Foundational Understanding - Outreach Ministry Training

Scripture Reference Text:

 

We are given an assignment from Jesus Christ and that is To Go!

Mathew 28:18-20 (KJV)

 

Read and Study  John 15:1-27

 

Colossians 4:5-6 (KJV)
5 Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time.
6 Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.

 

1 Peter 3:15 (KJV)
15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:

 

There several approaches to reaching out to believers or non believers for them to grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  In this training we will approach the process in three stages or phases.  The stages are

·        Knowing Jesus Christ, (Why do we need Jesus?)

·        Who we are as Disciples of Jesus of Christ, (Being a Christian is a Lifestyle , not a Title)

·        The role of the Church  (The Church is the Body not the Building)

 

2 Peter 3:18 (KJV)
18  But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever. AmenJohn 15:16 Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

2.      John 15:19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

3.     2 Thessalonians 2:13  But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

Why Do I Need Jesus? 

Either sin is with you, lying on your shoulders, or it is lying on Christ, the Lamb of God. Now if it is lying on your back, you are lost; but if it is resting on Christ, you are free, and you will be saved."- Martin Luther

Christians often talk about having been "saved" and speak of Jesus Christ as their "savior". To the non-Christian, it's not at all clear what problem exists and why anyone needs saving at all. Saved from what, exactly? This is a very difficult problem, perhaps one of the hardest in Christianity.

Let's begin with the fact that you and I are free to make choices. God made us this way because He loves us. He did not make us to be puppets or robots because true love can never be forced or demanded. It can never come from someone who is unable to make any other choice. Genesis 11:6  Only when someone makes a decision from his or her own will and desire can it be said to be complete and true love. This is what God wants from us - to love Him because we freely desire to do so. John 5:5-7


Because we are free, we sometimes make wrong decisions. Through our choices, we hurt others, we hurt ourselves and we hurt God. We sin. Each and every one of us has done this at least a few times in our lives. We have known what was right and what was wrong and we consciously, deliberately chose to do wrong. At that moment, we rebelled against God and said to Him, "What I want right now is more important than you." We know this hurts God we know it's wrong but we don't care, we're doing it anyway. Romains 3:23
Because God loves us and wants us to be free, He permits these rebellions. He will not interfere; He will not force us to obey Him or love Him. 1 John 4:19

The Problem is Sin

Understanding Jesus Christ as our Savior begins with understanding this very important point - you are a sinner. It's painful to hear and painful to admit, but the truth is that you have broken God's laws knowingly and willfully. We all have each and every one of us. As Paul writes in Romans 3:23, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

If you can come this far and are willing to admit that you are not perfect and there is no way you can live a perfect life on your own will or actions then you have made a giant step towards understanding who Jesus is and who you are in this world.  John 3:16-21.  

This is the hardest step for most people. No one likes to be told they are a sinner. It hurts our pride and offends our sense of how decent we think we are. This truth, if you will allow yourself to acknowledge it, is a seed of real understanding about who you are and who God is will start to grow.

God is perfect and has never sinned. Furthermore, heaven is a perfect place which no one can enter unless they, too, are perfect. If you imagine for just one moment, a person with sinful desires - a desire to steal or lie or cause pain - admitted into heaven and how that would alter its perfect nature, then you will understand that it could never be the place we hope and want it to be with those desires still lingering inside our hearts. Revelation 21:1-8

Yet we also know that we have all sinned. We have separated ourselves from Him through our rebellion. Genesis 2:16-17
If this were the end of the story, it would be an inescapable truth that none of us can ever pass through the gates of Heaven and none of us can be with God when we die. With these sinful desires resting in us and no hope of ever changing our hearts, we would be forever lost.

It is at this point that most people strenuously object and cry, "Not fair! I'm a good person, I don't deliberately hurt people." I'm sure you try not to do wrong. But you have. So have I. The point is not whether you're good. For the most part, people we know and meet are "good". But by what standard? When we say this, we simply mean, "above average." We can compare them to murderers and rapists and surely, we can call them good. But is that the right standard? What if we compare them to God, who is perfect? By that standard, none of us are very good. Ephesians 2:1-8 Perfection is the Standard


But why should that be the standard? Why can't God let the standard be something obtainable which most of us can achieve? There are several problems with this. First, whatever standard you set will make some people very unhappy. It will always be too lenient for some and too restrictive for others. Second, a standard less than perfection is like an admission of failure. We would be asking God to settle for something less than what He intended us to be before we rebelled. So, what should the standard be?

Think about this example:

 You are referee for a sport say football.  You try to call the game fairly as you see it. by your standard or vision.  If it occurred to you that the player crossed the end zone to score no matter what everyone sees, then the player scored.  But on instant replay you see that the player was short by an inch. Do you change your mind or do you stay with your first call.  Hopefully, you would change your first call and say that the player did not score. But without instant replay your standard or call would be all there was to go by.  We can see that your standard is flawed or weak because it’s based on what you see.  Well God sees everything and God sees it right the first time.  That’s why we go by God’s standard. The standard needs to be perfection and nothing less Isaiah 55:6-13

Jesus is the Solution


So that is the problem - standing in the presence of God and living with Him in Heaven can only be obtained by someone who is without sin. No one who has ever sinned a single time in their lives can be worthy of eternal life in heaven. Our rebellion has and will forever separate us from our perfect God.

Romains 5:13-15,  2 Corinthians 5:17-21

God loves us too much to allow us to be separated from him eternally.  He has provided a plan for us to be rescued from this dilemma. Salvation comes from His Son, Jesus Christ. When we call Jesus our "savior", or when we talk about being "saved" - this is the eternal problem from which we have been saved. If we will permit Him to do so, Jesus will save us from our sinful nature so that we can be perfect in God's eyes and we can live with him eternally in heaven when we die. John 3:1-21  Romains 6:1-15  Colossians 3:1-17   Revelation 21:1-8  

Why Did Jesus Have To Die?

"Christ took our sins and the sins of the whole world as well as the Father's wrath on his shoulders, and he has drowned them both in himself so that we are thereby reconciled to God and become completely righteous". - Martin LutherJustice

As much as it is true that God is love, it is also true that God is justice and judgment. We may initially have a negative view of this quality, for it comes with the image of God high in the clouds, watching our every move and sending fire and brimstone to consume those who step out of line. In reality, justice is what makes it possible for there to be a sharp line between good and evil. It's what makes the distinction real, for without it, the two will blur and become meaningless. Without justice, we will fail to even comprehend what goodness is. Psalm 89:14 , Isaiah 9:7, Isaiah 56:1, Isaiah 58:2 , Jeremiah 23:5

For some people, the hardest part of understanding God's plan of salvation is simply this - why did Jesus have to die? If I cry out to God to be forgiven of my sins, why can that not simply be done and over with? Why did Jesus have to suffer and die? On the surface, it seems horribly unfair. Jesus was the most perfect person who ever lived, yet he suffered unimaginable pain and agony for my sins. Why did God allow this? Why not just make my sin vanish away?

Imagine this idea in your own home, if you have any young children. Every time your child does something wrong, let's pretend you will simply forgive them, clean up the mess and say nothing. There will be no punishment and no cleaning of their own mess so long as they ask for forgiveness. If they hurt you then say sorry, you must forgive and say nothing else. You must not hurt them or upset them in any way. If they destroy something but then apologize, you must replace it without saying another word. There will be no punishment or judgment for this child so long as they ask for your forgiveness. You will still have to try to do your best to teach them right and wrong, but there will never be a consequence for bad behavior. In this scenario, it's easy to see that your child will learn to do what feels best for them, for they cannot possibly have a sense of other people's needs and feelings. Without consequence and punishment, they will become ultimately selfish because it is impossible for them to know what it feels like to hurt another person - we have taken this away from them. There is no doubting that this child will become a terror and a monster, even though we have tried to teach them right from wrong in our own way. You see, its justice and judgment that are missing from this example and without these, a sense of right and wrong can never fully develop. You can love a child all you want but if you take justice and discipline away from them, your love will not be able to save them. Proverbs 23:12-14

And so it is with sin in our lives. If there is no consequence for sin, then how can we truly repent? If God redeems me for a time until I sin again, I am not truly forgiven; I am only forgiven until the next time I sin, which is sure to be very soon. But worse still, how could I ever really be sorry? Like the child who utters a quick, "sorry" with no thought or feeling, our cries for forgiveness will be hollow and automatic. We know that God will forgive us no matter what, so why bother getting all upset and emotional about it? Soon, it will not matter anyway. We will truly be bad and will seek forgiveness as a ritual for no other reason than to avoid punishment. We will not just do evil, we will be evil.     Ecclesiastes 8:11-12,  Proverbs 3:11-12

No, the consequences for sin must be real, and as much as it seems objectionable on the surface, the punishment must be real. It is consequence and punishment which makes good really good, and evil really evil. Without it, we could never hope to know the difference. As hard and potentially unfair as it may seem, the debt we incur for sin is death. Romains 6:23   If we have sinned, we can never be with God in Heaven. We will be eternally separated from Him unless the debt is paid.

And here we find yet another dilemma. We cannot pay the debt, for it is too much and we are not good enough. Yet no matter how much God loves us, He cannot simply ignore the debt, otherwise there will not be any justice in the universe. As we have seen, without justice there can be no appreciation of right and wrong and there can be no redemption.  The answer, of course, is that another can pay that debt for us if we will permit Him to. Hebrews 10:1-39Jesus Took Your Place.

Think about the following illustration.

There was once a tribe where the chief was a wise and powerful man. He was respected for his physical strength as well as his tough and fair laws which everyone respected and obeyed. However, one day, it was discovered that someone was sneaking into the tents and stealing. The chief ordered that this person be found and that the punishment for this crime would be 40 lashes with the whip. "No one is exempt!" he declared. "This punishment must be served." The tribe agreed that it was a fair punishment. However, the chief was devastated when he discovered that it was his frail old mother who was the thief. "Surely in her old age, she will never survive 40 lashes," he thought, "but I cannot change the punishment, for it is fair and just and has already been announced." At the thought of losing his mother whom he loved, he was heart-broken. When the time came for the punishment to be administered, the chief gave the order to begin and at once, his mother cried out, "Save me my son!" Immediately, the chief ran and embraced his mother, shielding her entire body from the whips. As the whips came down upon his back again and again and the pain filled him, he quietly whispered to his mother that he loved her.This is what Jesus Christ has done for us. As we cry out for mercy at the moment at which we understand that we cannot save ourselves, Jesus takes our place upon the cross and pays the debt on our behalf. It is a sacrifice that He alone can make, for He is God - he is perfect and has never sinned. Yet at the same time, Jesus was fully man and understood what it meant to live, to love, to truly feel pain and to freely and completely surrender his will to the Father. It was not a sacrifice which God demanded and took; rather, it was a loving and merciful gesture by Jesus as part of his Father's plan. Jesus freely gave himself to take your place, suffer on the cross and free you from your sin.  Mark 14:35-37, Luke 22:41-43

For those of us who have accepted Christ's sacrifice, we know that although we did not literally share his pain on the cross, this does not mean that it was not real for us. This is not the same as the parent who fixes the mess and replaces the broken furniture. Jesus' pain and death were a real event and His suffering will be felt for all time. Each of us will carry a piece of that memory with us as we understand that every time we sin, that sin was in part responsible for the agony he endured that day. We know that our sin has real consequence and knowing that this consequence was suffered by someone totally innocent makes it all the more real. As Christians we still stumble and sin from time to time, yet we know that the Holy Spirit is working to purify us and make us holy. Each time we sin, the Holy Spirit convicts us and reminds us of what Jesus did for us, so that we do not fall back into our old ways.

To be saved from sin, you must accept (believe) who Jesus is and what He has done and confess it to yourself and others that He is your Lord and Savior, for God will not force you to accept his offer of salvation. Once you have made this choice, when God looks upon you, he will no longer see the stain of your sin. He will see only the righteousness of His Son who clothes and surrounds you. With the holiness of Jesus in your life, you can stand before God and He will accept you because of the sacrifice His perfect Son has made. That is God's plan for salvation and that is how we can truly be saved. John 14:6-7

So we must admit that we are a sinner and repent of our sins ask for forgiveness. Confess with our mouth and believe in our heart the Lord Jesus Christ and we are saved.

Romains 10:9-10  1 John: 1-8-10  Acts 2:1-47