Heralding the gospel

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. We’re looking at the topic of evangelism—reaching the lost. We’ve already begun to see that people without Christ are lost. Doesn’t matter wherever they are, wherever they live, whoever they are, rich or poor, we all need Jesus. We’ve also seen that this is a message which is to be proclaimed. It is a proclamation. It is not so much an idea that needs to be added to or modified; the gospel never, never changes, because Jesus never changes. And when Jesus was on this earth, He preached the gospel with signs and wonders and miracles that testified to the fact that this message was from God. And today, all over the world, God is doing the same thing. People who need a miracle in their life, God is touching their lives as the gospel is going forth. And this miracle confirms that Jesus is who He claimed to be. But we’ve also seen that there’s another element. Jesus didn’t proclaim the gospel from the security of heaven. He came to this earth, He came to this planet, He sat where you and I sit. And therefore, when He preached the gospel, it was personal communication. He had compassion on the people that He was involved with. And when you and I preach the gospel today, we must have that same compassion and that same personal involvement with the people that we preach to, because then we’re truly following Jesus.

Hello, and welcome to this session on Reaching the Lost. It’s about evangelism. It’s about reaching out with the love of Jesus Christ, proclaiming good news, being good news, and demonstrating good news—the good news of the kingdom. Now so far in these sessions, I’ve been concentrating on the words used in the New Testament for evangelism. And we’ve seen there are two main word groups. One which is based around euangelion, meaning ‘the evangel,’ ‘the gospel,’ ‘evangelize,’ euangelidzo, and so forth. And we’ve been examining what that means. And it’s more than just speaking good news; it’s being good news and demonstrating good news. Then we also began to look, in the last session, at the second word group based around the word kerux, which means, ‘a herald,’ ‘one who proclaims.’ And now the verb that is related to this kerux word is kerusso, which means ‘to herald,’ or ‘to proclaim.’ And it means ‘to act as a herald.’ This word is used around sixty times in the New Testament. Its literal meaning is very clear from Mark 1 and verse 45, “But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the matter so that Jesus could no longer openly enter the city, but was outside in the deserted places. And they came to Him from every quarter.” So Jesus told the man healed, “Don’t tell anybody,” but he told everybody. And it’s almost as if that’s been reversed. He’s told us to tell everybody and we tell nobody. What we need to do is to understand that the herald’s job is to broadcast. It’s something like News at 10, you know, or the local broadcasting station. That’s what we must do. And so this word carries with it three things. If somebody is to broadcast something, if somebody is to act as a herald, it means three things. First of all, it suggests a personal commissioning. To act as a herald means that you have been personally commissioned by the king to announce a message, and that message is to certain people. So it’s a personal commissioning. Secondly, it’s a specific message from the king. So you are to announce, specifically, the message the king gives you. And then it also implies obedience to this commission and obedience to this message. And so these passages that use this word in this way show that it’s linked, also, with the word euangelion. These two words are linked. So the person who is to herald the message announces the message, and the message they announce is the gospel. And so we have time and time again, kerusso often used with the other word, euangelion—to proclaim, to announce the gospel, to announce the gospel message. And so the king’s heralds are sent, essentially, to proclaim his gospel—the good news which is from and about the king. So in Matthew chapter 24 and verse 14, it says, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached.” It’s the euangelion, the gospel of the kingdom, which will be preached—kerusso­—“in all the world as a witness, and then the end shall come.” But as we’ve noticed, the spoken proclamation, the euangelion of the herald’s message, the kerux, is only one part of evangelism. It’s an important part, but it must be complemented by a demonstration and an incarnation of the gospel. So in other words, the herald has to announce the message, but in announcing the message, he isn’t just a neutral announcer, you know, somebody who just says, “This is what I’ve heard; I better tell it to you,” he must live that message. The announcer must incarnate that message so that he or she, as the bearer of this good news, must also demonstrate it in their lives and also pass that on in power to other people. Then we come to this word kerugma, which is also formed part of this word group. So we’ve got the herald—the one who acts as a herald—the verb. And now, the noun, that which is heralded—kerugma. Kerugma.  And this is translated as ‘preaching.’ The preaching, the content of the message. It always points to the content of the herald’s proclamation, not to their act of proclaiming. And as such, it is a clearly delineated message. The heralds knew exactly what it was. Very often, they just read it out. They knew exactly what that message was. And so the preaching, the content of the New Testament gospel, is very, very clear. Have a look at this in 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 21. It says, “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached, to save those who believe.” Now preaching in and of itself is foolish. To think that you standing up here can say something that’s going to affect somebody else, that’s foolish in and of itself. But the foolishness here is not just in the act of proclaiming, but the foolishness is in the content of what is proclaimed. Think about it. That something happened two thousand years ago that affects your life forever and transfers you out of hell into heaven. Now that is nonsense to the human mind. It’s not human wisdom. That’s not a human philosophy. That’s the message of God. It’s the power of God. Titus 1 and verse 3, “But in due time, God manifested His Word through preaching, which was committed to me according to the commandment of God our Savior.” Paul says, “This is the manifestation of the message. It’s been committed to me and I must proclaim this message.” There is a message to proclaim. There is a word to proclaim. It means ‘a fixed message.’ That’s what kerugma means. It’s a fixed, unalterable message. You can’t tamper with it. A herald had no more the right to say, “Oh, look. This is a message from the king, but I don’t like it. I think I’ll give my own message instead.” [stutters] The herald had no such right to do that and we have no right to tamper with the message—the gospel message. And yet a lot of people do in so many ways. Liberal theologians say, “We don’t like the sound of hell. We’ll deal with it.” And that’s affected the Christian church so that now even evangelical believers, many of them, are being taught you don’t have to believe that hell is forever. It’ll last for some time, but in the end, everybody will be extinguished, snuffed out. That’s not what the Bible says. We’re tampering with the message of the gospel when we preach like that. Or we may say, “Well [stutters] let’s do without repentance. It’s an unpopular message. Let’s just say come to Jesus as you are and stay as you are. You’re fine. You’re okay, I’m okay, everybody’s okay, okay?” Not okay. God says you are not okay. God says you are a sinner, hell bound sinner apart from His mercy and grace and you need to repent from your sin and you need to come to Christ in all His fullness. No, no, no, no. Some move away from this and say that the kerugma was a fixed series of factual statements and it’s announcing the facts about the life and ministry of Jesus. Okay, it culminates in a demand for repentance and faith. Others turn around, say, “No, no, it’s not about fixed facts. It’s about a person and it’s simply bringing people into a personal encounter with the living Christ, so it doesn’t really matter what you say, as long as they meet Jesus.” So here we have some who says, “It’s all in the message,” and some say, “No, no, no, it’s all in presenting Jesus as the person.” How silly theologians are, really, at times, because it’s both and it’s not either/or. The kerugma is both a message which is rooted in the historical facts of Jesus—His life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, His coming again, the sending of the Spirit—all of these things are facts of the gospel. But it is also an introduction to the person of Jesus Christ. You proclaim the facts in order to introduce the person. So we have in 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 23, Paul says, “We preach Christ. We preach Christ crucified, [in fact,] to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks, foolishness.” But it is a message which is a presentation of a person. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 14, he says, “And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also vain.” If Christ is not risen, if Christ is dead, then we have nothing to preach, nothing to proclaim. Our preaching is empty, because He is the content of our preaching. We are introducing you to Him when we preach about Him. So it is a presentation of Christ. So here we have some—and I’ve only scratched the surface—here we have a presentation of the New Testament understanding of evangelism. And as we move on from here to look at all the other aspects of reaching the lost, let’s not move from this position. We must understand that [stutters] the evangelism has to do with euangelion—the message—and all the words associated with that—good news. It has, also, to do with proclaiming—kerux—as a herald, and everything that we’ve said about these two words goes into our understanding of evangelism. Also, we should appreciate that evangelism now is the work of the Holy Spirit. It depends upon the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. And therefore, when we evangelize, we must depend upon the Spirit of God to awaken people from the sleep of death so they might come to the light of life. Focusing on the hurting—it involves a demonstration of signs and wonders, it involves a demonstration of the gospel in so many different ways. It involves living out the gospel in compassion and holiness. It means, also, behaving like a public herald, proclaiming, broadcasting the good news to everyone we meet wherever they are. Let that seed be scattered. Let the seed fall wherever it may find a place to fall. Okay, some of it will fall on the pathway, some will fall on stony ground, some will fall on thorny ground, but some will fall on good ground and that’s what will bring fruit to God. Our job is to preach and to proclaim, to live and to demonstrate, to love and to show people that Jesus Christ is alive. That’s what evangelism is.

And we now are going to focus on those whom we are to evangelize. It’s the lost. This series is called Reaching the Lost. And we need to grasp this point. You know, if we truly understand the state of the lost and know from what we have been rescued, our lost condition, and know that He has given to us this ministry of reaching out to the lost; if we know these things, evangelism will not be a problem to us; it’ll be a delight. It’ll be a lifestyle. We won’t be gazing into the empty distance with our mind wandering all over the place, when we’re being exhorted to evangelize. And when we’re being encouraged to do it, we won’t just be saying, “Yes, I know we ought to be doing that, but I’ll put it off for another time.” We will do it. I have a little booklet called The Cry of the Lost. Wish you could all get it and read it. It’s when I heard with my own ears, spiritual ears, the lost cry. It was not the cry of the finally lost. I did not hear the cries of people in a lost eternity, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, Jesus said. You know, He spoke more about that than He spoke about heaven. It was the cry of the lost who are already lost and on the way to a lost eternity. And the lostness in their voice, in their voices. And it was like a fresh call of God to my life. And I heard the screams and the cries saying, “Who will deliver us? Who will care for our souls? Who is going to help us, show us the way?” And like the sound of that voice of that young man who lived a life of a prostitute—a male prostitute—and went home. And in the early hours of the morning, having been abused all night long, pulled the covers of the bed over his face and cried out to a God that he didn’t even know, saying, “Help me!” And yet, for the most part, the lost of this world only feel the temporal consequences of their sin. That if you live a life of immorality and lying and cheating and self centeredness, that breeds within itself a kind of fruit. And they eat the fruit of those ways—depression, bondage, misery. Sin brings its own misery. But the only misery sinners experience, by and large, without the revelation of God, is the misery of their own sin in natural dimensions. But there are spiritual dimensions to this that await them. There are more horrible than we could even possibly contemplate, and yet we must contemplate them if we’re going to understand how lost the lost really are. They are lost without Christ. What does it mean to be lost? Have you thought about that? What does it mean to be lost eternally? Jesus spoke more about—more [stutters] to believers than unbelievers about hell because He wanted the believers to know the reality of hell and then go and rescue people from it. That great Salvation Army slogan—“Some like to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.” Booth said to a number of people who were graduating out of his school; he said, “You have been here,” for however long the course was, “and you have excelled in your studies. But if I had my way, I would not have sent you to this college to be trained for evangelism. I would have sent you to hell itself and let you have but ten minute in hell and then release you on the world. You would have learned everything you needed to know by experiencing what it means to be lost.” Now, while the purpose of our sessions together is very much to analyze this and to look at this from a—I am preaching to get a conviction today. I want to see you convicted about the needs of the lost. Jesus did. That was why He came. He said, “I’ve come to [stutters] search and to save. I’ve come to seek and to save the lost.” Those who are out of the way. That’s why Jesus heralded the good news. That’s why He incarnated it. That’s why He demonstrated it. That’s why He proclaimed it. Because He moved amongst the lost to reach them, to find them, to touch them, to bring them back to His Father. Here, we have in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 9 right the way through to chapter 10, here we have Jesus at the end of chapter 9 saying the needs of the harvest are so great because the laborers are so few. The greatest need is for more laborers. And then in chapter 10, He answers, in part, His own cry, by sending and commissioning the twelve to herald the message. And He provided them with the specific message that they were to proclaim and He directed them to a particular group of people. He says in chapter 10 and verse 8, [correct reference is Matthew 10:6] “Go to the lost sheep, the lost of the house of Israel.” And then He instructs them how to demonstrate the message, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead. “Freely you’ve received, freely give.” And then He says how you’re to live the message amongst the people. You know, when you go, don’t go demanding big salaries. When you go, give freely and live amongst these people simply and honestly, with integrity. And if you go into one house and they accept you there, don’t move away into some other bigger house when they give you a better offer. So, don’t stay with that brother, stay with this—we’ve got a nicer house. You just [stutters] be grateful for what you’re given and you stay there and you live a humble life. You’re not there for your comfort or your complacency; you’re there to reach the lost. Now it’s so important that we understand who the disciples were directed to reach. They were directed to reach the lost. In this instance at that time, especially the lost [stutters] of the house of Israel, the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And this is what characterized Jesus’ own ministry. Luke 19 verse 10, He says, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost.” Now what does it mean to be lost? Some people think it means, you know, to be misplaced. Well, you weren’t lost in that sense. You didn’t need to be found; He knew where you were. You didn’t need to find Him, either, because He wasn’t lost either. No, being lost does not mean to be misplaced—‘I’ve lost my keys, I’ve lost my shoes.’ No, it means something much stronger. The Greek word is apollumi, which means ‘to destroy.’ It means ‘to ruin fully.’ It’s something that it totally spoiled, ruined, and in that sense, lost. It means ‘to perish.’ And we see this, for example, in Matthew 10:28, “’Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.’” Now the killing here is not the cessation of existence; it’s a destruction. It’s destroying something. What is physical death? It’s the separation of the body and the spirit, but that body is going to be raised again and that spirit doesn’t die. It perishes. So when somebody perishes, the connection between the body and the spirit is spoiled and the being is spoiled. Now some translations and some theologians emphasize and say that this means to kill, as in the sense of annihilate. It does not mean a loss of being. This word, apollumi, means ‘a loss of wellbeing.’ Not a loss of being itself. It signifies devastation and ruin, not extinction and death in the sense of cessation of all activity or cessation of existence. Apollumi is occasionally translated as ‘perish,’ which is a very good translation. In John 3:16, the most famous verse, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” So being lost means perishing. So the title we’ve adopted, Reaching the Lost, is a thoroughly biblical expression. But we must understand just how lost the lost are. They’re not lost as if they’ve begun to perish a little bit, that perishing has set in and it’s irreversible and it will find its final conclusion, they will continue to perish and continue to perish. It’s an eternal perishing. That’s what it means in John 3:16, where it says that they should not perish, but have everlasting life. Everlasting life. That everlasting condition of being in the Father’s glory and the Father’s fullness, that is what salvation means. Being lost is being everlastingly excluded from that and receiving the ongoing, everlasting consequences of that—perishing. They are so lost that they are perishing. That’s what the Bible says. Now although they are lost and totally ruined and completely devastated, the lost still exist. And their existence, in what the Bible describes as hell, is an eternal lostness. That’s why Jesus came before it was too late. He said, “I’ve come to save.” And He sent us out to reach them with this gospel into the world—into the world—into the world. It’s the Father’s love that’s done it. He doesn’t want people to be lost. God is not willing that any should perish. That’s why He loves the world. God so loved the world that He sent His Son. His Son is sent to the world. The world is the target of God’s love. The world is the object of God’s love. The world is the mission field. Now when we think about evangelism, often we think about individual men and women. But there is a whole world out there. A whole world dimension to all of the Bible—something we as Western people, that’s assuming most of us are Westerners or at least heavily influenced by Western society and culture—we Westerners tend to have an individualistic view of life rather than a corporate, whole world view.

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