what is the gospel

What is the gospel?  5 points:

1. Who God is.  God is holy (perfect), creator, sets the standard.  God is who He is, not who we decide He is!  The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself to us.

2. Who man is.  Rebelled against God by choice, sinner (not in a generic sense, but individually). The Law is the place to start with someone who doesn’t think they’re that bad.
    Rom. 3:10, 23    [Scriptures are few & given for example only - it will be best
    Ex. 20        for you to search out your own]

3. The penalty for sin.  Death (eternal in Hell) is the punishment for our rebellion. (not purgatory, not annihilation, no 2nd chances with reincarnation)
    Heb. 9:27
    Rom. 6:23a
    Rev. 20:11-15

4. What God did. Took on a body of flesh, lived a sinless life, died a death undeserved, paid the penalty due to us for our sins.
    Jn. 3:16;  Rom 5:8;  2 Cor. 5:21

5. What man must do. Repent (change mind, see self as sinful and unable to save himself) and believe (place trust in Christ’s death on his behalf, and resurrection as promise of eternal life).
    Acts 17:30-31; Rom. 10:9-10

Don’t hurry on to the next point if someone doesn’t agree with your current point.  The order is important in understanding salvation.

Remember, we are not out selling people a ticket to heaven!  We are warning them of the wrath that will come upon them as reasonable judgment for their sins, and introducing them to the Person of Jesus Christ.

Stress the urgency of making this decision.  We won’t get a second chance to change our minds after we die & we’re not guaranteed tomorrow.  We never know when our time will come to face God in judgment.

Our job is to bring people to the point of making a decision (not to make it for them).  We present them with the facts of the gospel, answer their questions, point them to Christ, pray for them… but ultimately, the rest is between them and the Holy Spirit. 

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Sharing the Gospel

Be cheerful, kind, courteous and loving.  A sincere concern should be evident in our voices and on our faces.  Dress neatly - it reflects on the message.  Wear a smile - we bring the words of eternal life.  Be confident in attitude and speech - remember whose ambassadors we are!

Don’t debate people over secondary issues.  Many will try to rope you into distractions like the reliability of the Bible, evolution vs. creation, denominational issues, catholic issues, etc.  The list is endless, but the purpose is the same - distraction from the main point: where will you be after you die?  I’m not aware of anyone who ever was argued into salvation.  Answer questions briefly, even sidestep as necessary, then get back to the point: sin, righteousness and judgment. [read 1 Cor. 2:1-5]

Overcome your fears.  Most of the time they’re irrational anyway.  People aren’t usually waiting to bite your head off.  Intellectual debaters will usually accept your answer of “I don’t know about that” before you return to the gospel.  You don’t need to know everything about someone’s beliefs to tell them about yours.  You won’t get arrested for telling people the gospel or handing out tracts!  *** Courage is not the lack of fear, but the overcoming of it! ***  2 Tim. 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity [fear], but of power and love and discipline.”  By the way, every seasoned evangelist I’ve ever met says the same thing: it’s always difficult.  That fear never stops needing to be conquered.  It does get easier, but only by doing it.  Even Paul in Eph. 6:19-20 requests prayer that he would “make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,” and that “I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.”

Use words that people can understand (not Christian-ise).  Bible terms are ok to use, just remember to define them.  Use examples, visuals, word pictures, etc. to make yourself clear.

Ask lots of questions.  It is an easy habit to do all the talking when preaching the gospel, but you’ll never know where people are coming from, whether or not they understand, or what their specific questions are unless you listen to what they have to say.  W questions are better than yes/no questions.

When knocking on doors: (Acts 5:42)seek to start a conversation, don’t just hit and run.  You will gauge pretty quick if they are willing to talk or not.  Ask lots of questions. Pray walking between houses.  Be thorough: knock on each door, be orderly, keep track of where you start and stop, takes lots of notes!  Those contact notes will be a great blessing for doing follow up: if they go to church, any particular questions or prayer requests, etc.  GET THE ADDRESS!!!  A first name is very helpful.  Write it all down.  It can make a difference in eternity!
Be persistent & faithful with follow-up visits.  There are many testimonies of saints whose hearts were won to the Lord through the persistence of someone returning again and again to their door.

When handing out tracts, packets, or anything else: never ask if someone would like one.  Simply say, “Here’s a gift for you.”, “Here’s some good news.”, “Here’s an important question for you to consider.”, “Did you get one of these?”, or something like that.  If you ask, it gives them a good excuse to say no.  Remember, what we have to give is a matter of eternal life or death - it’s important!  If handing out to passers-by and several in a row reject, stop and wait a minute before starting again. 

When with someone preaching in public: face the speaker and pay attention.  You are an example, others will stop to see what’s so interesting.  Don’t hand out tracts while the preacher is speaking - the listeners are now readers.  Don’t leave the group to chase down people who leave (have people outside the immediate group to do that).  DO start a conversation with the person next to you when the preacher is finished.  People will often talk to others in the crowd rather than go up to the preacher to ask questions.  Don’t try to silence a heckler - let the preacher handle him (otherwise you become a distraction).

Evangelism is not a job or a program - it is who you are.  It’s a by-product of your faith and your focus in life. 

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Where to Share?

Events & locations: Paul used synagogues, marketplaces, the streets, the temple, prisons, courtrooms, even riots as opportunities to preach the gospel.  Why break our necks & spend a fortune trying to create our own crowds - use the crowds the world brings together for us.  Anywhere you see a group of people makes for a good place to preach the gospel or hand out tracts.  It is perfectly legal to do so in any public place in this country.  When in doubt, do it anyway.  Someone will request that you stop before they throw you in jail.  J

Make your own opportunities: Knock on doors in your neighborhood.  Invite people for something fun - friends and neighbors over for a Saturday BBQ.  Get a group together to go sing hymns at nursing homes (works all year - not just at Christmas).  Rent a booth at the local fair.  Be creative - God is! 
*** Warning: inviting people to events at your church building is akin to inviting criminals to the police station.  You can chrome plate the bars, carpet the cells, have an international police speaker and a great police band, but you’re still not going to get many criminals to come to the police station.  The church is where the saints gather together.  The world is where we go out into with the gospel.  They’ll come when they’re converted, but probably not before (not if we’re preaching things like sin, righteousness and judgment). 

I’ll use this opportunity to pitch door-to-door visitation.  It is the most thorough way possible for us to fulfill the Great Commission: 
By going house to house, we can honestly say we have preached the gospel to every creature. 
If no one’s home, make note and keep returning until someone is. 
You meet people you might never otherwise at stores, at work, on the street, etc. 
People connect better when you associate with their community. 
People are more at ease at the door of their own home than in many other places you might approach them with the gospel. 
Leaving something for them to read allows even more opportunity for the Holy Spirit to continue working after you’ve left.
At the door, you only deal with one person at a time (usually).
Follow-up is possible in ways not possible with other public witnessing (you know where they live).

Everyday life: There are lots of places to meet people that are perfect for telling people the gospel - at work, in line at the grocery store, standing around pumping gas, eating dinner at a restaurant - everywhere you are!  We are ambassadors for Christ - that’s our calling as saints. 
Tracts aren’t just for bringing to doors and distributing on the street.  Give them and leave them everywhere you go.  Each tract is a mini gospel preacher that can go places we never could, and continue to speak to people long after we’ve gone home at night.  I love to use tracts, but lets not think that’s all we’re called to do.  The gospel coming from our mouth is a powerful tool, which is then enhanced by tracts.

Now seems a good time to address ‘Friendship Evangelism.’  I whole-heartedly endorse it, so long as you really mean using friendships as opportunity for evangelism. 
More often, though, people say ‘Friendship Evangelism’ when they mean ‘Lifestyle Evangelism,’ which is an excuse for people to live as a good testimony without opening their mouths with the gospel.  “Faith comes by hearing.” 
Or they say ‘Friendship Evangelism’ which in practice is ‘Friendship-Today-Evangelism-Someday.’  We make friends with them now, then at some point when we’ve built up a good relationship with the person, we’ll tell them the gospel.  The problem is that ‘someday’ never comes, because the longer we’re silent, the harder it becomes to open our mouths with the gospel. “What fellowship does light have with darkness?” 
‘Friendship Evangelism’ is telling someone the gospel right up front, and then being friendly with them and showing them the testimony of our lives, which backs up our claim of knowing Christ as our Savior. 

Summary: Where to share?  Where not?

Do we regard every contact we make as an opportunity to save someone from eternal damnation?  “making the most of your time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:16)

Evangelism is not a job or a program - it is who you are.  It’s a by-product of your faith and your focus in life. “the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.” (Matt 12:34)

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How to Prepare

Get on your knees - every day!  Ask God to give you compassion & boldness & zeal for reaching the lost.  “Ask and it will be given to you.”  God is delighted to give us a heart like His.

Open your Bible - every day!  Hunger for His Word. Let Him speak to you, convict you, open your eyes and heart to His thoughts and His ways.  Study the words of our Master Teacher in the gospels.  Study the sermons preached in Acts.  We have a sure guide for this endeavor.

The first 2 lead to this - offer ourselves up as a clean vessel for use by God.  The testimony of our lives must match the testimony of our words.  Hypocrisy in churches is an oft-quoted objection to Christianity.  And sin blocks us from hearing the Holy Spirit’s leading when we desire to witness for Him.

Read biographies of bold, faithful servants of Christ who have gone before.  (This isn’t hero worship - we have such a biblical example in Hebrews 11)  Go for the classics: Hudson Taylor, George Muller, D.L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, Charles Stanley, etc.  Then remember we might not have the same gifts as these men, but we are indwelt by the same Spirit who empowered them in their lives, and are promised that very same power when we are witnesses.

Get out and start doing it!  Grab a friend and go.  There’s no teacher like experience.

The order of these is important: do all of them at once!

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The Need for Preaching the Gospel

On October 10, 1856, Hudson Taylor was traveling by a small boat on the river from Shanghai to Ningpo.  He was in his cabin when he heard a loud splash and heard the cry of man-overboard.  He sped to the deck and looked around, immediately missing his Chinese friend ‘Peter.’
“Yes,” exclaimed the boatmen unconcernedly, “it was over there he went down.”
Hudson searched all around, but saw nothing.  Then he spotted some fishermen with a dragnet - just the thing needed!
“Come,” he cried as his hope revived, “come and drag over this spot.  A man is drowning!”
“Veh bin,” was the amazing reply: “It is not convenient.”
“Don’t talk of convenience! Quickly come, or it will be too late!”
“We are busy fishing.”
“Never mind your fishing!  Come - only come at once!  I will pay you well.”
“How much will you give us?”
“Five dollars!  Only don’t stand talking.  Save life without delay!”
“Too little!” they shouted across the water. “We will not come for less than thirty dollars.”
“But I have not so much with me! I will give you all I’ve got.”
“And how much may that be?”
“Oh, I don’t know.  About 14 dollars.”
At this, they finally came.  Their first pass brought up the missing man in their net.  Despite Hudson’s efforts to revive him, it was too late.  It was only too plain that his life had fled, sacrificed to the callous indifference of those who might have easily saved it.

Hudson related this event to a conference back in England 9 years later.  A burning sense of indignation swept over the great audience.  Could it be that anywhere on earth people were to be found so utterly callous and selfish!  But the earnest voice of Hudson Taylor went on:
“Is the body, then, of so much more value than the soul?  We condemn those heathen fishermen.  We say they were guilty of the man’s death - because they could easily have saved him, and did not do it.  But what of the millions whom we leave to perish, and that eternally?  What of the plain command, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,’ and the searching question inspired by God Himself, ‘If you forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if you say, ‘Behold, we knew it not;’ does not He that ponders the heart consider it? And He that keeps your soul does not He know it?  And shall He not render to every man according to his works?’ ” [Prov. 24:11-12]



What else does Scripture say about our responsibility: (let me just read)

Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.  (Matt. 4:19)

What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. (Matt. 10:27)

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20)

Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. (Mark 16:15)

Repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.  (Luke 24:47-48)

Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest. (John 4:35)

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.  Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.  (Matt. 9:36-37)

Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.  (John 20:21)

You shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.  (Acts 1:8)

For whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.  How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed?  How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?  How will they preach unless they are sent?  Just as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!’  (Rom. 10:13-15)

For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel.  (1 Cor. 9:16)

Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He committed to us the word of reconciliation.  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (2 Cor. 5:18-20)

Now as for you, son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel; so you will hear a message from My mouth and give them warning from Me.  When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require from your hand. (Ezek. 33:7-8)

And for those who don’t believe this applies to us, Paul says…
Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men.  For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.  (Acts 20:26-27)

Tell me Hudson Taylor didn’t agree, also.

As Ray Comfort has said, we as Christians have not been given tickets for a pleasure cruise headed for heaven, but rather called up to serve on a battleship stationed at the gates of Hell. 

How can we call Him Lord and not do what He commands?  If we love Him, will we not obey His commands?  Are we truly seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness?

What we spend our time and our money on, much more than our words, reveals our priorities.  (for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also - Matt. 6:21)  Do our priorities match those of our Lord and Savior? 
I’m not asking for your money, though. God wants more than that.  I’m echoing God’s call for your very lives!!!  He gave His life to rescue each one of us.  Will we give just a portion of ours to rescue those around us?

150,000 people die in the world every day, most of them headed to an eternal separation from God in Hell. 

What are you doing to warn them, to rescue them, to beg them on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God? 

Or is it ‘inconvenient’?  (like the Chinese fishermen)
Or are you too fearful? (aka ashamed of the gospel, more afraid of men than of God)

We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ one day and give an answer for what has been entrusted to us.  What excuses will we use then?

This material is free to distribute, quote,  or copy.
Justin Humes - jhumesfamily@hotmail.com
Mark Cowperthwaite- cowperthwaitefamily@gmail.com