Building Bridges in Evangelism: Insights from Acts 17

Join Don as he delves into Acts chapter 17, exploring the Apostle Paul's methods for evangelism in Athens. Don shares personal stories and practical advice on how to reach out and build bridges with those around us to bring them closer to God. He underscores the importance of opening our eyes to opportunities, exposing our hearts, engaging our minds, and connecting others to God. Don wraps up with four actionable steps everyone can take in evangelism: shining your light, speaking about your faith, inviting others to church, and making newcomers feel welcome.

00:00 Introduction and Greetings
00:48 The Importance of Evangelism
01:11 Connecting to the Power of God
02:37 Challenges in Modern Evangelism
03:39 Paul's Mission in Athens
06:03 Building Bridges in Evangelism
07:04 Paul's Approach to Evangelism
07:23 Opening Our Eyes and Hearts
11:09 Personal Stories of Evangelism
18:26 The Reality of Being Lost
18:55 Apathy in Modern Society
19:19 Desensitization and Its Impact
19:41 The Importance of Worship
20:06 Embracing New Ideas
21:45 Reasoning and Persuasion in Faith
23:22 Debating Philosophies
26:39 The Resurrection of Jesus
28:30 God's Relationship with Us
32:05 Four Things Everyone Can Do in Evangelism
33:12 Shining and Speaking for Christ
34:32 Inviting and Welcoming Others
37:12 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Transcript

Thank you, Reagan. Well, good morning. Good to see everybody today. Do you have a Bible this morning? Acts chapter 17 is where we will spend all of our time this morning, 17th division of the Book of Acts. So good to see all of you today. Glad we can be together as we start. Uh, the gospel meeting today, I, I tell you, Reagan caught me off guard.

I was standing in the back talking and all of a sudden he's talking and, uh, I'm thinking, wow. Well, I'm glad to get to be with you. It is been a while, been since we've been together and, uh, think about you all often. Reagan and I crossed paths usually a time or two every year, and so I kind of keep an update about you and how the work here is going.

So happy that things are so well with you. Glad to be with him and with my good friend Harold this week. I'm glad we can talk together in this Bible class period. In every Bible class period, in gospel meetings, I talk a little bit about, about evangelism. I have multiple sermons that I talk about, but always the subject in Bible class periods is evangelism and it will be today as well.

So hopefully that will be beneficial to us as we navigate our way through what we want to consider this morning. Have you ever, uh, have you ever thought that an appliance or maybe a piece of electronics was broken and in reality just wasn't plugged in? And that can be a little bit embarrassing if before he called somebody to come and repair that.

But you know that if it's not connected to a source of power, nothing good can happen. Life can be that way as well. Of course, sometimes, sometimes life doesn't work well for people because they're, they're not plugged into God. They're not plugged into his word or into fellowship with his people. The point of that is that we all need the power of God flowing into our lives.

It's the way God made us. By my desk in my office in Temple Terrace, Florida. I have a, I have a power strip, and of course one side of that plugs into the wall, which it derives power. But of course on that power strip, there are other outlets where other things can be plugged in and they can in turn derive power from that single source.

In many ways, I think that describes us. We who are plugged in, as it were to God into his word and fellowship with his people. We are designed really to be the conduit so that others can plug into us and come to know God in His Word and his people. In fact, somebody as well said that the church is the only organization on Earth that exists for the sake of those who aren't a part of it yet.

Now that may not be totally true. There may be others, but you understand what's being said that we are here because when Jesus said, look, whosoever will may come, he was singing our song. We believe that. We embrace that. We try to live that as we try to bring others to come to know the Lord as well. The challenge, of course, is that reaching out to others in 2025 is a formidable task, is it not?

There's so many Christians, so many. Or there's so many people who view Christians in the church with a, with a great deal of suspicion and mistrust. It's just intimidating, often trying to talk to others. I mean, we think about that sometimes in venues that, you know, if you're with 50,000 people at the, uh, at the Houston Rodeo, how do you, how do you talk to those people?

Well, probably you can't, so we'll winnow it down a little bit. If I'm milling around with thousands of people at the Texas State Fair, maybe I could talk to them. Well, you're probably not gonna get to do that either. So let's winnow it down a little more. How about, how about just with that individual by whom you've lived for the last decade, or maybe that person with whom you work five days a week, or maybe just the person you go to school with and you, you sit by in a variety of classes.

How do you build bridges with them? How do you find, how do you find common ground with people that. Seemingly we might have very little in common. That brings us to Acts chapter 17. You're a good Bible students. You know that in Acts chapter 17, Paul finds him in Athens, Greece. I would imagine that there are probably people in this audience who have been to Athens, and if you've been there, you know that Paul would've seen some of the great buildings of which you can see, uh, the ruins.

Now, this is the, the Parthenon. This is what it looks like today. In Paul's day, when he saw it, it would've looked something like this. The outer shell has great beauty, and it has the cutaway there. So you can see inside it was one of the wonders of the ancient world, amazing thing that he would've seen.

But Athens itself was an amazing city. 250,000 souls resided in Athens in the first century. It was the cradle of democracy. It was the center of philosophy and art. It was known for athletics because the, uh, the Olympic Games had their genesis there. And so this is no mean city. This is an amazing place where Paul has found himself.

You know the story in Acts 17, beginning in Acts 17 and beginning of verse 19, they took Paul and they brought him to a meeting of the opus, and they said to him way we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting. And so Paul is invited. To meet the opus, cus is an interesting word. It refers both to a place and the people who min there.

And so it refers to a place. The cus was a place. I can show you an image of that. It's standing beneath the Parthenon. If you look at the bottom right hand side, that round area that goes up to a small temple building that is the opus. But. It's also interesting that the people who met there were known as the opus as well.

And so while it's strange, sounds strange to us to say the opus met at the opus, and you've heard it in Bible classes and sermons, that for Paul to be invited to speak there would've been, would've been, uh, in the minds of those people, at least it would've been an honor. And so he is invited to speak there.

Imagine that with this man. Who's invited to speak to this important gathering? Uh, maybe think about somebody addressing a joint session of Congress or maybe somebody in England making their maiden speech to Parliament. What's fascinating me about Acts 17 is that Paul shows us how to build bridges to talk about Christ to people with whom you would think you would've.

Nothing in common at all. Now we use that vernacular. We use that vernacular. We will sometimes say. Well, I just don't have anything in common with 'em at all. I, I love God. They don't care about God. I love the Bible. They don't care about the Bible. I love my church family. They don't care about church at all.

We, we don't have anything in common at all, and we understand what we mean by that. That's not exactly true though, is it? I mean, it's just, it's just not, we, we, for example, have a sin problem in common because all of sin comes short of the glory of God, and we all share the same solution because there's only one.

Acts four in verse 12. There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. And so we at least share the same problem and the same solution, but we understand beyond that. It may be that we have very little in common, and I think that was the case in Acts 17 with Paul, but what he shows us in Act 17 is how to build a bridge with people that at least spiritually would appear.

That we have nothing in common at all, and so I wanna talk about the four things that he did that will take most of our time this morning. Then at the end, I want to just take about five minutes and talk about four things that we all can do in evangelism that are very, very simple, but let's talk about how Paul built this bridge to begin this morning.

Well, he did four things. Number one, he opened his eyes. Paul opened his eyes. In fact, that's what the text says. He said, as I walked around, I looked. We would do well to do that. I walked around and I looked, in fact in verse 17, it says He recent in the synagogue with the Jews. Now he would've something in common with the fellow Jews, but also with God-fearing Greeks as well as in the marketplace.

That is the Agora Day by day with those who happened to be there with those would've been gentiles, and those are individuals with whom he didn't have much in common at all. And so what's interesting to me is that Paul didn't just associate with fellow Christians. He could have tried to find Christians everywhere and just isolate with them, but he doesn't do that.

He doesn't associate just with fellow Christians. That's an important consideration and gentlemen, I think sometimes we believe that it would be wonderful if we could just kinda live in isolation from everybody in the world. I wonder how many times individuals have thought, you know what, if I could just wake up in a gated Christian community where only Christians could live.

And get in my car and drive to a job where only Christians were allowed to work. And then I, at night, I could drive back and there would be an HEB where only Christians could shop. And then I would go back into my gated Christian community and close the gate and I'd not have to deal with any of these people in the world.

Wouldn't that be great? And the Lord says, no, that wouldn't be great at all. He said, you've gotta let your light will shine among men that they can see your good works. Have an impact to the point that they glorify God. Paul would write to the Philippians in two and 13 and say, look, it is a crooked of first generation.

Nobody's gonna deny that. And he said, among whom? Among whom you shine like lights in the world. And so that's our calling ladies and gentlemen. And that's what Paul did. And what Paul models, he goes through the agora. Well, they're gentiles in the Agora, and that's exactly what he does. I've always loved this statement from one Chronicles 12 from is.

There were men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. I, we need to, in many ways, just kind of transfer that into the New Testament that we need to be exactly like that. We are people who don't bury our head in the sand, but we honestly look at the world, the culture in which we live, and we, we figure out what children of Israel, children of God, God's, spiritual Israel, what in fact we should do.

We've gotta find ways to take Jesus into our. World. Now, one of the ways you do that is by looking for some signs of spiritual curiosity of your Bible. Acts 17, look with me beginning verse 22. Paul stood is the middle of the opus and he said, men of Athens. I perceive that in all things you are very religious, religious.

Now, if you're my generation, you probably grew up reading a version of the Bible that did not use the word religious there. I grew up reading the old King James Bible that used the word superstitious and all things. I perceive that you were very superstitious. That tells me probably that the translators had a bit of an issue trying to decide, excuse me, what was being said here.

And so it may be that he is saying, look, what is religion to you is superstition to me. But it's interesting that he doesn't, he doesn't begin by insulting them. He doesn't begin by saying, look this ridiculous, paganism is superstitious, and you people are ignorant and foolish for believing this. Can't believe that you are just this ignorant.

He doesn't do that. He uses that religious inclination to build a bridge. He appreciated the fact that they had some religious curiosity, some spiritual curiosity. When I wrote this lesson, I was thinking about thinking about this in regard to my wife Vicki. I. For the first 41 or two years that we were married, Vicki never watched a single minute of football with me.

Not one challenged our marriage a great deal, I would say to you. But all of a sudden, Vicki got interested in football. Now, she wasn't interested in every football team. She was only interested in one, not the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. She was interested in New Orleans Saints and only because of one player.

That was Drew Brees. And I'm gonna tell you, my wife Vicki, she loved her some Drew Brees. Now we, we were watching Tampa Bay was getting ready to play New Orleans, and they were interviewing Drew Brees. And Vicki is man, she is on the, she's on the edge of her seat listening to this. And so she's listening to interview Drew Brees.

And then she says, as she's listening that she says, that is one beautiful man.

And I said, Vicki, I, I can hear the words coming outta your mouth. And she looked at me and she said, I know. And I thought, well, I had a choice there. I could take offense at that. Could just be really happy that she was watching football with me, and that's, that's what I chose. Paul could have looked at this and he could have begun by insulting these people, but instead he said, you know what I have, I have seen that you have a religious, spiritual inkling about you, and look how he uses that as a springboard.

In verse 23, he said, as I was passing by and considering the object of your worship, I found an altar with the inscription to the unknown. God, here's his point, therefore, the one whom you worship without knowing him, I proclaim. To you, and he brilliantly uses that compliment about them having a spiritual inclination to springboard to talk about the one true God that they did not know.

Now, here's the point of that, ladies and gentlemen. The point simply is that when we pay attention to our world and to those in our world, we'll find that we have similar concerns and interests, and it will create opportunities. It's easy once we begin thinking in those terms, our. We often don't think in those terms and look for those kinds of opportunities in, uh, in Temple Terrace where I live, I've, I've lived in Temple Terrace now for 31 years, preached for the same church there.

They're extremely tolerant people. And, uh, from the day I arrived from the first week that I arrived, I've gone to the same dry cleaners there. And, um, when I first started going to this dry cleaners, the, the guy who owned it. He was a man. He was just a grumpy old man. There was no other way to put it. He, he made Oscar the grouch look like sunshine.

He really did. I mean, he just, he was a grump. Well, he eventually died. He eventually died and his son took over the business and his son was the polar opposite of his dad. Happy, loved everybody, loved everybody, and everybody loved him because he's just a happy, gregarious person. But I went in one day and something was wrong, clearly, and I asked him, I said, mark, something's.

Bothering you today, what is it? And he said, oh, Don, he said, it's, it's my wife. He said, she's been diagnosed with breast cancer and it's, it's really bad. And I said, well, mark, what's her name? He said, Valinda. And I said, we're gonna pray for her. And I said, I'm gonna ask the people to come in here and use your dry cleaners to go to church with us to pray for her.

Well, Valinda went through a whole gamut of treatment. I mean, it was chemotherapy and radiation and surgery and. And I would ask about her as I would go in. I didn't ask every single time, but I would ask about her. Finally, one day I went in and I said, mark, how's Valinda? And he said, oh, Don. He said, we got great news.

He said, we were told Moffitt, Moffitt is our cancer hospital in Tampa. We were told at hos at Moffitt this week that she's cancer free. And I said, oh, well thank, thank God for that. Mark said, I'm so happy for you. I said, we've been praying for her. Well, that's next Sunday morning I talk talk where I typically teach in our, in our building.

And I'm finished my class and I'm walking through the foyer and there's a little lady standing out there that I, I've never seen before and she's a little tiny thing. And I went up and sl my hand out and I said, Hey, it's great to have you with us today. I'm Don Truex. I said, what's your name? She said, well, my name is Valinda Kornheiser.

And I said, are you Mark Valinda? And she said, yes, I am. I said, we've been praying for you. She said, well, I know you have, well, already a long story. I can make a little bit shorter. We began studying the Bible with Valinda. One of our couples studied with her, and I was asking 'em, I said, well, how's it going with Valinda?

And they said, well, we're studying at our kitchen table. They said, uh, mark, he's in the bedroom. He won't come sit with us, but we know he is listening. But they said it's going well. So I ask a couple weeks later, I said, well, how's it going with Belinda? And they said, well, it's going really well with Valinda.

Mark still won't come to the table. But now he's sending questions to her to ask so he can listen in the bedroom. Well, we're making progress here. Valinda was baptized and I looked up a few weeks later and there was Mark sitting by Valinda. It took a long time for Mark. Did you catch Mark's last name was Kornheiser.

Mark's Jewish. Nobody in his family had ever left Judaism ever, and to do that, you pay a price. But he paid it. He paid it. Mark and Lin are just wonderful people. They're wonderful Christians. But it all began simply because I noticed something was wrong and asked and said, we're gonna pray about that. See, we have all kinds of those opportunities, ladies and gentlemen.

We just have to open our eyes. We just have to be attuned to those around us, but it's not enough. Just open your eyes. Secondly, Paul didn't just open his eyes, he exposed his heart. Look at verse 16 with me. While Paul waited for them, his spirit was provoked within him. When he saw the city was given over to, to idols, but provoked, that's a, that's not quite strong enough word.

The newer translations used this word. He was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idol. He was greatly distressed. That's a word that means to needle or to poker, to jab. It's the same word as Hebrews 10 and 24 that we are told that we need to motivate or provoke one another and to love and good works.

The point of it is that what Paul, so and Athens brought him pain, it made his heartache. He saw religious people seemingly searching for God who were headed in the wrong direction and his heart broke for them. He saw people that were debating philosophy and building temples and erecting statues, and yet their religion was empty, and that meant that their souls.

We're empty as well, and it caused him pain. And the question is, does it cause us any pain? Who do we cry over? I tell you, I, I'll tell you, part of our challenges, ladies and gentlemen, is that we live, we live in an all-inclusive, everybody gets a trophy kind of world. We live in a world where spiritually the mantra is, look, I'm okay.

You're okay. We're all okay. God loves us anyway. And we forget. Sometimes we forget sometimes. That neighbor that is so helpful and that coworker that is so friendly and that fellow student who may be so brilliant or that family member that is so loved, we forget sometimes that if they've not been obedient to the gospel of Jesus Christ, they are lost.

That's the Bible word. They are lost, not just mistaken, but they are lost. And the question again is, does that break our heart as it did Paul? The danger is that we become apathetic. That's a real challenge, I think in 2025 in America, that we just become apathetic. We, we can become desensitized to so much because, I mean, let's be honest, every day in America it's like, it's like drinking out of a fire hose.

We have so much information coming to us all the time. We can become desensitized. Things that used to just be huge in our life. You realize, ladies and gentlemen, there were, there were at least two mass shootings last week in America, and they were hardly even mentioned on the news. Why? Well, because we become desensitized, all of that.

And if we're not careful, we can, we can bring that into, into church as well. I mean, it's just, it's another song. It's another sermon. It's another Lord Supper service. It's another prayer. But heaven, helpless, ladies and gentlemen, for worship if worship, if the gospel ever becomes boring to him. Us. You know, it's interesting that in this story, verse 21, all the atheists and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to heal, tell, or to hear some new thing.

That's kind of where we are as Americans. Side note here, just real quick, that verse is written in with a negative connotation. Connotation. I, I know that, but I'm gonna tell you, there's a part of that verse that I like. They, they spent their time wanting to tell or hear something new. Decided that, that I like is they were at least willing to consider something new.

Because I'll guarantee you, if you've lived very long, you probably know some people that years ago they closed the lid on their box of knowledge and they sealed it shut and would not let a fresh idea in there for anything in the world. These people are at least willing to listen. We would do well with that.

But again, the the verse is written with a negative connotation. It's the idea that they didn't wanna settle on anything. They didn't wanna settle on anything. Doesn't that sound like America today? I mean, we have so much new knowledge on a daily basis. We almost have microscopic attention spans now. I mean, are young people looking for the next Fortnite?

We're looking for the next binge watch or the next, whatever it may be. We live in a generation that is, that is often bored and sled and captivated by anything. And if not, we're not careful. We can bring that to spiritual matters as well. There is a book on the religious market right now called Bored.

Again, Christians not Born Again, bored again, Christians. I gotta tell you, when I saw that, I was thinking about Jesus and the disciples. If you, if you had asked Peter, James and John, what was it like? What was it like to navigate Palestine for three years with Jesus? They might have used many adjective, but I'll guarantee you, boring would not have been one of them.

These men felt deeply. Following Christ is more than just emotion. It's not enough to open your eyes and just expose your heart. Third Paul engaged is mind reason with him. In fact, take a look at the screen here with me for just a second. He reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the gentile worshipers and he reason in the marketplace daily with those who happen to be there.

He reasoned with them in verse two, as was his custom poll, went to the synagogue and on three seven. He reasoned with them from the scripture and it bleeds over into chapter 18 as well. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue trying to persuade Jews and Greeks, and so think about that. Preaching and teaching the gospel is described as persuading people reasoning with people presenting a logical case for faith with people.

In other words, our faith stands on mountains inscrutable evidence. When I, uh, first moved to Temple Terrace all those years ago, for several years on Monday night, I taught a teenage class and we'd have teenagers from all over Tampa Bay. That would come as a wonderful, wonderful experience, and I used a lot of materials, but one of the books that I used and really enjoyed a lot was this book by Josh McDowell, entitled, don't Check Your Brains at the Door.

It was written for teenagers, and I would talk to 'em about the fact you don't need to check your brains at the door. Nobody needs to commit intellectual suicide in order to be a Christian. Christianity is a thinking person's religion. We have mounds of faith upon which our faith ultimately is built. And somebody says, well, yeah, but Don, what if, what if you meet somebody and they're extraordinarily sharp?

I mean, they are true intellectuals and they have a different philosophy or worldview than you. Paul did in Acts 17. Look at verse 18 with me. A group of epicurean and stoic philosophers began to debate with Kim. Some of them asked, what is this Babbler trying to say? So here are two individuals, this two groups of philosophy, and they were wise individuals.

They began to debate with Paul, who is no intellectual slut of course. And so they have, they have a debate here. These are, these are brilliant individuals. You could not find two groups that were more polar opposites than the Epic Koreans and the stoics. The Epic Korean, founded by Epicurus gave us the idea of eat and can be merry later was added because tomorrow we die.

But their philosophy was they were, they were heeding us and you ought to live in of, and for today and for yourself. At the other end of the philosophical spectrum were the stoics. And the stoics were exactly what it sounds like. Mean, they, they, they, their philosophy was, look, you should not allow any external circumstance to upset your internal equilibrium.

And so they would've made good bricks, you know, stiff upper lip, keep calm and carry on that that's the way they lived. There are people who try to live by those philosophies still today. There are some who are like epicureans and they say, you know what? I'm just one person. It's like trying to sweep back the ocean.

And so I'm just, I'm just gonna live like lifts. At the other end of the spectrum, there are those who say, you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna do what we talked about a moment ago. I'm just gonna isolate. I'm gonna try to just stay as far away from the world as I possibly can. Neither one of those, neither one of those are life philosophies in joined by Christ, but they debate with him.

They're sharp folks, and it's interesting that they say, what is this babbler trying to say? Well, that's an interesting word, babbler, that. That that work was not used in the way that we use it today. So if you today leave this class and say, well, Don just babbled on and on and on, well that'd be a true statement, but it's not what was being said here.

So if you have a marginal reading in your Bible for Babbler, probably gives you the two word phrase, seed picker. What is this seed picker trying to say? And it was used in the first century of a bird that would peck over here and over here, and over here and over here, and it would amalgamate enough food together to have a meal.

But it was used for religious teachers as well, religious teachers who would take a little bit of this and that, that and that, and they would form that together, and that would be their religion or philosophy. People still do that. Nobody's ever gonna acknowledge they do that, but people do that. You probably know some people that do that, that really, when it comes to spirituality, they just kind of pick.

They pick and choose. I'll take, uh, I'll take all the beatitudes, I'll take all the fruit of the spirit. I'll take six of the 10 commandments. I'll take one saved, always saved from Calvinism, and I'll take baptism for the dead, for Mormonism, just in case they put that together. Amalgamate that, that's the religious view.

It's interesting that Paul doesn't, he doesn't chase that rabbit. He's not gonna get distracted by that. He's not gonna talk about that. And so. What he says is he's preaching the good news about the resurrection of Jesus. It's so interesting to me, ladies and gentlemen, Paul doesn't chase that rabbit.

Instead, he says, I want to tell you about what really matters, and that's the resurrection of Jesus. It's interesting that Paul takes them immediately to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I've said many times that the resurrection of Jesus is the linchpin of Christianity. Have you ever thought about this?

Have you ever thought about the fact that we could have Christianity without a lot of things that Jesus did? We could have Christianity without Jesus walking on water, water to wine, feeding thousands of people with a little boy's lunch. We could have had Christianity without Jesus doing any of that, had he chosen.

But you can't have Christianity without Jesus rising from the dead. Why Paul would write to the Corinthians and he would say, look, this is of first importance that Jesus died. He was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. And Paul gets them there. That's what he wants to talk about, and that's what I want to talk about.

You know, sometimes people say, yeah, but Don, you know what I, I tell you what, there are just so many things in the Bible that are really hard to be under. I just can't understand a lot of that. Well, you know what? Get in line. There are a lot of things in the Bible that are hard to be understood. Peter said that our brother, Paul, has written many things hard to be understood.

Probably read the book of Romans that, but you know what? Jesus Christ wrote in the dead. I can understand that. And somebody says, well, but you know what, Don Sometimes people in the church, they, it's not everything that they ought to be. And you know, brethren, sometimes, particularly in the last 10 years, so brethren had been polarized by so many things.

Well, you know what? None of that should be. But Jesus Christ rose from the dead and I do understand that. And that is the ultimate reasonableness of our faith. And then fourth, he connected his God and that's verses 24 through 31. And we don't have the time to read all that 'cause we've got other things to do this morning.

But, but let me just summarize that and kind of give you the Reader's Digest version. You young people have to ask your mom and dad what a Reader's Digest is. I just dated myself with that. Paul makes basically three points in those verses. Number one, he said, God created us. In fact, look at verse 24 with me.

Verse 24. God made the world and everything in it. He is Lord of heaven and earth and does not dwell in temples made with hands. Think about that. God created us. You know what that means? Ladies and gentlemen? Listen to me. It means that every single person that you meet today and week is made in the image of God and should be treated accordingly.

He created us. Just a side note here, have you ever thought about how much courage it took, how much sheer raw courage it took for Paul to say, God created us, the God you don't know created us. And by the way, he doesn't live up there on that hill in the Pantheon, in that temple. God doesn't live there. Can you imagine how much courage it took to say that, but God created us.

Secondly, God's close to us. Verse 27 and 28. Those who seek the Lord and hope they might, they might grope for him and find him, even though he is not far from any one of us. Your own poets have said in him, we live and move, or we are also, we are also his offspring, and so he wants to be close to us. He quotes literature with which they would've been familiar, but, but really, you know, what he's saying is what we know that one of the names for Jesus is Messiah, is God with us, and then God holds us accountable.

29 and 30, verse 30 especially times of ignorance, this business of of not understanding who God is. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. In other words, he holds humankind accountable. That wasn't popular in the first century, is not popular in the 21st century as well.

He now commends all men everywhere. To repent. You know what we miss when we read these speeches? We miss the inflection in their voice. I wish I could have known how Paul said that. Now, growing up in our churches, I always heard this verse quoted this way. The times of this ignorance, God overlooked, but now he commands all been everywhere.

Correct answer. That's kind of the way I always heard that, and maybe that's the way Paul said that, but you know, I might have also said it this way. Look, the times of that kind of ignorance, it's in the past now. God commands all men everywhere. Pen. Maybe he meant it not so much as a threat, but as an opportunity that God's given you the opportunity to make a U-turn in your life, to go a better direction and to be right with Kim and to have a future that is actually worth having, maybe.

He meant it that way, but he opened his eyes, exposed his heart, engaged his mind, and connected his dot. He built a bridge. We can do exactly the same. Now I've got seven minutes left and uh, Reagan has assured me that at nine 40 the earth is going to open up and swallow me if I am not finished. And so I don't want that to happen.

So. I wanna segue out of this if I may, and I want to talk about something that when I was with you last, went back and looked at what we talked about when I was with you last time and in this Bible class period when I was with you last, I did a lesson called Evangelism for the Rest of Us. And I talked about in that lesson that there are four things that everybody can do in evangelism.

Four things. Now I know, I know that you probably put those on a post-it note and put 'em on a mirror in your bathroom and probably have read 'em every morning for last, for the last several years, but just in case you haven't. I wanna remind you of those four things this morning because there are four things that everybody can do in evangelism.

It doesn't matter if you are eight, 18, or 80. You can do these four things. It doesn't matter if you have a PhD or if you didn't finish high school. It doesn't matter. You can do these four things. It doesn't matter if you've been a Christian for, did an angel just get his wings or what happened? Huh? Okay.

Alright. Alright. Now, Reagan told me there's gonna be two more of those. Is that right? All right. All right. So everybody can do these four things. Let me just remind you of these, 'cause I think it's a good way for us to end our study this morning. Number one, everybody can shine. You can do that. Let your life so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven.

Everybody can live a winsome Christian life. Everybody can do that. We're called to do that. In fact, Paul wrote to Titus in Titus chapter two and he said, look, I want you to tell young men and. Young women and older men and older women to live in such a way, deport themselves in such a way that even if an adversary is looking for something to, to, to criticize about faith, they can't find it that you live so that they just can't find that everybody can shine.

Secondly, everybody can speak. I just lost half of you right there, didn't I? But I'm not saying that everybody ought to be able to preach a sermon. I'm not saying everybody should be able to teach a public Bible class. I'm saying that all of us can do what we talked about a moment ago with Mark. We can all open our eyes and we can see opportunities.

Jesus said that whoever confesses me before men, him will I confess before my father who is in heaven. He wasn't talking about there the confession before baptism. If you want that, go to Romans 10. That with the heart man believes through the righteousness with the mouth confessions made in ation. This is simply in the context of if you deny me before men, I'll deny you, but if you confess me, if you'll own me, we can all do that.

We can all do that if we just open our eyes. Third, everybody can invite. The easiest thing you will ever do in evangelism is invite somebody to come to worship with you. It's the easiest thing you'll ever do in evangelism because what? What's the worst that could happen? I mean, the worst thing that could happen is they might say, no, but we're big boys and girls.

We could handle that. And so invite. Just what was done in John one, they, they talk to these gentlemen and they say, you know what? We believe that we have found him, of whom Moses and the prophet speak Jesus of n And you remember their immediate retort was, can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Right.

When I was at Florida College, we named the cafeteria in Nazareth because no good thing ever came out of there, that that was for sure. But the response was when they said, can any good thing come out of their response was, come and see. Just come and see for yourself. It is the easiest thing you'll ever do in evangelism.

And then fourth, finally, everybody can welcome. Look, when we truly are evangelistically minded and we're inviting people to come to worship, they will. I mean, people will, not everybody, but people will. And we gotta make sure that what they do, when they accept that invitation to come among us, listen to me carefully.

We gotta make sure that we welcome them. Because there's a challenge with that. I tell you, the challenge is I, I don't know how many gospel meetings I've held at this church, but it's been a lot I've held. I've been here a lot, and I'll tell you something, through all these years that I've been coming here, y'all are sitting in exactly the same place.

You have not moved in 20 years. And you know what? I do that as well at home. Vicki and I, we sit the exact same place since the day we moved in that building. There's nothing wrong with that. But the challenge of that is that if we're not careful, we end up talking to the same people when we need to open our eyes and see those who are visitors among us.

And the other side of that is that those who accept invitation and come among us, you know everything that's gonna happen this morning, you know, the order of things you're completely comfortable with that. People who come to visit with us, who are, uh, truly unchurch, they don't have any idea what we're gonna do this morning.

They anything about the order. And so what have we gotta do? We've gotta make sure, welcome them, sit with them, we encourage them, explain to them what's gonna happen, make them feel welcome so that they truly want, they want to be a return visitor with us. Everybody can shine and speak. Invite and welcome you all.

As always. Listen so well. Thank you so very, very much. I appreciate it.