Pictures of Evangelism - Shepherds

I know my wife joins me in thanking you for the hospitality and kindness of this week. I'm sorry that my throat got a little bit raspy, but most of you don't know what I sound like anyway, so it really didn't make a great deal of difference. It's interesting that you should state that there are no gangsters down in Lincoln. I have lived in the Chicago area 42 years. 10 years I was down in Kentucky—that makes 52. And I was never accosted and I was never bothered by anybody in Chicago, and I was walking down the street one evening in Lincoln and I was robbed. Just shows how depraved the world is getting. But if you do come to Chicago sometime, we will stage a hold up for you.

We come now to four complimentary pictures of evangelism: the shepherd finding the sheep, the ambassador, the fireman, quote-unquote, and the priest. Luke 15 is where we begin. Now all the tax gatherers and the sinners—that means the Jews who weren't keeping the law—were coming near to listen to Him. Rather interesting, Jesus attracted sinners. You know, we have such a weird view of separation that we believe if we're really holy, unsafe people want nothing to do with us. They wanted nothing to do with the Pharisees. The Pharisees had a lifeless, brittle, artificial kind of piety that the sinners could see right through. But Jesus had a warm and loving kind of holiness that attracted people. We pray and we sing, "More like the Master may I ever be." One of the tests of my becoming more like the Lord Jesus is, how do unsaved people respond to me? Now I don't mean they have to agree with me, and they might even think I'm a little kooky. But is there anything about us that attracts them? After all, we are salt, and salt makes people thirsty.

And both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble—that was their chief indoor sport—saying, "This man receives sinners—that's bad enough—and eats with them." And of course in the East, to eat with somebody means to make a pledge of friendship. Now if you want to talk to them, that's one thing, but eating with them! And He told them this parable, not these parables. This parable. I want to believe that Luke 15 is one parable with three different facets to it. If I were to take a survey today among this intelligent group and ask you this question, I think we'd get about the same answer. If you had to name the three thinkers in the past 100, 125, 150 years—the three thinkers whose philosophy has most radically affected the world—I think we'd all probably come up with the same answers. I've tried this in various campuses, and it's amazing. Darwin, whose basic philosophy was man is an animal; Marx—somebody's saying Dewey around here, I never got Dewey. I got wet, but I never got Dewey. Actually, Dewey just picked up Darwin and applied it to education. So Darwin: man is an animal; and Marx: man is an economic factor; and Freud: man is a spoiled child. And Jesus says the same thing. He says, "Yeah, man's an animal—he's a lost sheep. Man's an economic factor—he's a lost coin. Yeah, he's a spoiled child—he's a runaway son." Rather interesting our Lord anticipated their philosophy long before they knew it existed.

And He told them this parable saying, "What man among you, if he has 100 sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the 99 in the open pasture—and obviously he leaves the sheep with someone to care for them—and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders." I like that plural—shoulders. He doesn't get it over, doesn't hold it by two legs over one shoulder lest it wriggle away; he gets the front legs and the back legs and he holds it over his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors saying to them, "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!" I tell you that in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. This doesn't mean God doesn't rejoice over righteous people; obviously He does. Our Lord's making a comparison, or contrast, really.

But this whole chapter tells us the meaning of the word lost. A lost sheep is in a place of danger. A lost coin is in a place of uselessness. I don't care how much that coin is worth; it's worthless as long as it's lost. And just as that coin bears the impression of the emperor, so each sinner has been made in the image of God and sin has marred that image. So the lost sheep's in a place of danger and the lost coin's in a place of uselessness and the lost son is involved in both, plus one thing more: he's missing all of the fulfillment and the joy that he really ought to have. The boy discovered that everything he was looking for out in the world was right back home. He wanted clothes? Put the best robe on him. He wanted parties? Kill the fatted calf. He wanted friends? Come and join with me—the whole village showed up. That fatted calf would feed about 100 people.

And so you and I are looking at lost people and we have to remember they're lost sheep and lost coins and lost boys. We're going to focus briefly on the sheep. I was not raised on the farm. I didn't see a sheep until I was, I suppose, seven or eight years old, when our third-grade teacher took us to a farm and there was a sheep. I'd seen pictures of them. But this much we have all learned: that sheep are very ignorant and very defenseless, very stupid. A few years ago, a book came out written by one of the authors of The Ugly American and the book was called A Nation of Sheep. And the great shepherd in America today is television. And millions of people sit there with their brains turning to mush, wondering who shot J.R. And my only response was, it's too bad somebody didn't shoot the producer. We have a nation of sheep. All we like sheep have gone astray; we've turned every one to—now get this phrase—his own way. That is what is wrecking everything right now: his own way. "I'm not getting anything out of this marriage, so I'm going to leave." And I feel like saying, "Well, what are you putting into it?" You know, marriage is like a bank—you get nothing out unless you put something in. "I'm not getting anything out of this church, so we're going to pull a bunch out and leave." Oh wait a minute, wait a minute. The whole philosophy today is my own way, my own way, it's got to be my way. We even sing about it: "I did it my way."

And the shepherd has to go out and find this stupid, defenseless, wandering, ignorant animal. And that is not easy. A dear friend of mine, if I named him you'd know him, he's a good preacher of the word—we've had great fellowship together on and off for, oh, I suppose over 20 years. And he said to me one day, "We've got to drop this image of the flock. We live in cities and you don't talk to city people about sheep and flocks." I said, "Did you ever read Acts 20?" In Acts 20, the Apostle Paul is talking to those Ephesian elders. Ephesus was not a bump in the road. Ephesus was a big city with a lot of money and one of the seven wonders of the world in it, and it was a metropolis of metropolises. And when Paul gave his final words to those Ephesian elders, what did he say? "Take heed to yourselves and to the flock." See, the problem today is that our people need to know that they're sheep. What other image would you use? Automobiles? Our Lord knew what He was talking about when He said people are lost sheep, stupid, prone to wander, and the church is a flock.

The point that the Lord is making here is not simply that the shepherd found the sheep; having found the sheep, he gets it into the flock. I say it again, too much of our evangelism bypasses the local church. And a sheep left to itself is still a sheep; in with the flock, it has that opportunity for growth and to be useful. And it doesn't hurt occasionally to fleece them—fleecing is good for sheep. The point our Lord is making is this: the sheep's not going to come to you. The difficulty, the sacrifice, the compassion that must be involved in winning the lost. I have a pastor friend who grew up in New Zealand, came to the United States to go to seminary and he's been pastoring the same church now for 25 years. Good man. Now New Zealand is known for its sheep. In fact, if you go to England and order lamb chops, they won't come from England, they'll come from New Zealand. And George was telling me one night he was driving home from church in the town where he lived, and of course each of these towns has a village green, a town green, and on that green is a flock of sheep. And he said one of the sheep—one—had gotten out into the highway, into the roadway. So George said, "I thought I would stop my car and get that sheep back where it belonged lest somebody be hurt." So he did, he stopped his car and he went to try to get that sheep back on the pasture. He said within five minutes the entire flock was on the road. That's typical, isn't it? We are dealing with people who are prone to wander, ignorant of danger, blissfully going on their way doing their own thing and they don't realize that the next step means a precipice.

Mr. Sankey did a great thing when he put words to that poem and when he sang, "But none of the ransomed ever knew how deep were the waters crossed, or how dark was the night that the Lord went through ere He found the sheep that was lost." Unsaved people when you do find them and bring them into the fold don't know what you went through. That's all right, God knows what you went through. The shepherd: compassion, sacrifice, danger. One final word on that: in John 21, the Lord Jesus combined shepherding with fishing. He had said to Peter, "Follow Me and I'll make you fishers of men." Now He says to him, "Tend My flock. Take care of My sheep." The two are not incompatible. As we go out to find the lost sheep, let's be sure that that found sheep gets into the fold and into the flock, and let's be sure we shepherd that sheep.

Now the ambassador: 2 Corinthians 5. You know, of course, that the Roman government had two kinds of provinces. They had senatorial provinces and they had imperial provinces. You say, "What's the difference?" Oh, big difference! A senatorial province was a peaceful province. It was a province in which they did not have to put a great big standing army and they had no ambassador. The province was friendly and cooperative and all they had to have in the province were the normal Roman officers, no need for an ambassador or a huge army. That was a senatorial province. Now the imperial provinces, that was something else. Those were the rebels, those were the renegades, those were the people who said, "Rome, we're going to get rid of you!" And so in the imperial provinces you had armies and you had ambassadors. The ambassador was sent to the imperial provinces because the provinces were at war with Rome. Even though they'd been conquered in one way or another, they were at war with Rome.

Now Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:20, "Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ." This earth, this world, is an imperial province, not a senatorial province. As long as there are ambassadors on this globe, it is evidence that the world is at war with God. Now the world is not at war with religion—never has been. You can go up to a stranger and say, "I'm a Presbyterian," or "I'm a Grace Brother," or "I'm a Plymouth Brother," or "I'm a United Brother," or "I'm an ignorant brother." They'll say, "That's great." You can say, "I'm an atheist," you can say, "I'm a reformed druid." They wouldn't care. But you tell them you're a Christian—see what happens. Our Lord said, "They're going to hate you for My name's sake." The world doesn't hate religion. The world loves religion because most religions whitewash what the world is doing, canonize it, approve it.

I read the liberal journals because I want to know what the enemy is doing. And in one of the leading liberal journals in America this week—I have it in my car—this week is a full-page ad giving a resume of a man, his name is there, his education, his experience. He's applying for work. He says, "I want a job working thus and so in a church somewhere." And down at the bottom it says, "I am an open and avowed gay." The magazine printed it. The world loves religion, but not Christ. If I understand my Bible correctly, the world's at war with God. The carnal mind is what? Enmity against God! It will not submit to the law of God; it cannot submit to the law of God. The old nature knows no law; the new nature needs no law, thank God for that. Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light. And so emotionally they're at war with God, intellectually at war with God, and Paul says we've been put here because they are at war with God.

Martin Luther once said, "If I were God and the world did to my son what they did to Jesus, I'd blow the world up." He probably would, too. We're glad he didn't. So you and I are ambassadors. You remember back in the book of Deuteronomy—when Moses was giving—Deuteronomy 20, when Moses was giving the law of warfare for the Jews, remember this? He says, "When you come up to a city, proclaim peace to the city." Not war—peace! And if they will accept conditions of peace, make them your slaves. If not, wipe them out. That's what God's doing today. God comes to the rebellious sinner and He says, "Here are conditions for peace, and if you'll accept these conditions, I won't make you a slave—I'll set you free." And they don't want them. And so He has to send out His ambassadors. We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us. Oh, what a responsibility! We beg you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God! The ministry of reconciliation.

I was privileged to write a book on Ephesians and I'd like to go back and rewrite it. In fact, most of my books I'd like to go back and rewrite—that's a story of our lives. I think I missed in my study one of the key points in Ephesians. My approach was to emphasize our riches in Christ, and that's there. But I was restudying Ephesians in preparation for a series to a group of missionaries. It struck me forcefully that God is saying My great goal is to put everything together. Ephesians 1:10, "I'm going to unite everything in Christ." Now that's not restorationism, that's not universalism. God is going to unite everything in Christ. There are two forces at work in the world today: there's the force that's pulling everything apart—Satan, sin—and there's God who's seeking to put things together. You and I are part of the latter. What a delight! Anybody can tear things apart. Takes very little skill to tear things apart. Takes some skill to put them together. So you and I have the privilege of being ambassadors of reconciliation. Fellow came in to see me one day when I was pastoring in Covington. I knew the man, he and his wife were at odds with each other. He came in, he sat down, he said, "Brother Wiersbe, my wife and I need a recancellation." I said, "What?" He said, "A recancellation." I said, "You mean a reconciliation?" He said, "Yes, a recancellation." Well, that was bad English, but pretty good theology. I said, "That's right, you do need a recancellation. You need to take all that meanness and all that disobedience and all that sin and get it canceled. Come to Jesus and get it all taken care of."

Let's talk about the characteristics of an ambassador. Now I realize that ambassadors back in Paul's day were not exactly like our ambassadors today, but I think we can draw a parallel that may help us see what our privileges are. The closest I ever came to a real live ambassador was Ambassador Ball when he was in the United Nations. We were in Washington, D.C., I was preaching nearby in a conference. Whenever I went to Washington to preach, I always took one of the children with me—I wanted them to see where their tax money was going. And we were in the White House on one of the tours and the helicopter landed and the White House guide said, "Ambassador Ball is coming in to talk to somebody." And in he came! And I was like from, oh, maybe from here to that post. I thought, "My, is that he's a—there's an ambassador! That's terrific!" I punched David, I said, "Boy, look at that man! He's a real live ambassador!" Then it dawned on me, "Hey, I got a higher calling than he does!" He's down there at the Untied Nations trying to put things together and it's not going to last too long. And I've been called by the King of Kings! When I was a young pastor, I used to be embarrassed when I went visiting. I'd go knock on a door or I'd ring a bell and I'd hope nobody was there. And I used to apologize for coming. And then the Lord said to me, "You know what? That's the wrong attitude. You're somebody in My kingdom. You're an ambassador. They ought to thank you for coming." Changed my whole approach to visiting. God has brought me here; I want to share the message God has given to me.

Quickly the characteristics of an ambassador: number one, he has to be a citizen of the nation he represents. Well, our citizenship is in heaven, Philippians 3:20. Secondly, he has to be commissioned. I can't pick up a portfolio and fly off somewhere and say I'm going to be an ambassador. They'd throw me out. You have to be commissioned. John 20:21, "As My Father has sent Me, so send I you." 2 Corinthians 5:19, He's committed unto us the word of reconciliation. So we're commissioned. Whether we obey or not, we're commissioned; whether we do it or not, we're commissioned. Thirdly, the ambassador represents his own ruler, doesn't represent himself. That's why he says in verse 20 of 2 Corinthians 5, "As though God were entreating through us." We don't go representing us or a denomination; we go representing Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:5, "For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord." He represents his ruler. Fourthly, all of his needs are met. Philippians 4:19 says, "My God shall supply all your need." Regardless of where God put you, even if the salary is lower, God will meet your need if you are a faithful ambassador. To change the image, when Peter went and caught that fish, he found the money in its mouth. If you'll catch the fish, God'll take care of the money. If you'll be a faithful ambassador, God'll take care of your needs. You say, "We can't go there; it's going to cost too much." It costs too much not to go there if God wants you there. Fifth, he has to declare the right message. He has no right to invent his own message. And what is our message? "Be ye reconciled to God!" Sixth, he's going to have to give an account someday. The President pushes the hot button and the light goes on over in the Court of Saint James and he says to the ambassador, "Would you hurry home? I want to talk to you." And so he has to hurry home to talk to the President. I read in 2 Corinthians 5:10, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." You're going to give an account, I'm going to give an account. I hear people singing about the coming of our Lord as though it's going to be a Sunday School picnic. Now don't misunderstand me—I want the Lord to come back. We all do. But some people are going to be ashamed before Him at His coming. There's going to be an accounting. The ambassador has to give an account. Now I know we do not build our theology on images, on metaphors, but I like to add this point—it aggravates some people and blesses other people. Did you ever notice that an ambassador's usually called home before war is declared? Now don't build your theology on that. We have better arguments than an image to do that with. We're ambassadors for Jesus Christ—now!—representing the great Court of Heaven. And Paul tells us, "You'd better realize the dignity of your calling, the solemnity of it, the seriousness of it." You're an ambassador; don't stoop to anybody! Wasn't it one of William Carey's sons who was called into civil service and Carey wrote to someone and said, "My son has descended from being an ambassador of the King to being a worker for the Queen." Never apologize for the Gospel. Stand with all the dignity of an ambassador and give the message. Now there's one more factor about the ambassador that doesn't have to be true of a civil ambassador. Verse 14 of 2 Corinthians 5 says, "The love of Christ controls us." It's a good thing when an ambassador does love the people he's visiting. It's a great thing when the American ambassador to Japan loves the Japanese people; it's marvelous. Doesn't have to, though; should, he doesn't have to. Jonah preached the greatest revival in the Bible to a bunch of people he hated! He wanted to see them burned up. So it's possible to preach the truth and not love people, but Paul says, look, the great controlling motivation is love. We've got a message for you because we love you.

Now the third image I want to discuss with quotation marks around it: the fireman. Three times in Scripture you find this image of a brand pulled out of the fire. Zechariah 3:2, "Is this not a brand plucked out of the burning?" John Wesley claimed that verse for himself because literally it was true. When his father's parsonage was on fire and the neighbors came and they ran—they literally pulled young John Wesley, the little boy, out of that burning. We thank God that it happened. Zechariah 3:2: "And the Lord said to Satan, 'The Lord rebuke you, Satan! Indeed, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you!'" That's election. Dr. Peter Stianson used to tell us at Northern Seminary in his own Norwegian brogue, "You try to explain election, you may lose your mind, but you explain it away, you lose your soul." Is it right to preach about fire? John Braun has written a book called Whatever Happened to Hell? Interesting. He phoned me one day when the book was in preparation to ask about certain books he thought maybe I knew about, which I didn't. And I said to him, "I thank God you are writing this book." Whatever happened to Hell? I ask my students at seminary to read Jonathan Edwards' classic sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and to give me a written response to it. And the responses were in two categories. One was, "It scared me; if I had heard that sermon, I would have repented." The other one said, "An antique piece that if it were used today would not get anywhere." Now there may be something to that latter interpretation because it was a little bit melodramatic when you describe the sinner as a spider hanging on a thin thread over the pits of Hell. This great theologian, this marvelous—the most brilliant mind probably that America ever produced—and yet what an evangelistic zeal he had! Why don't we talk more about fire? Now I'm not going into the argument: is it literal? Is it figurative? All I'm going to say is this: there is a place called Hell. And people who do not know Jesus as their Savior are going there. And my Lord was a preacher of Hell. He said more about fire than He said about Heaven. He talked about a furnace of fire. He talked about weeping and gnashing of teeth. He picked up Gehenna, the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem, the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. He picked up that image and said, "Hell is one gigantic garbage dump where the refuse of the universe will end up." Oh, you say modern man is not interested in that type of thing. That's right, and that's too bad.

Did you ever ask yourself the question, why is it so hard to preach about Hell? I'll make some suggestions to you—these aren't the final answers, but I'll make some suggestions to you. Number one, we have a lot of substitutes these days: reincarnation, universalism, conditional immortality, annihilationism. Now the average person out on the street thinks that when he dies he's gone, like when you spray a bug. Something else: if you don't have clear views of sin, you won't have clear views of judgment. And today we have such a blurred idea of sin. Thirdly: if you don't have clear views of the holiness of God, you won't have clear views of judgment. Something else: today in America, the purpose of law is not retribution. The purpose of law is rehabilitation. The law is not enforced to uphold the law; the law is enforced to try to rehabilitate people, and it's not working. And people do not believe that a God of love is interested in upholding His own law. Owen Barfield was a great friend of C.S. Lewis', as you know. He came to Lewis one day and he said, "You'll never believe what I just saw." Lewis said, "What did you see?" He said, "In a grave—in a graveyard I saw a tombstone and on this tombstone it read this: 'Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.'" You know what C.S. Lewis' response to that was? Quietly C.S. Lewis said, "I'll bet he wishes that were so." All dressed up, no place to go.

Now I'm not suggesting we get into our pulpits and turn on the thermostat. I'm not suggesting that we get all wrapped up in grotesque images borrowed from medieval cartoons. But I am saying this: there is a place called Hell. And Jesus preached about Hell. Although Paul never used that word as such, when Paul talked about perdition and when Paul talked about judgment, he used images that you can't miss. Try 2 Thessalonians 1 if you think Paul was talking about some future second chance after death.

Is fear a legitimate motive for evangelism? There are those who say no. "Oh no, you shouldn't put fear!" Wait a minute. My children would be dead today if we hadn't put fear into them. "Don't you go near that highway. You go near that highway, you won't sit down for a while." That's fear. If you leave the scissors where the baby can get ahold of them, you're in trouble. Why do people go to doctors? They're afraid. What would you do if you walked into your doctor's office and there was a sign that said, "When you are at death's door, I will pull you through"? No! If people were not afraid of dying, they wouldn't go to the doctor. American Airlines flight 191 went down last May, was it? Almost in our backyard—I mean, we live near O'Hare Field and it was off a few miles away, but boy, we heard about it. A month later—a month later!—I took that same flight number to Los Angeles. I met Mr. Epp at O'Hare Field, we had lunch together, and I was going to take 191 to Los Angeles for a meeting. Mr. Epp and I were standing in line at the O'Hare coffee shop waiting to get in and he just casually said to me, "Where are you going from here?" I said, "I'm taking American 191 to Los Angeles." There was a black couple, lovely black couple right in front of us. And the black fellow turned around and he says, "Man, does you know what you's doing?" "Did ya? I'm taking flight 191 to Los Angeles." He said, "Man, that plane may go down!" Now what the number has to do with it, I don't know. I said, "Well, sir, if it goes down, I go up." His wife turned around and said, "You're a Christian." I said, "That's right." The fellow was afraid of a number. Yeah, it's safer up there over Chicago than it is down on the streets. Fear is a legitimate motive. Now not the kind of grotesque, destructive fear that paralyzes a person, but the kind of honest, God-given fear that motivates a person. And perhaps the time has come for us to remind people that there is a place called Hell. Maybe—maybe I need to put a tract together the first page of which says, "Did you know that God says if you don't trust Jesus you're going to Hell?" The fireman. It's not an easy thing to reach into a fire and pull out a brand that's burning. You've got to get close to the fire yourself.

Finally, let's look at Romans 15:16. This will be the capstone to our series. Romans 15:16. Oh, we must begin with verse 15: "But I have written very boldly to you on some points so as to remind you again because of the grace that was given to me from God"—oh, what kind of grace?—"the grace to be a minister of Christ to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the Gospel of God, that my offering of the Gentiles"—he pictures the souls he has won as a great sacrifice offered to God—"that my offering of the Gentiles might become acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit." You'll have to forgive me when I say this, but it's—it's one of my prejudices, it's one of the little crusades that gnaws away at my soul, we all have them: I am sick and tired of this commercial attitude toward evangelism. Paul says evangelism is the ministry of a priest. We are set apart to minister the Gospel as a priest. And then as we win these people by the grace of God, we offer them up, not as statistics.

Did you know that Jesus did not die just to make drunks sober or prostitutes pure? You know what the bottom line of salvation is? Read Ephesians 1: "to the praise of the glory of His grace." To the praise of His grace! To the praise of His glory! That's what it's all about. Not to my praise. Not to our church's praise or to the denomination's praise. Nothing wrong with statistical reports; Spurgeon used to say those who criticize statistics usually have none to report. But these statistics had better be reported to the glory of God. Paul did not look upon the multitudes he had won to Christ as statistics: another notch in the rifle, another mark on the Bible, another card in the file, another statistic in the computer. No, no. Paul said all of these people saved by the grace of God, chosen by the grace of God, all these people are a great spiritual sacrifice. I'm just a priest. Now I don't have to develop this point except to drop this into your heart: when the priest was ministering in the temple or in the tabernacle, the important thing was the glory of God. Nadab and Abihu forgot that—they were killed. Moses forgot it one day; Moses didn't give God the glory and he missed a free trip to the Holy Land.

Who gets the glory? That's a good question. Some of this literature that comes to my desk, it's revolting. I got a magazine—I don't even know who runs the group or what group it is—I got a magazine, opened it up to the center spread, and here was a huge crowd of people that had come to hear this man preach. I mean a huge crowd! And I said, "Boy, that's terrific." My minister of music looked at it, he said, "Have you seen what they've done with this picture? They flopped the negative! The same people were sitting over here, they were sitting over here." They flopped the negative! Doubled the crowd. There're three kinds of lies: white lies, black lies, and statistics. Nothing wrong with statistics—we've got to know the state of the land, we have to know where we are to the glory of God. But the ultimate in soul winning, the ultimate in evangelism, is the priest: holy, set apart, sanctified, ministering according to the word of God, bringing these spiritual sacrifices to the Lord to the glory of God. Not just a statistic.

So we are shepherds: the difficulty of evangelism. We are ambassadors: the dignity of evangelism. We're firemen: the urgency of evangelism. We're priests: the sanctity of evangelism. As I reviewed these pictures in my own soul before even coming here, God rebuked me. And I had to admit sometimes my motives weren't the best. It's nice to have good reports when you go to board meetings. Sometimes my methods were not wholly sanctified. We're so anxious to get people saved, we even trick them into doing it. And so the Lord had to deal with my heart, and maybe He's been dealing with your heart, to do it the way He wants us to do it.

A conductor got on a train one day and picked up the first ticket of the first passenger, looked at it and said, "You're on the wrong train." He took the second ticket and he said, "Madam, you're on the wrong train." She said, "The brakeman told me to get on this train." He said, "I'll check." The conductor was on the wrong train. I know some pastors who are on the wrong train. They don't know what it is God wants them to do, if they know they don't care, if they know and care and don't do it they're disobedient—they're on the wrong train. May the Lord help us to do it the way He wants us to do it. Whether or not the world ever recognizes it, whether or not anybody'll ever write a book about us, let's do it the way He wants us to do it, where He wants us to do it. You say, "My place is a small place." When it comes to soul winning, there are no small places. Every place is a big place. And every ambassador is important to the glory of God. Let's bow together.