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Ray Exum
Crystal Lake Church of Christ
Crystal Lake, Illinois, USA
Jan 7, 2001
I would like to ask you to turn with me in the New Testament to the book of Acts. In just a moment I will read the last three verses of Acts chapter five. Most of us certainly understand that we have an obligation to help people who are in need. Many times the elders here meet with people who have some kind of financial need. Maybe we have softer hearts than we are suppose to have, but it is hard not to be moved by people who have had a series of tragedies in their lives, who need a helping hand to get their lives back together again. I think that all of us would have that same kind of attitude. We want to help those who need our help and who are suffering in one way or another.
Let me present this picture for you at this time. Suppose I am at my house, and I look out the kitchen window, and I see that my neighbor's house is on fire. At that point there are several options that I have. I could say to myself, "Well, I could call them, and I could warn them to get out of that burning house, but after all, it is their house, and I don't want to get involved. It is really none of my business what they do in their house." I might say to myself, "Well, if I call them, they might be offended. Maybe they're already in bed and they might be upset with me if I pointed out the fact that their house is on fire." Or I might decide that I want to put this off a while. I might say, "Well, maybe this is not the best time, but maybe at some point in the future I will go over and tell them that their house is burning down." Please keep that story in mind for a few minutes.
May we think together about the great commission which our Savior gave us, to spread the gospel to everyone who is lost around us and needs forgiveness of sins. As we look at people in the world today, we see all kinds of individuals who are living phony lives. They have a job, and maybe they tell themselves that it is an important job, but deep in their heart of hearts they know that they could be fired at any moment and replaced by somebody else. Maybe they pretend to themselves that their lives are going well, but deep in the night they have to admit that their lives are full of despair and gloom. We are the ones that have the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the message that has liberated our lives and given us a reason to live, a reason to hope in the future, a reason to know that regardless of what the world may do to us, our Father is still going to be watching over our life, and our Savior is still there to take us to heaven someday. So, we have the message of Salvation. Shall we keep it to ourselves, or shall we go and tell our neighbors that their house is on fire?
The first century Christians were almost obsessed with the spirit of evangelism. We read in the book of Acts that the apostles Peter and John were arrested for preaching the gospel, and the authorities commanded them not to say anything else in public about Jesus Christ. You may recall their reply from Acts 4:20. They said, "We cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard." And that is the attitude of the first century Christians as we read through the New Testament.
In Acts 5 the apostle Peter was arrested again for preaching about Jesus Christ. This time he was sent to prison, but we know from Acts 5 that an angel of the Lord freed him from prison, and he went back into the city of Jerusalem and continued preaching about Jesus Christ. The Sanhedrin had him rearrested. He was brought back before the Sanhedrin, and they were trying to decide what to do. And there was a man named Gamaliel who said, "If we try to stop Peter again, maybe we will be trying to fight God." And therefore, he persuaded the Sanhedrin not to put Peter back in prison; however, they did beat him up very badly as a warning that he was still suppose to stop preaching about Christ.
Let us pick up the reading in Acts 5:40. Notice the spirit of evangelism that we read about among the Christians who were members of the Lord's church in Jerusalem in the first century.
"They took his advice (that is, the advice of Gamaliel) and after calling the apostles in, they flogged them and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and then released them. So they went on their way from the presence of the council rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name. And every day in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ."
Let's look at verse 42 and notice the five parts of evangelism that were being carried out by the Christians in Jerusalem. Verse 42 begins with the words "and every day." Most of our religious friends today think that it's good enough just to go to church on Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday. That's fine and is pleasing to God according to them. There are others who might be a little more radical and say that maybe they ought to attend church once a month, and I suppose that the really radical ones might agree to go to church once a week. It's almost as if people around us have fit their religion into a little box, and have set the box up on the shelf there at home. Occasionally they take the box down and go to church, and when they get home, they put the box away because it is no longer time to consider religion to be important.
Please notice that these Christians in Jerusalem were involved in spreading the gospel on a daily basis. It was important to them just as eating and breathing were important. They had been saved to save others. They could see their neighbors house was on fire, and they had to do something every day to warn people that they were in great peril, and that meant they did not take any days off when it came to evangelism. And so we read at the beginning of verse 42 "every day."
Notice the second thing that we read. We read that every day "in the temple." There are two meanings here. The first is that fact that the Lord's church originally met at the temple in Jerusalem. We read about this in Acts 2:46 and also in Acts 3:1. Apparently they did not have anyplace else to meet, and so for a while at least, they were meeting in the temple. So the church was gathering on a daily basis in the temple. I think there is something else going on here in terms of evangelism. Out of all the places that they could choose to try to spread the gospel, they went back to their own place of worship.
We know of course that the first century Christians, at this point at least, were all Jews. They were raised as Jews. They were converts from the Jewish religion and their friends were Jewish, and therefore, day by day they went back to the temple, and there, at the center of Judaism, the world-wide center of Judaism, were Christians trying to convert people to the gospel of Jesus Christ. They were not ashamed to go back to the temple and try to persuade people to follow Christ. They could not keep quiet about their faith. They had to share it with others. And what better candidates could they find then those that they used to worship with in the Jewish religion. And therefore every day in the temple, notice the third expression in verse 42, "and from house to house" they were spreading the gospel to their neighbors. They realized that their neighbors' houses were built on sand, and that the storms of life would eventually come and destroy those houses. They realized even that was not the worst thing that could happen to their neighbors, because after that would come the judgment and their neighbors would be lost.
What kinds of methods of evangelism do we have today, as they had back then? Well, we have some things today which they did not have back then. When I first started preaching, I used the Jule Miller filmstrips, and there were some who were baptized at this congregation because of those filmstrips. There's the Open Bible Study. There's also the Romans method that I studied at one time. And yet, I think that there are better ways of talking to people about Christ. Better than carrying all this equipment and charts and so forth into somebody's house. I think there is a better way. It's something that some people refer to as "friendship evangelism", that is, becoming a friend to people, helping them when they are in need. Inviting them informally to come and to worship with us because we are concerned about their needs.
Think for example about a lady who's had extremely serious surgery, and she's at her house, and she's in bed and cannot get up. Two of her friends come over to visit with her, and they sit and they talk with her for a while. As they get up to leave they say, "Well, if there is anything we can do, just let us know. As they leave, they walk past stacks of dirty dishes in the kitchen. There are all kinds of cartons on the floor from TV dinners. The kids are running wild. There are mounds of dirty clothes everywhere. They walk through all this stuff as they leave, after having fulfilled their obligation to help one of their neighbors. May that never be the case if two Christians are visiting someone in need.
There are those around us that we can help from time to time. It does not require a degree from a Christian college to practice "friendship evangelism." The interesting thing is that there are many people out there in the world that need us, because they are considered to be worthless in the eyes of other people. About a week ago I was walking home from the church building and I found something down on the pavement. I just happened to notice it. I picked it up. It was a penny. I put it in my coin purse. The next day I was at Wal-Mart and had to pay for something that required two or three pennies in the change, and so I put this penny down, and the lady said, "That's not a penny." I said, "Well, it looks like a penny to me." She started looking at it, and could very vaguely see the outline of Thomas Jefferson on it. It was a nickel! She said, "We can't take it anyway in that condition." So I had to take my nickel back home with me. I was thinking, doesn't this describe a lot of people in the world. They've been run over by cars and trucks, in a spiritual sense, at least. They are worthless in the eyes of the world. People look at them as maybe not being worth befriending, not really being worth anything in terms of our society.
There are a lot of people, like my old nickel, that really do not have any value to society, and maybe those are the ones we need to concentrate on particularly. The ones at work that don't have any friends. Maybe the ones that have had a very rough background. You know who Jesus began with, with his evangelism? He began with the prostitutes. And then he went to a group worse than them, the tax collectors. He worked with those two groups, and the Pharisees could not believe that Christ was having meals with the prostitutes and the tax collectors. Jesus answered this way: he said, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick." He was looking, therefore, for the ones who knew they were spiritually sick and were humble enough to listen to his message. Beloved, we can practice "friendship evangelism" with people like that. The odd ones, so to speak, in society that are neglected by others, and we never can know the ultimate results that will come from being a friend to those who are in need, being a friend to those who may not show a lot of potential.
I want tell you a true story that begins back in the Civil War. There was a teenage young lady back then who heard the gospel and was baptized. She had a boyfriend by the name of J. H. Halbrook. J. H. Halbrook became a Confederate soldier. He was captured by the Union army. He was sent to a prison camp in the state of Michigan. When the Civil War was over, they gave him a train ticket to Nashville, Tennessee, and they gave him $2.50 for his expenses in getting from Michigan back to Nashville. He got to Nashville and returned to his home in Centerville, Tennessee. He found his old girlfriend there, and they got married. After a while, she began studying the Bible with him and pretty soon he was baptized. He was so enthusiastic about the Lord's church, that he began spreading the gospel to his neighbors and friends, and then he started preaching the gospel, but he realized he needed more training.
Therefore, J.H. Halbrook enrolled in the Mars Hill Bible School that was run by T.B. Larimore. His students were always referred to as the Larimore boys. So J.H. Halbrook became one of Larimore's boys. That is, he had been trained by the great preacher, T.B. Larimore. After graduating from Mars Hill Bible School, J.H. Halbrook and his wife began to do evangelism in several places in the South. One of the people whom J.H. Halbrook baptized was a man named C.A. Wheeler, Charlie Alexander Wheeler. He was basically uneducated. His wife had taught him how to read, but when C.A. Wheeler was baptized, he began preaching to others, and it has been estimated that in his lifetime, he baptized approximately 6,000 people.
Somebody might say, "That's quite a story." It's not over yet. One of those 6,000 people was Gus Nichols. I'm sure that some will recognize his name. It has been estimated that Gus Nichols, in his lifetime, baptized approximately 12,000 people, one of whom was his younger brother, Flavil Nichols. In a few weeks Jesse and I will be attending the Freed-Hardeman lectures, and I am certain that Flavil Nichols is going to be one of the speakers there. Truly one of great gospel preachers. There is so much good about him. It has been estimated that already in his lifetime, Flavil Nichols has baptized approximately 3,000 people. Please remember how this story began. One teenage young lady was baptized, and who knows ultimately how many millions of Christians will result from that one baptism. Maybe when she was baptized, people said, "Well, it's good to have another member here, but we'll just leave it at that and we'll get on with the work of the church." Who could have possibly foreseen how many people would have been baptized, at least over the last 150 years, because of that one Christian young lady? We see, therefore, that the first century Christians had this same attitude. Every day they practiced evangelism. They did it in the temple, and they also did it from house to house as they were talking to their neighbors about their faith in Jesus Christ.
Let's go back to verse 42, because there are two more things that are mentioned here. "Every day in the temple and from house to house they kept right on teaching and preaching." In other words, they did not get discouraged. They had lots of reasons to get discouraged due to the persecution that was going on against them. The Romans and the Jews had already arranged for the death of their Savior, Jesus Christ. The apostles Peter and John had already been arrested and beaten and warned in public several times. Peter was rearrested and so forth. In Acts 7 we read that the preacher Stephen was stoned to death by the Jewish Sanhedrin. In Acts 8 we read that Saul was persecuting the Church with great bitterness. Listen please to Acts 8:3: "Saul began ravaging the Church, entering house after house and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison." In Acts 12 we read that the apostle James was killed with the sword, but isn't it thrilling to read again in Acts 5:41, did you catch what the writer says here about the attitude of the Christians in Jerusalem toward persecution? Acts 5:41: "So they went on their way from the presence of the council rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name." For them it was an honor to be persecuted because of the name of Jesus Christ. They remembered the eighth beatitude of the Savior when he said, "Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
At the present time, the Lord's church in the United States is not suffering physical persecution. Although I have a suspicion, and that is that if the people of McHenry County and Lake County and Kane County understood everything being taught at this church, I think we would be suffering persecution. But at least it is not taking place at the present time. What will happen in the future, we do not know. And yet, we should have the attitude of the Christians here, that it is an honor to be considered worthy to suffer for the name of Christ. Many times there are those who are baptized in this area and maybe other northern states that go south on a trip. One thing I can guarantee is that people will come back amazed at how many congregations of the Lord's people there are in the South. Where I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, in Davidson County, Tennessee, there are 132 congregations. That's one county. Of course, not all of those are perfect. Not all of those are great, but nevertheless, that is an astounding number of congregations in one county in the South.
What brought that about? Why are there so many congregations and members of the Lord's church in the South? I can only refer back to David Lipscomb, and his explanation was that the South was humbled because of the civil war. The "Old South" died at Appomattox, and according to Brother Lipscomb at least, this was his theory on the subject. There was a spiritual vacuum in their lives, and the Lord's church was already in place there, and it grew. Many thousands and thousands were baptized, because of the humility that was received as a result of the Civil War. The time may come when God will humble this part of the country. The time may come when there will be those around us who will be searching for the truth. This is one reason that the church here is involved so much in mission work in the upper mid-west. Not that we want to ignore the rest of the world. Nevertheless, we need to be laying the foundation at this time for what may come in the future.
I want to turn your minds back please to the year 1957. In 1957 Brother Basil Barrett Baxter was preaching for the Hillsboro Church of Christ on the south side of Nashville, and the elders there sent Brother Baxter on a mission trip to the Far East. They asked him to visit the countries of Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan, which he did in 1957. He got back and was asked to give a report on what he had found concerning the potential for taking the gospel to the Far East. He delivered that report on Sunday morning, December 15, 1957. I have a mimeographed copy of the sermon he delivered on that occasion, and he told a parable. A parable that explained his attitude toward mission work in that part of the world. I want to read what he said in his sermon on that morning, December 15, 1957.
"There was a farmer who had a tremendous crop one year, so he went to the town and got all the people he could to help him bring the crop in. When they all got to the fields they saw the golden harvest and were deeply impressed with the hard work that the farmer had done. They talked about the wonderful privilege that they had in helping the farmer bring in his crop. Before they started, they noticed that the fence around the field was torn down. The barbed wire was rusty. The posts were falling over. So the people spent the morning repairing the fence. When they had finished they said, 'If we should have rain, we might get wet. So we need to build a shelter that we can stay in.' So they started working on the shelter. It was a beautiful little shelter that anyone would have been proud of, but then it was lunchtime, so they all got together to eat. They had a fine lunch. After lunch they were looking at the shelter and said that it was such a fine looking shelter that they wanted to put up a plaque with the names of all the people who had helped build it."
"Next they picked up the sickles and got ready to bring in the harvest, but they noticed that the sickles were dull and needed sharpening, so they spent several hours sharpening the sickles until they were all bright and shiny and sharp, but then they noticed that the handles on the sickles were rather weather-beaten and worn, so they decided to replace the handles. They spent several more hours carving new handles and installing them. The sickles were now truly beautiful. Some of them almost looked like works of art they were so beautiful. Then as they were getting ready to bring in the harvest, the sun began to go down, and naturally they could not do anything at night."
"Finally the farmer came back, but instead of finding the harvest all in, he found the beautiful shelter, the plaque on it, the well-fed workers, sharp tools, beautiful handles. He sadly asked, 'But where is the harvest?' Brother Baxter continued, 'Will Christ return to find us in nice cars, living in beautiful houses, wearing fine clothes, worshiping in neat buildings, but with no harvest of souls?'"
Notice again the attitude of the Christians in Jerusalem. "And everyday in the temple and from house to house they kept right on teaching and preaching." They did not get discouraged by the times, but they continued to do all they could to teach and preach. Notice the last part, please, of Acts 5:42. The fifth secret to their success: "They kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ." They were not ashamed of Jesus Christ. What we see happening around us in the religious world today is pathetic. Jesus Christ has been replaced with pure entertainment. The First Century Christians did not have laser shows in use for converting people. They did not have rock bands at their disposal. They did not have professionally choreographed skits and dramatic presentations. They did not have an acrylic pulpit in their building and a preacher who was friends with the president. They did not have robes and rows and banks of candles and statues of the saints. They had only one thing to present to the world, and that was Jesus as the Christ. So here was their plan: Everyday in the temple and from house to house they would keep right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ. That does not seem like a very exciting plan to many denominations today, but it is the only plan that they had in the church at Jerusalem.
What was the result of that plan? Would you please look with me at Acts 6:7? "The word of God kept on spreading and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith." Beloved, let us follow in the footsteps of these First Century Christians. Let us do all that we can to save our neighbors whose houses are on fire, and who will perish if they do not hear and obey the gospel of Jesus Christ. May we be encouraged to follow the advice we have here in Acts 5:42. There are some this morning who have not yet obeyed the gospel. We need your help. As our Lord said, the fields are ready for harvest around us, but there are not enough workers. We need you not only to save your own soul by being baptized into the body of Christ, but then to join with us in taking the gospel to the counties that we are responsible for in our area. If you are subject to the invitation and are ready to be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, as we sing the next song, would you please come to the front.