Trusting God with our evangelism

Father, elsewhere the Apostle Paul writes: I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost sinner, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. We’re about to read of an example of Paul in Corinth – may Christ’s perfect patience be displayed and his glory magnified before us,may his example give us instruction and hope in the way of Christ. For Jesus’ name’s sake, Amen.

I wonder how you have been finding reading Acts together week by week. What happened in your heart as this week’s passage was read? I imagine there’s a mix of feelings in a gathering like this. And if your instinct was to duck and cover because we’ve got another bit of the Bible talking about evangelism and that brings up shame and guilt – then let me begin by saying I sympathise with that. These past few weeks have been relentless in their focus on evangelism! We’ve seen how the Holy Spirit led Paul to unreached peoples in Macedonia, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens and now Corinth. We’ve seen how he followed a consistent pattern preaching wherever he went, first to Jews if he could find them, then to non-Jews. We’ve seen he and his message was both received and rejected, and that he was often forced to leave cities because of opposition. And now we’ve got another bit of Acts telling us about roughly the same pattern happening in Corinth. So, if your reaction to our reading tonight was to think “not again!” I sympathise with that. Sharing the Gospel, telling others about Jesus, is not easy, and this passage has a hard saying we need to look at (it’s in Acts 18.6 Paul says to the Corinthian Jews in the Synagogue):

Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent.

For where Paul is innocent – don’t we so often feel guilty? Are we not, in fact, often guilty? I want to be like Paul – yet I know I fall far short. I want to have whatever it was that moved Paul to go to synagogue after synagogue where he faced beatings, ridicule and slander. I want to be strengthened by whatever it was that moved him to pick himself up and immediately go to non-Jews instead. What gave him such courage? How was he so resilient? What does God say to us in this bit of his Word? Two things to focus on this week from this passage: 1. Paul had a responsibility to make the Gospel known. 2. God protected Paul until he had made the Gospel known for the sake of his people in Corinth. So first of all:

1. Paul had a responsibility to make the Gospel known.

Paul left Athens and went to Corinth, which is about a 50 mile journey. Corinth was a big, wealthy, proud and notoriously immoral city. Apparently there was a word in Greek “To corinthianise” which meant to be sexually immoral. He meets a Jewish couple, providentially, who can give him a job, and he goes into the Synagogue in Corinth every Sabbath, reasoning and trying to persuade the Jews that the Christ is Jesus. And we read that the Jews in the Synagogue opposed and reviled him. That’s the context of Paul’s shocking action and statement – look at Acts 18.6:

When they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”

That is – Paul has discharged his responsibility. Until that point Paul was responsible; he had been given a precious message, it had to be told. The dynamic of Paul’s situation is like the drama in the film 1917; two soldiers are given a message by their commanding officer to give to a front line battalion, ordering them to call off their attack the next morning. The whole battalion is about to walk into an ambush, the communication lines are down. The only way to get the message across is for these two soldiers to make the hazardous journey across no-man’s land, risking their lives, to pass the message on to the battalion commander. The soldiers are under orders. They have a responsibility to get the message to the front line. If they fail, thousands of lives will be lost. That’s Paul’s situation; he has a message they need to hear, he’s responsible that they hear it, but once they’ve heard it – he can say I’m innocent – I need to move on to tell others.

That was how Paul understood himself and his task – a man with responsibility to tell people the Gospel. He knew that he had been saved by the Gospel, and he knew there was no other way to be saved than by believing in Jesus, who is made known in the Gospel. There is no doubt in Paul’s mind – he had to tell people; eternal lives were at stake. But, the thing that kept Paul going was the knowledge that God wanted him to tell people. Strange as it is, God prefers to use vulnerable, time and space bound people like Paul, Priscilla, Aquila, Silas and Timothy rather than sending Angels who travel at the speed of light and never forget their memory verses. Let’s look at the second half of the passage – here is what God was doing as Paul was making the Gospel known:

2. God protected Paul until he had made the Gospel known for the sake of his people in Corinth.

We’ll read from Acts 18.7-11:

Paul left there and went to the house o a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the Synagogue. Crispus, the ruler of the Synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptised. And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” And he stayed a year and six months teaching the word of God among them.

Making the Gospel known is Paul’s God given priority. It would have been tempting, after the discouraging response from the Synagogue, to content himself with the little band of believers at Justus’ house, but God said clearly there are still others who need to hear, keep on speaking. Sharing the Gospel wasn’t Paul’s idea that he had to convince God to accept. Sharing the Gospel was God’s plan which Paul was called to obey. Paul was free to leave the Synagogue because they had heard the Gospel and rejected it. He wasn’t free to leave Corinth and stop speaking there, because God had still more people whom he wanted to hear the Gospel and be saved, and nothing will be able to dislodge Paul until God’s plans are accomplished. We know this because God protects Paul from the united attack from the Jews during Gallio’s time in office. We know it is God protecting Paul because he doesn’t even get to open his mouth. Gallio refuses to even entertain the charges. The attack is stopped before it can start. And we read in Acts 18.18 Paul is able to stay many days longer before setting sail to Syria. Paul gets to leave Corinth on his own terms. Presumably by then there is an established church, there are elders in place, they’ve got the scriptures in their language and they’re proclaiming the Gospel themselves. Paul’s work is done. He can move on to other areas to proclaim the Gospel.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by another passage on evangelism here’s the thing this passage reminds us: God knows who his people are and he urgently wants them to hear the Gospel. There are lots of reasons to be weary or afraid of telling others the Gospel and that is why Acts is so full of examples of Paul doing it, and so many examples of the God granting faith and repentance to the most unlikely people. The great news in this passage is that saving people by Gospel messengers is God’s idea. God is so confident in his grace and power he will put the life saving message of the Gospel in vulnerable people like Paul, and like you and me, and he will say ‘do not be afraid, but keep speaking and do not be silent – for I am with you’. So, in this passage, God says to us ‘will you trust me to look after you as you pass on the most valuable treasure in the world, the Gospel, to the people I have sent you to?’

Before we think about what that might look like for the majority of us who are followers of Jesus, I want to take a moment with any of us here who are still making up our minds about Jesus. It’s possible that you may be here for the first time and haven’t heard anything about Jesus and if that’s the case welcome! We’re so glad you’re here and you’re welcome to stay behind and to come back next week. If you haven’t heard anything about Jesus up til now, then the bit to dwell on this evening is Paul’s conviction that every person needs to hear about him and believe in him. If Paul were here, he would want to reason with you and persuade you that Jesus is the Christ so that you could believe in him and receive forgiveness for your sins and eternal life, and we would love to do that too!

On the other hand, there are others who have been coming for a while, or who know a lot about the claims of Jesus and the implications of believing or rejecting him. And I want to plead with you tonight – there is no other way to be saved apart from him. Jesus came to earth to die on a cross for the sins of the world. Paul reasoned with such urgency because he knew that the Jews in the Synagogue needed to hear. They were very religious people, they probably kept well clear of the immorality of Corinth, but they still fell short of God’s law. When Paul went into the Synagogue he reasoned that the Christ is Jesus – Jesus is the promised saviour king. We cannot be part of his kingdom if we won’t accept his sacrifice for us on the cross to pay for our sins, and accept his rule over our lives. This passage reminds us to accept him now, while we can. And if you would like to do that tonight, please speak to me or a Christian you know at this church, we would be delighted to help you and pray with you.

And for those of us who are Christians; what would it look like for us to say yes to trusting God in sharing the Gospel? Maybe you have friends who are like the Jews in the synagogue and it breaks your heart, but they’ve heard the Gospel and they laugh at it and they laugh at you. Maybe for you trusting God means saying ok I’ve told them. It’s up to God now. I won’t keep forcing it. I won’t pester. But look, Paul makes sure he tells the Jews in the Synagogue the seriousness of their decision. And maybe that’s what trusting God means for you; picking up the phone or writing a letter saying something like “you know I love you, I’m only saying this because I care about you but we’ve spoken about Jesus before, and I know you don’t want me to bring him up again, but I don’t want to leave anything unsaid. I believe one day we will stand before Jesus and have to give an account of our lives. And I don’t want you to get to that day without warning. I believe God has put me in your life to tell you – I want to honour that”. That might be the end of the conversation for a while. We trust God with our friends. The one thing we absolutely cannot do is remain silent.

So here’s something for all of us – in a few weeks’ time, on 11th June we’ll be having an invitation service in the evening. That’s three weeks away. Can I ask us to start praying tonight for people we could invite? This week is homegroup week – please can we pray for one another’s evangelism. Likewise students at focus this week and you guys at CYFA. Let’s take a minute now to think of people God has put us alongside. Let’s start to see God’s kindness and providence behind that – he’s put them within touching distance of the Gospel which can save them. Let’s remind ourselves that God is confident to use vulnerable and sinful people to tell other vulnerable and sinful people the Gospel. Let’s think of those people – and then I’ll lead us in a prayer:

Father, we thank you for sending and appointing people to tell us the Gospel, whether they were our parents, or friends or strangers. We are sorry we have often been too slow to tell others the life saving Gospel, afraid for ourselves and our reputation. Please help us take courage from your dealings in the past, please make us more like your Son, our Lord and Saviour, who willingly left the comfort of heaven to bear our sin on the cross may we not be afraid, but go on speaking and not be silent while our friends and neighbours need to hear the Gospel and be saved. Amen.