist, what's your answer?
Well, that's what my pastor believes. Well, do you know what he believes?
I believe he knows what he believes. I just believe because I think
he's right. I like him. That won't cut it. As a member
of a local church, it's each and everyone's responsibility
to understand why we believe and why we believe it. Why do
we not believe every wind of doctrine? It doesn't matter what
church you attend. They're all the same. If they're
all the same, I wouldn't be here in new life. I know why I'm a Baptist, and
I came to that conclusion early in my ministry. I know what Baptists
stand for. Hadn't heard anybody preach on
the church for a long time, was going to the conference of Baptist
Faith Mission, and I said, why don't somebody preach on the
church? I know what I believe about the
church. I know where it came from and how it got here. Lo and behold,
Dempsey, Hender, and Priesthood. Yeah, I'm not the only one that
believes that. The basic doctrines that I believed
in the first two years that I was saved, they've stuck with me
today and I still believe that they're true. It's our responsibility to help
one another believe that. It's our ministry. Now you say,
do you suppose that would all be put into practice? Let's go
to the Book of Acts, the eighth chapter. Did this all work in the first
century? Well, let's take a look here
in the very first part of the first chapter, first verse of
chapter eight. Verse one. And Saul was consenting
unto the death, at the death of Stephen. And at that time,
there was a great persecution against the church was at Jerusalem.
And they were all scattered abroad throughout the region of Judea
and Samaria, except the apostles. I want you to notice the last
three words, except the apostles. Let me ask you, if that kind
of persecution came to us today, what would we do? hunkle down, hunker down. I don't
know what's gonna happen. I had one occasion one time many
years ago. In fact, 30 years before I arrived
on the mission field, this one little village, the Catholics
accused what few believers they had of destroying an image. Turned out it was the Catholics
themselves that broke the image in their church. But they took
all the Bibles, the few believers that were there, tore them up.
Each one had a songbook, and they were torn up. They formed
two lines, and the believers would run down through it, bang,
bang, bang, whips. One young man escaped when he
took off, had said he'd been called to preach, and disappeared
for 10 years. He was one of the most faithful
ones that I knew in Brazil after that. But anyway, I go there
30 years later, and they said, ha ha ha, they got a beating
30 years ago, and they're asking for it again. What do I do? There's two or
three believers, two or three families of believers in that
little village. I said, will you start a church here? That's
when that man said, they got a beating 30 years ago, and they're
asking for it again. Do I start a church there? Yeah. Did they ever beat up on us?
No. Did they ever threaten? Yes. One night we looked out there
and by candlelight we could see machetes all the way around a
little service we were having outside. Brick bats in their
hands. And I thought, well, time has
come. You know what happened? We walked out. Was I scared? No, I didn't have sense enough
to be scared. I just thought I'd better preach
the gospel. I did. You know what we did while the
machetes were flashing? Who wants to have a service in
the home tomorrow night? That carried on for weeks and
weeks. They showed up. One night they
circled our house to burn us out. What do you do? We hung
our heads and went to sleep. I'm still alive today. Was I
scared? Didn't have sense enough to do
that. Where are we going to have service tomorrow night? With the persecution of Saul,
they were scattered abroad. They were scattered abroad, scattered
abroad. Now, I think there are times to run. And I think there
are times to howl fast. These brethren saw it was time
to move on. And I want you to notice what
he says here. They were all scattered abroad except the apostles. Were they not scared? I'm sure
they were. They'd already been through some of the persecution
of their own. They knew what it was. But some found a time
to run, so they moved on. But they didn't go alone. Look down in verse four. Therefore they that were scattered
abroad Went everywhere, and what were they doing? Preaching the
word, preaching the word. Why did it take persecution to
get them out of their comfort zone? You know why? Because Jesus came, and they
thought he was gonna establish his kingdom on earth, and they
were gonna expel the Romans, and that would make them satisfied.
That didn't happen. But now then, something more
serious has come along. It's a matter of life and death.
Paul found times that it was time to leave. Saul of Tarsus was one of the
teachings that turned into the name of Paul. There was times
that he ran. There was times that he held
fast. But these that were scattered
abroad, they took one thing with them. They took them where they
went. How does that apply to us today? You students that are in school,
take the gospel to school with you. You that are on the job,
take it with you. I came from Thompson Road Baptist
Church before I came to New Life. While there, I began to look
back, and I said to Lois one day, I said, Lois, I said, I've
become slack because when I was starting a new work in Brazil,
in the morning, I hit the streets, house to house, visiting, preaching,
teaching, teaching, telling people to come, asking people to come
to church. In the afternoon, I hated to do that. I had to
kick my behind every afternoon to get myself back out there.
But you know what? I never came home sad. Had to beat myself in the morning,
had to beat myself in the afternoon, but I always came home happier
than I went out. Organized churches was doing
that. And so these, they went, and what'd they go with? They
went preaching the gospel everywhere they went. Why did the apostles
not go? The Lord told them, said, you'll
be witness to me in the whole world. You go and preach the
gospel to every creature, baptizing them, and then teach them to
observe all things. That teaching all things is what
we've already been talking about this morning. Growing up in Christ.
But you know what? It isn't very difficult to preach
the gospel. It isn't too difficult to get
people baptized. but it's hard to get them lost.
And then when you get them lost and you get them saved and you
get them baptized, it's a lifetime of teaching them all things.
They just never seem to learn at all. I learned so little of
it. So they were all scattered abroad
except the apostles. Then what took place? Look down
in verse Then Philip went down to the
city in Samaria and preached the gospel to them. What did
he preach to them? The evangelio, the gospel, evangelist. Philip was an evangelist. He
went there and he preached and they gave ear to what he said.
But don't you remember? The Lord Jesus Christ went to
one of those cities or went to one of those villages and the
whole city came out to hear him. And they went back, the men came
out at least, because of what this prostitute woman had told
them, says, is this not the Christ? They came out and says, ah, we
believe now because, not because you said it, but because we heard
ourselves. They went out there and they
heard Christ. What did they believe? That, yeah, he is the Messiah. She said he was. He said, you
know what? He's now going to set up that
kingdom that is going to destroy the Roman force. Whether they
were converted to Christ or not, I don't know. But now Philip
goes there and he preaches the gospel. And the whole city came
to him to believe. You know what? Philip didn't
last long there. The Lord called him down to just
one little old road. going down this road, he met
one man in a chariot. And he heard him reading the
Gospel, or the Book of Isaiah. He said to him, he said, do you
believe what you, do you understand what you're reading? He says,
how can I unless a man teach me? He asked Philip, he says,
come up here in this chariot and teach me. He preached Christ
from the 53rd chapter of Isaiah that the man was reading. He
said, He said, here's water to keep me from being baptized.
If you believe with all your heart, he preached the gospel
just to one person. And so you may not think it's
very important when you're preaching to one person, but that guy went
on his way merrily because he had found Christ. And those back
there where Phillip had preached, the apostles, look over into
verses 14 and 15. Now, when the apostles, which
were at Jerusalem, heard of the Samaria, had received the word
of God, they sent Peter and John. And when they were there, they
prayed and laid their hands on some of them, came there and
verified the fact, yeah, these fellows have been saved. You know what Peter and John
did? when they were come, they prayed
over them and must have the Holy Spirit. Then if you look down
in verse 25, and they, when they had testified and preached the
word to the Lord, returned into Jerusalem and preached the gospel
in many of the villages. That's real strange. The apostles
went up there, verified the fact that these people were saved,
laid hands on some of them. They went back to Jerusalem.
To do what? They went back to do the very
same thing that the commanders would do, teach you and I and
each and every one of us to do what they said. They went back
to do what they were called to do. They were called to edify
the church. They went back to Jerusalem.
So it all comes back to that same thing. Did it ever happen again? I want
you to go over into the 19th chapter of the Book of Acts. Now we find the Apostle Paul
at Ephesus at this particular time, looking down into verse
19. He was there preaching, and by
the way, Ephesus was a city that was completely given over to
idolatry. The great goddess Diana. And he was there and discussing
and preaching the word and the contentions became so great that
he separated himself from the group of the general public and
took those that were believing. And of course he says in verse
19, but when divers were hardened, and believe not, but spake evil
of that way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated
the disciples, disputing daily in the school of Tyrannus. And this continued by the space
of two years, so that all that were, which were in Asia, heard
the word of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what did Paul do? There in Ephesus, he preached
the word. Some contended, he separated
himself from them, took these few believers that he had and
went into a school. And there he taught them, how
long? Two years. What was the result of him being
there in Ephesus for two years? All of Asia heard the gospel.
How did all of Asia hear the gospel if he stayed in Ephesus
two years? They heard that same word that
I'm preaching to us this morning. One by one, they started out
preaching the gospel wherever they went until all of Asia.
You know, Paul didn't reach all of Asia in two years. But those
that he taught, he taught them the responsibility that the ministry
is upon you. Get out there and do it. And
all of Asia heard the gospel. Well, I'm old. I'm going to let
Steve do it. Both Steves. A few years ago, still over at
Thompson Road, I realized that I had gotten slack on that house-to-house
visitation. I said, Lois, I'm scared to death
that you can try that now. I'm in a different culture. I don't have any courage. But when spring comes, I'm going
to start something. I'm going to go house to house.
I don't do any more than 10 houses, but I'm going to force myself
to do 10 houses. When spring came, I did 10 houses. No results that
I know of. Next Sunday in Sunday school,
I said to my class what I had done. I'm going to start that
here around this church. Church had no outreach. Two brothers says, can we go
with you? And for the next few weeks, the
three of us, every Saturday afternoon, it finally developed into something
a little larger. A group of us, under the leadership
of the pastor, left the church on foot. We first designated
which ones would go which streets. I knew where I was supposed to
go, so we all walked from the church. I climbed steps on about
three houses. When the pastor came by, Dave
Park came by, he found me sitting on the curb. I couldn't climb
another step. He went to the church and got
his car and hauled me on back to the church. And now then you
ask, will that work today? I don't know what will work today.
But I remember I taught this lesson in one place and the pastor
came to me after and says, it will work in America. I said,
it worked for me in Brazil. I believe it will still work.
If where we work, where we go to school, if we'll take the
gospel with us. The problem is we're cowered
down by illnesses, lethargy, careless, and I confess I don't
much care anymore. Pray for me, I need help. Our Father in heaven, I pray
that this has been helpful to all of us. that we that have heard that
we'll share it with others and that we in ourself will put
it into practice. It will work in America if we
would just go and take the gospel with us and leave it out. Have mercy on us, Father, for
I pray in Jesus' name, amen.
The Gift of Evangelism
You have the responsibility to help others be what Jesus wants them to be, to help them come to the fullness of Christ.
| Sermon ID | 102521320204354 |
| Duration | 39:25 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Bible Text | Acts 8; Ephesians 4:7-14 |
| Language | English |
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