"THE WORK OF AN EVANGELIST"
“THE WORK OF AN EVANGELIST”
It is impossible to know the Saviour without longing to make Him known to others. His unspeakable love claims the utmost devotion of every ransomed heart, and kindles the desire to make Him known far and wide amongst the sinners for whom He bled. The woman of Sychar cannot rest until she has said to the people of the city, “Come, see a man who told me all things I had ever done: is not he the Christ?” (John 4: 29). Andrew has no sooner found the Messias than he runs for his brother Simon to share the blessing (John 1: 41). Philip has no sooner beheld the beauty of Christ than he is found bringing Nathanael to the Saviour (John 1: 45). And thus, in some measure, it ever is.
Answer, every believing heart! Is not this a cherished desire? Hast thou not deep longings to make known thy Saviour’s name in all its living power? Wouldest thou not be delighted to see multitudes at His feet, joyful in His salvation and rapturous with His praise? Does not thy spirit kindle with joy at the thought? In the Old Testament, God’s witnesses were impelled by a command from without, but in the New Testament there is also a constraint of love within (2 Corinthians 5: 14). It is characteristic of the dispensation that Moses reasons with the Lord to be excused from going at all (Exodus 4: 10); while Paul reasons with Him to be allowed to stay at Jerusalem (Acts 22: 19, 20). Yes! there is a desire in every believer’s heart to make known the Saviour.
It is our blessed privilege to sound out the word of the Lord (1 Thessalonians 1: 8), and to hold forth the word of life (Philippians 2: 16), but this demands a path of decision and self-denial which our hearts often shrink from, and thus the desire to do so is nipped in the bud. The sword of violent persecution is sheathed at present, but in the fear of misapprehension and ridicule, Satan has found a more potent means of silencing our lips. How often, ‘It will be thought out of place’; ‘They will think me odd and peculiar’, have closed our mouths! Shame on our coward hearts!
Let us cry to the Lord, like the disciples in Acts 4, that we may speak His word “with all boldness”. It was the earnest desire of the apostle (Ephesians 6: 19, 20) that he might open his mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the glad tidings; that therein he might speak as he ought to speak. This spiritual boldness is what we need. Not the forward flippancy of the flesh that irritates without convicting, but the calm courage of the one who can say, “I have a word from God unto thee” (Judges 3: 20).
Nor let us be discouraged by the consciousness of our own weakness; rather let us glory in it as that which makes room for Christ’s power. How sad that we should be considering difficulties and probabilities, which would never have a place in our minds if self was not before us instead of Christ, while souls are perishing around us! Why should we calculate our abilities and resources, as if we were sent to warfare at our own charges? Have we not received the Holy Spirit to empower us to be witnesses unto Christ? Then let us lay aside indifference and sloth, and be followers of him who said, “I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Timothy 2: 10).
The sovereignty of God in grace was not distorted by the apostle into an excuse for indolence and indifference, but with him it formed the spring of an energy in service which never tired, and is a blessed fact pregnant with encouragement to every worker in the gospel field. To know that there are elect souls whom God will bless, and that if we do not seek them out God will send somebody else to do it, ought first to fill our hearts with prayer that we may be guided like Eliezer to the very spot where we shall find them, and then it ought to make us very earnest in dealing with souls when we reflect that, in the sovereignty of God, their eternal [p. 72] salvation may depend, instrumentally, on the few words we say to them, or the tract we put in their hands.
Oh! brethren, this is a day of good tidings, let us not hold our peace. Let us imitate the blessed example of those believers who “went every where preaching the word” (Acts 8: 4, Authorised Version). Let us arise to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4: 5). Let us not attempt to cast off the responsibility of this great privilege. Let us not ask in guilty indifference, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Let us consider these striking and solemn words, “Deliver them that are taken forth unto death, and withdraw not from them that stagger to slaughter. If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not, will not he that weigheth the hearts consider it? And he that preserveth thy soul, he knoweth it; and he rendereth to man according to his work” (Proverbs 24: 11, 12). Nor let us forget that “A true witness delivereth souls” (Proverbs 14: 25), and “He goeth forth and weepeth, bearing seed for scattering; he cometh again with rejoicing, bearing his sheaves” (Psalm 126: 6). “So then, my beloved brethren, be firm, immovable, abounding always in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15: 58).
In conclusion, we cannot be too solemnly reminded that gospel testimony in conjunction with a worldly walk has a terribly hardening effect on sinners. If, like Lot, we live near the world and like the world, the world soon comes to the conclusion that there is not so much in it after all. Small wonder that loving invitation and solemn warning alike fail to awaken souls when they come from those who are identified with the world. In Lot’s case, “But he was as if he jested, in the sight of his sons-in-law” (Genesis 19: 14). It is the one who comes to the world as Jonah went to Nineveh — out of the jaws of death, in resurrection power, a man of another sphere, without a single moral link with the scene against which he denounced judgment — whose testimony takes mighty effect. May there be a complete divorce between us and the ways of the world; and in the power of this [p. 73] Nazariteship may we bear witness to sinners of redemption accomplished and judgment approaching.