Evangelism (Part 2)

Announcer: Welcome to Sword of the Spirit, written and presented by Colin Dye, senior minister of Kensington Temple and leader of London City Church. Sword of the Spirit is a dynamic teaching series equipping the believers of today to build the disciples of tomorrow. We pray that you find these programs inspiring, and a catalyst in deepening your knowledge of God, your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and your intimacy with the Holy Spirit.

Colin Dye: Hello, and welcome to The Sword of the Spirit, a school of ministry in the Word and the Spirit. Our topic is Reaching the Lost. And we’re focusing on the church’s mission to evangelize the nations of the world. And we have already seen that this is central to our ministry on this earth. As believers in Jesus Christ, we are called to make Jesus known through the preaching of the gospel, right across the nations of the world. In 1918, the Archbishop’s committee of enquiry on the evangelistic work of the Church of England gave us a definition of evangelism. This is what they said. “To evangelize is so to present Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept Him as their Savior, and serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His church.” Now this famous definition stresses for us a number of important features of evangelism. It tells us that we have a message to declare—a specific message. Evangelism has content. It is about proclaiming the message of who Jesus is and what He’s done for us in our lives. Then also, the definition helps us understand that evangelism without the Holy Spirit is totally fruitless. We depend on the Holy Spirit to anoint our words with power and conviction so that people hear this, not as the word of men, but as the Word of God. Nobody can call upon Jesus without the help of the Holy Spirit. So when we proclaim the gospel, we are depending on the Holy Spirit to make that word live on the inside of people that they can be born again. And that is totally impossible without the Holy Spirit. Also, the definition shows us that the gospel is about presenting Jesus as the Christ. It is proclaiming that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, that He died on the cross and was raised again to be our Lord and our Savior. And then also, the definition reminds us that it’s not just about proclaiming the message, but calling people to respond to the message and to follow that message through in their lives personally through a life of discipleship. And as they are following Christ and growing as a disciple, they are taking up their place in the church of Jesus Christ. Now the word ‘evangelize’ means to act as a herald; to proclaim Him, not arguing or debating about the content of the message, but simply proclaiming Christ and commending this message to every person’s conscience, that they might see it and hear it and receive it as a word from God—the very message that will bring life and salvation and touch the lives of every individual hearer. Now in today’s message, we’re going to take this teaching further—Reaching the Lost.

Okay. Let’s look at the use of this verb, to evangelize. It appears about fifty times in the New Testament. It’s used, for example, in Luke chapter 4 verse 18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He’s anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.” That’s evangelism. Luke 4 verse 43, “And He said to them, ‘I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also.’” This is evangelism. Preach the kingdom. Acts 8 verse 4, here we have the story of Philip the evangelist. No, this is [stutters] not Philip—before we get to Philip—it’s all of the disciples. “Therefore, those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the Word.” So they evangelize the gospel. They evangelize the kingdom and they evangelize the Word. They preach the Word. Don’t forget, though, that this is the translation which is limiting evangelism to preaching and we might be better translating this ‘bringing good news.’ Look at Romans 10 and verse 15. “And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace.’” Who preach the gospel. And then it goes on with some words in the English that don’t appear in the Greek—“Who bring glad tidings of good things.” Bring glad tidings—who bring the gospel of peace. And so here’s how the word is used. Let’s go back to Luke 4 verses 18-19, because this is particularly illuminating. It’s one of Jesus’ most important statements. It’s called His mission statement or His manifesto. And here, Jesus summarizes for us the purpose of the anointing. The purpose of the anointing is, according to Him, to proclaim, to preach, to bring, to bear, to spread good news to the poor. It’s to evangelize the poor. That’s what He’s here for. That’s what He came for. And that’s the anointing. Now in those—that verse, we find it in the English translation, the word ‘preach’ three times. But in the Greek, there are two words used. The word ‘evangelize,’ which we’ve just been looking at, euangelidzo, and also the other word kerusso,  that belongs to the second group of words that we’re going to come to a little later on. And so we need to grasp, then, that Jesus here says, “The anointing that God has given me is that I should bring good news, that I should evangelize the poor,” and then He goes and gives five examples of what that means—what it means to evangelize the poor. First of all, He says it means healing the broken hearted. It means liberating the captives. It means restoring sight to the blind, releasing the oppressed, and it means proclaiming God’s message of freedom and favor. And so we see that evangelism is more than preaching; it involves all these other things. And this shows us the kind of message that is to be preached. And so Jesus said, “I’ve not just come from the Father to preach sermons in the synagogues.” He said, “I’ve come to reveal God, I’ve come to set the captives free. I’ve come to do this through my words; I’ve come to do this through my deeds, my acts of power. And I’ve come to do this by being good news and demonstrating through my incarnation, my coming in the flesh, to demonstrate to the world what it means to be in the kingdom of God.” He came to live in a way that was relevant to those who were hurting, to the poor. Now the word ptochos here, which is translated ‘poor,’ means, rather, ‘afflicted’ or ‘hurting.’ It comes from a word which means ‘to cower or bend down by fear.’ It’s not talking about how much money you’ve got in your bank account. Though often, people are—who have no money are by poverty brought down and cowered into fear. But it’s not just talking about financial poverty. That’s not the essential meaning here. The essential meaning is that somebody is being afflicted. It’s the hurting. It’s those who are broken. It’s those who are oppressed. That’s what ‘the poor’ means. Now this same idea is repeated by Jesus in Luke’s gospel later on in chapter 7, only He does it in reverse order. You’ll recall the situation. The disciples of John the Baptist have been sent by John to go to Jesus and to say, “Are you really the Christ, or should we be looking for somebody else?” It seems as if John the Baptist was going through a period of doubt and depression. Now, the fact that he was in prison had something to do with it. But also, his doubt was because he’d observed what Jesus was doing. [stutters] Jesus, he had pronounced as the one who would be the great Savior. And yet, He doesn’t seem to be doing very much of it. Witness exhibit A, ‘I, John the Baptist, I’m in prison. I knew He had to increase and I had to decrease, but this is ridiculous. Where is the Savior? Where is the freedom? Where is the liberation that He was to bring?’ And so he was questioning what Jesus was doing because he was expecting another kind of Messiah, perhaps. Somebody that might more immediately bring some of the more obvious manifestations of the kingdom. For example, political freedom, and so forth. And so John the Baptist, in a very real way, is doubting what’s happening and sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one that is to come, or should we look for somebody else?” Now, here we have in verse 21, Luke 7, Jesus’ response. “At that very hour, He cured many of infirmities, afflictions, and evil spirits. And to many blind, He gave sight.” At that very hour, Jesus was healing the sick, Jesus was delivering people from demonic spirits, Jesus was giving sight to the blind. That’s remarkably like the manifesto statement that Jesus gave in Luke chapter 4, quoting from Isaiah chapter 61. And so, that’s exactly what Jesus was doing. And it seems here that Luke, the author, is wanting us to understand that this in itself was Jesus’ answer. This is exactly—was Jesus’ answer to the question. “Are you the one to come or should we look for somebody else?” “Look what I’m doing and then you will see.” But then in verse 22, He explicitly says, “’Go and tell John the things that you have seen and heard. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have the gospel preached to them.’” This seems to be Luke 4 in reverse order. “He’s anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor,” then He demonstrates what they are; what this means in Luke 4. In Luke 7, Jesus points to what He’s doing and then says, “And the gospel is being preached to the poor.” And so this does two things: this shows us that Jesus is the Messiah, because He came not just to proclaim, but He came to demonstrate through signs and wonders that the kingdom had come. Because if the kingdom is coming, Satan’s kingdom must be pushed back. If God’s kingdom is coming, which is a kingdom of life and health and peace and joy and celebration, then Satan’s kingdom, which is a kingdom of darkness, of pain, of misery and suffering, those things must be pushed back. And so John [stutters] needs to see that in the miracles of Jesus is the manifestation of the kingdom and the message of the kingdom and the miracles of the kingdom together make the manifestation of the kingdom. And these signs and wonders point to the presence of the kingdom, for they are part of the kingdom. They’re not just signs pointing beyond themselves. They are that—they are also samples of the real thing. This is what I call scratch and sniff theology. Hello? Do you hear what I’m talking about? Have you ever had put through the letter box a free sample of some new fragrance and it’s on a card and you open it up and they say ‘scratch away the surface and sniff,’ and then you sample that perfume, which has been impregnated beneath the surface that you scratch off. So they send out samples of their perfume. And you scratch away and then you sniff. Maybe they sent some in their little bottles—you open the bottle and it’s a sample. And what do you know about the sample? You know two things. Number one, you know that there is a product out there. That little sample points to a whole product which is being, as you speak, it is being mass produced and marketed all over the world. So it points beyond itself to the real thing. But at the same time, in and of itself, it is a tiny part of the real thing. That’s what it means when you sample it. It’s the real thing. You say, ‘I like this,’ or you don’t like this. You go to the shop and you buy it because you smelled it and you liked it. When you buy it, it’s got to smell like what you smelled in the sample. That’s what it’s all about. That’s why signs and wonders are signs of the kingdom. They are signs of the kingdom’s presence, because when you see a little bit of this kingdom manifestation, you know there’s a whole lot kingdom coming—a whole lot more kingdom out there. It’s pointing beyond itself to the full manifestation of the kingdom. The second thing you know is that having said that, it is part of the kingdom itself. It is a sample of the kingdom of God. And when you experience a miracle—a healing, for example—you know that that’s a sample of the resurrection. It’s not the full thing. The resurrection’s coming, but if the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwell in you, He will quicken your mortal body, and the healing is a pointer towards it. So it is a sign, it’s also a sample. But we need to understand that it is [stutters] a sample is a tiny bit. It’s not the whole thing. There’s a whole lot more to come. And so Jesus pointed to His miracles and He says, “You know that the kingdom has come. Look at what you’ve seen. Look at what you hear. The gospel is being preached.”

And so we have this wonderful understanding from the very beginning that evangelism must mean more than proclamation. It must mean more than that. It means proclaiming in a context. You should write that down. It’s a very important statement. Evangelism must mean proclaiming the gospel in a context. In a context of incarnation. Jesus Himself didn’t just speak from heaven; He came as a man in this world. So we have proclamation, which is in the context of incarnation. And when we proclaim the message, we must, in a very real sense, also incarnate the Word of God. We must live it out. We must be good news. Be good news everywhere—in the arts, the media, commerce, industry, education, medicine; everywhere—in our homes and our communities. We must be good news. And within that context of being good news, we proclaim good news. But also, we must demonstrate good news by signs and wonders, mighty acts of power, and demonstration of the kingdom of God.

All right. And so now we come to how this is used, again, if we have a look at Luke chapter 8. I’d like you to turn to Luke chapter 8, please. Turn to Luke chapter 8. And as you’re turning to it there, I want to read to you verse 1. “Now it came to pass afterward, that He went through every city and village preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with Him.” Now, Jesus is preaching and bringing the glad tidings to every city and every village in the area. Now this gives the translators a problem, because both words are used—kerusson, which means ‘proclaiming,’ and euangelidzemenos, which means ‘evangelizing.’ So the translators have got a problem here. They can’t say Jesus went about everywhere preaching and preaching, which goes to show you the inadequacy of the translation. But here in the New King James, they get around it by saying, “preaching and bringing the good news,” which shows that we’ve got to be very careful how we handle this word ‘evangelize.’ So if they were consistent, they’d have to say, ‘Jesus preached and preached.’ Even ‘preaching’s’ not an accurate translation of kerusson, because it’s more than preaching. It’s an indiscriminate proclamation. It’s an indiscriminate broadcasting—that’s a better word. Announcing is a better word for kerusson, and we’ll come to that later on. Okay. So this is conclusive proof that evangelism is not just a verbal action. Proclamation and evangelism go hand in hand, yes, but they are not exactly the same thing. Now keeping in that chapter, Luke chapter 8, just have a look at the rest of the verses. Just glance through from verse 2 to verse 56. It seems to me that Luke is expounding verse 1 in the rest of the chapter. He is saying Jesus went everywhere preaching and bringing good news, and then he goes on in verse 2 to describe how that happened. And we can analyze it. We can see that in the first 18 verses, virtually from verses 4 to 18, Jesus preached and answered questions. Then in verses 22-25, we see Jesus bringing peace to these terrified passengers on the trans-Galilee boat. As they were terrified by the storm, He brings peace there. In verses 26-39, He liberates the captives—the Gadarene demoniac—and we know from the other gospels there were two of them. Then in verses 43-48, we see Jesus healing the sick—the woman with the hemorrhage. And then in verse 49-56, we see Jesus bringing life to the dead as He raises Jairus’ daughter. And so it’s as if, in Luke 8 verse 1, Luke is saying proclamation and evangelism are connected, but they are different aspects. They’re two different things. And it seems that the miracles demonstrate Jesus evangelizing and the parables demonstrate Jesus proclaiming. All right? Take that note on board. It’s very important. So to evangelize means to bear or bring and spread good news. Okay? And the miracles were a tremendously effective way of bringing good news. And if you go to a sick person and you say, “In the name of Jesus Christ, get up and get well—be well,” that’s good news. You have brought the good news. You have brought the kingdom of God. Can you see how that evangelism is more than just talking to people? Now these miracles in this instant were not just a preparation for evangelism. I’m going very—making a very strong statement. Some would say, “Yes, well, we believe in miracles, but they only are preparation. They’re not really part of evangelism as such. They’re like pre-evangelism.” No, not according to the New Testament. Miracles are evangelism because miracles are the message. They were not even the consequences of evangelism. “Oh well, you know, we believe in miracles because miracles follow the preaching of the Word. And you know, you have the preaching of the Word [stutters] and the miracles follow that. They’re sort of consequences of it.” Well, I know they’re consequences. I also know that miracles prepare the way for evangelism. I know that. But I’m also saying not just that miracles prepare the way for evangelism, not just that miracles are consequences of evangelism, but I’m saying miracles are in and of themselves evangelism, because they demonstrate the good news. Just think of that lame man—the man who was born lame from birth. Well, he would have been born lame from birth [stutters] to overemphasize the point. Peter says, “In Jesus’ name, rise up and walk.” And then the man doesn’t only just rise up and walk, but he runs and leaps as well and he enters the temple, the place where he, as a cripple, was never allowed to go. He enters the temple walking and leaping and praising God. Now if that is not a visual demonstration of the gospel. Jesus comes to right where you are, picks you up on your feet, sends you on your way rejoicing, and brings you into the very presence of God. That miracle was a message. And it was the message of that miracle that gave Peter a platform to tell more about the message. The apostle Paul makes the same point in Romans chapter 15 and verses 18-20. “For I will not dare to speak of those things which Christ has not accomplished through me in word and deed to make the Gentiles obedient. In mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and round about to Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.” Now in verses 19-20, most translations use the word ‘preaching’ there, but these word—this word was missing from the Greek. Paul literally writes in verse 19, “I have filled the gospel of Christ.” And in verse 20 he says, “I have made it my aim to evangelize.” And so the word ‘preaching’ doesn’t occur in the original. Verses 18-19 then go on to show how Paul filled the gospel and gospeled, or evangelized. It was in words and deeds and mighty signs and wonders by the Spirit. So in other words, Paul says, “Everywhere I have gone, I have filled the gospel by words, deeds, and in mighty signs. And it all has happened in the power of the Holy Spirit.” That is definitive evangelism as far as the apostle Paul is concerned. All right? So he ought to know. So don’t let any new fangled theologian—evangelical or otherwise—tell you anything different. We go back to the New Testament, and that’s how we evangelize wherever we go. We preach the gospel, we heal the sick, we perform signs and wonders in the name of Jesus Christ as He gives us ability, and we demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ. And we also see here, in Jesus—he got this from Jesus. Mark chapter 1 verses 21-34, have a look at that, please, right now. Mark chapter 1 verses 21-34. We have Him preaching in the synagogue. That’s how He begins. But there He delivers a captive—somebody who has a demonic spirit—heals the sick, casts out demons. All right. That’s how Jesus ministers. And so it seems that in every gospel, Jesus announced the good news through preaching, through teaching, and through one to one conversations. And He also demonstrated mighty signs and wonders and He also lived the good news by accepting people, receiving people, and embracing and forgiving them. He embraced the afflicted, the hurting people of His day. In the same way, in the early church, we have in Acts chapter 8; we have the story of Philip. He evangelizes. Verse 5 by preaching, verse 6 through miracles, verse 7 by casting out demons, verse 8 by healing the sick. And Acts chapter 8 and verse 12 [correct reference is Acts 8:25] makes it clear what His ministry was. And it says, “The Samaritans believed as He evangelized.” He evangelized by doing all of these things. He preached the gospel message, He demonstrated signs and wonders, He healed the sick, and He cast out demons. It’s the same as Peter. When he preaches Jesus, he says to the household of Cornelius, “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power and how He went about doing good and healing all the things, all those that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.” [Acts 10:38] These things should convince us above all that evangelizing is proclaiming the good news, but in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the demonstration of the life of God fleshed out as we not only preach, but demonstrate and be good news wherever He sends us. Well, there’s our introduction to the meaning of the word ‘evangelism.’ We’re going to come back in the next session to take it further from here. But let’s go out with this understanding burning in our hearts and minds. Evangelism is a demonstration in the power of the Holy Spirit. God bless you.

And that brings to an end today’s teaching on Reaching the Lost. I pray that you’ve been inspired to reach out to people who don’t yet know Jesus Christ with the wonderful message of the gospel. We’ll be back next time with more teaching on Reaching the Lost. Till then, God bless you.

Recommended reading

• Dye, Colin. Reaching the lost, Kensington Temple, 2007
• Bonnke, Reinhard. Evangelism by fire: Igniting your passion for the lost,Full Flame Gmbh, 2002

Additional reading

• Osborne, T. L. Soulwinning out where the sinners are, Harrison House, 1980
• Bonnke, Reinhard. Time is running out: Save the world before it’s too late, Regal Books, 1999