Evangelism and the Lordship of Christ

It’s lovely to see everybody, and isn’t it lovely to be at Ashburnham this weekend? It’s going to get sunny this afternoon, I’m told, which is very good news. We’ll all be able to go for a nice walk. Why don’t we pray together?

Jesus said, the harvest is plentiful, the labourers are few. Pray to the Lord of the harvest to thrust out labourers into his harvest field. We pray, our Father, that you would do precisely that in your kindness. Persuade us of what you tell us in your Word, that the harvest is plentiful. And we pray that by your Holy Spirit and through your living Word, you would thrust labourers into your great harvest field.

In Jesus’ name, amen.

4 talks on the privileged task that you and I have been given to work for the Lord Jesus. I guess all of us want to be part of something that counts. Last time I spoke on this subject, it was just after Harry and Meghan’s wedding, and 2 billion people had tuned in kind of electronically across the world. 10,000 had crammed into the streets of Windsor, and the privileged 300 were actually in the building. I mean, can you sense it would have been very hard not to feel very self-satisfied if you were one of the 300 sitting there in the actual building with royalty?

And I want us to see over these few days that we have this extraordinarily privileged responsibility to work with and for, as co-workers of the King of Kings. I mean, it is when one pauses to, because consider it that we have been commissioned by the Lord of all lords, the King of all kings, that we have this extraordinary privilege. So much angst about purpose and point and why I’m here and whether I’m with the in-crowd and if I’m missing out on social media, driving so much anxiety. And if we belong to the Lord Jesus, he tells us we are part of the most significant in-crowd, as it were, commissioned by the one who really matters for the only work that really counts. And so I want us to see over these couple of days, just to get a sense of the privilege that is ours.

Colin Spreckley used to be Vice Chairman of Lloyd’s, and you’ll see him around occasionally. He’s done the whole Lloyd’s cycle, you know, he’s worked for Lloyd’s, become Vice Chairman, set up his own business, Gone bottom up, redone it all. I mean, you know, he’s really been— he took me in 1998, a month after I was installed as Rector of St Helen’s, to the top of the Lloyd’s building, and we looked down, and we came back down through the building, and as we came out of the door, he said, you know, it’s an extraordinary thing. 6 months ago, or 2 years ago rather, I was Vice Chairman of Lloyd’s. If I’d gone up the lifts and come down the lifts, everybody, hey Colin, good to see you, Colin.

Did you notice? Nobody greeted me. It’s extraordinary. And there is, if we simply work for the princes of this world, that is what lies ahead of us. But if we work for the King of Kings, we work for the only one who really matters.

My father would never let us drive the car, ever. And eventually, when finally he did, one time, he handed me the keys of the car and he said, William, I have only one car. And then he let me take the keys. He would never let us stay in his house, actually, on the farm alone, on the farm alone, until I was married and over 40. Can you believe that?

But, you know, I remember the first time that I was actually kind of staying there on my own without my dad there, aged 40. I think it’s probably because I was married and he trusted Janet more than he trusted me. But this sense, when I was first behind the wheel of that car, that sense of privilege, and I want us to gain just a little of that. Remember, you know, people talk about a commission in the British Army, you spend 9 months kind of, you know, in training being told what a privileged thing this is, and then you’ve probably seen it on the telly, you know, march up the steps at the Sovereign’s Parade with the commission from the Queen. Well, you and I have a commission from the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and I want us just to get a sense of that.

If that’s all we do over this weekend, then mission accomplished. Would you turn to Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 to 20.

The Lord Jesus commissions us to be part of his global mission and he gives each one of us a role in his work. The Lord Jesus commissions us to be part of his global mission. And he gives each one of us a role, a part, a position, a post in his global work. Matthew 28:18, now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had directed them, and they saw him and they worshipped him, but some doubted. Interesting that it puts that.

You’d never write that, would you? Some doubted, if you were wanting to write a kind of, you were making it up. You would never say that, but some doubted. I think it just shows something of the kind of veracity, the trustworthiness of the Gospels. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I’ve commanded you. And behold, I am with you always. To the close of the age.

What I want us to see here is the basis of the Great Commission, and then the content of the Great Commission, and then the power of the Great Commission. We’re still in the introduction at this stage, so don’t start writing under, what is the gospel, yet. The basis of the Great Commission: all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. There is no corner of the globe, there is no moment in history, there is no person on this planet who does not come under the rule of King Jesus. Here he is, having conquered death, having been raised from the grave, about to ascend to sit at the right hand of God the Father in heaven.

Here he is having, if you like, gained the right to be ruler and king, God’s long-promised ruler of the universe. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. You know, the Old Testament speaks of a king who would reign eternally, before whom all other kings would bow, who would rule over all the nations and gather a people from across the world. And And that King was to die on behalf of his people, and that King was to live eternally. And so, when Jesus rises from the grave, this is the moment, having lived in perfect obedience, having used the authority and power that he had by right, not exploiting it for his own end, but rather entering into the form of a human being, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

This, at the moment of his resurrection, this is the moment, if you like, where he is demonstrated to be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And so, the Ascension is inevitable following the resurrection, the seating at the right hand of God in heaven is inevitable following the resurrection. He is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. The basis of the Great Commission, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, the basis lies in the gospel authority of King Jesus.

The content, you’ll notice Well, you may not notice because it’s not immediately evident, but there is one main verb and then 3 doing words. So, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, going, therefore, make disciples. The main verb is make disciples, with 3 doing words: going, baptising, teaching. And to make disciples, the word disciple simply means learner, make learners.

And so, the command is to make disciples, to make learners of people. And going means that it’s to be done out in the world. Inevitably then, it must mean the work of pioneer evangelism across the world to people who do not yet already follow the Lord Jesus Christ. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, Make disciples, going therefore make disciples, go out into the world and make disciples of all nations. Baptising is a summons to change direction completely.

So, baptising speaks of a fresh start, not simply influencing people, not just kind of getting alongside of them and showing them how lovely the Lord Jesus is, but actually seeing people turn and change direction start afresh, baptising, the external symbol of an internal reality that they’ve been washed clean, that they now follow the Lord Jesus Christ. So, going, make disciples, going, baptising, and then teaching, instructing, that is teaching them such that as learners we make learners, disciple-making disciples. The work of making a person a disciple is not complete until that person himself is a disciple-making disciple. The work of making a disciple is not complete until that person himself or herself is a disciple-making disciple, because the command is to go, going, make disciples, baptising, fresh start, new beginning, I now follow Jesus, teaching. And so, that person is not a disciple until they themselves are obeying the command to go and make disciples.

The Great Commission, the basis, the content. And you say, well, how on earth am I ever going to do that? I mean, little me, funny little me, you know, wherever you happen to work and live and whatever your background happens to be. Think of myself, funny little me, with all my sort of hang-ups and problems and difficulties and conflicts and all the rest of it. How am I ever going to do that?

And lo, I am with you. Always to the close of the age. The promised Holy Spirit, who Himself, the 3rd person of the Trinity, will come into you. So, you say to yourself, well, how can I ever work for the living Lord and the King of Kings? It’s a wonderful privilege.

Could it ever be me? Yes, from the moment you are baptised, from the moment you turn to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, from the moment the Holy Spirit comes into your life, you know, the internal reality of which external baptism speaks, from the moment you surrender to Jesus, you have the power of God already within you. So, the issue is not kind of, O Lord, send your Holy Spirit upon us today. No, he’s already upon us. The issue is, go out and do it, go out and obey.

You have the power already. Go make disciples, baptising, teaching. So, here is the Great Commission, the basis, the content and the power. His dynamic resurrection power at work in every single believer, if only we would realise it and act on it. It’s not something we have to wait for, it’s already there.

The Holy Spirit dwells within you now, go and do it. So, that then, of course, means that we have to know what this Gospel is. What is it that we’re going to be making disciples? What does it actually mean to be a Gospel person? And what I’ve done in each one of these talks is to have 3 basic blocks, and we will alter the order, so it won’t always come in the same order.

But what I want us to do is to have, what is the Gospel? How does the Gospel gospel? And then, me, a gospeler. Okay, so each of the talks is going to, apart from the last one, the first 3 talks anyway, are going to have, what is the Gospel? How does the Gospel gospel?

So, what I’m wanting to do is to kind of refresh us in the Gospel, to teach us the Gospel as we go along. And I think you will find that it is the Gospel that equips us and empowers us. It’s actually the gospel message itself which makes me a gospeller.

Anyway, see how you go along with this, see what you think as we go along, whether it actually works like this. But what is the gospel? What I want you to do in just 10 seconds is write your own summary of the gospel, maybe longer. I’ll give you a whole minute, okay, because time’s short. Write down a summary of the Gospel in as short a form as possible.

What is the Christian Gospel? What have you written there, Micah? Jesus died and rose again to save sinful people like me, to rescue us from hell and give us eternal life in heaven. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, well, I’m going to give you my summary of the Gospel and then we’ll see.

So, it’s a good summary of the Gospel, a short succinct summary. Thanks, Micah, really helpful. Here is my summary of the Gospel: Jesus Christ is Lord. Okay, just 4 words. You can see it there, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, go and make disciples.

So, at its very, kind of, most reduced. Now, you may say, hold on a second, there are all sorts of things missing from that. Yes, but I want to suggest that actually pretty much everything that you wrote is contained within that. Okay, so if you wanted just to boil it, to reduce it, like you do when you’re making marmalade, to its absolute minimum, Jesus Christ is Lord. Do you do that when you’re making marmalade?

I think you don’t, you don’t. Well, okay, when I make marmalade, we reduce things. Okay, so Matthew 8 to 10, you see it in Matthew 8 to 10. Matthew 8 to 10, we’re not going to go there, but Matthew 8 to 10 is the section in Matthew’s Gospel where we are persuaded that the King has arrived. The leper is cleansed, the centurion’s servant is healed, many come and are healed by him, he calms the storm, he casts the demoniac out of the wild, deranged men.

He heals the woman with bleeding and Jairus’ daughter is raised from the grave. And we’re shown there that Jesus Christ is King, the King has arrived, Matthew 8 to 10. Acts 10 is a fascinating passage. Just turn to Acts 10.

Acts 10 is the first sermon in Acts to a non-Jewish audience, delivered strangely by Peter rather than Paul. So, Acts 8 and 9, Paul is converted. You would expect Paul, the Apostle to the nations, the Apostle to the Gentiles, you’d expect Paul to be the one who preaches the first sermon to the Gentiles. But instead Peter, for the last time in Acts, comes back onto the stage and he preaches the first sermon to the Gentile audience, in order to show us that this is the message to go out to the non-Christian, non-Jewish world, delivered by Peter. So, what is it that Peter says, verse 30?

We’ll take it from verse 34. Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching the gospel, good news, of peace through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all. So that’s where I get it from. You want a longer summary?

Peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.

Okay, so that includes much of what Micah gave us in his summary. But if you want the shortest summary, he is Lord of all. Jesus Christ is Lord. Peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. Let’s go somewhere else, shall we?

Let’s go to Romans chapter 1 for a moment. Here we have Paul writing to the Romans in order to commission them, or not to commission them, to engage them in global mission. It’s a missionary support letter, Romans. Romans, that’s what it’s about. And he’s wanting to get their support for global mission.

Look at how Romans 1 begins. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. The gospel of God. Whose gospel is it? My gospel?

Your gospel? God’s gospel. It’s God’s gospel. Which he promised, that’s God promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his Son. It’s God’s Gospel about God’s Son.

Who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. We’ve just looked at that, haven’t we, in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus Christ our Lord. God’s Gospel concerning God’s Son who is Lord of all. And then verse 5, through whom we’ve received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of the nations and for the sake of his name among all the nations.

So, it’s for the sake of his name, it’s God’s gospel concerning God’s Son who is Lord of all for God’s glory. So, there again you’ve got that gospel. What is the gospel? Jesus Christ is Lord. What is the gospel according to Peter, the first kind of model exemplary sermon of the Christian message that is to go out and that I’m proclaiming to you right now.

Isn’t it fascinating? There is Peter with Cornelius in Caesarea, the first message being delivered to a non-Jewish audience. It’s electric and they’re hearing, Jesus Christ is Lord. Here are we, 2,000-whatever-it-is years later, or is it 1,900 and something? But anyway, here we are, Exactly the same Gospel in Ashburnham.

I wonder if Peter pictured us here. Of course he didn’t, he’d never been here, but you know what I mean. He must have, I think, he must have, if he’d been taught by Jesus, go and make disciples of all nations, he must have imagined there must be some complete barbarians running around in, you know, leather jerkins with woad and all these other things, living in mud huts, probably somewhere up north there, you know, that’s us. And here we are. Herein Jesus Christ is Lord.

There is the essential gospel. So, here is our first building block of what the gospel is. Jesus Christ is Lord. Lord of all.

So, what?

Well, this has huge implications, doesn’t it? No corner of the cosmos, no person, on this planet, no remote region on some far-flung island, no individual, no hamlet or village, no office where Jesus Christ is not Lord.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

I remember doing— speaking at a place, at a graduation for Sydney Mission Bible College, and Sydney Missionary Bible College sends its graduates all over the world. There were 200, it was 40 degrees, we were indoors, it was an awful, I mean, you know, it wasn’t, it was a wonderful event, but I mean, it was 40 degrees, there was no air conditioning, we were all sitting indoors, 200 people with all of their relatives, I mean, there was this vast, and each one, we had to wait while 200 people were commissioned and they all came up, where are you going? Well, I’m going to. And, you know, there were people going to Sydney, and then there were some people— sorry, Sarah— there’s some people going up the Gold Coast to Brisbane, where it would have been 50 degrees, poor things. And then there’s some people going up into the Northern Territories, and then there were people going to Vanuatu.

Have you ever been to Vanuatu? How Vanuatu survives, this speck of an island in the Pacific Islands. PNG, people going out there, people going to Asia, people going literally all over the world. Jesus Christ is Lord. And then one girl came up and, where are you going?

I’m going to Torquay in Devon. Yes, even there, Jesus Christ is Lord. There is the gospel. Getting on the plane at the end of that 2 or 3 weeks in Australia, flying back, looking out the window, didn’t open the window obviously, but looking down, you know how in the night you look down, you’re flying over this huge landmass and you look out down through and there’s this tiny little, you remember you’re flying at night, this speck, Do you ever think to yourself, I wonder what they’re doing down there? You don’t, do you?

You’re watching the telly. But whenever you’re not watching the telly, you look down here, what are they doing? Jesus Christ is Lord, go and make disciples of all nations. He’s Lord of all. He is enthroned, he’s seated at the right hand.

And then into London. We always fly over our house, it really annoys me because it takes another hour and a half, do you know what I mean? You fly in, we can see, I can see Janet, you know, down there in the And I’m thinking to myself, but anyway, flying in over all of that, Jesus Christ is Lord, and then into cycling into the city and past your office, Jesus Christ is Lord, he’s Lord of all. And if he is Lord, objective fact, seated at the right hand, then a friend of mine put it like this recently, I thought it was so helpful, it is the human right of every individual to hear this. Not to proclaim the gospel, is to deny the people in your office a fundamental human right to hear of the beautiful lordship of King Jesus, created by Him, redeemed potentially through His blood shed for them on the cross.

They have the human right to hear the gospel, and you’ve been commissioned to take that Christian message to them. So, I always buy my coffee from the same place every Sunday morning. I only tend to have one cup of coffee a week, so on a Sunday morning just before I preach, that’s why, you know, Janet says sometimes I’m sort of like a steam train, sort of on steroids going through, or on amphetamines or something like that, but anyway, there we are. But I always try and get to know the person behind the, you know, you always, and, you know, I can’t think of the girl’s name at the moment who serves coffee at the moment, but for a while it was Bappy, Bappi was from Bangladesh and so, because I’m working for the church and sort of just across the road, oh hello Bappi, get chatting to Bappi, chat away, chat, chat, chat, a little bit about this, a little bit about that and then one day, Good Friday, he actually said, what is Good Friday about? There we are, gospel opportunity.

And then Easter Sunday, oh Bappi, I talked to you about Good Friday and we had a little chat about— he gave me a free coffee. I’m all for that. That’s not why I do it but I— One day we were coming out of Merrick Square on a Saturday morning, and out of one of the houses— there’s some quite rough houses around us— comes a bloke, absolutely legless, and pursued by his brother with a samurai sword. Yeah, I know, that’s what I thought. Anyway, they were punching the living daylights out of each other.

This guy dropped the sword, so I stopped the car, grabbed hold of one of them, and I put the sword in the car first. And grabbed hold of this bloke and held him. Meanwhile, his brother continued to beat the living daylights out of him, poor bloke, he couldn’t defend himself. So I let him go and they carried off around the corner. And later on, coming back from B&Q or wherever I was going, the police were all there and all the rest of it, and I had the sword in the back of my car.

So I just— the mum came over to me and said— I just said to her, I’ve got the sword. Drove home, put it away in my gun safe. So that’s where it was for the next 5 years. But we’re now friends. And so I seek to gospel Wayne every time I see him, and his father Patrick, and his mother Sandra.

I mean, they haven’t yielded to the gospel yet, but Jesus Christ is Lord. Of course, they have a human right to hear, and I’ve been commissioned by the King of Kings. Now, this aspect of the gospel is very easily overlooked, and it’s very dangerous when we overlook the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord in our gospel presentation. So, I grew up in the 1970s and, well, sorry, in the 1960s, yeah, okay, fair enough. But I did grow up in the ’60s, ’70s, and I suppose into the ’80s.

And in that period, in English evangelicalism, we assumed Jesus Christ is Lord and we preached Jesus died for your sins. Our gospel was God loves you and he died for your sins. Our gospel was not Jesus Christ is Lord. And the gospel was basically Jesus loved you, died for your sins, admit your sin, believe in the cross and commit your life to Him. We sort of assume Jesus was Lord and it took me after my conversion 2 or 3 years to realise that Jesus Christ is Lord.

I sort of accepted Him thinking this will be very helpful in my life, I can be forgiven for my sins, and then the battle began because I hadn’t realised that actually Jesus Christ is Lord. So the battle raged for a couple of years at university. But it was, and then it was a huge shock when John Chapman came across from Australia and told us that the gospel fundamentally begins with the lordship of Christ. And I remember him taking us through Romans 1:1-5, it’s God’s gospel concerning God’s Son, a setting very much like this, there are 120, 140 of us who are Christian, young Christians. The gospel is actually that Jesus Christ is the Lord.

And I remember writing to the leader of the camps at which I was currently serving, as a very precocious young man, like an 8-page document telling him how our camps had got the gospel wrong for the last 20 years, which you can imagine, you know, I think I’ve got a little bit of wisdom since then, but poor bloke, he received this. But we had, we had, we’d simply been saying, Jesus loved you and died for your sins, We hadn’t been teaching Jesus Christ is Lord. Of course, it has profound implications. It has implications for our motivation for evangelism and for gospel work. Once you realise Jesus Christ is Lord, there is nobody who you bump into any day of the week who is not, should not rightfully bow to King Jesus.

Jesus Christ is Lord. It changes the way I look on everybody. I see. But also it changes my gospel presentation. See, our gospel presentation should begin with the lordship of King Jesus before we go on to talk about the love and grace and forgiveness of King Jesus.

And if it doesn’t, our gospel appeal ceases to involve repent, which is where the gospel begins in the Gospels. What’s the first thing Jesus says in the Gospels? The kingdom of heaven is at hand, Jesus Christ is Lord, repent.

So, I remember going to speak in Bangladesh. I didn’t meet Bappi there, but there are 120 million people there. But I remember speaking in Bangladesh once and there was a whole group of missionaries there and on day 1, one of them stood up and said, the thing is, we’re having all this trouble because people are becoming Christians out of a Muslim background, but are not going on in discipleship. And so I was teaching from Acts and working through some of the Gospel presentations in Acts, and by the time we’d done the second one, this same guy said, you know, I don’t think the Gospel we teach is the same as the Gospels the apostles preached. We’re telling Muslims Jesus loved you and died for your sins, They are coming to Jesus for a washing and a cleansing of their sins, and they’re not going on in discipleship.

Could it be that we’re not actually teaching Muslims that Jesus Christ is Lord, they must repent for the forgiveness of their sins? It was fascinating, the head of the mission agency came up to me at the end of the visit, said, could we just spend a couple of hours together? Would you go through that again? And it’s very humble of him, and we went through it again, We went to Mark’s Gospel, the Gospel concerning Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus Christ is Lord.

We went to John’s Gospel, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Jesus Christ is Lord. We went to Philippians 2, he’s been given a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. Jesus Christ is Lord. We went to Romans 1, God’s Gospel concerning God’s Son.

We went to Matthew 28:18-20, all authority Yeah, Jesus Christ, that is the gospel. And it changes the whole way we think about our own personal responsibility, commission, and evangelistic enterprise. Every single person in your office should repent. Jesus Christ is Lord of every single individual, whether they like it or not, believe it or not, accept it or not. And we’ve been given the commission by the King of Kings to make this announcement.

I came back from Bangladesh, I usually go and talk to Dick Lucas, my predecessor at St Helen’s, on the return from these sort of trips. I was sitting down chatting to him, I said to him this, he said, oh yes, brother, that’s what Chapo taught us in the 1980s. And it’s what we learned when we started studying Mark’s Gospel, that we’d been getting the Gospel wrong.

What is the Gospel? How does the Gospel gospel? So, second point, how does the Gospel gospel? Is Wes here still? Wes, did you manage to do that stuff on the overhead?

Did you even do the picture? No, not yet, no. No, okay, fine, fine. So, we won’t be able to show this. How does the Gospel gospel?

I think I’ve got it, got this I want to show you. Which is a problem. Okay, here is the problem. Are you still with us? People still here?

Yeah, very good. So we’ve got a problem. We’ve got a problem because the word gospel in the original is the same word both for the noun, that is the thing, the gospel, and for the verb, that is the doing. The word is the evangel. And the noun is to evangelise.

So that gets it right, okay? But you never read the evangel in your Bible, do you? You read the gospel. So we use the word the gospel and we don’t have a verb to gospel, though the verb is actually the same verbal form of the noun. We use a word, to evangelise, well, that’s right, or to preach the Good News.

Wherever you read to preach the Good News or they preached the Good News in the Bible, wherever you read that, it’s they gospelled. And so, I want us to start talking about gospelling. I mean, it’s a bit quaint, a little weird, but we ought to start talking about gospelling. I have the Gospel and I, you, he, she, or it gospels. I mean, it doesn’t gospel obviously, but you see what I mean.

So, the problem is we don’t have a verb to gospel, but in the original you both had the gospel and you gospelled. And in the original, the gospel simply means the announcement. Did you know that? Probably you all know that. Am I teaching my grammar?

Nelson, did you know that? You didn’t know that, that’s a relief. Turn to 1 Samuel. At least one person is learning something useful. 1 Samuel chapter 3.

1 Samuel chapter 3.

Where is 1 Samuel? It’s before 1 Kings and it’s before 2 Samuel. Go to the Psalms, head backwards. If you get to Genesis, then nip, nip to the table, contents page, it’d be quicker to find a page number. 1 Samuel chapter 31, right at the end.

Here is what I think is the first use of the word gospel in the Old Testament, okay, that I can find. Somebody will, there’ll be somebody here saying, oh, I found one in the book of Deuteronomy. Well done, well done, you’ll get a gold star. 1 Samuel chapter 31. What what the Christians did was they took a word which was used in normal speak and they adopted it for use in the Christian church.

Okay, so they took an everyday word and they adopted it for use in the Christian church. Now here is its use in normal speak, verse 9: So they cut off Saul’s head, stripped off his armour, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to gospel the houses of their idols and the people. They announced the good news. What was the good news? Saul is dead.

The king of Israel is dead. We won the war. Here is the news. And you can imagine people, you know, we don’t have them now because we’ve got, you know, WhatsApp and Facebook and all the rest of it. You can imagine people racing into the village, News, you’ve seen it on kind of Arthur and the, you know, the dragon and all the rest of it.

Then the whole village arrives and assembles. We have a gospel! And they gospelled the good news. Saul is dead. Bad for Saul, but good news for the Philistines.

Okay, there’s the first use of it. The next use I can find comes in Psalm 68. Psalm 68, verse 11. Head to the middle of the Bible, you’ll find the Psalms.

Psalm 68:11. Here is Miriam. Miriam is announcing the good news that Pharaoh’s army has been drowned at the bottom of the Red Sea. Psalm 68:11, the Lord gives the word, the women gospel.

The women who gospel are a great host. So, a great crowd of people led by Miriam start singing this great song on the banks of the Red Sea. Pharaoh and his horses, the kings of the armies, they flee, they flee. We divide the spoil, etc., etc., etc. So, what the early Christians did was that they took a word that was just in common parlance, which was It’s more than just news.

I used to say gospel just means news. No, it’s more than that. It’s huge news. It’s big news. It’s great momentous news.

It’s regime-changing news.

So, America’s got an election coming up. What is it, the end of next year, David? When the election happens, I mean, people are going to be voting one way or the other. They’re all terribly excited about it and Some people would boo, somebody would yay, and then when either Trump gets re-elected, news! It’s that kind of news.

And they took that word, and you’ll find it everywhere. Augustus, the Emperor of Rome, had a whole load of milestones put outside Rome when he was appointed, and they were called, and it said, 1 mile to Rome, Augustus is the Emperor, and they were called Gospels. One great general won a huge battle and his soldiers came back from the battle with spears and at the top of it they had garlands and those garlands were announcing that a victory had been won. And do you know what they were called? Gospels.

Announcements.

So now, this is really important. What is the Gospel? How does the Gospel gospel? The Gospel gospels through verbal, announcement. You see, you cannot have an announcement without some sort of communication.

Okay, here is the gospel.

It’s not a gospel. I mean, Fiona Bruce comes on, dong dong dong, you know, I don’t know if that always happens before Fiona Bruce goes anywhere, but anyway, it’s the news at 10, dong dong dong, and here is the news at 10. It’s not news. It’s not a gospel. Momentous news that is announced.

It means, therefore, you cannot do evangelism without speaking. Evangelism has to involve communication. You hear people talk about evangelism, oh, I do evangelism like this, that and the other, by washing people’s clothes, or whatever it happens to be. No, no, that’s not evangelism, that’s washing. Okay, so, Verbal heralding has to be at the very heart of gospel work.

The Bishop of Oxford spoke at the General Synod just last week. Evangelism is one facet as part of God’s mission which embraces the work of social action, working for peace and justice and care for creation. The work of an evangelist at this momentous time, moment in time, is primarily the work of listening and asking questions. No, that is stupid. You’re wrong, Stephen Cottrell, Bishop of Oxford, and there’s going to be no gospel advance in your diocese because you don’t know what gospel work is.

Now, gospel work is not social action, You can wash people’s socks and all the rest of it until they’re blue in the face, but if they don’t hear the momentous news, you haven’t gospelled them, do you see? So, some of our people went down to Bristol where they were running, the students were running an evangelistic mission, and they came back and they said the centre point and centrepiece of the evangelistic mission was that the students were cooking toasties, cheese toasties, you know, cheese toasties, I suppose cheese with toast on top. Anyway, they were cooking cheese toasties for other students when they came in from the nightclubs and giving to them at 3 o’clock to show them how much they loved them. Now, that is not gospel work, that is cooking, okay? So, gospel work has to involve verbal announcements.

So, Jesus Christ is Lord, there is the gospel. What will be needed if we are to be engaged in gospel ministry We have to make, in some way or another, we have to make that announcement. We’ve got to find a way of making that announcement. That is gospel. You know, St Francis, preach the gospel, use words if necessary.

I cannot believe that he said that. It’s so stupid. It’s so wrong. Preach the gospel, use words if necessary. How can you preach the gospel if you don’t use words?

It’s so badly wrong. So, theologically contorted and twisted and wrong. He cannot— anyway, maybe he did say it, in which case we’ll have a chat one day. Me a gospeler, me a gospeler. So, now, what I want us to do now is to think about an incorrect overcorrection.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, because a lot of people from the charismatic churches were plucking verses out of their context and applying them straight us. We said in those days, and people who led us said quite rightly, we must put every verse in its context properly. And as a result of that, we rightly said, well, who is it being spoken about and who is it speaking to? And frequently the verses that our charismatic friends were using, Pentecostal friends were using, had been ripped out of context and were verses that were primarily applicable to the apostles. And so there was a lot of good and right work done about, well, what is to the apostle and what is to us?

But I want to suggest that in some instances we made an incorrect overcorrection.

And so you may have come across some people who go to Matthew 28:18-20 and say, oh yeah, but that, that’s just for the apostles. There were the 11 apostles there, it was just the 11 apostles, they were told to go and make disciples of all nations. So, this job of making disciples of all nations is only for the 11 apostles? I actually heard somebody say this recently, because they’re told to baptise and only the senior pastor of our church baptises people, therefore this job must be only for senior pastors of churches. I mean, that is an epic case of reverse engineering, isn’t it?

You’ve got this idea, you reverse engineer it back into the passage, it’s really badly wrong. No, because if the commandment is, go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything that I’ve commanded you, as you teach them to observe everything I commanded you, you are teaching them, all authority has been given to me, Go and make disciples of all nations. And therefore, the very act of obeying Matthew 28:18-20 means that every disciple who listens to Matthew 28:18-20 has to become a disciple-making disciple. Otherwise, you’ve engaged either in the sort of reverse engineering or the kind of incorrect overcorrection that we’re speaking about. And so, every single one of us then is commanded to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

And Jesus Christ is Lord of all. And so, in his great, I mean, you only have to say, in his great condescension, kindness, in his extraordinary thing, that funny little William Taylor here on— I had no idea what date is it— March 2nd, I think it must be. Yeah, yesterday was March 1st, so it must be March 2nd, 2019, should have been commissioned by the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. And whether he’s William Taylor, Rector of St Helen’s, or William Taylor, doorman in an Aviva building, or William Taylor, you know, sort of for taking notes, etc., whatever he is, William Taylor staying at home looking after the children, he’s got a responsibility to go and make disciples of all nations.

And so what I want to suggest that we do over the next little period, we’ve got 2 minutes left, and so what I’m going to just tell you what I hope we might do. On your seat you will have found this, okay, it’s actually an American exercise that I have stolen. Okay, number one thing to learn to do if you’re going to be a church leader is theft. All right, so I have nicked this off some American friends. It’s, I think it’s really excellent.

And ignore the stuff on the left, it sounds American, Australian, because it says, somewhere it says, go to the beach for a surf, but it’s not, it actually originally came from the United States of America. And what I want you to do is to just fill out— ignore the writing on the left and the squiggles down on the right— and what I want you to do is to— is I’ve got some questions which Wes is putting up for a moment, and one of the questions will be fill out your own personal mission field. And I just want you to make a list of people you know in those different columns who are not Christian?

Neighbours. Work. That’s quite fun for me, you know, in my workplace, the St Helen’s office, who do I know who is not a Christian? That’s great fun, I enjoy doing that. Where’s Illingsworth?

No, no, no. Leisure. That was a joke. Somebody just looked at me really shocked. What?

We never knew that. Neighbours, work, leisure. Okay, in your leisure, family, church. There may be people in your church who attend who, you know, are not yet Christian. Okay, but now I’ll tell you something that’s going to be a big shock to many of you, well, some of you.

When it comes to neighbours, you don’t know your neighbours. Yeah, don’t panic about that, you just live in London, the Industrial Revolution has happened. Yeah, I mean, we all travel. You sleep, you know, your bed doesn’t happen to be where you live at the moment. You actually, you live most of the time in— if you’re a lawyer, you live pretty much all of the time in whatever office it is.

So don’t panic you don’t know your neighbours. Yeah, a lot of people don’t know their neighbours. That’s quite normal. But what I’m trying to establish is where are the people who you actually do know, who you have most contact with? Neighbours, work, leisure.

When somebody was filling this out once, their, sorry, leisure, their leisure column had only one person, and he said, that just shows what a loser I am. And I said, no, it doesn’t, it just shows that the Industrial Revolution has happened. You know, you’re very busy now at work, you don’t have a lot of leisure time, and when you do, you go running with your iPhone in. iPhone? You know, those funny white things, headphones in.

Don’t panic about that. But where are the people who you know who are not? There’s your personal mission field. Okay, and then what I’d like us to do also is, have we got that gospel outline anywhere, Wes?

There you go.

Yeah, yeah. So, what I want us to do also is to look through this gospel outline. It’s a great little gospel outline. I think it puts first things first, okay? God.

God is the loving ruler of the world. He made the world, he placed Jesus as King over the world, he gave evidence of that by raising Jesus from the dead. People. All of us have rejected the loving rule of King Jesus. We’ve rebelled against him, we fail to relate to each other, we fail to run our own lives.

God, in his extraordinary love for us, God sent his Son to die for the sins of the whole world. Extraordinary love for us. And he commands us to recognise Jesus’ rightful rule. What if I don’t? What if I do?

Take that away, read through it and see. What I love about it, it’s 5 points. How many fingers have you got on your hand? Well, if you shake hands with a Cornish farmer, most of them don’t have 5 fingers. They could just not, not most, but many of them don’t.

You know, back in the day you’d shake hands with with Cornish farmers, many of them would be missing a finger. Well, maybe you haven’t got a finger, but I’ve still got all mine, 4 fingers and a thumb. God, people, God, what if you don’t, what if you do. It’s so easy to remember, one for each digit. Okay, if you have to go to 2 hands, then don’t panic, there are lots of people like you in Cornwall.

Okay, so there is our first content piece, Jesus Christ is Lord. There is our first, how does the Gospel gospel? The Gospel gospels through verbal communication or written communication, that’s how it gospels. Me, a gospeler? Do you know, I think you might have a mission field.

Amazing, isn’t it? You’re a missionary. You might have a mission field. Okay, and, well, how then am I going to actually speak the Gospel? Here’s a simple one: God, people, God.

What if I don’t? What if I do? Let’s pause there, shall we? We’re going to head off for our different groups.