Evangelism and the Acts 2 Church

In Acts 2, we see that the church was given the power (Dunamis) of the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised it in Act 1:8. The Holy Spirit comes upon a group of fearful people and it sends them into the world as fearless evangelists. It is the same Spirit that fills us today. God does not have two Holy Spirits – one for the apostles and one for us. He has One Holy Spirit and it is the same Holy Spirit which He has given us when we came to trust in Jesus as our savior. When the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles, they were filled with fearlessness and power. WE have the same power! We don’t have a different Spirit that lives within us, it is the same Holy Spirit that now dwells is us as it was that came upon the disciples. Once they were filled with the Holy Spirit, they were filled with fearlessness and power. They used this power to go out into the world and tell the world about Jesus. It was not about the content of their words that brought 3,000 to Jesus, it was the power of the Holy Spirit.

We need to think the same way as the disciples did. Sometimes I think we all think that we don’t yet have the Holy Spirit living in us. We are thinking that we need to go out and reach out to others in our own power. However, if we try to go out and reach out to others in our own power, we will fail. The disciples would have failed as well. It is why Jesus told them in Acts 1:8 that they needed to wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon them and then they would go out into Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the end of the world. If they had gone out prior to the sending of the Holy Spirit, they would have failed also. But because they waited for the Holy Spirit to come upon them, they were able to go out in power and in fearlessness. If we go out in the power of the Holy Spirit, then we will succeed as well.

There are two reasons we don’t evangelize: we don’t feel we are equipped and we are afraid. Part of this is human nature and part of this is Satan working to keep you from moving into the plan God has for you. Satan would rather see us squander our 2 talents than come back with 2 more. He knows that God expects us to do with those talents what we are capable of doing, but Satan wants to see that no one comes to the Lord. So he tells us that we are unable, unworthy, incapable. He tells us that our friends won’t like us anymore, that we will be outcast and treated like lepers…and we believe him. So we go around thinking that we can’t do this because we don’t know the answers to the hard questions. We don’t know all the theology behind the faith. We don’t think we can convince them that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God and that if we even try, we will fail miserably.

There are two things we need to keep in mind here. How often are Christians told that they only believe because they need a crutch? That Christians are illogical and too simple and stupid to understand the difficult explanations of science. But here’s the point: Christianity is actually a very intellectual pursuit. Some of the greatest minds were Christians, and that you recognize how difficult it is to answer some of these questions should remind you of how intellectual Christian theology can be. So we should not worry about sounding stupid and not knowing everything because some of the greatest minds in history had difficulties understanding everything within the faith. However, that shouldn’t stop us from talking about it. After all, with the little bit of understanding you have, you have still come to salvation through Jesus. Unless you came to the Lord through one of the smartest people in the world, it should show you that you don’t need to be an expert in the faith nor a genius to be able to lead someone to Christ.

The second thing to keep in mind here is that you are not doing this. You are doing it in the power of the Holy Spirit!. You don’t need to know all the right things to say before you speak to them. Let the Holy Spirit lead you.

• Romans 8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.
• Matt 10:17-20  "But beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues; and you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say. "For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”

Too often, we think that we need to have all the answers. So we start a map that sounds something like this. “I’ll tell them they need to accept Jesus and they will ask me either why I can’t just get to heaven by being good or why a loving God would send anyone to hell. If I answer the first question, they will respond by saying either what about those who never hear about Jesus living in the jungles of Africa or why would a loving God allow people to suffer in earthquakes or abusive marriages.” All of a sudden you are thinking that you need to have the answer to 50 questions that the greatest theologians don’t even have answers to. No wonder you are worried! But you are letting Satan control your thinking. This is a battle for your mind so as to win the battle for the souls that you would be saving. You need to not allow your mind to take off on you and make you think what an impossibility it is to speak to someone about Jesus and remember that God will give you the words to say. It is not that you are super genius. It is that god has placed His Holy Spirit within you and you now have the same power that the apostles had when they went into the street to tell everyone about the Lord Jesus.

So once we overcome our doubts about whether we are capable of telling people about Jesus, the next part is getting over our fear. What are we afraid of? We are fearful that we will not know what to say (which we’ve just addressed), that we might say the wrong thing (again, we’ve addressed by recognizing that God will give us the right words to say), that we might come across as mean, politically incorrect, narrow minded. That we might lose our friends, gain a bad reputation. All of these things are things that we fear and so instead of taking a chance, we instead sit home and pretend like it’s not a big deal.

Luke 12:4-5
"I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” (NIV)

1 Timothy 1:7
For God has not given us a spirit of Fear (timidity, cowardice) but of Power and, Love and sound mind.

If we are fearful, it is because we either we do not yet truly understand the situation of the unsaved or we don’t love enough. We are so glad that we are saved and we are so happy to be able to look forward to our eternity with God. But the moment we enter into the Kingdom of God by trusting in Jesus to bring us into everlasting life, we forget how dead we were, how close we were to eternal damnation. Think for a moment what you would do if you were not saved and you were going to hell. What would your eternity be like? Would you be desperate for someone to show you a way to avoid it? Of course you would! We forget how much we would want someone to tell us about Jesus if we were not saved. How can we not do that for someone we know? We need to remember the situation of the unsaved and never let it become less horrific than it really is.

As for loving enough, the first step is to have the mind of Christ. We need to have hearts for the lost the same way that God does. God sees them and loves them as they are. He wants them so much to be saved, to come into a relationship with Him. He wants so much for that lost person to know the way to be with Him for all eternity. He knows that right now, that person has chosen the way of death and it hurts Him, it hurts his heart. He cries over this lost soul. We need to see them the same way that God does. We need to see them where they are and where they are headed. The lost are that way because they do not know who Jesus is. We need to love them the same way God does. Next time you see someone you know needs to know the gospel message, see them through God’s eyes. See how lost they are, where they are heading. Can you still just sit there and do nothing?

As an example, imagine we’re on a mountain and we know an avalanche is coming so we have found a safe cave to stay in until it is over. We fear the avalanche but we know we are safe from its wrath. However, we look out of the cave and see two people standing in the path of the avalanche. All of a sudden, our hearts jump and begin to beat faster. We become afraid. Our fear is still for the avalanche. We still fear what it is going to do – but this time, not to us but to those others. We can invite them into the cave and into safety or we can let them continue to walk in the path of the avalanche. But these people can be really sarcastic and rude. If we tell them that they are in the path of the avalanche, they might respond by saying things like, “Who do you think you are; the expert in avalanches? I know as much about avalanches as you do.” Do we fear them or do we fear the avalanche? Since we fear the avalanche, we would probably be adamant, even yelling and screaming for them to come into the cave before they die! We need to love them enough to want to save them and we need to overcome our fear of rejection and urge them to come to safety. I think it would be odd to hear that someone didn’t try to save someone from an avalanche or any other danger – an oncoming car, a fire, a murderer hiding in the bushes – if we knew about it before they did and saw they were heading right into the danger.

We need to recognize that that an Acts 2 church overcame both their inability to properly tell people the gospel truth and their fear when the Holy Spirit came and dwelt in them. We have the same Holy Spirit living in us. We need to let go and allow God to work through us, recognizing that He will give us the words to say and the power to overcome. We do not have to worry about what we will say or fearing what people might think. We have the Holy Spirit to take care of us. If God is with us, who can be against us?

Many of them don’t know that all their good works will not get them into heaven. They don’t know that their eternal destination is not heaven but hell. These things are not known to them and so they continue in their same ways, in their same thoughts. They need someone to tell them about Jesus. They need someone to tell them that they aren’t good enough.

Others are so wrapped up in their pain and their situations that they don’t realize that there is a God who loves them, a God who cares about what they are going through. They think they are alone in their problems. They can’t imagine how they will go through the rest of their lives. They need someone to tell them that Jesus also suffered, that God knows what they are going through, that He knows what it’s like to lose a loved one (His son was crucified), the pain of rejection (Jesus was crucified because the people rejected who he was). They need to know that they are not alone, that Jesus loves them.

Do we see people like these? Do we see people who think they are fine all the while they are headed for eternal damnation? Do we see people who are suffering because they think they have to go through it alone? When we see these people, are our hearts heavy? Do we see them the way God sees them, the way Jesus sees them?

The problem is that too often, when we do see them the way God see them, our compassion for them is the exact thing that keeps us from telling them. We are afraid that we will hurt their feelings, that they will reject our help, that they will be offended. So we say nothing because we don’t want to make the matter worse than it already is. But the truth is that they are going to hell. No matter how we try to rationalize it or ease our minds or explain away, we know that there is only one way into heaven and that is through trusting in Jesus to get us there. Jesus is the only way into heaven and if we don’t tell others this simple truth, then they may never know.

People want to believe there are many ways to heaven. The reason for this desire is that they don’t want to believe in Jesus because then they have to listen to what he says. If we are telling people that Jesus is the only way to heaven and that everyone else is going to hell, then people are right about us and our message – that we are exclusive and intolerant. Unless it’s true. If it’s true, then we are neither of those things and instead we are desperately trying to save them!

1 Thes 2:2-4 We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition. For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts.

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Last modified: May 31, 2009