Gospel Situations

If we are going to understand something well, we have to start with theory. There are basic things that need to be understood in any kind of a new venture. But eventually, theory has to give way to practice, or we don’t ever really learn the material very well. For the last four weeks we have stayed pretty abstract as we have talked about how to share the Gospel in post-Christian environment. Last week we took a step toward practicality, but we didn’t go far enough. Today we’re going all the way. Sharing the Gospel in a post-Christian environment will eventually require us to…you know…actually share the Gospel in a post-Christian environment. Let’s talk about how to do that as we wrap up our series.

Gospel Situations

Have you ever worked really hard to set up a perfect situation only to have it go awry on you? Maybe it was a date. You planned everything down to the smallest detail you could think of. But you didn’t account for that one thing, and it turned out to be a landmine that blew up the whole affair. Maybe it was a conversation with another person you knew was going to be difficult. You were dreading it, but you also knew it had to happen. So, you prepared the ground as carefully as you could in hopes of getting through it without too many bruises. But as soon as you started off down the path of whatever the subject was, everything fell apart on you. 

Sometimes things just don’t go according to plan. And, honestly, if that happens very many times, we start to get a little gun shy. We start trying to avoid repeats of those situations. Sometimes, though, a situation seems so likely to go sideways on us or leave us looking foolish or threaten a relationship that we try to avoid them altogether in the first place. Well, as much as it may seem like it shouldn’t be, sharing the Gospel with another person is often one of those situations. 

This morning we are in the fifth and final part of our series, When Faith Isn’t Assumed. For the last five weeks we have been talking about how to share the Gospel in the midst of a post-Christian culture. The first three weeks of our journey were all about foundation building. We established that truth doesn’t come from within, contrary to what our culture likes to claim. Jesus is in a class all to Himself. And He really will save everyone who trusts in Him. Those may all seem like exceedingly basic points when it comes to sharing the Gospel, but when our culture starts interacting with the Gospel from a place of having no foundation at all, foundation building is precisely what we have to do. 

Yet we can’t stay there forever. Eventually, we have to take all of that theory and put it into practice. So, last time, we started talking about that very thing. With the apostle Paul guiding our way, we were confronted with the truth that trying to force someone to come into our home court where we are comfortable and where we have the advantage is probably not going to work as a means of gaining a hearing for the Gospel. We have to go where they are. We have to be willing to meet them on their terms. 

Well, if last week was a step in the direction of moving from the more abstract to the more concrete, if we’re being really honest, it didn’t go far enough. Acknowledging that we should meet other people where they are when trying to share the Gospel with them still feels pretty abstract. We need examples. Today, we’re going to address that. 

Now, let me pause for just a second here to acknowledge something. This sermon today is mostly going to be for folks who already consider themselves followers of Jesus. Today we are talking about Christianity 101 stuff. This is non-negotiable in terms of following Jesus well. If you are hearing this today and you aren’t really a Jesus person, I’m glad you’re here. Listen in today because you are going to be able to learn something about how believers ought to be doing the work Jesus called them to do. Even if you’re really not interested you can at least make sure they are doing it winsomely and well. 

If we are going to be more concrete about this whole sharing the Gospel in a post-Christian culture thing, we are going to have to see it in actual practice. Fortunately, the Scriptures have us covered there. The authors don’t merely tell us what to do, they give us a few examples of people actually doing it. And in terms of seeing someone share the Gospel with a group of unbelievers by meeting them right where they are, there are few examples better than the one the apostle Paul gives us and which Luke tells us about in Acts 17. If you have a copy of the Scriptures handy, join me there. 

Acts 17 unfolds sometime in the second half of Paul’s second missionary journey. After being run out of a couple of different cities, Paul had landed in Athens to hide out and wait for his traveling companions to catch up with him. Paul wasn’t one to sit on his hands, though. Like we saw him mention in 1 Corinthians 9 last week, he had a commission from Jesus Himself to preach the Gospel. He couldn’t not do it. Just because he was on the run for his life didn’t mean he was going to shirk on his duties. As a result, as soon as he got to Athens, he set about doing the work he had been called to do. 

Look at this with me in v. 16: “While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed when he saw that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with those who worshiped God, as well as in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.” In other words, he did the exact same things he did in every single city he visited. But did you catch what drove him to it in particular this time? What provoked him into speaking? “He was deeply distressed when he saw that the city was full of idols.” He saw how lost the people there were, and it broke his heart. 

This doesn’t necessarily mean that he saw a society that was obviously broken and impoverished and hungry and in bad shape socially speaking. It was the evidence of so many false beliefs that set Paul aflame. I wonder: does the lostness of the world around you bother you? Do you ever consider that there are people who are disconnected from what’s true and will one day face eternal consequences for that? Even when it seems like the people around you mostly seem to have everything together, do their false beliefs leave you unsettled to the point of taking action to help point them in a different direction; one that actually leads to life? If you are a follower of Jesus and lostness doesn’t bother you at all, it may be time to take a fresh look at which things bother you, which don’t, and if you need to do some shuffling of that list. 

Paul was sufficiently bothered that he jumped into action. He started by finding the lost people who were likely to be the most sympathetic toward what he had to say, and then he branched out from there to folks who were likely not going to be as interested. He didn’t berate them. He wasn’t ugly to them. He didn’t throw a fit and stomp his feet and tell them they were all going to Hell. Luke tells us that he reasoned with them. He made a logical, if personal, case, and let them decide for themselves what they were going to do with it. 

Some of those who heard listened with interest. Some were not so gracious. “Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also debated with him. Some said, ‘What is this ignorant show-off trying to say?’” That phrase “ignorant show-off” is a little tricky to translate into English, but the gist is that it is pretty insulting. Other listeners were at least open to hearing more. “Others replied, ‘He seems to be a preacher of foreign deities’—because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.” 

If you have Gospel conversations with other people, you can be as reasonable as possible—and you should be—but some folks just aren’t going to respond well no matter what you do. That’s one of the risks of the venture. It’s one Jesus warned us about well in advance of our jumping into the deep end. He didn’t ever promise it would be easy or smooth to bear witness to His kingdom, but He did promise that we wouldn’t ever be alone in our efforts. For Paul’s part, he intrigued enough listeners to get invited to the local debate forum to make a formal presentation. “They took him and brought him to the Areopagus, and said, ‘May we learn about this new teaching you are presenting? Because what you say sounds strange to us, and we want to know what these things mean.’ Now all the Athenians and the foreigners residing there spent their time on nothing else but telling or hearing something new.”

What comes next is Paul’s putting everything we were talking about into incredible action. He was given the floor at one of the most prestigious debating arenas in the ancient world. His audience was filled to the brim with pagans, most of whom knew they were smarter than he was. They had never heard of Jesus. The idea of the Gospel was going to sound like utter foolishness to them. If Paul was going to gain any kind of a hearing, he was absolutely going to have to play on their home court and by their home rules. So he did. 

Listen to this in v. 22 now. “Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said: ‘People of Athens! I see that you are extremely religious in every respect. For as I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed: “To an Unknown God.” Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.” 

Pause there just a second. Do you see what Paul is doing here? He marched straight into their worldview assumptions and set about presenting the Gospel to them from there. He didn’t insist that they move to believe like he did or that they had some kind of basic understanding of the point he was going to be making. He also didn’t judge them for their worldview assumptions even though he knew they were entirely wrong and wrongheaded in their beliefs. Judging someone who is not a believer for not thinking or speaking or behaving like a believer is silly. Of course he’s not going to do any of that. He’s not a believer! Our job is not to judge people who aren’t followers of Jesus. God will handle that, and He’ll do a better job of it than we will. Our job is merely to proclaim the truth as winsomely as we can and let the Holy Spirit take care of the rest. 

Paul says to these folks: Look, I know you are a religious people. You are so religious that you’re worshiping gods you don’t even know just in case you miss one. Let me tell you about the most important one you’re missing. “The God who made the world and everything in it—he is Lord of heaven and earth—does not live in shrines made by hands. Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. From one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. He did this so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, “For we are also his offspring.” Since we are God’s offspring then, we shouldn’t think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination.” 

Do you follow his presentation here? It’s pretty unique and unexpected as far as Gospel presentations go. He mentions God several times, but only as God. He doesn’t go into the trinity. He doesn’t mention Jesus by name, and only barely makes reference to Him at all. And he doesn’t quote the first line of Scripture. If you don’t cite Scripture or mention Jesus by name, does it count as a Gospel presentation? Apparently Paul thought so, and the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to include this story in Acts, so apparently He’s okay with it too. 

Paul’s goal here, though, wasn’t to create an altar call type of moment. This becomes painfully obvious when his conclusion doesn’t point them anywhere even remotely in the direction of an altar. “Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” 

Notice there’s no invitation there. But again, that wasn’t Paul’s point. His point was to plant some Gospel seeds with a crowd that was pretty much entirely clueless about anything relating to the Gospel in hopes that some of those seeds would land in good soil, take root, and grow to produce the fruit of new life. It looks like that while that didn’t happen in most cases, he did at least draw the interest some. And a couple went all the way with him and started following Jesus. “When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him, but others said, ‘We’d like to hear from you again about this.’ So Paul left their presence. However, some people joined him and believed, including Dionysis the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.”

Now, there have been endless analyses of this passage. I honestly don’t remember how many times I’ve studied it in a preaching class or an apologetics class or an evangelism class and so on and so forth. I don’t want to get into all of that with you this morning. What I do want you to see, though, is what Paul did. He didn’t plan to go to Athens on his journey. This was something unexpected; it was inconvenient even. But that didn’t matter. Paul simply took stock of his bearings, found a place to start, and began having Gospel conversations with the people around him. As it turns out, these efforts were parlayed into a formal opportunity to make a clear Gospel presentation to a brand-new audience, but even if that hadn’t happened it wouldn’t have mattered. Paul would have had those initial conversations all the same. Whatever situation Paul found himself in, he sought to turn it into a Gospel opportunity. His example here is a good reminder that any situation can become a Gospel situation. 

We encounter all sorts of different kinds of situations in our lives. Most of them are ones we expect to be in—home, work, school, the store, and the like. Occasionally we encounter situations that catch us completely off guard. We didn’t plan for them and weren’t even remotely expecting them. Whatever the situation we are facing is, though, it can become a Gospel situation if we will simply be faithful to Jesus’ command to bear witness. Certainly this can be formal like Paul demonstrates here, but it doesn’t have to be. And we don’t have to land things on a clear and compelling Gospel presentation. Paul certainly didn’t here. He simply planted seeds. It takes a lot of seeds to grow a good crop, and it just may be that your job in this instance is to be a seed planter. That’s just as important as being a seed harvester. Without seeds planted, no harvest is going to come. We need to be ready for both because we don’t know what God might do in a given situation. The one thing that is for sure, though, is that any situation can become a Gospel situation. 

But still, this sounds abstract. Yes, we have Paul’s example, but we need more clarity here. So then, let’s take care of that. Let me give you some examples of situations you might find yourself in that you could turn into Gospel situations with a simple observation or question, and then we’ll get out of here to put it into practice. 

Let’s say you are with an unbelieving friend who shares some struggle she is dealing with or perhaps a neighbor who shares a burden he is carrying. That’s an open door to turning the situation into a Gospel situation if I’ve ever heard one. That doesn’t mean you need to jump straight to telling them how Jesus can make all their problems go away. Number one, that’s not helpful. Number two, that’s a lie. Don’t use lies to sucker people into following a Jesus who doesn’t actually exist. That happens way too often and those folks wind up walking away from that worthless faith and often being some of the hardest people to convince later to receive the real thing. 

So, how do you respond? With empathy. “That sounds really heavy. I’m sorry you’ve been dealing with that.” Then you slide into a question that can help you pivot the situation in a Gospel direction: “What has been helping you face each day with all of that hanging over your head?” Do you see what we just did? We used a genuine, caring, compassionate question to open a conversation door. Now we can start to gently steer things toward the Gospel. Perhaps you’ve been through something really hard that your faith in Jesus helped you navigate. Share that story. “When I’ve gone through seasons like that, my faith in Jesus has actually been a really big anchor for me.” Or maybe just offer to pray for them—you could even offer to do it right then and there. “Hey, would you mind if I prayed for you about that?” You haven’t had to answer any scary questions. You haven’t really even had to put yourself out there much. But with a simple, genuine response, you have nonetheless opened a Gospel door. Any situation can become a Gospel situation. 

How about another one? Maybe you’re with someone who is just complaining. About everything. She doesn’t like her career. He’s not happy with his marriage. She’s facing or has just been through a major life transition (moving, starting a job, getting married, having a baby). He’s reached midlife and is struggling with the meaning of it all. Again, this isn’t a situation where you need to preach a sermon, but you can turn it into a Gospel situation. As before, start with empathy: “I’ve wrestled with that kind of thing before too; it’s hard to figure out what life is really all about.” Then move to curiosity to invite more conversation: “Have you ever reflected much about purpose in life and if there’s a spiritual side to things that might help inform it?” Then you can get personal: “For me, discovering that God actually created me with a purpose that is bigger than just my life changed how I see everything.” Once again, you’ve taken a pretty normal situation and turned it into a Gospel situation and it took almost nothing on your part. Just a bit of faithfulness. Any situation can become a Gospel situation. 

Maybe one more just to make sure we have it down? The world is a bit of a mess right now. There was yet another mass shooting even just this past week in Rhode Island, and this time a father murdered his own wife and son before going on a shooting rampage. That kind of thing gets people talking. It gets them thinking about the brokenness in the world. You’ve felt that too. So, be honest about it: “Sometimes it feels like the world is more broken than ever!” Not many people are going to disagree with you there. Then you can turn to curiosity: “What are some of the things you do to wrap your mind and heart around situations like this?” Then you can be personal and honest with them: “I’ve struggled with making sense out of this kind of stuff myself, but one thing I’ve found that has become a real foundation for my own life is taking seriously the promise in the Scriptures that God hasn’t abandoned us—that’s actually a big part of why Jesus came.” Now you’ve got a wide open door for the Gospel. Any situation can become a Gospel situation. 

Listen: You can do this. I know that you are sitting there thinking you can’t because I’ve sat where you are thinking the same thing myself. I’m extremely introverted. Talking to new people or bringing up tough subjects is incredibly hard for me. Following Jesus faithfully will occasionally take us into unfamiliar territory. But a little bit of obedience and practice can go a long way. Turning any situation into a Gospel situation doesn’t mean preaching to everyone all the time. It simply means caring about people and taking a genuine interest in them which is something the love of Christ compels us to do anyway. So again: You can do this. Any situation can become a Gospel situation. 

The first step forward here isn’t even hard. It won’t actually require you to talk to anyone; well, anyone but God. The first thing you can do today and even this whole week is to pray about this. Pray and ask God to help you see the world and the people around you like He does. Ask Him to give you Spirit-empowered confidence to speak up when a situation comes along. Ask Him to create opportunities and then put you in them. If you do all of that, there’s a pretty good chance He’s going to answer. So, let’s get praying together. And let’s turn all of our situations into Gospel situations. Any situation can become a Gospel situation. 

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