The Pastor as An Ambassador of Christ
Topic The pastor as an Ambassador of Christ Time October 2016 Place APC, South Africa
Our final session is on the pastor as Ambassador of Christ. That word ambassador has clearly been taken from 2 Corinthians 5:20 where Paul says We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.
There is a more general sense in which a pastor is an ambassador for Christ. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones has written of preaching in general (Preaching and preachers) in these terms
Any true definition of preaching must say that a man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is 'an ambassador for Christ'. That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people.
This is also the way some books on being a pastor can get into all sorts of unexpected areas. In Jay Adams Shepherding God's Flock he talks about the importance of good table manners. It seems an abstruse point, perhaps, but it doesn't help the gospel if the pastor is an embarrassment at the table. We could spend a lot of time on matters like that but it is clear from the context of the Scripture quoted that Paul has in mind evangelism and evangelistic preaching in particular. It immediately brings to mind that verse where Paul tells Timothy he is to do the work of an evangelist (2 Timothy 4:5). It is not entirely clear what that verse may mean but clearly Timothy is not to content himself with feeding the sheep. He needs to be out there winning the lost to the Saviour. That is part of the call for every pastor. \\It is no surprise then that in our home chapter of Acts 20 we read in verses 17ff Paul saying
You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus ....
That was always Paul's approach, declaring to all the need to turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus .... It should be ours too.
Now different preachers will take different views of how they are going to preach evangelistically. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, like many others, deliberately preached in an evangelistic way every Sunday evening when he was pastor of Westminster Chapel. Of course, one of the snags with that approach is that unbelievers may come at any time, not necessarily Sunday evening. That is why Spurgeon's approach, including something evangelistic in all his sermons, is to preferred. However, it is very easy in that method to start saying very little of the basic gospel message. Whatever method we adopt this is a subject we need to keep coming back to and reappraising. Am I really giving the attention to evangelistic preaching that I ought to?
Roger Carswell
In a recent book called Evangelistic preaching the evangelist Roger Carswell has set out five elements that he believes should characterise all evangelistic preaching.
1. These are, firstly, focusing on Christ and him crucified. Every passage in the Bible leads in one way or another back to Christ and so there ought not only to be expository preaching but evangelistic preaching too, preaching that focuses on Christ and what he has done for sinners. Carswell suggests there are vital ingredients in any evangelistic address and he seeks to make sure he always includes them.
These are
It is important that we always mention certain things if we are going to really preach the gospel. Another way to go about it is to summarise the gospel. Here is such a summary based on Jeremiah Burroughs
It concerns the Lord Jesus Christ. By nature we are all of us lost because of Adam's sin and we are subject to God's wrath. A sentence of death hangs over us all. Although God has done nothing for fallen angels, he is concerned about us human beings and has provided a way to be at one with him again, to be reconciled to him again.
Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, has taken to himself a human nature and has become the Head of another covenant in place of Adam. In this covenant he stands charged with sin. He has answered for it by suffering what the law and divine justice require and by making satisfaction for keeping the law perfectly. This satisfaction and righteousness he tenders up to the Father as a sweet savour of rest for the souls that are given to him by the Father. This mediation of Christ is, by the appointment of the Father, proclaimed to people of every nation or rank, freely offering to all this atonement for sinners. It requires them to believe in Christ. On believing, they are promised not only a discharge from all their former sins so that they will not enter into condemnation but none of their sins or unworthy traits will ever hinder God's peace in them and through him they will be accepted into the number of those who have the image of God renewed again in them and be kept by God's power to eternal salvation.
Further, such souls, with their bodies, will be raised to as high a glory as such creatures are capable of. They will live forever enjoying the presence of God and his Christ, in the fullness of all good.
Would that be too much to include every time? Probably.
2. Carswell's second point is that evangelistic preaching should manifest love. We are speaking to sinners but they are in ignorance and like our Saviour we ought to be moved with compassion for the crowds. Love should constrain us. He quotes John Stott
I constantly find myself wishing that we twentieth century preachers could learn to weep again. But either our tear-springs have dried up, or our tear-ducts have become blocked. Everything seems to conspire together to make it impossible for us to cry over lost sinners who throng the broad road which leads to destruction. Some preachers are so preoccupied with the joyful celebration of salvation that they never think to weep over those who are rejecting it. Others are being deceived by the devil's lie of universalism. Everybody will be saved in the end, they say, and nobody will be lost. Their eyes are dry because they have closed them to the reality of eternal death and outer darkness of which both Jesus and His Apostles spoke. Yet others are faithful in warning sinners of hell, but do so with a glib and even a sick pleasure, which are almost more terrible than the blindness of those who ignore or deny its reality
3. Carswell's third point is that evangelistic preaching demonstrates creativity. This time he quotes Warren Wiersbe saying “People's minds are not debating chambers but picture galleries; therefore speak so that you turn people's ears into eyes and they see the truth.” This is not a modern thing about communication but a realisation that to capture hearts and minds takes great skill. In Preachers and preaching (215, 216) Lloyd-Jones wrote interestingly
If I am asked which sermons I wrote, I have already said that I used to divide my ministry, as I still do, into edification of the saints in the morning and a more evangelistic sermon in the evening. Well, my practice was to write my evangelistic sermon. I did so because I felt that in speaking to the saints, to the believers, one could feel more relaxed. There, one was speaking in the realm of the family. In other words, I believe that one should be unusually careful in evangelistic sermons. That is why the idea that a fellow who is merely gifted with a certain amount of glibness of speech and self-confidence, not to say cheek, can make an evangelist is all wrong. The greatest men should always be the evangelists, and generally have been; and the idea that Tom, Dick and Harry can be put up to speak on a street corner, but you must have a great preacher in a pulpit in a church is, to me, the reversing of the right order. It is when addressing the unbelieving world that we need to be most careful; and therefore I used to write my evangelistic sermon and not the other.
4. Next Carswell says evangelistic preaching connect with the non-Christian. This is really a plea to take every opportunity and to make sure that the message is appropriate for the unbeliever it is aimed at.
5. His final point is that evangelistic preaching expects results. That is the only way to preach the gospel.
David Murray
The seminary professor David Murray has also tackled this matter of evangelistic preaching in a blog. He uses eight words. Evangelistic preaching must be
I thought I might finally give you an example of how I myself have tried to preach evangelistically. I preached on John 3:1-18 both in church and later in Trafalgar Square. I entitled the sermon
The story of Nicodemus's visit to Jesus recorded in John Chapter 3 is one of the most famous incidents in the New Testament and one we should know well. John 3, of course, includes the most famous verse in the Bible, verse 16, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. I'd like us to look at the incident again this morning and remind ourselves of its teaching, the most obvious thing being that You must be born again. Let's look at the first 18 verses then.
I went on to say three things
1. Understand your state by nature – benighted and dead
We are told at the beginning of the chapter Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. We hear about this Nicodemus later in John's Gospel and we know that he became a disciple of Jesus – secretly at first but then at the death of Jesus he helped Joseph of Arimathea in the burial. At this time, however, he was a Pharisee and, like Joseph, a member of the Jewish ruling council, and entirely ignorant of the truth.
John emphasises this in a rather subtle way by saying (2) that He came to Jesus at night. Why did he come at night? His decision could have been prompted by many factors. He could have been trying to keep his visit secret or it may simply have not been possible to visit Jesus in the day time so busy was he. I think it is most likely that as a Pharisee it was Nicodemus's custom to use the daylight hours for study and that sort of thing and then in the evenings, when night fell, he would give himself to conversation. That seems to be what is going on here. The important thing to notice, however, is that John has mentioned this because he wants us to see that Nicodemus was spiritually in the dark.
It is a theme you can pursue all the way through the book. In verses 20 and 21 of this same chapter we read This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. This was Nicodemus's state regardless of all his religion and the state we are all in by nature. We love darkness instead of light because our deeds are evil. We hate(s) the light, and will not come into the light for fear that our deeds will be exposed.
So when Nicodemus says Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him whatever question he was leading up to, the fact is that he was not truly seeking the truth. Yes, he thought he was, but in fact he was in darkness and like a mole in the ground always turning from the light he, like us all, loved darkness instead of light because his deeds were evil. He hate(d) the light, and would not come into the light for fear that his deeds would be exposed.
That is why Jesus cuts in so abruptly in verse 3 with Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. It is not possible to know the truth, to come to God, to be out of the dark, unless something totally radical happens to you. There has to be a complete renovation, what Jesus here calls being born again or born from above – it all has to start again right from the top!
Nicodemus's response to this again shows how much in the dark he is – how benighted and dead he is. 4 How can someone be born when they are old? Nicodemus asked. Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born! Now we don't know if he said that in an incredulous way or a sarcastic way or perhaps in a regretful way – surely you don't mean a man has to become a baby all over again. Whatever way he said it, he clearly did not understand what Jesus was talking about. And may be you have no idea what I mean when I say you need to be born again. And that shows then how ignorant and how much in the dark you really are. It is how we all are by nature.
My first application was
This is the first thing to grasp then. By nature we are all spiritually dead. We are in the dark – ignorant and lost. Unless something very radical indeed happens to us we will remain in our sins and we will die forever. That is the case for all of us, religious or not. I was giving out tracts one day and a woman said to me “You ought to be giving a tract to him not me” (pointing to a drunk sitting on the bench nearby). She said she was an evangelist and in the en she did agree that we all need forgiveness but she really thought some need it more than others, whereas the truth is that we all need it – desperately.
2. Realise that you need to be born again
So this is our need – to be regenerate, to be born again or from above. In verse 5 Jesus says Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. There has been quite a bit of debate about what exactly Jesus meant by this.
Some people think there is a reference to baptism here somehow but Nicodemus would not have known much about baptism so it is unlikely that Jesus introduces that subject here.
Some think being born of water is a reference to physical birth. You know that there is an amniotic sac that breaks just before the birth of a baby (hence the expression “her waters have broken”). Born … of the Spirit would then be spiritual birth or new birth.
If we bear in mind other Scriptures, however, especially Ezekiel 36:25, 26, a Scripture Nicodemus would have known, and that talks about God sprinkling clean water on his people and giving them a new heart then it is most likely that Jesus is using two expressions to refer to the same spiritual event. It is being born of water as it is a washing (what Paul calls somewhere in Titus (3:5) the washing of regeneration) and it is being born of the Spirit as it is a spiritual renewal (in the same place Paul talks of renewal by the Holy Spirit).
This is what we all need then – a fundamental washing away of our sins (symbolised in baptism), a radical renewal that transforms us and makes us new people in Christ.
Jesus goes on (6) Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. This is amplifying his point. In the physical realm Flesh gives birth to flesh, a woman of flesh gives birth to a baby of flesh. In the spiritual realm the Spirit and I think it is right to use a capital there as we are talking about the Holy Spirit gives birth to spirit. The Holy Spirit is able to bring about a new birth, a radical spiritual change. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' Jesus continues. Jesus says that everyone needs to be born again. It is not a command but a statement of truth – we all need regeneration.
Jesus use another illustration at this point - 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. You cannot see the wind but you see the effects of it. You can see the trees move, things blown into the air. So the Spirit works in people's hearts changing them so that they are born again. You cannot see that. It is entirely invisible. What you see is the effects – the way their lives are transformed so that they turn form evil and begin to do good.
My second application was
So you see that the great need of every man and woman and boy and girl is to be transformed by the Holy Spirit. By nature we are benighted and dead. We need the light to be turned on, to be spiritually made alive. The only way this can happen is if the Spirit of God himself does it. He alone can wash us clean. He alone can enlighten us. He alone can renew us. He does his work secretly but effectively in people's hearts. Have you been born of water and the Spirit? Has the fresh breeze of the Spirit blown into your life? Have you been born again? It is the only way into the kingdom of God. It is the only way to be a true Christian
3. Recognise that Christ has come so that you may trust in him and have life
So Jesus sets it out all very clearly but Nicodemus is still a good way off. How can this be? He asks in verse 9. (10-12) You are Israel's teacher, says Jesus, and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? Nicodemus was a Pharisee. This was the strictest sect among the Jews at the time. He was a man people looked up to, a rabbi, and yet he was unfamiliar with the most basic teaching about God's kingdom that there is. At this point Jesus is only speaking of earthly things – being born again here on earth. He has not gone on to the end of time, to the Second Coming and the judgement and heaven and hell and so on. It seems incredible to think that such an apparent man of God was so ignorant and yet there are plenty of examples of such things throughout history and to the present day. There are popes and cardinals and metropolitans and archbishops and bishops and deans and so on who don't know the first thing about being born again.
By this stage of his ministry Jesus had preached to very many but the general response was one of refusal to listen, refusal to accept the need to be born again. It is the same today.
In the early days of Dr Lloyd-Jones ministry, in the 1920s, he was once told “… you talk of God's action and God's sovereignty like a hyper-Calvinist, and of spiritual experience like a Quaker, but the cross and the work of Christ have little place in your preaching.” This chapter is certainly about being born again and it needs to be emphasised. Only God can save you. You also need to trust in Jesus Christ without doubt. But how does that make a difference? It is because of justification by faith. We all need two things. We need new birth, renewal and we need to be justified – to be declared righteous by God. We can be declared righteous because Jesus has died in the place of sinners like us. So if we trust in him we will be justified. Jesus goes on to open up on how people are saved in the verses that follow. It is not entirely clear where his words to Nicodemus end and where John has added other statements. It is all important to know, however. We will go as far as verse 18 today.
Jesus speaks first of his incarnation, then of the cross, then of the two together, emphasising the need for everyone to trust in him to know eternal life.
So first Jesus says (13) No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven - the Son of Man. When he says that No one has ever gone into heaven he means in his own right. In 1:18 John says similarly No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. Jesus has unique access to God and to heaven. By coming from heaven as the Saviour he has opened up a way into heaven for people like us. Some manuscripts add who is in heaven. The niv does not include it but there is no real difficulty with it because Jesus is man and God and so he was in heaven even at that very moment according to his divine nature.
In verses 14 and 15 Jesus draws on an Old Testament incident to explain how by his death he was going to provide eternal life. When God's people were in the desert they often rebelled, On one occasion God punished them by sending poisonous snakes among them. People got sick, some died. God then directed Moses to fashion a bronze snake, which he was to hold up in front of the people. Everyone who looked at it would be healed that moment. So Jesus says Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that is he must be crucified that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. Jesus says he is going to die as he did. Once he dies, everyone who trusts in him will be forgiven and they will have the gift of eternal life.
Jesus sums it up in verse 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Out of his love for this world in all its rottenness and sin God sent his one and only Son into it. He did it so that whoever puts their faith in Jesus, whoever it is at all, might know the blessing of eternal life. Verses 17 and 18 re-inforce the teaching. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. The world was already condemned by the law. We have not lived as we should. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. It is all about faith in the end, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.
My final brief application was
So Nicodemus learns not only that he needs to be born again but also that Christ by his death provides a way of salvation for all who trust in him. We too need to see that we need to be born again and we need to trust in Christ and be justified. Have you been born again? You will know it if you have. Have you put your faith in Jesus Christ? I urge you to do that today? You must trust in him. Only he can save you.
There is a more general sense in which a pastor is an ambassador for Christ. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones has written of preaching in general (Preaching and preachers) in these terms
Any true definition of preaching must say that a man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is 'an ambassador for Christ'. That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people.
This is also the way some books on being a pastor can get into all sorts of unexpected areas. In Jay Adams Shepherding God's Flock he talks about the importance of good table manners. It seems an abstruse point, perhaps, but it doesn't help the gospel if the pastor is an embarrassment at the table. We could spend a lot of time on matters like that but it is clear from the context of the Scripture quoted that Paul has in mind evangelism and evangelistic preaching in particular. It immediately brings to mind that verse where Paul tells Timothy he is to do the work of an evangelist (2 Timothy 4:5). It is not entirely clear what that verse may mean but clearly Timothy is not to content himself with feeding the sheep. He needs to be out there winning the lost to the Saviour. That is part of the call for every pastor. \\It is no surprise then that in our home chapter of Acts 20 we read in verses 17ff Paul saying
You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus ....
That was always Paul's approach, declaring to all the need to turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus .... It should be ours too.
Now different preachers will take different views of how they are going to preach evangelistically. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, like many others, deliberately preached in an evangelistic way every Sunday evening when he was pastor of Westminster Chapel. Of course, one of the snags with that approach is that unbelievers may come at any time, not necessarily Sunday evening. That is why Spurgeon's approach, including something evangelistic in all his sermons, is to preferred. However, it is very easy in that method to start saying very little of the basic gospel message. Whatever method we adopt this is a subject we need to keep coming back to and reappraising. Am I really giving the attention to evangelistic preaching that I ought to?
Roger Carswell
In a recent book called Evangelistic preaching the evangelist Roger Carswell has set out five elements that he believes should characterise all evangelistic preaching.
1. These are, firstly, focusing on Christ and him crucified. Every passage in the Bible leads in one way or another back to Christ and so there ought not only to be expository preaching but evangelistic preaching too, preaching that focuses on Christ and what he has done for sinners. Carswell suggests there are vital ingredients in any evangelistic address and he seeks to make sure he always includes them.
These are
- God's character including the fact he is a Trinitarian God
- Sin and judgement and the fact we deserve punishment
- Jesus and especially his death and resurrection
- An emphasis on the need to repent and believe
- He always mentions heaven and hell
It is important that we always mention certain things if we are going to really preach the gospel. Another way to go about it is to summarise the gospel. Here is such a summary based on Jeremiah Burroughs
It concerns the Lord Jesus Christ. By nature we are all of us lost because of Adam's sin and we are subject to God's wrath. A sentence of death hangs over us all. Although God has done nothing for fallen angels, he is concerned about us human beings and has provided a way to be at one with him again, to be reconciled to him again.
Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, has taken to himself a human nature and has become the Head of another covenant in place of Adam. In this covenant he stands charged with sin. He has answered for it by suffering what the law and divine justice require and by making satisfaction for keeping the law perfectly. This satisfaction and righteousness he tenders up to the Father as a sweet savour of rest for the souls that are given to him by the Father. This mediation of Christ is, by the appointment of the Father, proclaimed to people of every nation or rank, freely offering to all this atonement for sinners. It requires them to believe in Christ. On believing, they are promised not only a discharge from all their former sins so that they will not enter into condemnation but none of their sins or unworthy traits will ever hinder God's peace in them and through him they will be accepted into the number of those who have the image of God renewed again in them and be kept by God's power to eternal salvation.
Further, such souls, with their bodies, will be raised to as high a glory as such creatures are capable of. They will live forever enjoying the presence of God and his Christ, in the fullness of all good.
Would that be too much to include every time? Probably.
2. Carswell's second point is that evangelistic preaching should manifest love. We are speaking to sinners but they are in ignorance and like our Saviour we ought to be moved with compassion for the crowds. Love should constrain us. He quotes John Stott
I constantly find myself wishing that we twentieth century preachers could learn to weep again. But either our tear-springs have dried up, or our tear-ducts have become blocked. Everything seems to conspire together to make it impossible for us to cry over lost sinners who throng the broad road which leads to destruction. Some preachers are so preoccupied with the joyful celebration of salvation that they never think to weep over those who are rejecting it. Others are being deceived by the devil's lie of universalism. Everybody will be saved in the end, they say, and nobody will be lost. Their eyes are dry because they have closed them to the reality of eternal death and outer darkness of which both Jesus and His Apostles spoke. Yet others are faithful in warning sinners of hell, but do so with a glib and even a sick pleasure, which are almost more terrible than the blindness of those who ignore or deny its reality
3. Carswell's third point is that evangelistic preaching demonstrates creativity. This time he quotes Warren Wiersbe saying “People's minds are not debating chambers but picture galleries; therefore speak so that you turn people's ears into eyes and they see the truth.” This is not a modern thing about communication but a realisation that to capture hearts and minds takes great skill. In Preachers and preaching (215, 216) Lloyd-Jones wrote interestingly
If I am asked which sermons I wrote, I have already said that I used to divide my ministry, as I still do, into edification of the saints in the morning and a more evangelistic sermon in the evening. Well, my practice was to write my evangelistic sermon. I did so because I felt that in speaking to the saints, to the believers, one could feel more relaxed. There, one was speaking in the realm of the family. In other words, I believe that one should be unusually careful in evangelistic sermons. That is why the idea that a fellow who is merely gifted with a certain amount of glibness of speech and self-confidence, not to say cheek, can make an evangelist is all wrong. The greatest men should always be the evangelists, and generally have been; and the idea that Tom, Dick and Harry can be put up to speak on a street corner, but you must have a great preacher in a pulpit in a church is, to me, the reversing of the right order. It is when addressing the unbelieving world that we need to be most careful; and therefore I used to write my evangelistic sermon and not the other.
4. Next Carswell says evangelistic preaching connect with the non-Christian. This is really a plea to take every opportunity and to make sure that the message is appropriate for the unbeliever it is aimed at.
5. His final point is that evangelistic preaching expects results. That is the only way to preach the gospel.
David Murray
The seminary professor David Murray has also tackled this matter of evangelistic preaching in a blog. He uses eight words. Evangelistic preaching must be
- Present, that is majoring in the present tense. These are not sermons that are taken up with large amounts of history, geography and chronology. They may begin there, but move swiftly to the here and the now. He is talking about what Lloyd-Jones called the “urgent tense”.
- Personal. When we are going after lost souls, we have to move swiftly, we have to engage more rapidly, we have to show relevance much earlier on. Let it be eyeball to eyeball, too. Try and get into their minds.
- Persuasive. In evangelistic preaching the great aim is persuasion. We are here to persuade. People must see our anxiety that they respond to the gospel in faith and repentance.
- Passionate. To be really persuasive, we must also be passionate. Let people see that we feel this deeply, that we fear for their eternal state, that we are anxious over them, and that we love them deeply. Let that be communicated in our words, but also in our facial expressions, our body language, and our tone.
- Plain. If we love sinners and we are anxious for them to be saved, we will be clear and plain in our structure, content, and choice of words.
- Powerful. When we go into the pulpit with an evangelistic sermon, let’s not go in defensively, and apologetically.
- Persevering. We preach. No one’s converted. We do it again. We preach. No one’s converted. We do it again, and again, and again.
- Prayerful. Above all, of course, evangelistic preaching is to be prayerful – before, during, and after.
I thought I might finally give you an example of how I myself have tried to preach evangelistically. I preached on John 3:1-18 both in church and later in Trafalgar Square. I entitled the sermon
BE BORN AGAIN AND TRUST IN CHRIST WHO DIED
I began by sayingThe story of Nicodemus's visit to Jesus recorded in John Chapter 3 is one of the most famous incidents in the New Testament and one we should know well. John 3, of course, includes the most famous verse in the Bible, verse 16, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. I'd like us to look at the incident again this morning and remind ourselves of its teaching, the most obvious thing being that You must be born again. Let's look at the first 18 verses then.
I went on to say three things
1. Understand your state by nature – benighted and dead
We are told at the beginning of the chapter Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. We hear about this Nicodemus later in John's Gospel and we know that he became a disciple of Jesus – secretly at first but then at the death of Jesus he helped Joseph of Arimathea in the burial. At this time, however, he was a Pharisee and, like Joseph, a member of the Jewish ruling council, and entirely ignorant of the truth.
John emphasises this in a rather subtle way by saying (2) that He came to Jesus at night. Why did he come at night? His decision could have been prompted by many factors. He could have been trying to keep his visit secret or it may simply have not been possible to visit Jesus in the day time so busy was he. I think it is most likely that as a Pharisee it was Nicodemus's custom to use the daylight hours for study and that sort of thing and then in the evenings, when night fell, he would give himself to conversation. That seems to be what is going on here. The important thing to notice, however, is that John has mentioned this because he wants us to see that Nicodemus was spiritually in the dark.
It is a theme you can pursue all the way through the book. In verses 20 and 21 of this same chapter we read This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. This was Nicodemus's state regardless of all his religion and the state we are all in by nature. We love darkness instead of light because our deeds are evil. We hate(s) the light, and will not come into the light for fear that our deeds will be exposed.
So when Nicodemus says Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him whatever question he was leading up to, the fact is that he was not truly seeking the truth. Yes, he thought he was, but in fact he was in darkness and like a mole in the ground always turning from the light he, like us all, loved darkness instead of light because his deeds were evil. He hate(d) the light, and would not come into the light for fear that his deeds would be exposed.
That is why Jesus cuts in so abruptly in verse 3 with Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. It is not possible to know the truth, to come to God, to be out of the dark, unless something totally radical happens to you. There has to be a complete renovation, what Jesus here calls being born again or born from above – it all has to start again right from the top!
Nicodemus's response to this again shows how much in the dark he is – how benighted and dead he is. 4 How can someone be born when they are old? Nicodemus asked. Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born! Now we don't know if he said that in an incredulous way or a sarcastic way or perhaps in a regretful way – surely you don't mean a man has to become a baby all over again. Whatever way he said it, he clearly did not understand what Jesus was talking about. And may be you have no idea what I mean when I say you need to be born again. And that shows then how ignorant and how much in the dark you really are. It is how we all are by nature.
My first application was
This is the first thing to grasp then. By nature we are all spiritually dead. We are in the dark – ignorant and lost. Unless something very radical indeed happens to us we will remain in our sins and we will die forever. That is the case for all of us, religious or not. I was giving out tracts one day and a woman said to me “You ought to be giving a tract to him not me” (pointing to a drunk sitting on the bench nearby). She said she was an evangelist and in the en she did agree that we all need forgiveness but she really thought some need it more than others, whereas the truth is that we all need it – desperately.
2. Realise that you need to be born again
So this is our need – to be regenerate, to be born again or from above. In verse 5 Jesus says Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. There has been quite a bit of debate about what exactly Jesus meant by this.
Some people think there is a reference to baptism here somehow but Nicodemus would not have known much about baptism so it is unlikely that Jesus introduces that subject here.
Some think being born of water is a reference to physical birth. You know that there is an amniotic sac that breaks just before the birth of a baby (hence the expression “her waters have broken”). Born … of the Spirit would then be spiritual birth or new birth.
If we bear in mind other Scriptures, however, especially Ezekiel 36:25, 26, a Scripture Nicodemus would have known, and that talks about God sprinkling clean water on his people and giving them a new heart then it is most likely that Jesus is using two expressions to refer to the same spiritual event. It is being born of water as it is a washing (what Paul calls somewhere in Titus (3:5) the washing of regeneration) and it is being born of the Spirit as it is a spiritual renewal (in the same place Paul talks of renewal by the Holy Spirit).
This is what we all need then – a fundamental washing away of our sins (symbolised in baptism), a radical renewal that transforms us and makes us new people in Christ.
Jesus goes on (6) Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. This is amplifying his point. In the physical realm Flesh gives birth to flesh, a woman of flesh gives birth to a baby of flesh. In the spiritual realm the Spirit and I think it is right to use a capital there as we are talking about the Holy Spirit gives birth to spirit. The Holy Spirit is able to bring about a new birth, a radical spiritual change. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' Jesus continues. Jesus says that everyone needs to be born again. It is not a command but a statement of truth – we all need regeneration.
Jesus use another illustration at this point - 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. You cannot see the wind but you see the effects of it. You can see the trees move, things blown into the air. So the Spirit works in people's hearts changing them so that they are born again. You cannot see that. It is entirely invisible. What you see is the effects – the way their lives are transformed so that they turn form evil and begin to do good.
My second application was
So you see that the great need of every man and woman and boy and girl is to be transformed by the Holy Spirit. By nature we are benighted and dead. We need the light to be turned on, to be spiritually made alive. The only way this can happen is if the Spirit of God himself does it. He alone can wash us clean. He alone can enlighten us. He alone can renew us. He does his work secretly but effectively in people's hearts. Have you been born of water and the Spirit? Has the fresh breeze of the Spirit blown into your life? Have you been born again? It is the only way into the kingdom of God. It is the only way to be a true Christian
3. Recognise that Christ has come so that you may trust in him and have life
So Jesus sets it out all very clearly but Nicodemus is still a good way off. How can this be? He asks in verse 9. (10-12) You are Israel's teacher, says Jesus, and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? Nicodemus was a Pharisee. This was the strictest sect among the Jews at the time. He was a man people looked up to, a rabbi, and yet he was unfamiliar with the most basic teaching about God's kingdom that there is. At this point Jesus is only speaking of earthly things – being born again here on earth. He has not gone on to the end of time, to the Second Coming and the judgement and heaven and hell and so on. It seems incredible to think that such an apparent man of God was so ignorant and yet there are plenty of examples of such things throughout history and to the present day. There are popes and cardinals and metropolitans and archbishops and bishops and deans and so on who don't know the first thing about being born again.
By this stage of his ministry Jesus had preached to very many but the general response was one of refusal to listen, refusal to accept the need to be born again. It is the same today.
In the early days of Dr Lloyd-Jones ministry, in the 1920s, he was once told “… you talk of God's action and God's sovereignty like a hyper-Calvinist, and of spiritual experience like a Quaker, but the cross and the work of Christ have little place in your preaching.” This chapter is certainly about being born again and it needs to be emphasised. Only God can save you. You also need to trust in Jesus Christ without doubt. But how does that make a difference? It is because of justification by faith. We all need two things. We need new birth, renewal and we need to be justified – to be declared righteous by God. We can be declared righteous because Jesus has died in the place of sinners like us. So if we trust in him we will be justified. Jesus goes on to open up on how people are saved in the verses that follow. It is not entirely clear where his words to Nicodemus end and where John has added other statements. It is all important to know, however. We will go as far as verse 18 today.
Jesus speaks first of his incarnation, then of the cross, then of the two together, emphasising the need for everyone to trust in him to know eternal life.
So first Jesus says (13) No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven - the Son of Man. When he says that No one has ever gone into heaven he means in his own right. In 1:18 John says similarly No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. Jesus has unique access to God and to heaven. By coming from heaven as the Saviour he has opened up a way into heaven for people like us. Some manuscripts add who is in heaven. The niv does not include it but there is no real difficulty with it because Jesus is man and God and so he was in heaven even at that very moment according to his divine nature.
In verses 14 and 15 Jesus draws on an Old Testament incident to explain how by his death he was going to provide eternal life. When God's people were in the desert they often rebelled, On one occasion God punished them by sending poisonous snakes among them. People got sick, some died. God then directed Moses to fashion a bronze snake, which he was to hold up in front of the people. Everyone who looked at it would be healed that moment. So Jesus says Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that is he must be crucified that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. Jesus says he is going to die as he did. Once he dies, everyone who trusts in him will be forgiven and they will have the gift of eternal life.
Jesus sums it up in verse 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Out of his love for this world in all its rottenness and sin God sent his one and only Son into it. He did it so that whoever puts their faith in Jesus, whoever it is at all, might know the blessing of eternal life. Verses 17 and 18 re-inforce the teaching. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. The world was already condemned by the law. We have not lived as we should. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. It is all about faith in the end, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.
My final brief application was
So Nicodemus learns not only that he needs to be born again but also that Christ by his death provides a way of salvation for all who trust in him. We too need to see that we need to be born again and we need to trust in Christ and be justified. Have you been born again? You will know it if you have. Have you put your faith in Jesus Christ? I urge you to do that today? You must trust in him. Only he can save you.
