Do I Have To Share My Faith?

1 Peter 3:13-17

 

 

Which would you rather be—would you rather be a witness for Christ or a martyr for Christ? Doesn’t anyone want to be a martyr for Christ? I can’t believe there are no volunteers to be a Christian martyr. Are we going to let the Muslim extremists put us to shame? Thousands of them are willing to strap dynamite to their chests and step on a bus to blow up twenty or so people. They are so committed to martyrdom that they train their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. Did you see this picture from about a year and a half ago? It shows a Palestinian baby with explosives strapped to his little body. Maybe they are not using babies to blow up buses yet, but it has been clearly documented that the extremists indoctrinate children with the desire to be a martyr. If you ask children what they want to be when they grow up, instead of the usual answers like fireman, policeman or schoolteacher, some of their children would answer by saying, “when I grow up I want to be a suicide bomber.”

 

All of us would rather be a witness for Christ than a martyr for Christ. But being a martyr doesn’t always mean that you are killed. In fact, the Greek word martyr just means “to be a witness”. But even that word is a little scary for Christians. We ask one another, “Have you witnessed to anyone lately?”  “Have you shared your faith—have you given your testimony?”  It is scary because it might imply knocking on doors or talking to someone about Jesus who really could care less what you believe. “Witness—No, I don’t want to witness to anyone. I’m too nervous to share my faith.” We are the kind of people who asks the question that we are asking this morning, “Do I really have to share my faith?” What we are asking is: Is sharing my faith a vital part of my relationship with God? Will God be displeased with me if I don’t?

 

Let me tell you why the question itself is misguided. Witnessing is not something you during the Thursday evening visitation program,. Sharing your faith is not a matter of leaving gospel tracts on your neighbor’s porch, ringing the doorbell and running away. Witnessing is not just a small part of your life, but as a Christian, it is your entire life. Every day of your life and every moment of each day, you are a witness for Christ. You cannot stop being a witness for Christ, but the question that needs to be answered is, will you be a good witness or a poor witness for Christ? When you go to work, you are witness for Christ. People will draw conclusions about Jesus Christ by watching what you say and what you do, by how you respond to the boss, your level of honesty, your work ethic, your language. All day long you are a witness for Christ. You are a witness for Christ in your neighborhood, at school—everywhere you go you are a witness for Christ. So will you be a good witness or a poor one?

 

This passage in 1 Peter gives several principles on how to be a consistently positive witness for Jesus Christ.   ^13 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? ^14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear what they fear^b; do not be frightened.”^{c 15} But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, ^16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. ^17 It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

How can we be a good witness for Christ? How do we draw lost people to the Savior of their souls? I get this free magazine on outreach and I would like to read one of the latest ideas that are listed here. One idea is to have a hair styling outreach. You’ve probably heard of churches that make free car repairs for single moms. This is the same idea only you give away free hair styling. This article even supplies you with a checklist of what you will need. Step two: Recruit a group of volunteer hair stylists who are willing to supply their own chair, mirrors, hair dryer, curling iron, etc. I think it is safe to say we won’t be trying that idea for a while.

Maybe this hair styling outreach idea would work great in Southern California, I don’t know, but why would anyone attempt such an outreach? I think the simple answer is in order to get people to listen. Think about it. As Christians, we have the single greatest and most important message in the whole world. Absolutely nothing is more important than the message of salvation to a dying world. Our message isn’t the problem. The problem is that no one is listening to our message. So churches have hair styling outreaches in order to get people to listen. But still no one listens, because especially in the US, people feel they already most everything they need. But in this passage, Peter hits on something that will get others to listen. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

Peter says, give them hope. The people around you may not need a free haircut, but they need hope. But yet another problem is that most people think they have hope. Granted their hope is misplaced. They put hope in money, things and possessions. So God calls us to live our lives in such a way that our true hope outshines their false hope. Because we already have the hope of eternal life and the message of the gospel as our possession, our hope should serve as a beacon light pointing them to us so that we can in turn point them to Christ. But that isn’t easy, is it? Their false hope feels like real hope so they don’t think they need the real hope which we have. How then can our hope outshine theirs?

Peter answered that question by stating that hope is most visible in the midst of persecution, suffering and potential annihilation. True hope shines in adversity at the same time that false hope fades away. We saw this after 9/11. If you remember there was a 3-4 month spike in church attendance and interest in God. People were truly frightened and shook up after this tragedy so they began to look for true hope. But after the collective fear began to wane, so did their interest in spiritual things. Adversity reveals true hope.

Peter illustrates in v.14 where he wrote: . “Do not fear what they fear^b; do not be frightened.”   This is a direct quote from Isaiah chapter eight. In context, Israel was about to be destroyed by the Assyrians. This was no mere threat. God had firmly declared that the Assyrian army would destroy Israel and carry its people away into exile. And this is precisely what happened. The Assyrian army swept down from the north and wiped out every nation and city in their path, including Israel. Assyria was the world superpower of its day, but it didn’t get that way merely by threatening other countries. Assyria flexed their military muscle and dominated the world of their day. So Israel knew Assyria was coming. It was just a matter of time before their armies reached their own front door. It was in that context that Isaiah said to the Israelites, . “Do not fear what they fear^b; do not be frightened.”^   Even though they were to be punished by the Assyrians, God commanded that they not fear and lose hope. Did you catch that? Even in the midst of pending annihilation, God demanded that they not fear the enemy.

The text in Isaiah goes on to say, “Do not fear what they fear…The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread.” You see this was Israel’s problem all along. They did not fear God, but constantly lived in fear of their surrounding enemies. They had a healthy fear of man, but no fear of God. But they were to fear God because God is the one who held the power to bless them, as he did in the past, or punish them, as he was about to do. The message is clear: if you do not fear God, you cannot trust him. If you do not revere and fear God as the supreme power over all of your blessings and all your problems, then you cannot possibly trust him to take care of you.

This week Ryan asked me what would happen if another country were to take over our country. He wanted to know if they would kill us, or make us move to their country, or what. When he asked the question, I was trying to conceive of such a thing happening. I was imagining the U.S. being invaded by Canada. Or perhaps Jamaica or even a coalition of Caribbean countries could sail north and invade Florida. Maybe Mexico will march through Texas and capture Washington DC. When we imagine such a scenario, it almost makes us laugh. It seems so ludicrous and impossible. But why? Why do we so easily dismiss an invasion by Canada or Jamaica? Is it because we have an overwhelming fear of and trust in God? No, it’s because we trust in the military strength of the U.S. We don’t have hope in God, we have hope in mankind.

Peter said, Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.  So why is no one asking? No one is asking about our great hope in God because it simply doesn’t exist. How many times in your life have you been asked about your secret hope? I can only remember a handful of times that people have asked me a similar question, and they have all been related to how I have handled stress in the workplace. In the often stressful medical environment is which I used to work, a few people asked how I could stay so calm. People are thirsty for hope. If our lives demonstrated a well of hope that spilled out and ran into the streets, people would come running to us and beg us to drink from our well of hope. Sure, we trust in God for our salvation. We know we need God to get to Heaven, but do we need God just as much to get through tomorrow? This is why I said we witness at every moment of our lives. The presence of hope is a positive witness for Christ and a lack of hope is a negative witness for Christ.

There is not a person in this room who has an overabundance of hope. But don’t lose hope at your lack of hope. Hope is something that can grow steadily over the years of walking with the Lord in obedience. Moreover, we can be a positive witness for Christ even if our hope is not spilling out of our lives. I would like to spend the rest of the time with practical suggestions on how to improve our daily witness for Christ.

1. Take advantage of adversity. Peter wrote to his readers in the midst of persecution and unjust suffering. Isaiah wrote in the midst of pending annihilation. We need to be able to take advantage of times of suffering and persecution to let our hope shine. True hope will shine in adversity while false hope will die out. Should we ask God for more adversity so that our hope will shine? I don’t think we need to ask for more adversity because we know it will be coming anyway. As we said last week, if the Lord tarries, persecution and suffering will continue to increase. Will you be ready to take advantage of these things? How are you doing right now? How do you respond when you are mistreated? Do you lash out and fight back, or do you suffer unjustly and receive a blessing? True hope shines brightly in adversity.

2. Witness actively with words. As Peter said, we should be prepared to give an answer when people ask, but it is not enough to wait around for them to ask us, we need to be active in our witness. Philemon v.6 says, “I pray that you will be active in sharing your faith so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” This is one of the hardest things about witnessing. We don’t mind being prepared just in case every five years or so someone asks us about our faith. That’s easy, but we get nervous when we think about going on the offensive.

I want to take time to explain how you can be active in sharing your faith in a non-threatening manner. I am referring to the 40 Days of Purpose campaign coming up next month. Please pull out the insert in your bulletin. As you can see from the schedule, there are three components to these 40 days. During these weeks every Sunday morning message will be related to a different topic of the purpose driven life. But Sunday morning is only meant to reinforce the most important aspects of the 40 days: your personal reading and study and your small group involvement. We want every person to have their own copy of the Purpose Driven Life. We would like you to commit to reading a chapter per day during the 40 days. The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.

But we would also like each person to join a small group during the 40 days. Here is the challenge: we want to see 100 people in 15 different small groups. But you might be thinking, “We don’t have 100 adults in our whole church!”  You’re right, we don’t. So where are they going to come from? From outside our church. What a radical concept: instead of waiting for the people to come to church, we take the gospel to them. In order to do this we will need to have 15 small group leaders. Yes, you guessed right again, we have never had 15 small groups, so we will need to rely on those of you who have never led a small group before. There are two reasons why this will be relatively easy for even a newcomer. The first reason is due to the popularity of this book. It has sold almost 11 million copies and has been on the NY Times bestseller list for 49 weeks. If you ask someone to join a study group on the Purpose Driven Life, many people will know what you are talking about. (I should also say that Rick warren does not earn a single penny from these millions of books. Any profit goes right back into their ministry.)

The second reason why this would be an easy group to lead is that the teaching is done by Rick Warren. As a leader, all you have to do is invite people to the study and then pop the videotape in the VCR. After Warren’s teaching is done the study guide has questions for the group to answer. Almost anyone could do this. Here is the challenge. We need at least 15 leaders, so I challenge you to form a group of your own. Begin praying about people you could invite to your group, and preferably they would be people not from Grace Church. This 40 DOP has tremendous outreach potential. As you can see from the schedule, just after the 40 days will be our Easter service which will have an intentional outreach focus. Imagine if from your personal invitations to a study group or to our Easter service we ended up with at least 150 people on Easter morning. You are a witness every day of your life—why not use the 40 DOP to grow in your ability to be a positive witness for Christ?

3. Witness with the right attitude and actions. Even in the midst of persecution, Peter challenges us to witness to others with gentleness and respect. Remember the news story I read last week where the man was arrested for yelling “you’re damned to hell” into the middle of a parade? Is that respectful or gentle? Most definitely not. When you share the gospel it will be foolishness to some and offensive to others. It is normal for the gospel to be offensive, it is lazy for you act offensively. Peter also warns us to keep a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. Here is a good question to ask yourself: “Is there anything in my life that would be an embarrassment to Jesus?” If our lives are an embarrassment to Jesus, then we give people a good excuse to reject him.

Be a martyr for Jesus. No, it doesn’t mean we must strap bombs to our bodies. Your daily martyrdom and witness for Christ probably will not result in your death. But are you willing to suffer for being a good witness for Christ? Do you have to share your faith? You have no choice but to be a witness for Christ. Why don’t you let our church help you to be an increasingly positive for witness for Christ.

Rich Maurer

January 4, 2004