Ep. 110 | What is Evangelism and Why Do It?
Speaker: Aaron Baddeley
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Available on all podcasting platforms -
Summary
Aaron Baddeley shares about evangelism from the biblical principal of the image of God. What is evangelism? Why do we do it? To explore, Aaron highlights humanity's uniqueness as being made in God's image.
Scriptures Explored: Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 8:21; Genesis 11:4; Genesis 17:4-8; Hosea 11; Matthew 2:13-15; Luke 3:21-22; Luke 3:38; Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10; 1 Corinthians 15:49; Mark 4:18-22; 2 Corinthians 5:18-20
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Music created by Chad Hoffman
Artwork created by Anthony Kuenzi
Speaker’s Bio
Aaron Baddeley grew up in Bellingham, Washington, where he met his later-to-be wife, Katelyn Baddeley. He graduated from Corban University’s School of Ministry with a Master of Divinity in 2017. They now have two daughters, Penelope and Juniper. After serving in various churches and in various roles in Salem, OR and Spokane, WA, Aaron is preparing to be a lead pastor of a church plant in Spokane, WA, named Princeton Avenue Church.
Transcript
Intro:
Hey there, welcome to Pickled Parables. This podcast is presented by Parable Ministries as a Bible teaching resource. Thank you for joining us. Pickled Parables is a podcast about taking in and living out the Bible. Here we will study, contemplate, and testify to the Bible's incredible teachings and how it leads us to live better lives. To stay up to date with all things parable, follow us on Instagram at parable underscore ministries and visit our website at parableministries.com. We hope today's message finds you well.
Message:
Well, hello and welcome.
My name is Aaron Baddeley, and I serve on staff at Indian Trail Church in Spokane, Washington.
And actually, in the next couple of months, I'll be transitioning from this Royal Toledo Church plant in the Spokane area.
And it's my pleasure to be with you on this podcast today.
And in the spirit of that, I wanted to address the why and the what of evangelism.
In other words, we'll be covering the reasons we evangelize, and then we'll examine what it means to evangelize.
And time depending, we'll cover some hurdles to evangelism and how to think about those.
But first, why evangelism?
And allow me to take you on a journey with me through our Bible.
So buckle up, we'll start in Genesis 1, verses 26 through 27, Genesis 1, 26 through 27, and we read, Then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him.
Male and female, he created them.
Here, God creates mankind in his image and likeness, and it's repeated.
These words are annoyingly mysterious to us as modern readers, but they were not mysterious to ancient readers, the first readers of Genesis 1.
Image and likeness were used when a ruler conquered and he'd settle an area, and before the ruler left to return to his original country or ruling place after conquering the new area, that ruler would erect monuments featuring his likeness in the cities that he conquered.
And this likeness, this image communicated his new rule or his reign and his authority over the conquered city.
When God calls humanity his likeness or his image, he's expressing his authority and rule, his dominion through humanity.
And humanity, humanity alone is in God's image, meaning we embody his qualities, we do his work, we are living symbols of his presence and we act on his behalf in his creation.
It is an elevated, it is a unique position.
Nothing else in God's creation receives these types of privileges and relationship, only mankind.
But God's image bearers, they quickly present a problem after being deceived by Satan in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, they believe Satan's lies.
They presume that they can be as God's themselves and they deliberately cast away God's authority.
And instead they proclaim their autonomy, their own rule, and they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
This plunges creation into the curse of sin.
So rather than a peaceful relationship with the earth, man's labor is cursed and instead of giving birth to image bearers in bliss, childbirth will be arduous.
Instead of enjoying perfect fellowship with God, man is banished from God's presence.
And instead of enjoying eternal life in God's world, mankind is sentenced to die.
And something else actually happens to humanity after this.
Humanity was fundamentally altered and instead of being born in perfect innocence in the fellowship of God, subsequent or following children are born as sinners by nature.
And as Genesis continues, we read heartbreaking verses about this, like Genesis 8.21, where it says, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.
Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.
Referring, of course, to the flood.
Fast forward a little bit later in Genesis 11, the people on the earth again rise in rebellion against God.
And the rebellion in chapter 11 is very specific.
This is Genesis 11, 4.
It says, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.
Here at the tower of Babel in Genesis 11, this is the literal opposite of everything God commanded humanity to do as image bearers and markers of God's authority and presence on earth.
God frustrates Babel by confusing their languages and dispersing them.
And it makes their attempt to becoming like God impossible.
And this type of tension goes all the way through your Bible.
The Gentile nations, they'll be given over to rampant idolatry and destruction.
Even Israel will make images out of gold into calves throughout her history.
That happens multiple times.
Israel will fall, worshipping objects of wood and stone and metal.
Israel will be tempted by the high places, the cultic trees, by the human sacrifice cults of neighboring nations.
And you should read into that, image slayers, right?
And all the while, humanity is constantly exchanging the glory that they have as God's image bearers.
And they are intent on stealing that glory by worshipping things that they can manipulate and make worship themselves, namely idols.
But the good news of the Bible is the good news of God, calling sinful humanity back to himself in mercy and grace.
And God executes his plan to bring humanity back to himself through Abraham.
And listen to God call Abraham the father of Israel.
This is Genesis again, Genesis 17.
It says, verses four through eight says, Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.
No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.
I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you, and I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you, and I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.
Through God's covenant with Abraham, you hear God's heart for the restoration of sinful humanity.
You hear God will be the father of nations.
You hear Abraham's name will be great and God will be God to Abraham's offspring.
And yet, later, flowing from Abraham and his offspring, the nation of Israel, they will consistently fail this covenant as God's son, just like Adam.
It's so interesting.
This is Hosea jumping to a minor prophet, Hosea 11 verses 1 through 2, describing Israel.
The offspring of Abraham says, When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
The more they were called, the more they went away.
They kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.
Even as God calls his son Israel, you see continually the failure of God's son.
The more God called, the more they went away, just like their father, Adam.
This passage in Hosea 11 is applied to Jesus, interestingly enough, in Matthew 2, Matthew 2, verses 13 through 15.
It says, Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you.
For Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.
And he rose, took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod.
This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.
Out of Egypt I called my son.
The point of Jesus fulfilling this passage is not that Hosea was predicting Jesus Christ.
The point of this passage is that Jesus is succeeding in every way where Israel failed.
And you could say it this way.
Israel was freed from slavery in Egypt physically, and yet they remained in bondage to slavery spiritually.
This is not true in Christ.
As God's son, Jesus came out of Egypt, and he leads his people out of bondage completely.
And he fulfills what Hosea 11 is desperately crying out for.
Likewise, Jesus is baptized in Luke chapter 3, and you should immediately be taken back to your Old Testament, the creation story, and the flood story, where we previously discussed image and likeness of God.
This is Luke 3, 21-22.
It says, Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.
And a voice came from heaven, You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.
You should hear a lot of that Noah language, of a dove descending, the heavens opening.
And immediately after this statement from God, Luke goes to a genealogy of Jesus.
And the genealogy ends this way in Luke 3.38, it says, The son of Enoch, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
In other words, Jesus fulfills what everyone from Adam up until Jesus failed to do.
As sons of God, they all fell short.
But Jesus, the son of God, did not fall short.
He fulfilled all righteousness.
He is God's beloved son with whom God is well pleased.
And because of the accomplishments of Jesus Christ, the nations from Judea, Sumeria, and the ends of the earth are all being called into the family of God.
They are being baptized into the new covenant, just like God promised Abraham all the way back in Genesis 17.
They are baptized into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
And in Jesus Christ, the fall of mankind into sin is undone.
Even including death.
And the reason why we start here for the why of evangelism is because it is through Jesus Christ alone, who is Son of God by nature, we are then all made sons and daughters of God by adoption.
I'm going to say that again.
Through Jesus Christ, Son of God by nature, we are all made sons and daughters of God by adoption.
And now, instead of image bearers who exchange God for idols and forsake their calling as image bearers of God, we now are being shaped by the Holy Spirit into the true image of God, namely God's Son, Jesus Christ.
And listen to these verses in the New Testament about the image we now possess in Christ.
Let's start with Romans 8-29.
It says, For those whom he foreknew, this is God, those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Colossians 3-10, it says, And have put on the new self, in the middle of the sentence, sorry, but, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
1 Corinthians 15-49, Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, that's Adam, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven, Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 4-24, And to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness.
And we could actually go on and on, but why we evangelize now boils down to two truths.
And truth number one is we evangelize all of humanity because all of humanity is created in the image and likeness of God.
We evangelize all of humanity because all of humanity is created in the image and likeness of God.
And as we mentioned previously, the problem is that humanity uses their God-given characteristics and qualities to pursue unrighteousness and to worship what is created instead of their creator.
Evangelism then is the calling back, that calling back of humanity to their creator.
And the call is a call of grace, of mercy, a call of adoption and restoration of sinners who are to walk in the new image of Jesus Christ, the true Son of God.
Evangelism is restoring the name of God to a wayward and rebellious people in faith and repentance, and it's all in the power and call of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
And this leads to our second truth about evangelism, which is about the rule and reign of Jesus Christ.
This is truth number two.
It's we evangelize because through Jesus Christ, Son of God by nature, we are all made sons and daughters of God by adoption.
We evangelize because through Jesus Christ, Son of God by nature, we are all made sons and daughters of God by adoption.
And it's because Jesus has succeeded as Son of God by nature, then all authority in heaven and earth is his.
And in this, he is the true and better Adam.
He is exercising and has exercised total and perfect dominion over all creation, as God commanded precisely in Genesis 1 and 2 for humanity.
Jesus Christ, he perfectly fulfills Psalm 8, which is building on Genesis 1 and 2.
And Psalm 8 reads this, verses 3 through 8.
It reads this way.
When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands, and you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whoever passes along the paths of the seas.
And this is the essence of the Great Commission in Matthew when Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
And you can hear that a Genesis language and Psalm 8 language that you have put all things under his feet.
So all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
Because of the accomplishments of Jesus Christ that result in his rule and reign, and because Jesus Christ literally embodies true and new humanity, we then call the nations into his rule and reign.
Those who respond to the call, they receive a new name, the name of the family of God.
They are being baptized into the name of God as these newly created sons and daughters, formerly fallen and disgraced by nature.
That's the why.
That's the why of evangelism.
But moving from the why, we are now going to address the what of evangelism.
What is evangelism?
In one sense, evangelism is simply calling people to follow Christ.
It's very simply calling people to follow Christ.
Shortly, we are going to fill this definition out a little bit more.
But Jesus truly models the simplicity of evangelism as He calls people during His ministry.
We are going to read Mark 4, verses 18-22.
It says, While walking by the sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea.
But they were fishermen, and He said to them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.
Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.
And going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, in the boat with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets, and He called them.
Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed Him.
This calling of people to follow Jesus, it's not just unique to Jesus and the apostles, however.
And in 2 Corinthians, Paul describes the role of every Christian, every Christian, not just apostles, as ambassadors for Christ.
In 2 Corinthians 5, 18-20, describes this.
It says, All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us.
We implore you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
For our sake, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
An ambassador is someone who represents a foreign ruler in another state or another country.
And an ambassador acts with this representative authority on behalf of that sovereign.
And the ambassador's job is to somehow embody their nation and their ruler's directives.
In other words, they don't bring their own agenda and opinion.
They bring the interests and the qualities of their nation.
And this is our role as ambassadors.
We are not these autonomous little queens and kings of our lives sharing whatever comes to our mind and whatever we feel like.
Rather, we are given specific directives from a specific and living king with a specific message, with a specific behavior.
And we are not to live according to the foreign affairs of this world.
Rather, we're called to live as exiles in a foreign land, as 1 Peter says.
We're acting as ambassadors from another kingdom.
And as ambassadors, God makes his appeal to the world through us.
As ambassadors, God makes his appeal to the world through us.
Specifically, as ambassadors, we implore people to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
And that's where I'm going to leave us today with a simple sketch of the why of evangelism and the what of evangelism and the sweeping fulfillment of Christ on our behalf.
Son of God by nature, making us sons and daughters of God by adoption.
And praise the Lord and thank you for joining in this time with me.
Outro:
Thank you for listening to Pickled Parables. If you enjoyed this message, please rate us, subscribe, and share with your friends. If you're interested in more things like this, check out our secondary podcast called My Dusky Bible. To stay up to date with all things Parable, follow us on Instagram at parable underscore ministries and visit our website at parableministries.com. Parable is a volunteer organization and we would deeply appreciate your prayers. Thank you for joining us today, we'll catch you later.
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