Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we're talking about Matthew chapter 4, and particularly we're hanging around on this one verse that seems so beautiful and simple, but man, it's tricky when you think about it. Verse 19, come follow me, Jesus said, and I'll make you fishers of men. I mean, that sounds great. It's this cherished Christian turn of a phrase initiated by the God become man for whom the religion is named. But how much of world history has been shaped by this go tell other people evangelistic impulse of Christianity? Now, you want to see a Rorschach test right here, right now? Some of you who listen to this are like, yes, the world has been made beautiful by the transmission of the gospel, by people who hear this and have gone and communicated this truth of Jesus, and people have been set free and given life and life eternal and forgiveness of sins and purpose by having an encounter with Jesus through that truth being relayed by Christians who are following this evangelistic impulse that Jesus puts forth. But some of you are reading that Rorschach print completely differently, I promise you. And you're sitting there like, yeah, the world has been changed by this impulse because Christians just can't keep their hands to themselves. And people who claim Jesus as their God, they get conquery and territorial and colonialism. And look, neither of those are really a fair or complete characterization of what's gone down there at all. And it'd be fun to at some point make some content that's like, hey, has Christianity been good or not? And then I get to make my case for all the awesome things that have happened as a result of Christianity, and I would have fun even owning all of the gross things that have come as a result of Christianity. Obviously, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think the net were positive, but that doesn't mean that I'm immune or blind to all of the or many of the misguided, weird stuff that comes with a religion that is constantly outwardly focused. But at the same time, it's kind of like a shark that quits swimming. You don't got that water running across the gills, you don't have a shark anymore. You guys the big belly-up stinking bloat of nothing that eventually dissolves and goes away. Likewise with Christianity, the impulse that keeps it going in terms of human behavior is evangelism. But what is actually evangelism? Is it always be closing? Is it Christianity is about making relationships with people that seem genuine and sincere, but it's actually like Amway or insurance sales or one of those Etsy parties or the things that the ladies do now, where they invite you over and they're like, we're friends, surprise, buy something, or we're not friends anymore. I've seen both. Now, Jesus didn't stutter here. The first disciples he's calling right here: Peter, Andrew, James, John, the first thing he's telling them is this is going to go beyond you. This isn't just about you. You are going to have a role in this world that is outward focused. And you know, Jesus isn't playing. And if we go and we look through the Old Testament, and yes, I did mark these so it would be more efficient today. And we go back to God's call to Abraham. It has an outward focus. God, well, Abram is the guy's name at the time. God says to him, I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So even what sometimes looks like kind of an ingrown Old Testament, this is just a conversation between uh local people and their local ethnic deity. No, that's not really what it is. That's a mischaracterization. This thing always had an outward impulse. If we bounce ahead, what would this be? A thousand years in the history of this story to the Psalms, and we look at Psalm 105.1. It says, Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known among the nations what he has done. The impulse hasn't changed and it's been a millennium. The idea is still that you take this message out to other people. But did you notice the theme between the two? It wasn't just language here in Psalm 105 or in the calling of Abram that's about go tell people about what's going on here and get them to sign up for the thing and donate or become a part of my political movement so that we can have the biggest country and we can make the biggest guns or swords and we can stab and shoot more people and win things. It's not the language at all. The language here is a description of a blessing. All the nations of the earth are going to be blessed through you. And here it says, give thanks to the name of the Lord, call his name, make known among the nations what he has done. Uh, sing to him, sing praise to him. So the idea seems to be twofold if I'm reading it right so far. You've got God being exalted as the perfect being, the originator of existence, that being that decided that existence instead of non-existence would be how things are going to be, which I'm very much for. I'm super glad there's an existence. So, on the one hand, uh God is glorious and awesome. And on the other hand, being aware of that and around it is a blessing in and of itself, intrinsically. Can you hear all of the upward question mark sounds at the end of my words? It's because this is a bit of a tricky and a difficult question. But as we move forward into the Gospel of Matthew, we're going to see in the very next chapter we get to, Jesus actually clarifies a little bit why we're doing this Fissures of Men thing, why the whole religion has this outward focus. And he is going to say, You are the light of the world. Uh, this is verse 14, by the way, of chapter 5 in Matthew. You're the light of the world, a city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl, instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. Huh. So I guess this is the same language as the Old Testament, right? Like even the stuff that you do that is not screwed up, and as we'll see when we get to chapter five, the stuff that you do that is reflective of the values of this great king, Jesus, and his kingdom, all that stuff, it's not about punching your ticket to get into the kingdom. This language assumes that these are people who are already following the king, have sworn loyalty to him, and are embracing the values and cultural ethics of this new kingdom that they're a part of. These people are in, and the reason that they keep living like this is because they're also in this other kingdom. This is this one that we're contrasting the kingdom of God with, the broken, messed up, uh dirty one that has weird backwards values. And so the people who are kingdom people go and live in the world kingdom, and all of their kingdom-y stuff looks weird there, and it brings glory to God. And the idea is that they might see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. Now, if this is starting to sound a little different to you than how we often think about evangelism or being fishers of men, if this sounds a little different than the always-be closing, go out, search, destroy, find the people who believe the wrong things, use whatever means necessary to get them to sign up for the Christian thing. If it sounds different than that, good, because I think the impulse toward evangelism from Jesus and the gospels and in the Bible in general is different from that. In Matthew chapter 10, we run into the first of two commissionings of the disciples. So Jesus said, I'm gonna make you fishers of Ben. And then we get to chapter 10, and we really start to see what that looks like. And I don't have time to break all of this down, but it lists all of the disciples, and then Jesus goes into his second great speech of the book of Matthew. We'll talk more about how the bowl, the whole book is built around these big, gigantic speeches. But right in the middle is this commissioning. He says, I'm sending you out like sheep among wolves. That's rough. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. I cannot wait to break this down all the way when we get there. But simply put, now Jesus is getting into the very practical. If you are a follower of Jesus, you are expected to go out with the message of Jesus somehow. How are you supposed to do it? Well, uh you're supposed to be innocent and shrewd. So don't be a doe-eyed idiot that goes around and does a terrible job. Like one, because then you probably don't want to get killed, but two, because it's just not effective. But also, as you are smart and you're reading the playing field and trying to understand the people who you're trying to talk about this thing that you believe to be the realest, truest thing ever with, yeah, you just gotta know your audience. That's shrewdness. You gotta not say things that are dumb, casual throwaway remarks that are gonna put nothing but distance between you and the people that you'd like to have a conversation with. But at the same time, you can't punt on all of the values of the kingdom in order to get people to sign up to be a part of the kingdom. If you punt on all the values of the kingdom and compromise them all in the way you communicate the values of the kingdom, the the whole thing implodes and uh just you look like a joke and a clown and it makes God look bad. And some of the ugliest things we can picture are just exactly that activity. It's it's the message and what you're messaging about not lining up. Well, then finally, Matthew concludes his gospel, spoiler alert, with yet another commissioning. And this one seems to be an open-ended call to just stay after it. So, Matthew 28, verse 16. Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go, and they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you, and surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age. And then, after the gospels, did you know that Jesus is actually on screen doing stuff after the gospels? It's really, really brief. You probably did know that. It's in Acts chapter one. Jesus is still hanging around. This is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke. And all the disciples are like, all right, well, all of that go reach out stuff is over. They murdered you. You're no doubt super mad. You came back from the grave. It is time for you to lead us on a rampage where we are going to turn over the tables of the world and make them pay for crucifying, you know, God in the flesh. And Jesus is like, nah, we'll do a reckoning some other time. Right now we're going to continue with my whole great commission deal. And he says, Don't leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift of my father, the gift my father has promised, which you've heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit. We'll have to get to that later. Then he said to them, It's not for you to know the times or dates the Father is set by his own authority, but you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you'll be my witnesses, here we go, in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And after he says that, he gets, you know, taken up into heaven and he ascends. So what we are seeing here is beginning to end, not just in the Old Testament, but also in the ministry and life and teaching of Jesus himself. There is no getting around this evangelism thing. And in fact, Jesus actually very significantly forms and crafts and disciples and coaches his team that he put together to be really stinking good at it. But even then, they're not all that great at it. And I said we'd talk about this later. I guess now is later. And so then the Holy Spirit shows up, crazy stuff happens that I still don't know how to wrap my brain around. I don't know what to do with it, other than I can see the results and I trust the rest of the document. But miraculous stuff happens that empowers them to see the church grow by orders of magnitude in a matter of days, hours, weeks, whatever it is, and the whole thing takes off. And then time and again, every time the disciples are confronted with these difficult things, you know, it looks like they're remembering, yeah, Jesus said this was an outward-focused religion. It would be much easier to go and continue to hide and huddle in our room. But the impulse of the religion is to go out, to be a blessing to the nations, not to hoard this thing for ourselves. And every time they go do it, they see effective things happening. Sometimes in tragedy that advances the church and the message of Jesus and the kingdom, sometimes in awesome, happy stuff that advances the message of the kingdom. But tomorrow, we're gonna look a little bit more specifically about good evangelism, bad evangelism, how is this played out over time? And what do we do with this right now? Whether we're on the giving end as people who are really into all of this stuff, or on the receiving end as people who are curious about this stuff, but aren't Christians and maybe don't even have plans to become Christians. Okay, I'm Matt is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. More about this evangelism thing tomorrow.