Sermon Central
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The Sinner's Friend
Contributed by Martin Spoelstra on May 6, 2023 (message contributor)
There's the story told by Watchman Nee, the Chinese evangelist where he was talking to another Christian in his home. They were downstairs, as was his friend's son. The friend's wife and mother were in an upstairs room. All at once the little boy wanted something and called out to his mother for it.
"It's up here," she said. "Come up and get it."
He cried out to her, "I can't, Mommy; it's such a long way. Please bring it down to me."
He was very small. So the mother picked up what he wanted and brought it down to him. It is just that way with salvation. No one is able to meet his own spirituality, but the Lord Jesus Christ came down to us so our need could be met. Nee writes, "Had he not come, sinners could not have approached him, but he came down in order to lift them up." (Watchman Nee, What Shall This Man Do? (London: Victory press, 1962), 37)
Be a friend to those who you are trying to win. Jesus showed himself as a friend to those who are lost. He was described as having been a friend to sinners and prostitutes. He could've kept aloof from those people but he wouldn't have won anyone that way. Instead, Jesus went to the sick, lost, lonely, distressed, and perishing, and moved among them as a friend.
I wonder if we are witnessing like that? Do you keep aloof or do you go to others? Another way of asking the same thing is to ask whether or not you have contact with non-Christians socially. Do you go to their homes, sit in their kitchens, and ask them about their interests?
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