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Commentary on "Defining Evangelism and Witnessing"

COLLEEN TINKER

 

Day 1: Sabbath Afternoon, March 31, 2012 - Introduction

 

Overview

This week’s lesson is entitled, “Defining Evangelism and Witnessing”. The key thoughts for the week are understanding the terms “evangelism” and “witnessing”. The author makes the point that the job description for God’s people is to work to spread the gospel through evangelism and witnessing.

 

Observations

It’s worth noting that the illustration just below the title for the week is a picture of a group of four people with Jesus standing to their side. There is a city in the background, and the four people are looking straight ahead. Jesus, beside them and much taller than they, is also looking straight ahead and pointing in the same direction they are all gazing. He is showing the way.

This illustration is revealing Adventism’s underlying lack of experiencing Jesus as being, Himself, The Way. Within Adventism, as within other groups not generally considered to be Christian, Jesus is the Way-Shower rather than being the actual Way.

This lack of understanding that Jesus Himself IS the way reveals the subtle problems in the rest of the lesson. The memory text for the week is Matthew 28:19, 20:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The Great Commission which Jesus gave in the text above just before He ascended to His Father was a command to “make disciples”, not to “make converts”. Further, Jesus told them they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, “and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). In other words, Jesus left marching orders for His disciples: they were to be His witnesses, and they were to make disciples.

Being a witness means, simply, to tell what they personally saw and knew. The disciples were to tell the truth about Jesus that they knew from direct experience. They had received His teaching about His personal fulfillment of all Scripture (Lk. 24:13-27), and they were uniquely qualified to tell others about Jesus the Sacrifice and promised Savior. They were also to make disciples, teaching those who placed their faith in Jesus how to live by the Spirit as born-again believers.

Being Jesus’ witnesses, however, means essentially one thing: being able to articulate the gospel and tell how Jesus reconciled God with man. Witnessing our own experience is worthless if we don’t clearly articulate the gospel. A subjective experience cannot be shared; we have to have something real and reliable to share: the gospel is rooted in history and continues to change lives.

The gospel is defined succinctly in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…

The facts that change lives are those three things: Jesus died for our sins just as Scripture said He would. He was buried, and He was raised on the third day just as Scripture said He would. Without articulating the actual gospel, our witness will be something other than life-changing.

If we tell people that they should try God, give their lives to God, or follow Jesus, we are not giving them helpful information. If we tell them that God has healed us or blessed us or that we are blessed by the Sabbath or that we have better health because of our vegetarianism, we have not delivered anything that will give the other person eternal life or assurance.

We have to know the gospel, and we have to embrace it ourselves before we can truly witness.

“Evangelism”, moreover, is a loaded word within Adventism. It always means making converts to the Seventh-day Adventist religion. Evangelism in the New Testament, however, was always preaching and teaching Scripture and the truth about Jesus, bringing people to faith in Him.

Adventism requires that its members “witness” and “evangelize” so those who hear will not only hear “Jesus” but also will hear “the plan of salvation”. Further, within Adventism, “the plan of salvation” includes the unbiblical story of pre-history when Lucifer became jealous of God’s inclusion of Jesus in His personal council. It includes the notion of a great controversy and of a final test including the seventh-day Sabbath.

None of these things is in the Bible. The gospel to which we are to witness is the Lord Jesus: crucified, buried, and risen. His Sacrifice and resurrection are the means by which we are saved, made right with God, and guaranteed eternal life when we believe. Jesus said,

He who hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment but has passed out of death into life (John 5:24).

Moreover, He made it very clear what God asks of us:

Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:28-29).

God asks only one thing of us: that we believe Jesus and accept His blood on behalf of our sin. This is the only work God requires of us. This is the message we must carry in our evangelism as we witness of the fact of His death with justifies us and His resurrection which gives us life when we believe (Rom. 5:10).

 

Summary

  1. Jesus is not the Way-Shower; He IS the Way.
  2. In order to witness and evangelize we must know the gospel: Jesus died, was buried, and rose on the third day.
  3. Witnessing is not telling how Jesus has done things for us; it is telling the truth about Jesus and how His sacrifice for our sin has given us absolute assurance of eternal life.
  4. The work of God is to believe in Him whom He sent.

 

GO TO DAY 2

 

Copyright 2012 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised March 29, 2012. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Camp Verde, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.

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