The Evangelist: Office Gifts of the Holy Spirit
To watch the sermon The Office Gifts of the Holy Spirit: The Evangelist
And so today I want to talk to you about an office that traditionally we think of these as passionate women and men.
We do.
They're big tent revivals and they're kind of like dancing on the stage and their hands are going out and then they're like, "And Jesus said…" I got a little bit of that in me.
I was raised in the Presbyterian church.
They're one step away from being Pentecostal.
You should have seen when they did away with the choir robes.
You would have thought like there were snakes on the ground and they were, "Jesus said, the Sabbath day."
The five-fold ministry, that's what we're in as it's commonly known in a lot of spaces.
Clock offices.
I used to think that they were separate from the office gifts.
I did.
Until Brent and I started to go into this study and really kind of not just go in and look at like just the offices or just the manifestations or just the fruit and take them as separate series.
I used to think that they were separate.
Until I started studying through this and then I realized that it's like that show, what was the jingle?
I'm not a good names person, but I'm a good face person.
So, I know a good jingle.
It was like, oh no, I can't actually sing it.
Never mind.
I remember what the show was.
So, it was going to be a great analogy until I realized what show it was.
But the five-fold ministries I used to think was something that needed to operate in a church leadership and that if you didn't have that, you weren't in line with God.
And I also used to think of it as something that in any relationship you needed all of these things.
And now I no longer believe that as well.
I believe that the five-fold ministries and these different office gifts are gifts that are given to more people than think they actually have them.
And they're given for the glorification and the building up of the body of Christ.
Not just in a church, because sometimes it will say like, where's the apostle?
And I have tried hard in talking with the elders, and Brent won't even let me go to the other elders, but I'm like, can I just change my title from pastor to apostle?
And he's like, no.
No.
And I'm like, what if I start off as bishop and we work our way up to apostle?
And he's like, I already knew you were out of your mind.
You're just confirming you're even more out of your mind.
But the evangelist is not something you normally think of inside a church.
And traditionally, from our corner of Christianity, when we think of an evangelist in the church, we actually speak pretty negatively.
We're very judgmental.
We're very haughty.
We almost have that religious spirit.
Because we say, well, you know, they don't understand the Torah, they don't understand the Sabbath, or they don't understand dietary, or they don't understand this.
They're seeker-friendly.
So what if we took away seeker-friendly, and what if we said they're evangelist-led?
What if we just changed the terminology?
We like semantics.
We like semantics.
Messianic, Hebrew, it's Torah observant.
Ain't nobody Torah observant in this room.
Evangelist-led rather than seeker-friendly.
Does that change your perspective?
What if we said we had prophet first?
We have some prophet-led congregations out there.
What if we were prophet-led congregations rather than pastor?
Because again, sometimes we have a problem where we actually interchange those terminologies.
We interchange those offices as if they're the same.
If somebody has an internet ministry by which they self-proclaim themselves a prophet, then other people will come in and say, well, I was talking to the pastor of this congregation.
It's like, well, they don't even call themselves a pastor.
So seeker-friendly, what if they were evangelist-led?
Does that change your perspective today or not?
Because how many of you, when we think about evangelists, we think about maybe somebody with my temperament a little bit more than Matthew Day.
Matthew Day, wave your hand just so everybody can, they might be faces rather than names people.
Matthew Day is very quiet.
If you see Matthew Day and you know Matthew Day in the lobby and you wave and you smile at him, he's like, how do I know this is exactly what took place this morning?
I walked out there and it was very hot and I was turning the AC on like a good pastor, a good evangelist.
I was trying to preach the gospel to you.
That AC is better than heat.
And he was like, when I'm all bubbling, and that was his bubbling.
So when we think of that, we think about somebody who's got to run around.
Like I got to go to this revival, big tent revival.
Which was the name of a band in the 90s.
Great band in the 90s.
If you haven't picked up, we've listened to nothing but 90s music before and after service for the last three weeks and we will for the entire five weeks.
For some of you who weren't alive in the 90s, get hip, like real quick.
It was the best era of Christian music.
Michael W.
Smith tells me so.
He was going west on a love crusade.
Na na na na, na na na na na.
Na na na na, hey, hey, hey.
Some of you, Cam has got a 90s haircut again.
Things all come back.
They all come back.
See?
I was a trendsetter by bringing back DC Talk and Michael W.
Smith.
See, DC Talk is where Michael Tate, the lead singer of Newsboys, actually got popular.
For all the younger kids who are listening to new Newsboys.
Newsboys used to be run by a guy who had a bald head and was very, very, very, very, very white.
Like, just very bald head and very white.
And he had like an English French, I don't know.
He was singing about breakfast.
Like there's no breakfast in hell.
That was enough to scare me as a child to never want to go to hell.
Because I'm not like Ian.
Ian, Ian loves a small breakfast.
I love a big breakfast.
The best breakfast.
The only breakfast.
Big breakfast.
This is the greatest ever.
That one got a laugh from Isaac.
I can't see him, but I heard him.
Big breakfast.
But they didn't serve breakfast in hell according to the original Newsboys, and that scared me.
I might have considered that to be an evangelistic message at the time.
As I've grown and as I've studied the scripture, I actually had the concept that the more passionate, the more outgoing, the more marketable you were.
You know, we talked about that terminology as pastors a lot of times.
Last week people think they need to have a vision or they need to have all these things, and trust me, I've had all of them, and some of them worked really, really well.
But at the end, where is God?
Well let's use the same concept here.
If you are a really, really good public speaker or you're really funny, like you got Jim Gaffigan for instance.
You know, the guy's really, really funny.
And when he's talking, does that make him an evangelist?
Just because he's funny or he's quirky or because he can make fun of everybody and then when he's done he can move back and he's like, "What is it?"
Does that make him an evangelist?
Because he's a good public speaker or because he's amusing?
Because honestly growing up that was more the concept I had was that if they were funny and they were a great public speaker, that somehow they were a good evangelist.
And we see some of that bleed over into some of the more seeker-friendly churches where there's a very popular individual who is the dominant preacher.
Unfortunately, that's not our church.
The popular preacher is Brent, and I'm preaching today.
I started the joke in the green room.
It didn't hit then and it didn't hit now.
I should have learned then, but that's okay.
I still love Brent.
I love Brent a lot.
He's the best ever.
But the scripture doesn't tell us anything about an evangelist being some sort of smooth speaker, smooth talker.
It's not somebody who's in great shape.
It's not somebody who can bounce around a stage.
I got my workout in and so because I did that I'm a good evangelist.
And I didn't trip over the pulpit, but you might have.
Like none of those are details in the scripture that outline an evangelist.
Yet, Timothy is one of the only places we hear about this terminology evangelist.
See pastor, overseer, shepherd, we talked about those.
That's all throughout the scripture.
We went to Genesis 1.1 and we started to look at what it meant to be a house and how to get on page with being an overseer.
I will show you today that the terminology of an evangelist, that title, that phrasing doesn't exist in the scripture quite the same way.
If you have your Bibles, go with me to 2 Timothy 4 or 5.
And it says, "I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge of the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and extort with complete patience and teaching.
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itchy ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry."
Here in this passage in Timothy here, it actually casts a teacher, which we haven't even got there, teacher's next week.
We haven't even got to the office gift of a teacher, but a teacher's actually cast in a negative light.
It says that people are just looking for a teacher to give them confirmation bias or to operate in a place where they will teach them exactly what they already want to know.
It's as if Brent and I were getting together and I would say, "Brent, your sole role here today is to confirm exactly what I say.
If you don't, you don't exist here anymore.
Or if you don't, you can't be my teacher."
Now we obviously know that a teacher, if a teacher is an office gift or a gift that's given by the Holy Spirit, that in and of itself is not bad, which means, once again, it's another point for us to point out that when the Spirit of the Lord is the one leading it, it is proper, when it is your spirit that is leading it, it is improper.
When the Holy Spirit is the one leading you, whether it's a teacher, an evangelist, a pastor, an apostle, a prophet, it is good.
When you start to interject yourself into it, it is bad.
And this is, I think, I think a lot of times where we get sideways with the evangelists who are like running around or whatever.
It's like, you know, oh, they're interjecting their humor or they're interjecting their personality or their public speaking ability into it.
And that's not always necessarily the case.
Just because somebody has the ability to speak eloquently doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit isn't in them.
You are to judge the Holy Spirit's existence in a person based upon fruit.
And we will get there in a couple of weeks with Brent.
You are to judge every person in the world by that fruit.
Judge not lest you be judged.
No, you are to judge, but you're to judge based upon the Holy Spirit's fruit and the Holy Spirit's calling, and then you're to use that at the forefront.
And if somehow that tree is bearing good fruit, it is unrighteous judgment for you to turn around and say that that tree does not bear good fruit.
If the Holy Spirit is present in the life of an evangelist, a prophet, a pastor, an apostle, and a teacher, and it aligns with the fruit that God says, then it would be unrighteous judgment for you to call them out.
Now this gets hard.
Why does this get hard?
Because we're Americans, and we like to tear other people down, to build ourself up.
It was corporate 101.
Well, if I can do better, if I can shine brighter, it's also a Toby Mac's, light shine bright everywhere you go.
If we shine brighter than the other person, the only problem is we didn't think that we could shine brighter without dimming the light of another person.
How many of you would let your kids listen to the Toby Mac song if it said, "Light shine bright everywhere you go, put out their light first?"
No.
Why?
Because first off, it doesn't rhyme.
You wouldn't be able to sing it.
But secondly, it would absolutely be theologically incorrect.
You don't put out somebody else's light to make your light shine brighter.
At the end of that passage in Timothy, it says, "As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, and do the work of the evangelist, fulfill your ministry."
So in doing the work of the evangelist, we help fulfill our ministry.
How many of you want to be an evangelist in this room?
Raise your hand.
This is definitely a test.
Like, you absolutely have to do it.
Okay, there's a couple in this room.
Thank you for being honest.
And those who didn't raise their hand, thank you for not being honest.
Why?
Because in the end, all of us are called to be evangelists.
I know they're dramatic, thank you.
They heard one thing out of the whole teaching, it's the sound effects.
Praise God.
In Acts chapter 21, we see that Luke, who is recording Paul's trip to Jerusalem, it's in this chapter that Luke is documenting how Paul is going back, how Paul is getting ready to face imprisonment and possibly even death at the hands of the religious leadership.
They were opposed to the nation's hearing and coming to the faith of Yeshua as the Messiah.
This is post after they had gone to Rome and they're like, "Hey, look, we need to spend some money.
We need to share some money back and forth."
Just say that the disciples came and got his body.
There's all these things happening.
There's all these coverups.
Why?
So that the message of the fact that Jesus's resurrection from the tomb would not go forth.
Judge fruit.
If there's that much work going on to hide some testimony, some evidence, don't you think there's something big there?
If people are hiding people's issues, there's evidence.
If they're turning the narrative, there's evidence.
The evidence they tried to squelch was the fact that this man who claimed to be the Messiah, the Mashiach, the Jewish Messiah who resurrected from the dead, actually walked out of the tomb.
They were trying to make that go away.
Why?
Because the moment that he did that, this changes everything for the leadership.
Beforehand, the Pharisees and the Sadducees both had influence over certain areas.
But see, Jesus came and his gospel, his message was not in line with how the Pharisees were saying to walk it out.
And this isn't me bashing the Pharisees.
This isn't like every Pharisee was bad.
Paul continues to go on.
The very person we're reading about in Timothy, the very person that Luke is writing about, Paul identifies as a Pharisee.
Brent's gone through that multiple times in the other series.
But there is a difference between the Judaism that was being taught by Jesus the Messiah and the first century Pharisees and the first century Sadducees.
There was a difference.
There was a different Torah that was being taught.
There was different ways by which the yoke was to be felt.
It wasn't to be felt as a burden.
It was to be felt with freedom.
In verse 8 of Acts chapter 1, we see the second time that evangelist is written.
And this isn't in a numerical chronological order.
It's just two times.
When we had finished the voyage, we arrived at, I don't even know what that is.
I figured you'd tell me when we get to the Mediterranean.
"Petol-mai-es, Petol-mai-os, the city of Pea, and we greeted and brothers," get your mind out of the gutter.
"And we greeted the brothers and stayed with them for one day.
On the next day we departed and came to Caesarea."
I know that one.
That one's been read a lot.
"And we entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven and stayed with him."
Here we see in Luke's writings that Philip is listed as an evangelist.
And then the third time is in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 11, which is where we started with this entire series, which is where the office gifts are listed.
That's it, folks.
That's how many times the terminology of evangelist is actually written in the scripture.
Three times.
Now just to show you some context here, there's 73 references to a prophet in the Bible.
But yet it also says all should desire and want prophecy.
There are 72 references to a teacher for next week in the Bible.
And there's 25 confirmed times that the terminology of the apostle is in the scripture.
And yet here we are talking about a position that has three real mentions in the Bible.
Now this caused me a little bit of a problem.
Because I've sat in our building blocks classes when we're talking about theology, we're talking about these types of things, and I've been very adamant.
It's very hard for us to make doctrine, theology, positions, things like that when there's only once something is mentioned in the Bible.
I've cautioned us against some of the other teachings on the internet that would say, "Oh, see, here it mentions this, and so this is why we have to do a new calendar and a new haircut and all these other things."
I've cautioned you against taking one thing out of the scripture and trying to apply it as some sort of life-altering doctrine and theology that will change your family's entire philosophy.
I've warned you against doing those things.
So I had to wrestle with myself when evangelists is written three times.
And so I'm sitting before the Lord and I'm like, "What do I do with an office gift that's only been listed three times when 20-plus times the other offices are given?"
And there's all these examples, and there's all these other things.
I thought, "Okay, did we just create evangelists?
Is this something we just created?
We created this whole concept?"
Because don't get me wrong, there are days and times when I love to run around this stage.
I like to operate in that space.
But what do we do with it when it's only mentioned three times?
So I started pressing in and I started asking the Lord.
And I started trying to figure out why was this type of terminology not used as much as some of the other office gifts that are there.
And I feel like I had a divine revelation that also should have been a really easy revelation, but I'm simple folk.
I don't have a doctorate.
I just have a desire for the Lord and the Holy Spirit to speak in my life and to reveal all things.
And even though I've been a believer in Jesus since I was 13, sans two years, that 18-20 years, there's things that the Lord reveals in the scripture over the last year and a half to me that I've read hundreds of times, maybe, probably not thousands of times, but hundreds of times.
And all of a sudden there's a revelation that's given that's different.
See, I would probably more align with evangelists.
If I were personally to just go to a church, if I just were to write down on a piece of paper my wish list for a church, and yes, I understand you're saying, "Well, Chris, you always tell us that's not how you're supposed to go about finding a church," and you're absolutely correct.
I'm talking about like if I was just going to live in my flesh, my carnality, because every once, once a year I do that.
If I was going to live in that, what would I do?
I would look for somebody who is a very smooth talker, somebody who could put words together, somebody who made a lot of sense.
They told some jokes.
They made me laugh.
They kept me engaged for no more than 25 minutes every single Sunday or Saturday, and that would be my utopia.
I'd have the best of both worlds.
I'd check off the boxes, and I could go home and do what I want to do again.
So I would actually probably look for somebody who would be more like what we would consider in America as an evangelist, somebody who could just drop a one Brent bomb, just give me one Brent bomb.
Sometimes I go back and I have to listen to Brent sermons like 10 times because I'm like, "Dude, you're only supposed to give us like three Brent bombs.
You drop like 25 in one message.
You drop more Brent bombs in one message than the entire scripture talks about evangelists."
So how do I apply those to my life?
Yet the evangelist is not something that is widely talked about in our corner of Christianity.
Whether you call yourself Messianic, Torah observant, Hebrew roots, I'm not here to scare any of you away.
But remember, we were actually taught to insulate ourself from the outside world.
People bought ambulances and cartons of cigarettes and toilet paper and all these things because the world was coming to an end.
Kissinger was the Antichrist.
Obama was the Antichrist.
Donald Trump was the Antichrist.
Joe Biden was the Antichrist.
King Charles was the Antichrist.
I'm sure there's got to be more Antichrists out there.
But we were told to insulate ourself from the outside world.
How will we ever walk in an evangelistic type of office gift if we insulate ourselves to the outside world?
I'd like to think about this for a second, just in all logical, rational things.
So God gives Michael Stallsworth the office gift of evangelist.
And he says, "Thank you, Lord.
I feel very blessed by this.
I'm going to evangelize by insulating myself in my house every day and not talking to anybody and only watching community online and only watching church online.
And even then, I'm not going to comment in the comments.
And I'm going to operate that."
How many of you would see, based upon just the two texts we've read, that Michael, if that's what the gift he was given, that he would be walking in compliance with what the Bible says about that gift?
I would say, "No, he's not."
If we can't do community as believers together, if we can't fellowship together, if we can't operate in a space where we can work on how we use our gifts collectively, because again, it says to build up the body of Christ.
If we can't do that together, how in the world are we ever going to do that to bring others into the body of Christ?
And I know, especially in this area, in this geographic location, there's beacons of—light is not how I would define it—but there's beacons of communication that have gone out forever that say, "Hunker down.
Get a go bag.
Get this.
Get that.
Pull yourself inward.
Just get a couple of friends.
Keep the Sabbath together off in the woods or off in this place.
If things go like this, we need to do this."
In different denominations of Christianity, we hear the same thing where it's like, "The world's getting really, really bad.
Jonathan Cahn's got a new book.
It's something else is a dragon, and now there's a news report that there's a dragon coming out of the sea, and all of a sudden everything is the book of Revelation, but this isn't new."
And you say, "Well, Chris, this is—you're back to talking about prophecy and the office of the prophet."
They're all interconnected because they're all supposed to be given for the building of the body.
So how do we, if we're looking at the office gift of the evangelist, how do we combat the mentality that we are to isolate ourself?
I've heard Disney is bad.
Everything is pagan.
Everything's the Antichrist.
This is why we need evangelism, because if that's the office gift of evangelism—Sarah Wallace, you've been keeping the Sabbath.
You've been doing this for a really long time.
How many of the people that you grew up who called themselves some fashion of Messianic Hebrew, Torahisms, whatever it is, how many of them are still walking in this faith today?
Next to none.
Why would you think that is?
This was in my notes to ask you, but I just—I would like—put you on the spot.
Maybe you have a word of knowledge for us.
>> I feel as though the evangelist is not there in the form of pointing everyone to the Lord.
>> So, you believe that the office gift of the evangelist is not currently functioning in that group in doing what is right, which is to point everybody towards the Lord.
Did I hear you correctly?
Okay.
Matthew 28, it should be a game changer for us.
Should be a game changer.
Because a lot of people here will say, "Hey, look, I'm just not comfortable."
And then some other people here, they're so comfortable, they will take off pieces of clothing to evangelize to people.
And I'm not talking about in an inappropriate way.
I'm talking somebody needs a shirt, they'll take the shirt off their back.
They need shoes, they'll take shoes off their back.
They need an umbrella, they'll give them their umbrella.
They need money, they'll give them money.
They'll do anything in their power, not only to take care of them, but to evangelize the love of Christ to them in what they do.
So Matthew 28 is the scripture that I want us to really hone into today.
I feel like everybody in this room has read it before, but we're going to read it together.
Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.
And when he saw them, they worshiped him, but some doubted.
And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me."
Why does he need to make that statement?
Because there was already people questioning, dun, dun, dun, just like in the 21st century.
Some of us did not learn.
Some people were questioning, "Well, what authority does this man who speaks, speak?
You're not Adonai.
You're not Hashem.
Under what authority?"
And we're going to get into that a little bit tomorrow, next week as well, in the teacher's role.
Under what authority?
Who are you?
He says, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me."
All authority.
So when we question whether Jesus is divine, whether Jesus is made, we preach a different gospel.
Because he himself, the God of the universe, says, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me."
If you try to lessen the authority that's been given to him, which by the way was never your authority to give, you preach a different gospel.
You preach a different king.
And then he says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always until the end of the age."
There's no asterisk in there.
To go back to an earlier point, there's no asterisk that says, "Behold, I am with you only when you have your go bag ready."
There's no asterisk that says, "Behold, I am with you while you insulate yourself from the world.
Behold, I am with you if you," it says, "Go preach the gospel, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."
That includes loving one another.
That includes, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.
If you love me, you'll keep my commandments."
I don't ever want to hear that phrase out of a Sabbath keeper's mouth again.
If you are not, "Go therefore and make disciples."
It doesn't say if you have the gift of evangelism, if you've been given, if the Holy Spirit has fallen on you and somehow you are an evangelist, "Go therefore."
This is a commandment.
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you."
Sometimes we get the first part or we get the second part or we put an emphasis, but this is a commandment.
You are not a Sabbath-keeping, commandment-keeping person if you don't keep that command.
Why?
Because this is just like any other one.
It's given to all people.
Guys, we like to say evangelist with like a capital E.
As if like, like Tyson.
Like Tyson walks in and all of a sudden he like pulls open his shirt when it's go time and there's like, he's got his little costume.
He's like Superman.
But rather than an S, it's an E.
Because he's like, "Evangelist to the rescue."
Like this isn't Bible man.
This is real life.
This is the nation of Israel.
This is the kingdom come that will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
This is not something I've always done well with.
One of the first times I ever did anything with Ian Hellerman and some of the guys from the church after the Hellermans moved here, we went down to OU.
And we were asked to pastor and be engaged with, it wasn't the send, it wasn't the call, it wasn't ignite or revive.
What was it?
Fill the stadium.
Yes.
It was one of those adjectives.
And when, it was a great night.
It was a great opportunity to go.
Kerry Jobe killed it.
Chandler Moore of Maverick City killed it.
Literally should have, they should have sang the whole entire time.
There was this guy named Once the Rapper or something like that.
Chance.
Okay, okay.
I'll stick with mine.
But that's not why I'm telling you this story.
Why I'm telling you this story is we get in the car, we Uber down there.
We all met at Ian's place and we Uber down there.
And we're in the car and the guy who picked us up, he wasn't really a believer.
Like it was pretty easy to tell.
He wasn't even really high, he wasn't a believer.
He was, again, just trying to make it through life.
He was that group who's just trying to make it through life.
He's just trying to pay his bills.
He's just trying to do right by other people.
He's driving Uber, I think it was Uber.
And he's just trying to make good by his life.
And Ian's like trying to preach the gospel without like hitting him over the head with the gospel.
He's just like, so how's your life been?
What do you, how do you, how do you feel like you've wound up here?
I'm sitting in the back seat watching this all unfold.
And there wasn't a huge opportunity.
The guy wasn't rude, but he wasn't like super open to it either.
But there were seeds that were planted.
And so, every opportunity of your life, we've talked about before and I've said it multiple times in sermons, you're discipling somebody.
You're engaging with somebody.
And the question is, is are you taking those opportunities to do a commandment?
Oh, I keep the Torah observant.
Keep the Sabbath.
Awesome.
Good for you.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.
That's a red letter.
We're not talking about an interpretation here.
We're talking about the spoken word of God Almighty in the flesh.
Go therefore to all nations.
It doesn't also say, because I've heard this too, we take scripture and it says, well, I only came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
So are you Israel?
Because if you're not Israel, I don't have to go therefore to that nation.
I don't have to preach the gospel to you.
I don't have to talk to you about that.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.
I've never been to the UK.
I have no desire to go to the UK.
Might end up in the UK one day.
But I should be preaching the gospel to the UK.
It says Europe.
Never been to Europe.
I haven't, shocker, I haven't been outside the United States of America.
Europe.
Here's, there's a lot of interesting things going on in Europe.
I'm supposed to go to all nations and preach the gospel.
Israel.
I know this is a hard one because we love our Jewish brothers and sisters, love them to death.
They are part of my family.
The chosen people of God.
But we're also called to go to all nations and preach the gospel.
And sometimes the greatest gospel message you can ever preach is what you do without saying words.
But that's also not an excuse for you to not use words.
It's like, well, I'm setting an example.
It's like, oh, that's the gospel you're teaching.
Again, I've testified, I've had the own self-reflection moment.
How do you walk around with a Jesus t-shirt at a restaurant and realize that you're yelling and screaming at your kids?
It's like, well, I'm not preaching the right gospel to Jesus right now.
It's like, okay, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Yes, but I'm about to fall shorter of the glory of God because I'm about to take the belt off.
What gospel are you preaching?
Are you thinking about the fact that we all have been called to preach the gospel into all the nations?
Can I let you in on a little secret?
Every single person is supposed to be doing the work of an evangelist.
Not every person is beginning the manifestation of the gift of the evangelist.
There is a difference.
And it's not necessarily on whether you're a smooth talker or whatnot, but there are some people who just have those moments where they could sit down with anybody and they could talk about Jesus and they could talk about their life and they could do those and they're very comfortable with that.
But what do you do if that's not you?
You still have to obey the commandments of the Lord, which is to go therefore into all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
There is still an active command for you to do evangelism.
I only spent a little bit of time in Pentecost in the park, but if you sit there and you talk to people who have a hard time, things are going on in their life.
You don't spend a whole lot of time walking in your own self-righteousness.
There is a brokenness in your soul and in your spirit for those people who are struggling, who can barely put things together.
And in most churches, we're not that far in front of those people.
We're broken people who come together who need to be healed and then we need a community and we need a holy God.
But you are not messianic.
You are not messianic.
You are not messianic Jewish.
You are not Hebrew roots.
You are not Torah observant, Torah pursuant, or any of these things unless you preach the gospel to those who are lost, because it's a command.
And then on top of that, there's actually something that follows up which will lead us into next week.
It says then make disciples.
It doesn't say make friends.
Make disciples.
Paul and Barnabas weren't exactly friends.
In the paraphrased way, it's like, "Hey, I had to send you to New York and I was going to LA just so we didn't kill each other."
That's the modern Chris version.
They had to separate on their mission because they couldn't get along.
You're to make disciples.
We know in Matthew's writing that his whole entire concept about his writing is to point to the greater exodus.
In our area, the greater exodus has been traditionally taught as a physical thing that will happen.
And I'm not opposed to that.
That absolutely might be the case.
It's absolutely possible from the text of the scripture that there could be a second physical exodus that could happen.
I don't believe, like I've heard some of the teachings, that somehow the miracle of the sandals is going to be the miracle of the diesel fuel.
But it is also more likely, based upon the history of scholarship and contextual elements of scripture, the greater exodus references the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the cross.
It referenced it to be a greater exodus that would be unlike the first one.
And what happened in the first one?
One that was the death of the firstborn.
There was all kinds of plagues.
There was wars.
If you follow Dr.
Michael Heiser, I like a lot of the things he has to say about those times.
There was wars against demigods and worldly gods that were happening.
And Yahweh, Hashem Adonai, was proving Himself to be above all those created beings.
And in the end, He took an entire group of people that were Hebrew, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, whatever.
They were all cultures, a mixed multitude, and He took them out.
The Holy Spirit opened up the water.
They walked on dry land.
Mind you, again, when they looked behind them, they had impending death.
I don't think Pharaoh, after losing his kid, was like, "Let's just round them all back up and let's just put them back to work."
I think they wanted to kill Him.
He led them through the waters.
He led them to the mountain.
He gave them the commandments.
We like to call that sometimes the ketubah of the marriage, and brought them together.
The greater exodus is one where He says, "Every journey you've needed to go on, every mountain that you needed to be climbed, every river that you needed to be moved, I'm going to move them so that you can come and be joined together to Me where sin and death can't touch you anymore.
I'm going to join you to Me in the last days when that new Jerusalem comes from the sky.
I'm going to join you to Me."
Yet in Matthew, it says, "Afterward, He appeared in the leavened themselves as they were reclining at a table, and He rebuked them for their unbelief and their hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had saw Him after He had risen.
And He said to them, 'Go into the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
And these signs will accompany those who believe.
In My name they will cast out demons.
They will speak in new tongues."
Oh, wait, I thought it was Paul who talked about that.
Hold on, wait a second.
This is the tax collector.
This is the analytical mind.
This is the Matthew Day, not the Chris Frankie.
I want you to put that into context.
And these signs will accompany those who believe.
In My name they will cast out demons.
They will speak in new tongues.
They will pick up serpents with their hands.
And if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them.
They will lay their hands on the sick and they will recover.
So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.
And they went out and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs."
I'm not going to say that this is like, this is Miracle Signs and Wonders for Dummies.
You know that little book you can buy that's like 10 pages rather than reading the 100 pages?
But it says that while they were going out and they were preaching everywhere and doing the work of the Lord and confirming the message that the Lord had given him, that He accompanied them with signs.
I've heard some people say, "Well, I enjoy listening about the manifestations and the signs and the miracles of the Holy Spirit, but I'm not witnessing a lot of them in my life."
Could it be that we need to preach the gospel more?
I'm speaking to a room of people who love the Sabbath day.
They honor the Sabbath day.
They honor the feasts and the festivals.
They honor commandments.
They honor the tour to the best of their ability.
They honor the prophets to the best of their ability.
They honor the New Testament commandments that were given by Jesus to the best of their ability.
And yet we all can say for the most part, the majority of the people who've come into this movement have not come from a more charismatic influence.
Don't tell me that's not true.
I've been doing this for over 17 years and the majority of the people come more from a Baptist style.
Most denominationals are Baptists, not all, but they come from that tree.
Then from charismata, which is more Pentecostal assemblies of God, those types of things.
Just think back to your youthful days when you were in different denominations of the church.
The Baptists and the Pentecostal weren't exactly trying to plan a revival together.
And yet here we stand in this room as a mixed multitude of people.
And we can give the testimony, we heard it from somebody who's grown up her entire life in this movement.
I don't see a lot of miracles.
I don't see a lot of signs.
I don't see a lot of these things.
Most of the people who grew up, who were second generation of this, they're not even involved in this.
They don't even have a faith, let alone a faith in Jesus Christ, because they all backslid.
Oh, we can't do this.
If you don't light three candles on the Sabbath, whatever.
Preach the gospel.
What has the power to change a heart?
Not how many candles you lit on the Sabbath day.
Jesus Christ has the power to change a heart.
And there's nothing wrong with lighting candles.
There's nothing wrong with dawning a Talid.
One of the beautiful things about this community is that we allow for those diversity of practices.
But let's be realistic and call it out and put a main thing, the main thing.
If you're not preaching the gospel, why do you have the expectations you're going to see signs and wonders?
Because you have no power on your own to create these signs and wonders.
They were always God's power.
You can say, "Well, Chris, well how do I deal with somebody who can speak in tongues?
Or I've seen somebody lay hands on them and—" But the gifts are the gifts.
No different than Moses and Aaron and the staffs, and they had their own magicians.
Don't you think demons know how to manipulate things too?
Even they know who Jesus is.
So the demons can run and cower at the name of Jesus.
What do you want with us, Son of Man?
But we're afraid to talk about the Son of Man.
Are you coming over for Ereshabod dinner?
What do you do on the Sabbath?
I don't care what you do on the Sabbath.
Who's the Lord of your Sabbath?
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people who drive by this church every single day while we're in here.
How many of them have any place to go for eternity?
Do you eat kosher?
I don't care if they eat swine.
I care if they know why they shouldn't eat swine.
Because Jesus is your King.
Anybody in this room can stop eating a ham sandwich.
Anybody in this room can switch over from a Sunday to a Sabbath.
Anybody in this room can walk out some element of righteousness, but it's your own righteousness, i.e. the Pharisees.
Preach the Gospel.
Somehow it's like, well, the false gospel is that somehow they're not saved unless they keep the Torah.
The Torah has never saved a single person.
It wasn't the goal of the Torah.
It wasn't the giving of the Torah that brought salvation to those people.
It was the fact that God met them on Sinai and said, "I am making you my own.
I have called you."
And then it is a process.
Again, you don't spit in the face of the Lord and do whatever you want.
But it is only God who can save.
People will say, "Well, somehow you feel like you're better than the Presbyterians or this."
No.
I've been saying it for years.
I've lost a lot of friends.
I traveled this whole entire country with my wife.
My kids were two years old at the time, driving every four hours, stopping in Lee to worship.
We led worship at a guy's house who was a super popular minister on the Internet before he even grew a beard.
He looked better without it.
That's just my opinion.
It's not in the Scripture.
There's a reason why I've chosen to do what we've done here at the church.
It's not because somehow this is the most popular.
It's because I was convicted that we were preaching a different gospel.
I will die and be forgotten.
Brent will die and be forgotten.
Isaac, all of us will die and be forgotten.
But if you lose sight of who Jesus Christ is, Yeshua HaMashiach, I have failed you in every capacity.
I had some individuals come to me and say, "I just want to go back to a Sunday church.
Please, how can I help you get there?"
Because if you change your faith walk, that's between you and the Lord.
If you change who your salvation is, not only is that between you and the Lord, but that's between me and you.
Because if I saw you getting ready to walk off a curb in front of a bus, you can rest assured I'm going to do everything in my power to keep you from being hit by that bus.
Church, we have an epidemic in America.
We don't preach the gospel enough, whether that's in what we do or what we say.
Right now, there are thousands of millions of likes, shares, everything.
Everybody's got an opinion.
Every time Joe Biden wakes up in the morning, somebody's got an opinion.
Every time Donald Trump even breathes, they've got an opinion on it.
And it's all this or it's all that or whatever.
It's like at the end of the day, Jesus is King.
Jesus will always be King.
And if we start talking about Jesus, He will raise up the right leader.
Because there's a lot of people in this country who are, who need Jesus.
I stopped myself.
That was not at all, it was, what are those old things where you click them in and like there's a picture?
It's like, still can't say that, still can't say that, still can't, okay, okay, they need Jesus.
The Bible says that Jesus raises up leaders and tears down leaders.
Guys, next week we're going to go into the gift, office gift of the teacher.
Worship team, you can come back.
We're going to go into the office gift of the teacher.
What are you going to teach people?
I want you to think about that this week.
A lot of us have come from a movement in a place, a corner of Christianity that puts a lot of emphasis on the teacher.
It puts a lot of emphasis on knowledge and understanding and wisdom.
And a lot of that we believe comes from how many books we can read and how many teachers we can read and how many perspectives we can have.
That's great.
And again, I don't want to put anything down with that.
But in the end, if you know everything, if you know everything, and you refuse to tell somebody about the salvation of Jesus Christ because you were too busy trying to get them to understand how to wear your clothes like you wear your clothes, or how to do your hair the way you do your hair, or how you keep the Sabbath day or whatever.
If you had an opportunity to preach somebody the salvation and the love of Jesus Christ, somebody who maybe was abused, somebody who was maybe beaten, somebody who has maybe never known the love.
If you had the ability to teach them about the Jewish Messiah who throughout Genesis to Revelation came to offer one plan, and that was the salvation of all humanity and the reconciliation through that salvation back to Him.
If you had the opportunity to do that versus watching another five hours on YouTube on the paleo architect of Mount Horeb's 30th rock.
Not everybody wants to be an evangelist.
I get that.
Not everybody wants to have a tent revival.
And a lot of people are scared of snakes, and they don't want snakes out there.
They don't want to pick up no snake.
I don't want to pick up no snake.
But not everybody who is called to evangelize is an evangelist.
But it's kind of hard to argue when Jesus Himself gives commandments and says, "All of you in this room are to go into all nations."
You can say, "Well no, technically it was the apostles."
It says that the apostles were to make disciples of themselves.
So by default, at some point in time, pop the magic dragon, here we are.
Go therefore into all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Covenant Youth Camp starts on Monday.
We've got 120-ish, give or take, I don't even know, between the senior camp and the pre-teen weekend.
Which is amazing.
Praise the Lord for that.
A lot of people will ask questions and they'll say, "So, hey look, Brent, you helped found one of the largest, was one of the largest, Messianic Youth Camps that were out there.
Chris, you were a part of it for 2008 to, I don't know, almost 17 years.
Why do you do things the way you do them now?"
It's because of your testimony.
She shared a photo in our group family thread thing.
I don't even remember, it was probably what, 2010?
2010.
I was a young man at that point in time.
She was in my tribe.
She wasn't married to camp, she didn't have no kids.
I only had two, maybe two at that point in time.
Now I've got a whole herd.
She was in my tribe.
Jensen, Hosean, and both of you came through there.
Others have come through there.
And I heard the anguish.
Don't think I didn't.
Don't think I didn't hear the testimony.
The anguish of, my parents don't understand.
I love the kiddish and I love this, but what if I decide not to do it exactly the same?
What if I decide to just keep the Sabbath this way?
What if I decide to go, go out and want to be in the missions field and tell people about Jesus?
My parents say if I do that, that it's not, it's not messianic enough.
It's not this or it's not that.
I heard and I cried and I got mad.
I got another word, started with a P.
It wasn't the city that I couldn't pronounce before.
And I didn't know what I was supposed to do about it.
I know what I could do about it.
I know what my flesh would want to do about it.
But what did the Lord want to do about it?
And so, when we had the opportunity to go before the Lord and say, "Lord, why do you want us to do a youth camp?"
The truth is, is everybody knows the last two years of the other camp, I wanted out.
I'm 40 years old.
My kids go there.
I don't want to be a worship leader standing up there.
I don't want to be 51 years old trying to be cool and hip on Instagram.
I want to be out so other people can do it.
So it's like, "Lord, why do you want to put a youth camp together?"
Because I remember the testimony of the hundreds, if not thousands of youth that came through for 17 years, which most of them, like Sarah said, are gone.
It's not like, "Oh, well, they're gone from the messianic movement and we can go visit them in Northside, or we can go visit them in North Church, or we can—" Like they're gone.
They don't have a faith in Jesus.
They don't have a practice of their faith walk.
Why?
So that we could have been great?
We could have been great.
We were great.
We were great at telling you how bad you suck at keeping the kiddush.
Go preach the Gospel.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Oh, we were great at keeping Sukkot.
We did it the best way ever.
We had the lulav and all this stuff.
We couldn't find citron, so we just got lemons.
It was close.
God knows my heart.
But we were waving it.
The Gospel of Jesus.
If you keep the Feast of Tabernacles without Jesus in your heart and Jesus is in the center of that, adjust.
If you say, "Well, this is how we do our walk and this is how we do our faith.
We come over on Erev Shabbat and we do all these blessings and Jesus is in the center of the blessing," adjust.
Preach the Gospel.
And some of you, we might need to take a good hard look internally.
I'm not trying to beat you up, because guess what?
I am the chief of all sinners for 17 years.
Almost hundreds if not thousands of young people came through, and I heard what they were saying was happening in their house, and I heard what Gospel they were being preached, and it scared me to think of where they would be, but I knew where they were going to go.
And you heard it yourself here today.
Almost all of her friends don't have anything to do with this.
So what good is your faith, your relationship with God if your kids don't do it?
Sounds like you're a pretty selfish parent.
Sounds like I'm a pretty selfish parent.
What good is a church if it meets my needs but it doesn't meet the needs of my children?
Preach the Gospel.
You're going to die and be forgotten.
Preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you're going to die and be forgotten.
How you kept the kiddish and how many times you said this or what you did, those might be great traditions that live on, but when you go, if your tradition doesn't live on, you better hope that your Savior lives on with your children and your grandchildren.
I am the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father but through me.
Not through the Sabbath door, one way Jesus.
When everybody's looking for peace, there's only one way and that's through Jesus.
So today as we respond, we can disagree on doctrine, we can disagree on theology, we can disagree on the role of, of customs and traditions.
That's okay.
I'm never going to get mad about that.
We're never going to have a sit down and it's like, "Oh, you need to, you need to not do this anymore in our church."
Those things are great.
That diversity in a fellowship is great, just like that diversity was what the Lord brought in the mixed multitude to the Mount of Sinai.
But there's one thing this church will never compromise on and that is Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, the life and no one comes to the Father but through Him.
And if we can't get that right in here, no wonder we can't make a difference out there.
And guess what?
You can all come in here and you can say, "That was a great sermon.
I feel really great.
And by the way, I like your t-shirt today."
All those types of things, not life altering.
What you do out there for the gospel is life altering.
You don't have to be an evangelist, but everybody was called, "Go there be all to all nations."
King James and new King Jimmy all in one.
Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Mega churches, one main point.
It's a way to write a sermon.
So I got one main point for you this week.
There are seven days between now and when we'll see each other again.
Seven days full of opportunities for you to just once preach the gospel.
I'm not asking for overachievers here.
If you don't regularly preach the gospel, I'm asking once for you to preach the gospel.
Get up early, go to Waffle House.
Great place to preach the gospel.
You can load up on carbs for the rest of the day.
It's a win-win.
At your workplace, preach the gospel.
This week, preach the gospel.
Because nobody wants to hear about your Sabbath or your kosher eating or your feast keeping or anything until they see the love of Jesus Christ and who your King is.
Why would you want to be a part of a kingdom or uphold the law of a kingdom that you don't like who the King is?
Welcome to the United States of America and the election cycle of 2024.
I don't like the decrees of our King.
Our King doesn't even know where He is.
COVID.
Jesus is the way, the truth, the life and nobody comes to the Father.
Stand with me today.
Let's worship. worship.
