Week 7: Part Two of the Evangelistic Outline: Man

TEACHING NOTES - CLICK THE "NOTES" LINK ABOVE FOR THE CLASS BOOKLET

Team time

• Reviewing our covenant together
• Going over outline learned thus far (three-part “over-outline”, four-part “presentation outline”, “key question”, “God”)

 

Doctrinal instruction & Outline work

I.  Human Need:

We live surrounded by people who do not yet know God through Jesus Christ, and we are responsible to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit to be witnesses to them.  But our pluralistic age teaches us that all roads lead to “God” (if there is a God), and that people are basically good with basically right ideas about everything.  Sin has been reduced to two categories:  crime and psychological issues.  Even crimes are not the product of depraved character by rather brought on by adverse external conditions (society, disfunctional families, poverty), and therefore should be punished as little as possible.  All other things formerly called sins are now seen in a therapeutic sense as things from which we need “healing” rather than fruits of depraved character which will be accurately and justly judged by God.  We therefore have self-help groups for the “healing” of almost every imaginable state of the human soul:  chocolate-eaters anonymous, football-watchers anonymous, overspenders anonymous, etc.

The Bible paints a radically different picture of the natural human state apart from Christ.  If we do not understand this doctrine, we will get swept down the stream of pluralism, the roots of which is a denial of the universal and deadly effects of sin.  We will think we have just one of many “gospels” and that our gospel may not even be the best.

Whether our non-Christian neighbor feels it or not, and even if his/her life seems to be happy, fruitful, fulfilled, and virtuous, yet the Bible reveals the following things about all unbelievers:

1)  Spiritually Dead:

Just as a corpse cannot do anything physically, so a person apart from Christ cannot do anything spiritually towards God:  cannot turn to God, cannot repent, cannot believe, cannot do anything to please God, cannot change his spiritual situation in any way.  And just as a corpse does not respond to any stimulus, so a non-Christian will never respond to the gospel, no matter how clearly and forcefully it is presented, unless God works it in their hearts by giving them life.  This person is as lifeless as a corpse and needs a work of spiritual creation as dramatic as was the original physical creation:

Ephesians 2:1-2  "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient."

2) Already Under God’s Wrath:

The Bible teaches that there is a wrath to come, and we’ll speak about that in a moment.  However, the Bible also reveals that all who are apart from Christ are constantly and daily under God’s wrath because of their willful rebellion against Him.  They are already under His wrath, and live under it moment by moment, though they do not feel it:

Ephesians 2:3  "All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath."

John 3:36   "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."

3)  Storing Up Ever Greater Wrath:

Not only do non-Christians live every day under the wrath of God, but also by their daily choices and sins they actually increase the wrath they will experience on Judgment Day.  This wrath is stored up by God’s perfect and detailed record of their deeds:

Romans 2:5-6  "But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God "will give to each person according to what he has done."

This is done by a flood of sins proceeding from a vile heart of rebellion.  These sins follow certain recognizable patterns and are listed in many places in the New Testament:

Romans 1:29-31  "They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless."

4)  Law or Conscience Constantly Accuses:

Every non-Christian stands constantly accused either by God’s revealed Law or by the internal law of conscience.  The written Law saves no one, but only reveals the incredibly deep roots of sin in our hearts.  In places where God’s written Law has not yet been revealed, creation testifies to the existence and  attributes of God, no pagans living there are completely without excuse, and their own consciences testify that they are evil:

Romans 2:14-15   [Gentiles] "show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them."

Romans 3:20  "Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin."

Romans 4:14  "…law brings wrath"

Galatians 3:10  "All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.'"

James 2:10   "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it."

5)  Not one good deed accounted to their credit:

It is especially important to understand that even the “best” deeds of a non-Christian are actually “sins” in God’s sight because they are not done through faith.  Nothing done apart from faith in Christ is pleasing to God, therefore a non-Christian has no truly good deeds:

Romans 3:12   "…there is no one who does good, not even one."

Matthew 12:33-34    "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.  You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks."

Isaiah 64:6   "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags"

Romans 14:23   "…everything that does not come from faith is sin."

6)  Incapable of Pleasing God:

The world is full of “religious” people who are trying to reach God through religious duties.  Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Animists, and others think that by their efforts to please God they will somehow improve their standing with Him.  Furthermore, many nominal “Christians” are relying on their religious lives to commend themselves to God on that final Day.  But the Bible reveals clearly that all such efforts apart from Christ are useless:

Romans 8:8    "Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God."

Hebrews 11:6   "And without faith it is impossible to please God"

7)  Enemies of God:

Whether a non-Christian feels it or not, they are at war with God and God is at war with them.  They are enemies of God, and God opposes them.  This is true even of people who claim to “feel close” to God, but who have never repented and trusted in Christ:

Romans 5:10   "…we were God's enemies"

Romans 8:7  "The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so."

Colossians 1:21  "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior."

James 4:4   "You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God."

8)  Incapable of Atoning for Sin:

Not only are non-Christians under the wrath of God and alienated from Him, they have nothing they could possibly offer to Him as an atonement for sins.  The debt they owe to God is overwhelming, because they have sinned day after day against an infinite God:

Psalm 49:7-9   "No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him—the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough—that he should live on forever  and not see decay."

Matthew 18:23-25   "Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt."

Micah 6:6-7   "With what shall I come before the LORD  and bow down before the exalted God?  Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?  Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"

9)  Blind and Deaf to Spiritual Truth:

This is especially important for evangelists to remember:  non-Christian people are spiritually dead, so they are blind and deaf to spiritual truth.  They will never understand the gospel for it is foolishness to them and they are blind to its truth:

Matthew 13:14   "In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:  " `You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving."

1 Corinthians 1:18  "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

1 Corinthians 2:14  "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."

2 Corinthians 4:3-4   "And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." 

10)  Incapable of Changing:

Contrary to prideful human estimations, non-Christians cannot simply change their most basic nature.  They cannot suddenly “decide to follow Jesus,” nor can they repent and believe on their own.  They can make life reformations of a sort (i.e. stopping drinking, quitting smoking, losing weight), but they cannot change any of the things we have said above:  they are still spiritually dead, under God’s wrath, constantly increasing that wrath through new sins,  under the law/conscience, incapable of doing any truly good deeds, incapable of pleasing God, incapable of atoning for past sins, enemies of God, incapable of understanding spiritual truth.  The basic issue is, they cannot change their heart, have no desire for spiritual things, but only a continual lust for more evil:

Jeremiah 13:23  "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?  Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil."

Ephesians 4:19   "Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more."

This runs directly contrary to the modern emphasis on self-esteem, and the total lack of guilt that modern people feel.  This runs directly contrary to the modern gospel of self-help and self-improvement.  This runs directly contrary to the idea of our basic goodness and our good deeds being sufficient to pay for our sins.  But it is the gospel truth and it must be told!

 

Outline Work:

 Man

Outline Points:

• Man is Created
• Man is Rebellious
• Man is Under Judgment

 

1)  Man Is Created

Human beings are the pinnacle of God’s creation as recorded in Genesis1 and 2.  The fact that we are specially created by God and intended for a special role in the world is established by our first memory verse:

Genesis 1:27  "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

This verse is extremely important for understanding who we are, and what God intended for us.  The fact that we are created in the image of God tells us three important things about us as human beings (male and female), speaking of 1) our nature, 2) our purpose, and 3) our role.

1. our nature: we were created to be like God, with the ability to think, reason, plan, be passionate, love, decide, etc.  This is what sets us apart from animals.  It shows we are spiritual, like God. 
2. our purpose: we were created to know and love God, to worship Him, to marvel at Him, and to know His glory.  We were created to have a passionate love relationship with God, and to be fully satisfied in Him.
3. our role: we were created also to serve God.  This is clear from the fact that we are created beings, and all created beings must serve their creator.

The modern evolutionary viewpoint denies that we are created, and also denies that there is anything special about humanity.  We are merely homo sapiens, evolved from a pool of warm proteins through millions of stages, beyond the apes to our present state.  If this is true, then there is truly no such thing as sin, but only those things harmful to society and our survival.  If our race is to survive, we must deal with things that threaten our survival (like wars or crime).  But there is no absolute standard of morality, or right and wrong.  How wrong this is!!  The Bible’s simple statement that we are created in the image of God explains why He has worked through six-thousand years of history to redeem human beings.  God loves us and cares about us, simply because we are created in His image.

Yet, we should always remember that we are created beings, made to do the will of our creator, and to do it joyfully.  We were created to be like God, to know/love Him, and to serve Him.

2)  Man Is Rebellious

The tragedy of human history is that we have rebelled against our King rather than served Him joyfully as we should have done.  Sin is a deep-seated rejection of God’s authority that corrupts every area of a person:  their will, their emotions, their intellect, their bodies, everything!  It is not simply a matter of occasionally doing something wrong.  In order to be saved, we must cease being rebels and must joyfully submit to God as King.  This will never happen unless we acknowledge that rebellion, and part of true gospel preaching is making the reality of the rebellion clear.

Our two memorized passages from Scripture help make this rebellion clear:

Romans 3:10-12   "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."

This passage shows that no one, not even one person, is righteous (which means free from sin).  It also shows that sin is a matter of turning away from God rather than seeking Him, loving Him, serving Him.  Finally, it reveals that sin makes us worthless, and that sin prevents us from doing even one single good deed acceptable before God.  This is a key concept, since almost every person you meet clings to the idea of their basic goodness before God, and of many good deeds they have done which they hope will make them acceptable before God. 

If you press the significance of this passage home, it will be clear that no one will be able to stand before God on Judgment Day based on our basic righteousness or good deeds, since we have none.

The second passage helps define our rebellion and sin even more clearly: 

1 John 3:4  “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.”

Remember from the “God” section above that, as King, God has the right to make laws with which to govern His kingdom.  Romans 3:10-12 establishes the universality of sin, and 1 John 3:4 helps make it clear that the essence of sin is breaking God’s law… rebellion!! 

Remember also from the “God” section what those laws are:  the Ten Commandments give us (for the most part) a list of things we SHOULD NOT do; the Two Great Commandments give us a comprehensive statement of what we SHOULD do.  No human on earth can make it through these two filters unscathed.  Press the Ten Commandments home:  “You’ve never coveted?  You’ve never once yearned for something you didn’t have?  You’ve never once been jealous of some possession or position that someone else had?”  Or use the Greatest Commandment:  “You’ve loved God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength every moment of your life?”  As evangelists, we must cut through the “Self-esteem” work that Satan has done in almost everyone’s heart these days.  Very few people have any concept of sin whatsoever.  God’s word brings light to their true condition.

3)  Man Is Under Judgment

Just as God the King has the right to make laws by which His Kingdom is governed, God the Judge has the right to judge everyone concerning those laws.  And He has set a day when He will judge the world in righteousness according to those laws.

The first memorized verse comes from the lips of Jesus Himself, and it clearly establishes not only the reality of Judgment Day, but also the careful and meticulous way God will judge absolutely every detail of our lives:

Matthew 12:36  “I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.”

This is a devastating verse to those who are confident in their own righteousness.  If even or tiny careless words are judged, how much more our actions?

The second verse shows very clearly what judgment every sinner deserves for each sin they have committed:

Romans 6:23  “The wages of sin is death…”

At this point, I always explain that death is actually a “death penalty.”  The essence of a death penalty is that is has not yet been exacted from the prisoner under its terrible sentence.  In effect, every sinner apart from Christ is under a terrible sentence of death.  Now we also make clear that this is not merely physical death but even worse, eternal death in hell under the wrath of God.  Putting the two verse together, on the Day of Judgment, sinners will give a careful account to God for absolutely every area of their lives, and every sin we have committed will deserve a death penalty from God, the righteous Judge… a death penalty of eternity in hell under His wrath.

 

Practical instruction

 

Our practical instruction focuses on the value of Scripture memorization for evangelism.  The more verses you can have memorized, the more powerful will be your ability to witness.  Also, since witness flows from the heart of a maturing disciple of Jesus Christ who is in active fellowship with Him, a constant saturation with Scripture enables us to stay close to our source of life and strength, Jesus Christ:

John 15:5-8   "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8 This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."

In other words, abiding constantly in Christ is absolutely essential to bearing fruit.  In verse 7, Jesus gives us the two keys to fruitfulness in Christ:  1)  my words remain in you; 2) ask whatever you wish.  According to verse 8, if the conditions of verse 7 are met, we will glorify our heavenly Father and bear much fruit, showing ourselves to be His disciples.  Undoubtedly, included in this fruit will be evangelistic faithfulness and fruitfulness on our part.  NOW, what did Jesus mean when He said “and my words remain in you”?  Can Jesus’ words (verse by verse!!!!) remain in us any other way than Scripture memorization?  Thus Scripture memorization is a vital key to evangelistic fruitfulness.

Through memorization, we can have a full arsenal of weapons which the Holy Spirit can use through us to destroy false ideas about God which are blinding people and keeping them from eternal life.  Through memorization, we can present a vivid and accurate account of Jesus’ miracles or teachings (if we have them memorized).  Through memorization, we can select just the right way to respond to any objections the person might have.  Through memorization, we can leave a verse with them that they can write down and look up later, or that could burn conviction into their hearts.

How should one memorize?  Practical steps are laid out in my booklet on this topic, “An Approach to the Extended Memorization of Scripture.”

 Homework

• Review: three-part overview, four-part presentation, key question
• Review: “God” section with Scriptures
• Memorize “Man” section with Scriptures

Preparation

Introduction:  Introduce yourself

Interests:  Ask general questions about their life interests

Involvement:  Ask about prior involvement in church; listen for clues as to their spiritual state

Inquiry:   Key Question “In your personal opinion, what do you understand it takes for a person to go to heaven?”

Presentation

God:

• God is Creator

Genesis 1:1  "In the beginning, God created heaven and earth."

Therefore, God is loving

Acts 14:27  "He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy."

• God is King

Psalm 47:7  "For God is King of all the earth."

Therefore, God is sovereign

Psalm 103:19  "The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all."

Therefore, God also makes laws

The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20)

The Two Greatest Commandments (Matthew 22)

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. 

Love your neighbor as yourself.

• God is Judge

Psalm 96:13   "He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his truth."

Therefore, God is holy

Habakkuk 1:13  "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, you cannot tolerate wrong."

 

Man:

• Man is Created by God (Creator)

Genesis 1:27  "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

Our nature:  created to be like God

Our purpose:  created to know/love God

Our role:  created to serve God

• Man is Rebellious Against God (King)

Universally Rebellious

Romans 3:10-12   "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."

Rebellious Against God’s Laws

1 John 3:4  “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.”

[Remember God’s Laws:  Ten Commandments, Two Great Commandments]

• Man is Under Judgment by God (Judge)

Judgment Day

Matthew 12:36  “I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.”

Judgment Penalty

Romans 6:23  “The wages of sin is death…”