A publication of Evangelism Equipping Mission (Singapore

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Oct / Nov 2009

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CONNECTING EQUIPPING MULTIPLYING

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Silas had come to Thessalonica to preach the Gospel. We read thata group of “lewd men of the baser sort” cried out in great dismay(now that’s quite a description, isn’t it, of those that oppose theGospel?) that “

these that have turned the world upside down havecome hither also

” (Acts 17:6).Our theme today: “Reaching the World for Christ,” transformingthe world for Christ, turning the world right side up for Christ.Now, some would say, “Wait a minute, preacher. That’s… a littleheavy, isn’t it? You know, I did manage to get to church today, and Idropped a little something in the offering plate, and now you want meto change the world?”

SPIRITUAL MULTIPLICATION

Yes! You can do it; we can do it. To wit: just in the last five years,one of the ten ministries of this church succeeded in reaching 20million people for Christ. Twenty million people won to Christthrough one of the ten ministries of this church:

Evangelism Explosion

. By the end of this year, they anticipate that will be

twenty-five million

. Two more years after that it will be

fifty-onemillion people

. I am convinced that if you project a couple of decades into the future, this church will have succeeded in bringingmore people to Christ than the entire Christian Church in 1,800 years.Praise God!That is through the biblical secret (not really a secret, but manyhave not yet discovered it) of spiritual multiplication. That is the trick,if you want to call it that, of winning the world for Christ. That iswhat the world has been doing since Adam’s day. It has beenphysically multiplying, hasn’t it, while the Church has been trying toadd? You can never catch up with multiplication by addition.Therefore, it is vital that Christians learn how to multiply spiritually.That is what we are engaged in doing and have been doing fornumbers of years here at this church, and it is getting more and moreexciting with each passing year. Well, we wanted to bring you up todate on spiritual multiplication.You say, “I’m not a preacher or an evangelist. I’m just a layman.”It is interesting. I have never had anyone tell me he was a layman.They are always “just” a layman. Well, let me tell you about alayman. His name was

Edward Kimball

— just a layman. He did dosomething in the church; he taught a Sunday school class for highschool boys. Not exactly a place where he is likely to make a hugeimpact on the world. But he was doing the best he could, and after all,he was also shy.He noticed that one of the boys wasn’t doing very well in class. Hedidn’t seem to pay much attention or make much progress, soKimball decided he would visit him at the shoe store, where he had anafternoon job. He went to the store, but when he got to the door, hechickened out. Do any of you fellas and girls know what that means— chickened out? Sure you do. He just walked right on past the store.He stopped, came back, walked past the door again, and again, andagain. Something said to him, “Wait until Sunday. You can talk to theboy then.” Something else said, “No. Do it now.”Finally, the voice of conscience won out, and Kimball went in, and toldthe manager he wanted to speak to the young man that worked there. Hewas told, “He’s in the storage room in the back, getting the shoes ready tobe put out on the shelves.” So he went back there. I am sure the boy wasstartled to see his Sunday school teacher there, but they talked, andKimball shared with him the Gospel, one on one, and this young manaccepted Christ.Did that make much difference? The young man’s name was

DwightL. Moody

—probably the greatest evangelist America produced in thenineteenth century. His ministry gave rise to the Moody Bible Institute,the Moody Broadcasting Network, Moody Monthly magazine, andthousands of missionaries went out to the mission field through theministry of Dwight L. Moody.Moody went to England to preach, and there he came across a youngman by the name of

F. B. Meyer

, who also became a great preacher of theGospel. Meyer came to America. He preached in Moody’s school inMassachusetts.When Meyer preached there, he had a tremendous impact on

J. WilburChapman

, who was converted about that time through this group. Hebecame a great evangelist. When he retired from his evangelistic work, heturned the ministry over to a professional baseball player (Isn’t that whatyou would do if you were a preacher?) His name was Billy Sunday, and hebecame one of America’s outstanding evangelists. Many thousands cameto Christ through him. He went to Charlotte, North Carolina, andconducted a great evangelistic meeting and a number of people wereconverted there.A group of the men who were converted there decided to form anorganization and have their own crusade. This they did, and in 1932 theyinvited Mordecai Ham to speak — not a well-known speaker who had anunusual name. He preached at this crusade in Charlotte. There on the lastnight of the crusade, during the singing of the last stanza of the last hymn,a sixteen-year-old boy heard the Gospel and went forward and acceptedChrist. I am sure you know who that was. His name:

Billy Graham

. Tensof millions of people have come to know Christ through him.It all started with a Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball, whommost people never ever heard of.. The Bible says, “

And they that be wiseshall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many torighteousness as the stars for ever and ever”

(Daniel 12:3).Well, we have a lot of stars here on earth. We have movie stars androck stars and basketball stars and all the rest — most of them areshooting stars or falling stars — but Kimball will shine forever, becausehe certainly was responsible for bringing many to righteousness.You can be a star, too, by turning many to righteousness. It doesn’t sayyou need to be a preacher or an evangelist or a missionary. You cansimply be “just” a layman, but a layman that is concerned to win lostpeople to Christ. I think one of the greatest needs in the Church today isfor concerned Christians. Are you one? I would hate to say it, but it isprobably my considered opinion that the majority sitting in front of me arenot. Were you concerned last week enough to tell anybody about Christ?Many of you didn’t. We need concerned Christians.

I I n nA A s sii a a I I n nt t h heeww o o r rl l d d

To Glorify God by Equipping Believers to Multiply In and Through Local Churches

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by Rev Dr. D. James Kennedy, founder of

Evangelism Explosion

This is the sermon as delivered on January 29, 2006, at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida

I think of April 1964. Do you remember what you were doing then? InNew York City, a young lady was coming home late at night from work.She entered the vestibule of her apartment building and was accostedthere by a man with a knife. He slashed her across the face. She screamedat the top of her voice. He slashed her again, and again, and again. Shepleaded at the top of her voice, “Somebody please help me! I am dying! Iam dying! Please, somebody help me.” Nobody came. The man slashedher again and again and again and again and again. It took 30 minutes forher to die.That, of course, was on the front page of every newspaper in America.You may remember her name, Kitty Genovese, that dear lady whocouldn’t get anybody to listen to her or anyone to come to help her, andshe finally died. Eventually, the police came and checked it out. You say,“Surely, nobody heard her in this big apartment building.” It would benice to think so, but the facts showed that 38 people heard her. They hadlooked out of their windows, saw what was happening, and what did theydo? Nothing! They didn’t go down to help her. They didn’t call thepolice. When asked why not, they said, “We didn’t want to get involved.”They were totally unconcerned. So Genovese died a terrible death.

GET INVOLVED

You ask, “How could those people be so hard hearted as to not doanything — not even call the police?” My friends, people are dying allaround us every day, every week, every month. We pass them on thestreets, we meet them, we greet them, and usually we just go on our way,because we are really not concerned enough to do anything; we have ourown things going on. But there are people who will take a lot more thanthirty minutes to die.

They will take 30 billion, trillion centuries inHell.

We could save them if we shared the Gospel with them, but we are just not concerned.I thank God for the many right here who are concerned. I would thattheir number would multiply greatly. What a wonderful thing it is to bethe one used by God to bring the Gospel of salvation to some personwho, like all of the rest of us, is dying.Every one of us has the responsibility of being a witness for Christ.Every last person that names His name as Savior and Lord has been toldby Christ to go and preach the Gospel and share the Good News witheveryone on earth. I hope that you have been and are being just such awitness as that.A number of people have said to me, as an excuse for not witnessing(we are really very good at making excuses), “Well, I can’t talk aboutreligion. I just witness by my life.” Now, I am all in favor of witnessingby our lives, but it doesn’t work with the Gospel. That is not how peopleare converted.The Gospel is a message that needs to be proclaimed. The apostle Paulsaid, “

I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, whichalso ye have received…

”(1 Corinthians 15:1) Christ died for our sins; Hewas buried and rose again from the grave the third day. No. We can’t justbe Christians and live a nice life and expect that anybody is going to goto Heaven because of that.I remember one time a friend of mine in the ministry was debating aman who believed in what he called the “

theory of a voicelessChristianity

.” He probably could have talked you into joining his churchpretty easily — at least some of you who want a voiceless Christianity — just be nice and all will be well, and people will flock into the kingdom.But the Christian minister debating him disagreed, and said, “That’snot the way it works. You can’t just live a Christian life, because theGospel is a body of knowledge that must be taught and understood.”There is no “voiceless Christianity.” The Gospel is Good News, and ithas to be told if people are going to get it.Or suppose you are walking down your street at about ten o’clock atnight. You notice smoke coming out of the back window of yourneighbor’s house. You say to yourself, “Good grief, my neighbor’s houseis on fire, and that is his daughter’s room where the smoke is comingfrom. I had better scream at the top of my voice saying, “Fire! Fire! Yourhouse is on fire.”Then you say, “If I do that, people will come out and see me, and theywill think I am some kind of a fanatic, a lunatic. Why, they might call thepolice on me. No. I’ll do this. I will go home and get down on my kneesand pray and somebody will take care of it.” That is not what you woulddo. You would scream “Fire!” at the top of your lungs; you would go tothe front door and bang on that door and cry “Fire! Fire! Fire!” untilsomeone opened the door, and went and got the little girl out of her room.Why would you do that when you pass and have passed thousands of people who are definitely going to die, and most of them without Christand in need of the Savior, and you don’t talk to them? I thought aboutthat for a long time, and then the answer came to me. You know whywe would go and knock on that door and not on others? The reason is,my friend, we believe that the fire in that bedroom is real — but do youbelieve that your neighbors, friends, and fellow workers are going tothe lake of fire forever? If you did, you would do something about it.The flames are real, but unfortunately there is coiled in the soul of many of us a serpent of unbelief that keeps us from responding to suchpeople.Do you remember Aunt Sophie? She was a converted scrubwoman.No initials after her name, except possibly S.W. for “scrubwoman.”But she was a converted scrubwoman. She loved the Lord. She didn’thave any education to speak of, but she did speak what she knew. Shetold people everywhere about the love of Jesus Christ. Of course somepeople laughed at her. They mocked her, especially one day whensomeone saw her standing out in front (this is years ago) of a cigarstore witnessing to a cigar store Indian. In case any of you childrendon’t know, it’s made out of wood. But she couldn’t see him wellenough to know that, so she just went on witnessing to him.Somebody told her, “Well, you know, Sophie, someone said theysaw you witnessing to a cigar store Indian this afternoon.”And she said, “Well, perhaps I did. My eyesight is not as good as itused to be, but talking about Christ to a wooden Indian is not so bad asbeing a wooden Christian and never talking to anyone about Christ.”I’ll go with Sophie on that. How about you?

FEAR OF WITNESSING

Fear of witnessing is the other main reason why people don’twitness. They are afraid of what someone might think about them. Iknow, because that was a big hurdle for me to get over as a youngChristian, in spite of the fact that Jesus said in His final declaration,“

Ye shall be witnesses unto me

” (Acts 1:3). I didn’t, because I wasafraid.There was another young man about twenty years old who also hada big problem with fear. He was a Christian; he knew the Lord, but hewas afraid to talk about it with anyone else. It bothered him, like whatI’m talking about is bothering some of you. If that is so, I want to tellyou that I am so very glad, because that is precisely what I am trying todo. But one day this young man said, “I am going to witness tosomebody for Christ today. I am not going to put it off any longer.”Later he got on the bus to go to work. At the very next stop, a nicelooking gentleman in a three-piece suit got on the bus and sat next tohim in the seat. He noticed the man had tears coming down his face.Then he noticed the man was actually sobbing, and he began to speak out loud. The boy didn’t know if he was talking to him or somebodyelse, but he was saying, “Oh God, Oh God, help me. I don’t know whatto do. My life is falling apart. Everything is crumbling in. Oh, if I couldonly talk to you, God. If only I knew somebody that knew God,” andhe turned to this young man and said, “Do you know God?” Whatwould you say?The young boy whispered a prayer and said, “Lord, if this is a sign,then turn the bus driver into an armadillo.” Well, we all can find somekind of excuse to put it off or not do it at all.The Bible talks about one of the signs that people noticed aboutChristians. Do you know what it was? “

Now when they saw theboldness of Peter and John . . . they marveled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus

” (Acts 4:13). I amsure that one of the reasons we don’t have the boldness we ought tohave is that we are not spending time on our knees with Jesus, becauseJesus gives boldness to people. He tells us to witness and He gives usthe boldness to be able to do it. I hope He has given that to you.Dear friend, God has told every one of us that we are to bewitnesses unto Christ. That goes for you and me; that goes for thisweek. I hope that God gives you the grace to witness and that He willgive you the power of His Holy Spirit to make it effectual; and thatGod will use you to bring someone to Christ this very week. Peoplewill take note of you that you have been with Jesus when they see yourboldness.

“And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given untome in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” – Matthew 28:18-19