This is a lightly edited transcript of what I actually said when I delivered this message at Calvary Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio, in 2002, on returning from a summer mission trip to Poland and Latvia. It differs from what I planned to say; for the prepared text and audio, see the Messages page. (The opening trip report, which included a narrated slideshow, has been condensed here.)
Let me begin with heartfelt thanks for all your prayers and financial support. Knowing that so many were praying for us the whole time was a real joy and encouragement, and you had a great part through your prayers in what God did over there. Let me share a few answers to prayer, tied to the very things I’d asked you to pray for before we left.
Answers to Prayer
On our flight from D.C. to Vienna, Melissa and I were bumped to standby on an overbooked flight—along with about twenty-five others—but the team prayed, and just minutes before departure they found seats for us; we all flew together, with no empty seats on the plane. In Riga, one of the girls, April, left her passport under a bus seat—a serious matter where theft is rampant—but after diligent prayer it was found still there days later. Again and again, God brought the specific people we’d met and prayed for back across our paths and into our meetings. We’d prayed for open doors, and God gave us far more than we expected—into public schools and English classes, a girls’ detention center, orphanages, and an hour on a radio station reaching some seventy thousand people—so that we shared the gospel with literally thousands. We’d prayed for boldness and clarity, and time and again the Lord brought answers to mind I’d never considered: when a sharp young man pressed me on the purpose of the resurrection, or when strongly Catholic kids in Poland believed in purgatory, the Lord brought to mind the thief on the cross—who had no time to earn any merit, yet whom Jesus promised, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” God enabled young men who’d never preached to preach—through translators who’d never translated—gave us strength when we grew weary, softened the mild resistance we met, and knit our very different personalities into a real unity, both among the team and with the missionaries. He also gave us safe travel throughout. I thank you for your prayers and the part you had in it.
What the Lord Taught Me
A few things stood out. First, the joy of ministry. Day in and day out we ministered together—in the churches, handing out tracts, sharing the gospel, playing music on the streets—and I found myself thinking, “If I could be anywhere on the planet right now, I’d be right here doing this.” There truly is joy in serving the Lord. Second, God’s sovereignty even in changed plans. Our schedule was disrupted almost immediately—we were to head straight to Riga but got held in Poland a day—and the Lord used that delay to open doors into public schools we’d never otherwise have entered, which even produced a translator for our later ministry. He works in spite of our changed plans to give us opportunities we’d never have had. Third, God can use anyone, regardless of weakness. You may think you have little to offer—that you’re not a good speaker or singer—but I watched the Lord powerfully use missionaries who, humanly speaking, weren’t the most obviously gifted. God takes willing people and accomplishes his work through them, in spite of any weakness.
Briefly, the trip itself: nine of us, in our third year going to Poland and Latvia. We flew into Warsaw and, after that unexpected delay, took a thirteen-hour bus to Riga, Latvia, where we worked with a national pastor, Sergei, and his wife, Ilona, planting a church. Most of our ministry there was musical concerts on Monday and Wednesday evenings—about forty-five minutes of singing, a chalk drawing of a Bible story by Erin, and then preaching—while by day we practiced, passed out thousands of invitations and tracts, and played on the streets to meet people (one young man, Igor, was studying in his dormitory when the team happened to stop and play right beneath his window). We were on Christian radio for an hour, and—to our surprise—spent some forty hours recording a CD, since the people there loved our music. Several came faithfully to the services afterward, still not yet believers but wonderfully open. From Riga we returned to Warsaw to work with Mike and Becky Peterson, whose small church has struggled for acceptance in an entirely Roman Catholic area; we ran morning Bible clubs for forty to fifty children and a closing carnival, building many relationships and reaching people who’d always refused before. Finally, we spent two weeks in Kraków with Robert and Janelle Sulik. Much of our evangelistic effort there went into our three translators, Milena, Agatha, and Violet, with whom we had long, in-depth conversations about the gospel.
A few ongoing prayer requests: for Sergei and Ilona in Riga, who are losing their rented building and hope to buy land and build before prices soar with the European Union; for Robert and Janelle Sulik in Kraków, who have outgrown their space and need a place to meet; for the continuation of the many relationships that were built (and I should say plainly—the missionaries weren’t expecting five thousand conversions, which is rare on the field; they were overjoyed simply for the doors we helped open into their communities, and they’re following up); that the Lord would send more laborers into these fields (Sergei and Ilona have prayed for years for another couple to help—and it’s amazing how quickly you find a job on a mission trip; everywhere I’ve gone, people beg for help); and for direction in the lives of us who went, several of whom returned aflame for missions. As Jesus said, “Lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest” (John 4:35), and, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers” (Matthew 9:37–38)—there are many cities over there without a single gospel-preaching church.
A Multifaceted Gospel
Now let me share some thoughts from God’s Word. I’ve titled the message “A Multifaceted Gospel for a Multireligious and Multicultural World.” Over there we met all kinds of people—Roman Catholics, atheists, pleasure-seekers with no interest in religion, and people who assume they’re saved though their lives are given over to sin. What do you say to each? The simple answer is that they all need one thing: the gospel of Jesus Christ. No matter the culture, language, or religion, all people share the same root problem—they are sinners in need of God’s grace—and therefore all need the same solution. The gospel is not a message from days gone by; it remains relevant everywhere, and will until the end of time.
But not everyone is approached in exactly the same way. Is the gospel more than one message? No—its content is one, and it never changes, no matter who hears it or when. Yet there are times to emphasize different aspects of it. Look at how Jesus dealt with people: he had no single memorized formula, but tailored his presentation to each person’s need and situation. (I’m not against learning a plan for sharing the gospel—that’s a good starting point—but notice how Jesus fit the message to the person.) To Nicodemus he said, “You must be born again”; to the rich young ruler, “Keep the commandments” (exposing his love of money); to a lawyer, “Love God and your neighbor”; to the woman at the well, he offered “living water”; to the crowds, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood…you have no life”; and to others, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.” The essential content was the same, but the form differed, applied to each person’s specific sin. We see the same in Scripture’s own writers. Paul, addressing people who thought they could earn righteousness, hammers away at justification by faith alone, apart from works. James, addressing people who thought being saved was merely knowing the facts without submitting to Christ, stresses that true faith transforms the life (James 2). Some read Paul and James as contradicting—but they don’t; they were addressing different problems, applying the one gospel to meet different needs. So while Jesus had one gospel, he had many ways of presenting it; and while Paul and James agreed on how a person is saved, they emphasized different truths for different hearers. It matters, then, to know whom you’re dealing with—what a Roman Catholic believes, or what a pleasure-seeker needs to hear—so the one gospel can be applied in the form that meets the need.
Four Ways to Emphasize the Gospel
Some of the highlights of the whole trip were the chances to sit down, open the Scriptures, and watch someone’s face change as they heard, for the first time, liberating news after being held in bondage by a wrong gospel. Let me offer four ways we can emphasize different aspects of the one gospel, depending on whom we’re talking to—by no means exhaustive.
First, the gospel of joy for the worldly pleasure-seeker. Many people want nothing to do with religion; they’ve given themselves to the party life, a nice job and car, living for this world. Simply telling such a person, “You’re a sinner, Jesus died for you, believe in him,” often meets no interest—they don’t care about the future because they’re wrapped up in the present. (I’ve had people tell me they’d rather enjoy this world and go to hell than live the “miserable” Christian life—a distorted view, but they’re convinced life is best apart from God.) The gospel’s answer is that true joy is found only in a right relationship with Jesus Christ, and that the pursuit of sin is empty. Jesus did exactly this with the Samaritan woman—a woman given over to sin, who’d been with many men and was empty inside: “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again…a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14); and, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger” (John 6:35). So sometimes people need to be confronted with the emptiness of sin and shown that only Jesus, the living water, can satisfy the soul’s deepest thirst.
Second, the gospel of truth for the unbelieving philosopher. Especially in the big cities we met intellectual, university-educated skeptics who think they’ve disproved God by science and evolution. Such people need to be shown that their own thinking is self-contradictory, and that truth is found only in the gospel. Igor, the young man I mentioned, fell into this category; after hours of conversation he admitted he’d come a long way, saying, “What you’ve explained is finally something that satisfies me—I’ve talked to many priests and nothing they say makes sense”—and I could only reply that I’d told him nothing special; I’d simply shared the Scriptures.
Third, the gospel of righteousness for the religiously self-righteous. Every false religion teaches essentially the same way of salvation: you must perform, you must be righteous, to be accepted by God. Only the gospel says otherwise—you don’t achieve your own righteousness; you receive the righteousness of another. This especially needed emphasis with the Roman Catholics in Poland, who are taught that God gives grace and forgives sins through Christ, but will accept them into heaven based on how they perform. We often present only half the picture—that our problem is sin, and that Christ died to pay for it. True—but there’s a second half. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” We have a twofold problem: not only have we sinned (falling short of God’s law), but we have failed to earn the perfect righteousness God demands. Christ met both—he bore our sin, and he also lived a life of perfect obedience in our place. So the gospel is not only that Jesus became sin for us so our sins could be forgiven, but that he earned righteousness for us so we could be accepted with God. When you put your full confidence in his work alone, God counts all your sins forgiven—past, present, and future—and counts you perfectly righteous, accepting you as fully as he accepts his own Son. Far too many think they must strive daily to earn God’s favor—“if I work harder, do more good things, God will accept me more”—but you are accepted not on the basis of how hard you work but on the basis of what God has done in his Son. What a joy it was to share this with one of our translators, to whom it was completely new; her face lit up at the liberating news that God accepts her not for what she strives to do but for what Christ has already done in her place. And fourth, the gospel of true faith for those brought up in circles like our own—people who think they’re Christians because they have the right information in their heads, who know they’re sinners and that Jesus died and that it’s by faith, but who have never had a true, transforming faith in the Son of God. They too need the gospel presented with particular emphasis on what saving faith really is.
Applications
To sum up: no matter the people group, culture, language, or religious background, all people have essentially the same problem and need the same solution—the gospel of Jesus Christ, an unchanging message. Yet those varied backgrounds often call for emphasizing different aspects of the gospel to meet different needs. Just as Jesus dealt with people differently, we should be sensitive to the needs of those we’re speaking with; and while a memorized plan is a fine start, being truly effective means knowing the gospel so thoroughly that we can draw out whatever aspect a person needs.
A few applications. First, be reminded of the greatness of the gospel—there is really nothing else people need. We don’t have to move on to better methods and new techniques because the gospel is “outdated”; many churches chase fancy ways to draw people in, thinking the gospel no longer works, but Scripture shows it applies to every individual, whatever the need. There is no person or people group for whom the gospel is irrelevant, so let’s be renewed in confidence that it’s what we need to know and what the world needs to hear. Second, and more personally: in the struggles of your Christian life, you need look no further than what God has done for you in the gospel. Too often we treat the gospel as a message only for the lost, and imagine that the saved need merely some practical principles—but Paul kept taking believers back to the gospel. If it can meet every need an unbeliever has, it can surely meet ours, for they don’t really differ. So bring your daily difficulties, worries, and heartaches to what God has done in Christ, and ask which aspect of the gospel he has provided to meet your need today.
Third—my main point—go beyond a merely simplistic presentation of the gospel. That’s a good start, but we need to delve into a fuller understanding: study how Jesus gave out the gospel, how Paul and Peter preached in Acts, and how Scripture applies the gospel to different people and needs, so you’re thoroughly equipped for those you meet. Every mission trip reminds me how much better I need to know both the Bible and other religions in order to deal wisely with people. So I’d encourage you to strive to know the gospel so deeply that it simply flows out of you—not a memorized routine, but the very essence of your life, because you turn to it every day. And finally, wherever we go—not only on a mission trip—let’s stay in ministry mode, actively looking for opportunities to share the gospel.
Father, we thank you for the grace you’ve given us in Jesus Christ, for the gospel and all you’ve done for us, and that all our needs are met in it. Thank you that it is a timeless message that does not change and meets the needs of every people group. Thank you for saving us and for the privilege of being ambassadors of that message. Renew in each of us a zeal to know the gospel better, to give it out, and to be used by you in ministering it—even here in this city. In Jesus’ name, amen.