Last Sunday we took a look at some of the attitudes we need and which we might encounter as we seek to tell others about the salvation that can only be found in Jesus Christ.
We need to be ready for some “push back” - preconceived ideas
We need to be ready to engage the “down and out”
We need to be pursuing the brother or sister in Christ who has fallen
We need to “try a little kindness” and not instant condemnation
Do NOT “Walk a mile in their shoes.” We don't need to go into sin in order to effectively witness to the unsaved.
Colossians 1:6b, 9 -14
“In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world - just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.
“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,
“so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God …
“being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of His holy people in the kingdom of light.
“For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
“God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness!”
Wow! That’s amazing!
Sounds like a movie title - “Rescued From the Dominion of Darkness”
Sometimes it just doesn’t sink in that evangelism is literally a matter of life and death! “Rescued from the dominion of darkness”
Almost all of us have heard the story of the Titanic. The greatest ship in the world at that time. Pridefully steaming its way across the Atlantic to set a new world record. Laughing at danger; not even God Himself could sink the Titanic.
Then it happened, a collision with an iceberg. Multiple watertight compartments are flooded. The ship sinks.
Lifeboats are half filled.
Hundreds freeze to death in the frigid water
Only one lifeboat returning to see if they can rescue anyone
Can you imagine living the rest of your life knowing that there was plenty of room in your lifeboat and you just sat there listening to the dying cries drowning people.
This photo is from a website called “Titanic - Honor and Glory”
Honor? Glory?
What honor? What glory?
The Titanic - Horror and Shame!
I was thinking of trying to hook up a webcam so that we could watch the traffic going by during this sermon and constantly ask ourselves, Has that person been rescued from the “dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son” of God?
Many of them do not know that they are in the same predicament as the same predicament as those floating in the freezing water of the North Atlantic on the night of April 15, 1912.
How can they not know? Blinded and numbed by the evil one.
Many of us do not seem to know that we are like the folks in the lifeboats. And either we do not hear the cries of the lost or we are ignoring them.
Some of us are like those in lifeboat #14 (out of 20 lifeboats) are willing to head back into danger in order to try to save some!
1 Corinthians 9:22b
“I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”¬
We all remember the men and women from the NYFD who ran into the twin towers in order to save some. To us they are heroes. Facing almost certain doom they went in anyway. In order to save a temporary life.
We are tasked, by the power of God Himself, with saving eternal lives. Are we willing to turn our boats around and rescue some?
Rescue the perishing - Care for the dying
Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave
Weep o'er the erring one - Lift up the fallen
Tell them of Jesus - The mighty to save
We are in an unsinkable lifeboat! We don’t need to worry about Jesus allowing us to perish (eternally) if we take obey His Word and seek to rescue the perishing.
We have before us an amazing task. We have before us the only task in the universe that is of eternal value.
I really hesitate to use the Titanic as an illustration because some might be tempted to watch the movie.
Pluggedin.com
Nudity - formerly known as pornography
God and Jesus names blasphemed more than 20 times
Sex outside of marriage portrayed as beautiful romance
How can we tell the world about a life of freedom from the ravages of sin when we use pornography, blasphemy and fornication for entertainment?
One element of the story they forgot to put into the movie was the story of John Harper
In 1912, 39 year old, Rev. John Harper a Scottish preacher was making a transatlantic trip to preach at the Moody Church in Chicago. As fate would have it the vessel he choice was the Titanic. We all know the story about the disaster but do you know the story of John Harper? Harper like many others ended up in the water, and as people desperately tried to survive in the chilled waters, Harper swam to them.
The minister asked people in the water if they knew Jesus. Eventually, Harper approached a passenger clinging to a jagged piece of wood and he pleaded for the man to trust Christ. The minister was completely exhausted at this point. As he succumbed to the conditions and went under the water to his death, Harper said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."
A few years later at a meeting of survivors of the Titanic, the final man who encountered John Harper told the group that he had been saved twice that night. First, he had accepted Christ as his personal Savior because of Harper’s efforts. And, of course, he had been rescued from the deep Atlantic seas. He said “Alone in the night with two miles of water under me I believed, I am John Harpers’ last convert.”
Are we willing to forsake the things of this world for the cause of Christ?
Are we willing to lay down our very lives to reach one more soul?
We as Christians must somehow come to the glaring reality that the world is as doomed as the titanic was on that terrible night.
Sinners lost and drowning in the tragic consequences of sin and headed for an awful eternity.
Do you remember Esther?
(Tell a brief account of the story from memory)
She could have stayed silent and guaranteed her own survival.
Instead she obeyed the Lord and brought about the salvation of His chosen people even though they were in exile.
Play “For Such A Time As This” video when called for (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmYOQ8h4wsM)
Colossians 1:13-14
“For He (God the Father) has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
