WHEN, WHERE AND TO WHO
2 Timothy 4:2
Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.
Buffalo County Wisconsin. To a serious deer hunter the mere mention of that place brings to mind giant whitetail bucks. Buffalo County is the County with the most Pope & Young bucks in the record book... in all of North America. And here I was on a beautiful farm with rolling hills with long narrow corn and alfalfa fields up the valleys.
I was smack dab in the middle of a deer hunters paradise, staring at a "Field of dreams" where Boone and Crockett bucks have walked for centuries. It would be a dream come true for most hunters to hunt this piece of hallowed ground. But it wasn't hunting season and I wasn't here to hunt. I had been asked to come and speak at a fundraising event for an equestrian ministry that cared for wounded and disabled veterans.
After I arrived they showed me where I would be speaking, right in the middle of the bar room. Not what I expected, but it's where God wanted me at the time. My talk went just fine and I shared the Gospel and did my best to raise my voice over the voices of those ordering drinks and talking at the bar just 30 ft away. When I shared what Jesus did and that He had done it for all those there that day, you could have heard a pin drop. God had a plan in me speaking in that bar... although it wouldn't have been my plan.
Having been raised in a very conservative church as a child we didn't go near places like I had just spoke in. The places where "sinners" gathered were the places to stay away from. But why not share the good news of Jesus where people need it the most? Even if that is a bar or even a prison cell?
God's plan is that His message go out even to places that are indifferent or hostile to the Gospel. For the apostle Luke, this even gave (and still gives) persecuted Christians an important role: "It will lead to your giving testimony."(Luke 21:13)
Even today disciples who are brought to trial will be able to use the occasion to share the good news. Kings, governors, synagogue officials and prison guards who would never have encountered an evangelist heard the Gospel in Luke's time and can still today. Even through persecution the disciples revealed God's kingdom to those who might never have heard. When we come under persecution today, we have the same opportunities.
Who did Jesus share the message of salvation with? Anyone that would listen. Matthew was a hated tax collector, Jesus called him and what happened? Matthew immediately called his friends to come and hear the Good News of Jesus. Nicodemus was another tax collector that came to Jesus. Jesus went to his house, a place where the spiritual leaders of the day would never go.
In Matthew 2:14-17 we read of Jesus and his answer to those who would have looked down on Him for eating with those that were "sinners" in the eyes of the "spiritual" leaders of the day.
14 As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax office, and He said to him, "Follow Me!" And he got up and followed Him.
15 And it happened that He was reclining at the table in his house, and many tax collectors and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him. 16 When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, "Why is He eating with tax collectors and sinners?" 17 And hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
So, with who do we share the gospel? Anyone that will listen. Where do we share the gospel? Wherever there are those who will hear.
1 Corinthians 9:16
For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast about, for I am under compulsion; for woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.
Jesus's last words to His disciples in Mark 16: 15 answers the question of who and where to share the gospel with.
15 "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." (Mark 16:15)
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