The First Evangelism
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Introduction
Introduction
When we first began Luke, I told you that he had an affinity for those on the fringe of society—the outcast, the poor, the forgotten, the marginalized. People like Zechariah, Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary, and as we see today: the shepherds.
But this text isn’t all about shepherds; it’s about the gospel. It’s the first evangelism experience. Up until now, there had been prophecies of the coming Messiah, but now, those prophesies are turned into reality. So as we open up the text, I want us to see three elements that every gospel encounter must have to make it a success. And when you hear them, your mind will be blown. The first element that must be present is that there must be an evangelizer. The second element that must be present is that there must be an evangelized person. Finally, it is necessary that the evangel—the good news must be present.
An Evangeler
An Evangelized
The Evangel
If these three elements are not present, then evangelism has not taken place and thus cannot be successful. That being said, we pray for two other elements, but these are not required for successful evangelism: faith and furor.
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.
And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”
And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.
And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child.
And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.
But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.
And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
The Evangelizer
The Evangelizer
The first element of successful evangelism is that there must be an evangelizer. Someone must speak the good news. This ought not really surprise us too much. In Romans 10, Paul asked the question: how can someone believe in whom they’ve never heard? Someone has to tell them. We could equate that to this passage. How could the shepherds have known that the Christ-child was lying in a manger if no one came and told them? But who was there to tell them? Only two people knew about it and they were a bit preoccupied at the moment. So we see that God sent the first evangelizers.
And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.
We’re not told who this evangelizer was. Most likely it was Gabriel. He seems to be God’s number one spokes-angel, but we can’t be dogmatic about it; nor do we need to worry about it. All that matters was that he was faithful to go, faithful to give, and faithful to glorify.
Now, it’s been rightly said that not everyone is an evangelist. That’s true if we are talking about a profession or even a calling and gifting, which I believe Paul speaks of in Ephesians 4. This is why I call this first element “the evangelizer.” I want us to get the idea of a profession out of our heads and replace it with the idea of one who evangelizes—someone who shares the gospel.
The angel of the Lord suddenly appeared to the shepherds. It actually says that he stood near the shepherds. The idea is certainly one of sudden appearance. He wasn’t standing next to them one moment, and the next moment he was. But the idea of standing next to them is a very real idea. He wasn’t standing over them. He wasn’t floating up in the sky. He was standing next to them.
If we want to be good evangelizers, standing next to people is going to need to be our norm, not the exception. There is something to be said about social media evangelism. There’s something to be said about text evangelism and phone call evangelism. But our normal evangelizing efforts ought to be done next to people. We cannot evangelize those whom we are avoiding.
Paul wrote
To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.
I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
Jesus went into the house of Matthew to meet with his friends, a bunch of “tax-collectors and sinners” as the Pharisees called them. Peter went to Cornelius’ home to share with him the good news even though he was a Gentile and considered unclean. Philip, though supernaturally transported to the road, made it a point to get into the chariot of the Ethiopian eunuch, someone who would never have been accepted into the temple courtyard.
If we are hoping for successful evangelism efforts, then our normal routine is to be a present evangelizer.
The Evangelized
The Evangelized
But there is a second element that must be present if evangelism is going to be a success. There must be the evangelized. In essence, someone must not only tell the gospel message, but someone must be told the gospel message. That seems obvious enough. You might be wondering why I am going to such lengths to state two obvious points (knowing a third is coming soon!). It is because we need to go back to the fundamentals sometimes and relearn what we already know because we too often we think we’re beyond the fundamentals—too often we have complicated the most simplist of doctrine.
Here we have the evangelized.
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
Here they are. Shepherds. There was only one group that was worse than shepherds: lepers. The biggest difference, other than the oozing sores, was that lepers didn’t choose their reputation, but shepherds did. They may have been stuck doing what their dad did who was doing what his dad who did what his dad did. But they didn’t have to be stuck with their reputation, did they? They could have sought to live differently. Shepherds were not only dirty in body—spending all their time among the sheep out in the hot sun and filth. They were considered dirty in soul. If one was a shepherd, it meant no one trusted you. It meant rumors spreading about you. Everyone avoided you and walked on the other side of the street. Accusations and innuendos were the norm. They could have been better people, trustworthy people. They chose their path, didn’t they? They deserved the way they were treated, didn’t they? That’s how Christians see such people of ill-repute. Like priests and Levites walking on the other side of the street to avoid the broken and dying.
These were the men the evangelizer evangelized.
May I ask you, beloved, who is it that we evangelize when we evangelize? Are they those who have dirty souls or those who look squeaky clean? Are they the filthy or the pure? Are they the ones everyone avoids or the ones everyone approves? Are they the ruffians or the rich ones? Are we going after the broken or the beautiful? And as I ask these questions, we need to be careful where our thoughts lead us.
For one, we could spiritualize the questions. Well, spiritually speaking, everyone is broken. No one is squeaky clean. We’re all filthy and have dirty souls. Yes, that’s true. It’s also avoidance. The questions are too uncomfortable to answer.
For two, we could conflate the two. Surely you’re not trying to pit us against these two groups. Both need Jesus. It shouldn’t matter which person I talk to about Jesus. And yes, that is true. But there is a clear distinction that Jesus makes. When Jesus went into Zacchaeus’ house, the people grumbled that he was in there with a tax collector, a betrayer and thief of the people. Jesus responded
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
When Jesus was in Matthew’s house, he met all types of Matthew’s friends and many of them were unseemly. Again, the Pharisees and scribes grumbled, and in a direct assault on their character—those who thought themselves clean and good and whole, we read
And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.
Many people say that the church is a hospital for souls. I can see where they are coming from, but may I suggest to you that the church is a doctor’s consultation room and it is the world that is a hospital filled with sick and dying patients. As doctors we come here to consult with one another, encourage one another, strengthen one another, love one another and then send one another out in to a sick and dying world to share the good news of life and wholeness. Sure, the sick will come at times and we treat them here in our office just as any doctor would. But there are infinitely more souls out there, souls that are ugly and diseased and scarred and filthy and rotting that need our medicine, because ours is the only medicine that heals.
The Evangel
The Evangel
Which leads us to the third element that must be present in order to have a successful evangelism encounter. The first is the evangelizer, the second is the evangelized, and thirdly, there is the evangel itself—the good news.
And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
I quickly want to go through the five verses and pull out aspects of evangelism that we may otherwise miss. There are four of them:
Your Attitude
Your Announcement
Your Assurance
Your Acclamation
Your Attitude
Your Attitude
First, in evangelism, we must check our attitude. I remember speaking to a young woman when I worked at a hotel in Indiana. My goal was to present the gospel and yet my attitude was wrong. I badgered her with her sin and in doing so crippled my shot at sharing the gospel. She had grown up in church. She knew what sin was and knew she was living in it. She didn’t need me hammering it over and over again. Notice what Luke says about the angels.
And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
It is right that the shepherds should and would be sorely afraid. A being which had not been there before was suddenly standing next to them and was beaming and brightness filled the sky. But the angel didn’t come there to scare them. He came to give good news. His attitude was peace as it was peace that he brought. I have known of preachers who are preaching some great exciting passage and come at it with boredom or anger. The attitude does not match the message.
The angel sought to reorient the shepherds attention to the announcement rather than the fear and surprise he brought by his presence. Do not fear. Why? Because I’m proclaiming a news so good that it brings joy instead. Is this our attitude when it comes to the gospel?
Your Announcement
Your Announcement
Secondly, we must check our announcement. Look at the announcement that the angel gave:
And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
First, notice that the angel tells the shepherds who the good news of great joy is for: it’s for all the people. It’s not just for the rich. Not just for the powerful. It’s not just for those of good repute. This is for all the people. The rich and lowly, the powerful and the weak, those with good and bad reputations. Remember what Mary said in the Magnificat and Zechariah declared in the Benedictus?
God exalts the low and lowers the exalted. God gives light to those in darkness. Brothers and sisters, those who are sitting in darkness need to be shown the light and told that the light is for them. They need to be told that God’s arm is not too short and not to weak so as to lift them up. They need to be told that they are not too far gone to receive God’s mercy.
Notice secondly, the angel tells us who Jesus is. He gives him three titles: Savior, Christ, and Lord. Commentators say that this is the only time this phrase shows up in Scripture. It shows three distinct aspects of Jesus.
He is Savior. He came to forgive people of their sins and deliver them from the wrath of God to come.
He is Christ. He is the Anointed One, the Chosen One, the King of Israel—and King of kings. He is the rightful ruler of all.
He is Lord. Any Jew would have understood that the angel was saying that Jesus is God and as he was born in the city of David, he is God in the flesh come to dwell among his people.
So if we are to have a successful evangelism we need to rightly proclaim Jesus. He is the Savior of all who would be saved. He is God who was born here as one of us to be King over us.
Hebrews 2:8–10 (ESV)
Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.
But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
Your Assurance
Your Assurance
The angel did not stop with the announcement, but gave a sign—a way that the shepherds would know he spoke the truth. He gave the assurance.
And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
The sign given was a call to action. It was a call to response. This sign was not a miracle! The virgin birth was a miracle. An old barren woman having a baby is a miracle. Wrapping a new-born in clothes and laying him down for a nap is not a miracle. It was an assurance that the shepherds will certainly find that what was told them was true when they go searching for the baby in a manger. When Peter preached his first message, the people were cut to the heart and asked, what must we do to be saved.
And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
While we would absolutely agree that justification is 100% of God’s doing, there is a response and an assurance of the gospel message that ought to be given. As the 1689 London Baptist Confession states:
They are dead in sins and trespasses until they are made alive and renewed by the Holy Spirit. By this they are enabled to answer this call and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it. This response is enabled by a power that is no less than that which raised Christ from the dead.
If, as Hebrews 11:1 states, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, then in calling for a response, we are calling them to an assurance of those things hoped for. The angel called upon the shepherds to go and see the Christ-child. We call upon the evangelized to turn and trust and receive the assurance of forgiveness. If only Jesus had given us a sign of assurance. He did, we call them the ordinances: baptism—our initial assurance, and communion—our ongoing assurance.
Your Acclamation
Your Acclamation
Finally, we see the angel was joined by other angels giving glory to God; they shouted acclamation to their God.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
The angels could not contain themselves. God’s greatness—his goodness—was to wonderful to ignore. He was bringing the peace to the world. This peace is the shalom that the Jewish people longed for and still do. It’s not just an absence of violence, but a restoration of all things. It is the desire to make all things right—all things new. And this was what God was doing through the Savior, Christ the Lord.
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
Why would they not give glory to God? This was too exciting! And my question then is this: in our evangelism efforts, are we consciously and excitedly making much of God for what he has and is doing? Do we show the evangelized how enthralled we are with God and his work? Oh that we would not be ashamed to give praise to God among the evangelized! Instead may we be excited to give him our acclamation.
Faith and Furor
Faith and Furor
This leads us to our final point. The first three points are the three elements to have a successful evangelism encounter. This last point is what we hope our successful evangelism encounter produces. But we cannot ascribe success or failure based on the outcome. Though faith and furor come from successful evangelism, they are not indicative on whether or not one was successful in an evangelism effort. So quickly, let’s see the faith and furor in these verses.
When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”
And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.
And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child.
And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.
But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.
And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
In verse 20, we see the faith. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. Faith always acts. And the shepherds believed what the angels said and headed to Bethlehem and they did so with haste. That’s the furor, starting in verse 21. Just like Mary went hastily to Elizabeth, so the shepherds hastily went to see Jesus. We pray for that to happen.
Secondly we see the shepherds giving testimony! This is bizarre as not only would no one believe them if called on to testify, they would never be called on them to testify in the first place. Yet here they are giving testimony as to what they had seen and heard. They did not care any longer who believed them or not. They had to share the good news. Do you remember being that way? I do. When I first got saved, I didn’t care what people thought of me. I went to my second grade teacher and told her the good news the next morning. We pray for that to happen.
Finally, the shepherd’s glorified God themselves. They imitated the angels—their evangelizers. In fact, the entire actions of the shepherds was one long imitation. They went to Mary and Joseph—out of no where it seemed. Standing next to them, they testified of all they heard and saw. And they left glorifying God.
May I ask a difficult question: would you want a newborn believer to imitate you in your praise to almighty God? I’m not trying to shame you; only to make you think. Do you, do I give such acclamation to God that we’d want others to learn from us? Again, we can poopoo the idea by saying, no one praises God as he ought to be praised. That is true. But I’m just asking to look into your soul and ask if you’re praise has grown stale or is it still vibrant?
I’m not asking you to jump and shout. Some people show their acclamation that way. I’m not asking you to settle down and be somber in the midst of a holy God. Some people show their acclamation that way. I’m just asking, in your praise, do you show the greatness of God so that others may see your praise and give glory to the Father?
Conclusion
Conclusion
As we finish this text, we’ve seen that this text is not just about shepherds and angels, but about the very gospel of Jesus Christ. We saw the three components of a successful evangelism effort: the evanglizer, the evangelized, and the evangel. Then we saw what we hope to see in every successful evangelism effort: faith and furor from the evangelized.
Beloved, we have the good news of great joy that is for all the people. The lovely and the unlovely. Let us not discriminate against those whom we see as being of ill-repute. But let us go to them with right attitudes, giving the announcement of Jesus as Savior, Christ, and Lord. Let us call them to turn and believe assuring them of God’s forgiveness. Let us never cease to give our acclamation to God for what he has done.
But if you’ve never have turned and believed this good news, I call on you to do so now. God’s mercy and love can flood into your life today and give you peace and wholeness if you will believe. Jesus lived and died and rose from the dead by the power of God so that you can be made right with him and find that peace that you’ve always longed for. Sure, there will be difficulties. If they persecuted the one who gave such peace, they will persecute his followers. But he who saved you will remain faithful. Will you turn and trust in him?