Evangelism: hearing, believing, and sharing the good news – as children of God, we are all loved by God. Every single one of us. (1/20/63)
Scripture: Acts 10: 34-48
For January 20, 1963 (Evangelism Sunday)
Let us pray: Almighty God, grant us, we beseech thee, so to speak, so to hear, and so to learn that our fears may be banished, our minds enlightened, our faith confirmed, and our steps directed unto thee. Amen.
One of the central tenets of the Christian faith is that we are children of God. As children of God, we are loved by God the Father. As a father, God singles out each one of us as a child worthy, as a person to be cared for and respected, as a person to be afforded patience and forgiveness. In order that each one of us might know more fully of his love, God sent Jesus into the world. Through the respect and love that Jesus showed for each person he met, we have an indication of the divine love and respect that God has for each one of us. Through the way that Jesus cared for and cherished each individual person he came in contact with, we have an indication of how God cares for and cherishes each one of us. Through the desire that Jesus demonstrated to serve each person by healing tortured bodies or sick minds or tormented spirits, we have an indication of God’s eagerness to heal us and make us whole persons – the kind of persons he created us to be. Through Jesus’ willingness to suffer for persons here on earth, we have an indication of God’s willingness to suffer for us. Through Jesus’ ability to forgive those who wronged and persecuted him while he was among us, we have an indication of God’s willingness to forgive each one of us the wrongs that we perpetrated against him and against our fellow human beings.
Yes, we were created to be Children of God. But how often we seem unable to believe this; how often we seem to deny our role as God’s children. For surely if we human beings murder and steal, we cannot possibly believe that we are children of God. Surely if we lie and cheat, we cannot look on ourselves as persons of worth. Surely if we gossip and tear down other persons, we cannot look upon either ourselves or those others as persons worthy of the respect that Jesus showed toward each individual person. Surely if we use prejudice and discrimination to hurt persons of other races and religions and nationalities, we cannot see either ourselves or these others as people worth caring for and cherishing. Surely if we belittle our children or our wives or husbands or our friends, we cannot help but deny the worth of ourselves and these others who we debase. Surely if we enter into warfare with other nations, we are rejecting our true humanity for which we were created.
Yes, we were created to be Children of God. We were created to be persons of worth, persons with dignity, persons with potentiality for human greatness. This is a central part of Christian doctrine. But so often we show that we really don’t believe this. So often we reject our human dignity. So often we deny our worth as creatures made and loved by God. So often we debase ourselves and others and thereby show that we really can’t accept the fact that there is a God who could care for us and cherish us enough to go to any lengths to help us be what we were created to be.
Because we human beings so often and so persistently reject this basic Christian doctrine, the church is presented with a very important task. Because you and I within the church find it so hard to believe that we are children of God – and because so many persons outside the church perhaps seldom have heard that they are God’s children – because of this, we in the church are challenged to take on a very important job. This job is to help persons to hear and believe that they are children of God. This job is to remind ourselves within the church and to inform others outside the church that we are indeed persons of worth.
This central doctrine of the Christian faith that we have been talking about is good news. It is good news that we are Children of God. It is good news that God considers us of such worth that he would come into the world in order to make this more clear to us. It is good news that God cares for and cherishes each individual one of us to such an extent that to help us be what we ought to be he would be willing to suffer and to die for us. Yes, all this is good news. And this important task of helping ourselves and other persons to hear and believe this good news is what is called evangelism. The word evangelism comes from the Greek ‘euangelion’, which actually means ‘good tidings’ or ‘good news.’ So this job of evangelism that we Christians hear talked about so often is really nothing more than telling the good news. Evangelism is no more than helping persons hear and believe that they are Children of God who are loved and cared for by him as a father loves and cares for his children.
Evangelism, or telling the good news, then, is a major task of us in church. In fact, we might say that this task is the central task of the church. It is our raison d’etre, it is the very reason that the church was called into being. The church was created in order that all persons (both within the church and outside it) might hear and believe this good news. Let’s break this business of hearing and believing the good news into two parts and let’s talk about each separately. First, let’s talk about helping persons to hear the good news.
The church was created to help persons hear the good news. What good news? The news that we are Children of God, that God loves and cares for us like a father, that he loved us enough to come into the world and take up our human burdens and to suffer and to die for us.
Was the church created only to help those outside the church to hear this good news? By no means. All of us need to hear this again and again. All of us need to be constantly reminded of God’s love, of his willingness to forgive, of his eagerness to pardon us and give us a fresh start.
How has the church gone about helping persons hear the good news? One of the most important ways has been to preserve the Bible where the message of this good news is revealed to man, and to lay emphasis on the importance of the Bible as the conveyer of this passage. Another way has been through the teaching and the preaching of the church, both in study and in worship. Another way has been through the structure of the church, the organization which (although somewhat cumbersome at times) has helped the church to exist through the ages so that it might continue in its important task of helping persons hear the good news. For example, the church has set up offices such as elder and deacon and trustee and minister so that its task of helping persons hear the good news might be facilitated. But more about this phase of the church in a moment.
To help persons hear the good news is only part of the important task of evangelism. The other part of this task is helping persons to believe this good news. This part of the task is much the more difficult part. For to hear something is relatively easy. But to get to the point of accepting it as true, this often is the difficult business.
In the final analysis to believe in God’s love, to believe that you or I personally are a child of God, this is always an act of faith. But whether you or I can take this leap of faith depends on many factors, but these factors are tied up largely with our own personal experience, especially that part of our experience which involves our human relationships.
Let us consider for a moment a person who has always been belittled and trampled upon in his important human relationships. Perhaps his parents made him feel unwanted and worthless most of the time. Perhaps his teachers ignored him or disliked him. Perhaps his neighbors neglected or despised him. With such a background, what are the chances that deep down he would really be able to believe that he is a child of God, a person of worth, a person cared for and cherished by his creator? What are his chances that he would be able to trust in such a God? His chances are rather slim.
But now let us consider another person who in his important human relationships has been shown affection and respect. His parents have liked and accepted him, even though at times they have become impatient and irked with him. His parents and church and public school teachers have taken an interest in him as a person and have sought to aid him in his development and in meeting his problems. These persons and his brothers and sisters and friends have shown him that even when he misbehaved he could be forgiven and accepted back into his family or his group. If this person hears that he is a child of God, what are his chances of believing this? If this person, who in the give-and-take of life has learned to trust other persons, is taught to trust in God, what are his chances of learning this lesson? His chances are fairly good.
The church was created not primarily to be an organization, and not primarily to be a collection of unrelated individuals. Instead the church was created to be a fellowship. By a fellowship we mean a group of persons who are bound to one another as a human family. By a fellowship we mean a community of persons who have learned to respect one another, who have learned to cherish one another as persons of worth, who have learned to forgive one another so that the inevitable rifts in human relationships are permitted to be healed rather than to become permanent ruptures. By a fellowship we mean a close group of persons modeled after the group composed of Jesus and his disciples.
The reason that the church was created to be a fellowship is perhaps now obvious. It was in order that we persons within this fellowship could provide one another with the experience of being cared for and forgiven on the human level. It was in order that we might experience being a human family of forgiven persons in order that we might more easily believe that we are members of God’s family. The church was created as a fellowship in order that we might not only hear but also believe that we are loved and forgiven by God. The church was created as a fellowship in order that we might not only hear, but also believe, that we are children of God.
This applies not only to those already firmly within the church, but also to those on the fringes or on the outside. When the church is really the fellowship that it was created to be, then those within the fellowship was constantly inviting into this fellowship those who are still on the outside. Then they are forever reaching their arms out in order to beckon others in and to welcome them into the family of God. Therefore, through the fellowship of the church persons are not only invited to hear the good news of God’s divine forgiving love; they are also provided with an experience of human love and forgiveness which enables them more easily to trust in God. It is because the church was created to be a fellowship that it can carry on the second aspect of evangelism as well as the first. It can help persons not only to hear that they are children of God, but also (and of much more crucial importance) to believe it.
Earlier in this service of worship this morning we ordained and installed our newly elected officers: elders, deacons, and trustees. The new officers and you who were previously installed will have many varied duties. All that you do, however, will run the danger of becoming a hodgepodge of busy-work unless you bear in mind that your central task – and the central task of the church that you serve – is evangelism. That is, all your activities and duties will make the most sense if they are seen in the light of facilitating the important job of helping persons to hear and believe the good news that we are the children of God.
How will you carry on this important task of evangelism? First you elders will help persons hear the good news of God’s love through your work in overseeing the church school, through your work of seeing that our worship is meaningful and centered on God’s word, through your work of seeing that those beyond the walls of the church are invited to join us, and through your work of encouraging those who are already members, but inactive, to come back into the fold of the church. But more important than your work of helping persons hear the good news is your work of helping them to believe this good news. And of crucial importance in this area are your efforts at making sure that our local church is more than a gathering of people, but is a fellowship of practicing Christians, even as Jesus’ disciples were such a fellowship.
You deacons also have an important task, for you too can help evangelize: you too can help see that persons hear and believe in God as a loving father. Your visits to the sick are a reminder that God does not forsake even those who pass through death. Your visits to the new in the community are a reminder that the doors of the church are as open as the arms of God’s love and forgiveness. Your visits to the friendless and lonely are a reminder that those in the church are ever willing to be a friend even as Jesus always sought out the friendless. Your efforts at helping to alleviate material want are a reminder that our spiritual needs cannot be completely separated from our physical needs. All of your efforts can help persons believe that they are a part of God’s divine family because they feel a part of a close human family – that is, the fellowship of the church.
You trustees can likewise help facilitate this central task of helping persons hear and believe the good news that they are children of God. The very attitude that you have in approaching financial matters can make all the difference as to whether you convey the idea that these matters are an end in themselves or merely an important means of helping the church go about its central task of evangelism. The way that you manage the finances will make a difference as to whether our local church can work effectively and whether we can continue to carry our share of the larger work of the church in the nation and the world.
Does this mean that those of you who are not officers have no place in this important business of evangelism – of helping persons hear and believe that they are children of a loving heavenly father? It certainly does not mean that! These officers are your minister, just as I am your minister, and just as each of you is a minister one of another. For minister means servant, and we in the Presbyterian church believe that all of us have been called to be servants of one another. These officers have been called to serve you and serve the whole church. But this does not mean that you are to be idle. They are here not to take work away from you, but rather to be leaders and facilitators, so that you may work more diligently and more effectively at this task which is the major job of all of us who are followers of Christ. All of us are children of God. All of us need to hear this again and again. All of us need to renew our faith that this is true. All of us need to assist one another in hearing this and in knowing that it is true.
Let us pray: Grant, O Lord, that what we have said with our lips and heard with our ears we may believe in our hearts and practice in our lives. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Sermon copyright © 1963 by Marjorie D. Palmer and
the direct descendants of William E. Palmer
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