EVANGELISING

^[p. 246] EVANGELISING

The wider the range of any subject or duty, the more care must there be, if it is to be true to itself, that it lose not its character because of its diffusiveness, as a stream is lost in a lake.

It has been well said, the greater our privilege, the greater our responsibility. No greater privilege could be conferred on any one than to be appointed of the Lord an evangelist — one to proclaim the good tidings which have been entrusted to him. He has received them from the Lord, and he proclaims them with gladness of heart. To announce good tidings is his duty; he is appointed to this service, and he accordingly pursues it; but I repeat, if the privilege is great, the responsibility is as great.

Now there are three things incumbent on the evangelist. First, he must deliver his message, communicate the gospel; and in order to do this rightly, he must know it. Secondly, he must look to the Lord for guidance as to the person to whom he shall announce his message; and thirdly, he must be led by the Spirit as to the manner and way in which the work is to be done. Imperfection in any of these will proportionately hinder and compromise the evangelist in his work. If the first be defective, the greatest possible damage will occur. The recipients of an imperfect gospel will exhibit sad marks of the imperfection; and the evangelist who has not delivered the gospel will not be led in triumph in Christ, making manifest the savour of His knowledge “in them that are saved, and in them that perish: to the one ... the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life”.

Now it is evident that if the gospel in its fulness be not known, it cannot be preached (the word for preaching in the New Testament is generally evangelising); and much of the unhappy and unsatisfactory state of the ^[p. 247] souls of the converted can be traced to the imperfect tidings communicated to them. I do not mean that it is necessary for the evangelist to give any great or elaborate statement of the gospel; far from it — the simpler the better. But there is a touch given by one telling of a great good done to himself, the extent of which he fully understands, that gives a character of its own to the recital. If I know how the Father has received the prodigal in His own house, be assured I can give a prodigal an impression of the reception, which one who only knows about the kiss — though he know it ever so well, and though he may surpass me in earnestness and faith — could never give. And my tidings, if received, would be the root of blessing in the heart of the one who had received them, the seed of a goodly tree which, however feeble at the beginning, would one day declare its nature and value. Whom would the builder blame for an ill-formed brick but the brick-maker? and who is to blame for all the malformations among converts but the evangelist? They betray the defectiveness of the gospel which they have received, as the converts at Ephesus betrayed the defectiveness of the teaching of Apollos, who knew only the baptism of John; and when the apostle came there, he found that those who believed had not so much as heard whether there was any Holy Spirit; Acts 19. I cannot find an instance in Scripture where the gospel was preached, either by our blessed Lord Himself or by His disciples, that the prime part of the news was not presented and insisted on as much or even more than the forgiveness of sins, though that be the first thing that a sinner requires to know, and could not be omitted. What is announced to the woman of Samaria? The gift of living water. What to the thief on the cross? “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise!” What to the publicans and sinners in Luke 15? The Father’s delight in having the wanderer restored. Philip preached or evangelised Christ; Acts 8: 5. What a theme!

^[p. 248] And to the eunuch he began at the same scripture and evangelised Jesus. What tidings he must have told of the One whose “life is taken from the earth”! So also Paul with the Philippian jailor in Acts 16; he connects his soul at once with the Lord Jesus Christ — “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”. There might be many exercises and variations before his soul was resting fully in Christ, but the magnet was set before his faith at the start, and from the first he knew the only place of solid rest for his soul. This point is plain enough, that in every case the gospel preached was such as to connect the soul with Christ personally, and not merely to give it release from judgment. There is nothing that ought to sadden the heart of the servant of Christ more than the converts of the present day, who, however true and sincere they may be, are like young trees in dense brush-wood, which, though there be existence and some growth, are yet of the most attenuated form.

The second point of importance to the evangelist is the sphere of his service. Surely there must be some given sphere. A man would not get tidings without directions as to the person to whom he should communicate them. And if the evangelist be not constantly under the guidance of the Lord as to this, the very extent of his sphere, and the many needing salvation, will soon divert him from the Lord to the need around him, and the consequence will be that he will be occupied with man, and not with the Lord’s mind. When the needy are in multitudes, one with heart and ability to provide for them may, if his eye rest on them, feel their claim on his service and time to be paramount. But if he realises that he is sent by the Lord to deliver a message, he will not be the less ready to meet the needy, but he will wait on the Lord as to where he ought to be and to whom to preach. “Preach the gospel to every creature”, shows the universality of the message, but does not run counter to the individual commission ^[p. 249] of each one who bears it. Every true evangelist is specially sent, or he would not be a servant at all. We find on record several instances of this special sending. Philip is sent to the desert in Acts 8. In Acts 16 Paul is forbidden to preach the word in Asia; they assayed to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not. In chapter 18 he is desired by the Lord to tarry at Corinth, for He had much people in the city. His reason for going into Macedonia was assuredly to preach the gospel there. In a word, the evangelist has a special sphere, and his work is appointed for him by his Lord and Master. If it were not so, it would deprive him of the dignity of a servant. And he needs the more to take heed to this because, unlike the teacher or the pastor, whose sphere of duty is so marked out that he cannot so easily diverge from it, that of the evangelist is wide and unlimited, and he is so little under the control even of his fellows, that he needs the greatest watchfulness, lest he take advantage of the licence which so extended a sphere might seem to accord to him.

Now the rule or practice in the present day is that almost every one with any measure of devotedness and zeal for service assumes to be an evangelist until he has formed a circle or congregation, when he drops into a teacher or pastor as well. I do not say that there are not many evangelists, but that the idea abroad is that you begin with evangelising, and that by and by you may be fitted to have the charge of a congregation. Neither do I deny that there may be two gifts in the same man; but I do not believe that an evangelist grows into a teacher, or that the former is merged in the latter. The gifts are specialities, and they remain. They may have lost their lustre, because not truly exercised and cultivated, but they remain. All I submit is, that there is no scriptural warrant for the indiscriminate attempt at evangelising which is now the rule; and that, not simply in the way that evangelising is spoken of in ^[p. 250] Scripture, but in each one who attempts it, collecting as many as he can to hear a gospel address, instead of silently and noiselessly seeking entrance to every house and heart to which the Lord would lead, before opposition would be awakened.

Lastly, the third point is the manner and mode in which the work should be done. Let us examine for a little the light which Scripture gives us on this point, for I fear we shall find very little similarity between the instances recorded in the New Testament and the greater part of the evangelising of the present day.

The mode is twofold, one public and the other private. The public is where opportunity favours, or where there is special invitation; the private, the more general and favoured mode for the evangelist. I do not find that the object of the first evangelists was ever publicity, or to collect large audiences. There is a great difference between universality and publicity. We find in the Acts that Paul went into the synagogues, and in Jerusalem the multitude came together; but they did not summon the multitude to wait on them to hear the gospel. The evangelist does not shrink from public testimony, as Paul at the Roman tribunal; but he does not make himself a public man, or collect around himself or his preaching. He goes after souls, and does not call them after him. The latter is the rule in christendom, and it is a fact worthy of note that the more ritualistic the clergyman, the less he visits individually, and the more he enjoins and requires attendance congregationally. But our inquiry is how Scripture treats the subject. Let us look at a few examples of the mode of preaching of the early evangelists. Paul, we have seen, sought the Jews in the synagogue, and preached Christ to them wherever it was tolerated; but the presentation of the gospel to the gentiles concerns us more. We have an example of it in Acts 10, where Cornelius calls together a company, and the evangelist, Peter, addresses those who are invited to hear him. In Acts 13, Paul having ^[p. 251] preached in the synagogue, the gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them the next sabbath; and accordingly almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God. Again at Athens, in chapter 17, he spake in the market daily with them that met with him, and preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. In chapter 16 we find that there was a special call to Macedonia, and Paul and Silas went there, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called them to preach the gospel there. And when they came to Philippi, the chief city, they did not summon the multitude to hear them, but abode there certain days, and “on the sabbath ... went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and ... spake unto the women which resorted thither”. And a certain woman heard them, whose heart the Lord opened; and “she was baptised, and her household”. This was the beginning of the work at Philippi, a small and unobtrusive beginning to bring about such great results.

In private, or individually, I see the evangelist in his highest place; and here it is that he best displays his qualifications and abilities. He feels he is sent to preach the gospel universally; he is not told the actual man that will be saved, or the actual number; but he sets himself to work, as is figuratively set forth in Luke 15. Led of the Spirit of God, he sweeps the house and seeks diligently till he find the silver piece. His heart is set on saving some; but as Christ’s servant he is led in triumph, and is thus a savour of life unto life, and of death unto death. Like Philip he may be sent hundreds of miles off for the soul of an Ethiopian; or like Paul at Corinth, he may have to stay three years in one city before the silver pieces are rescued; or as at Philippi, he may suffer grievously unto death before he is within reach of the soul for which he has been sent. The evangelist has one great thought before him, how he may testify of God’s grace to souls and win them to Christ. His message is, ‘Come to the supper’ — and ^[p. 252] that is not simply conversion — and the Spirit of God compels individual souls to come to God. The great thing is the message, not the messenger. He is properly not a public character, but a private one, for he is one called and fitted to enter into the heart individually with the word of grace and life, to be the first to introduce a light secretly and distinctly into the deep dark recesses of the heart. He is one sent on the most wonderful and touching mission, never known in a crowd as the light of the sun; but each convert receives light as distinctly as if his heart were the only planet in which such a light was ever known. The evangelist is at his highest when he is the light bearer of everlasting life to a lost soul. The solitary soul, where no eye can see nor ear hear but God’s, is the prize for the true evangelist. He does not shrink from publicity, but it is in private, when he can engage the soul alone, as he walks by the river’s side or sits weary on a well, or shut up in prison, or in the desert, that he feels he is in the highest duty and glory of his office. As a teacher in a smaller way feels that his work is only begun when he has set forth the truth, the moment of real interest to him is when he finds how the word has reached, and he like a gardener can form a definite idea of the budding in the soul. The soul is the pulpit for both evangelist and teacher; and the one who preaches there is at least well heard there and has found the true place for publicity.