Youtube Video

MP3 Audio

Summary

This conversation focuses on the importance of evangelism within the church, exploring biblical teachings, cultural practices, and the role of Jewish Christians in early Christianity. It discusses the significance of confession, baptism, and effective strategies for engaging with the community. The speakers emphasize the need for cultural diversity in the church and the importance of teaching children about faith as a means of evangelism.

Chapters

00:00 Focus on Evangelism
01:26 Understanding Acts and Early Evangelism
08:23 Cultural Practices in the Early Church
13:32 Confession and Its Role in Community
21:45 Navigating Church Practices and Cultural Diversity
30:59 The Complexity of Public Confession
36:24 Understanding Baptism and Its Authority
43:37 Effective Evangelism Strategies for Preachers
56:20 Engaging Children in Evangelism

Transcript *This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.*

Open Forum (00:00)
All right, so we began this question and answer series several years ago, and we want to focus on the topic. So it’s not really an open forum as per, well, I don’t know if there’s any open forums left in the Brotherhood. I guess there still are. But not just any question out of the blue. Now, at the end, if we have time, we can answer some of those other questions that come out of the blue. But we usually don’t have time. We want to focus on evangelism. But the idea is that these guys have studied these lessons pretty intense.

and they’ve delivered the lessons. And so if you have a question about the topics, you what better person to ask than those who just delivered them. And we’re not here to make, you know, policy for the Church of Christ or brotherhood this or brotherhood that. ⁓ It’s just, you know, a Bible study to see what the Bible has to say about it. And when I said that, I paused for a moment because I guess this would be good time to say this, but, you know, Brother Steersman used to teach us, Jackie Steersman, when he was here, he’d say, you know, don’t say the Church of Christ.

teaches this or the Church of Christ teaches that, because you can find a Church of Christ that teaches just about anything if you look hard enough. But rather we should say, here’s what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches this, the Bible teaches that, and that we can plant our feet on. And so this is just a discussion about what does the Bible teach on these particular subjects. And so we’re not making kind of brotherhood law or anything like that. All right, so we have a lot of questions here. Some of them we touched a little bit on yesterday, but some of them we didn’t.

But here’s a question right here, and there’s two questions on, kinda like this, but a little different. It says, Acts 2 says, 3,000 were baptized. Of course, let me just say right here, about 3,000 is what it says. In River Road Church of Christ, when I was a student over here, and I can’t remember if her name was Joanne or Joan Clark, and she’s kin to Seth and all them that were here yesterday. Aaron Steele’s, no, not Aaron Steele, no, nevermind. She’s not kin to them at all, but anyway. ⁓ Anyway.

I preached my heart out as a student and said, you know, 3,000 souls. And she was an elder’s wife at the time, and she was an English teacher, retired or whatever. And she says, Brother Kenyon, the text does not say 3,000 souls. What are you talking about, man? She says it says about 3,000 souls.

I said, yeah, she’s got a point. speak where the Bible speaks. Anyway, about 3,000 souls were baptized. Many must have been visitors to Jerusalem. Is there any evidence that they evangelized when they returned home? And was it Steve that said something about that in Romans chapter 16? What is it? 16, you remember the verse? Anyway, Romans 16.

I’m going read the next question on Acts and leave it up here. But Romans 16, there’s two people mentioned. Imagine that, a preacher fixing to answer questions and he can’t find his Bible. He probably left it back at the pew back there. But anyway, Acts chapter 16, they’re going to come up with that in just a minute. Also, here’s another one that has to do with Acts. And so it says, how do you respond to those in the brotherhood and others?

who say it was okay for Jewish Christians to continue in their Jewish ways. Was that a part of the Apostles’ doctrine? And so let me just…did you find the verse? Romans 16, 7, read that, and if Steve wants to make comments on that in a moment, I’m going put this one up here too. But on this question right here, of course, I think of, you know, when Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9 verses 19 through 23,

I become all things to all men, that I might win some to Christ. To the Jews I became as a Jew, to those without the laws, without the law, but not without the law, but under the law of Christ, et cetera, that there is some cultural things that Jews could continue, that Gentiles could continue, that Paul could honor and participate in as long as they didn’t cross the line and violate ⁓ requirements from God. And sometimes they could, sometimes they couldn’t. So if that’s what the person has in mind, then

then yes, there are some things that Jews can still do. But to make it a part of salvation, like circumcision, for example. Paul refused to have Titus circumcised because they were making a condition of salvation, but he went ahead and had Timothy circumcised. And so if that’s what the question is meaning, that’s a good answer to that. But these guys may think of some other things.

think sometimes ⁓ we get pictures of the church as appearing in the book at the moment the book’s instead of thinking about it as being, this is something that’s already been going on before. And then the apostles are sending, I’m not saying everybody thinks like that, but you kind of get that. When Paul wrote to Rome, there are Christians there already.

But Paul points out that at least two of them, he makes mention of that in, well, let’s see, I knew that was going to happen. Verse 7, he says, Salute Andronikos and Junius my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners who are of note among the apostles who also have been in Christ before me.

Now, if you remember something, the Apostle Paul became a Christian in Damascus. You notice I didn’t say on the road to Damascus. But in Damascus, he became a preacher. But Acts 8 is the idea. They sent him out. So the Apostle Paul… ⁓

created a great stir. Many people left at that time period. Many people left Jerusalem. Many Christians did, okay? And when they did, they went different places. Later on, you’ll read some other things in the book of Acts about after ⁓ Cornelius becomes a Christian, they’ll mention that others then began to teach all around. But that was after, you know, that’s after Paul had become a Christian.

before he ever became a Christian.

He’s what he says here. They were in the Lord before me. I meant very early in the church very early in the church of our Lord You’ve already got people who have left and gone back to Rome They were in him before me and they are there they’re working You also find out a little later passage ⁓ about an anise and safara not an anise. I apologize Who are the two in in in current to take you beside Quilla Priscilla there they had left because

of a teaching about someone named Crestus who was there. And you know that they’re talking about Christ. mean, that’s, now I know you have a lot of people who say, there’s some fellow named Crestus that ran out of Jews. No, they were out running. The idea behind that is there had been ⁓ a Jewish problem and they were, you know, run out by Caesar. and I see, which one of the Caesars was it? Wasn’t it Rhodes before him? Somebody?

Claudius, right. And so whenever you’re looking at that picture, don’t get the idea that ⁓ everybody stayed. Now, let me go one step further because I’ve had this thing thrown at me from time to time. ⁓ well, there were people who are already going into faraway places and evangelizing. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

And they said, so there was other Gentiles who came in and they say a word about Gentiles. You had Jewish people and you’ve got to keep something in mind. For the first years of the gospel before the household Cornelius, Jews thought this was a Jewish kingdom. Even Peter thought that. That’s why when he goes,

He has to be convinced by God to go to the household of Cornelius. Why? Because I’m not supposed to be here. ⁓ wait a minute. Did not the teaching of the Old Testament, did it not teach that there’s going to be a great kingdom coming? Yes, but as far as they knew or understood, it was only about the Jews because that’s all who came into it. That’s all who came into it. Now I bring that up for a reason.

I just want you to consider with me the following. The Jews left Jerusalem, many did, Andronikos and Junius here, you see two of them. They’ve left there and they’ve gone and taken it, but where are they taking it to? Why among the Jews in that area? I also know from things that are stated later by the Apostle Paul when he gets there, or at that time in the latter portion of the book of Acts, that perhaps they were not.

as evangelistic, as outgoing as they should have been. I don’t mean they weren’t at all, but it was interesting that when the Jewish leaderships and their synagogues came to talk to Paul, that one of the things they state about that is, we’ve heard about that from different places, but we’d like to hear you yourself. And what that’s telling you is that though Christianity has come to a particular place,

The fullness and totality of it, and I believe a part of that too, is that they had also heard after Cornelius’ household had come into the body of Jesus Christ as Gentiles, suddenly there were Jewish people who were fellowshipping with Gentiles in the church. And so that too would have proceeded, but they want to know more.

about that. And so there were some struggles that were going on even in the book of Rome. But when Paul passes through there, he tells them there’s two things that I’m concerned about. The latter portion of it, I want y’all to help me as I go on into Spain. He wrote the letter to receive that, but there’s something else in there, very important for every one of us to consider. Paul also says to them, there are some,

Okay. I’m going to be a missionary who wants to go on and take the gospel someplace else. Okay. I want you to support me in that effort, but there have been some sounds. have been things people have been saying. What have they been saying, Paul? Well, they’re saying that you preach and teach, let us do evil that good may come. Let us do evil that good may come. And the rest of the book after that, he starts there and he

completes the concept of it as you go as you continue on through it by saying I don’t teach that Here’s what I do teach and then he finalizes that When he says what shall we say then Roman 6 and verse 1 what shall we say then? Let us continue in sin that grace may abound I’ve never taught that Paul says God forbid but the but the gospel is already in Rome these brethren

They were in the Lord before him. You’ve already got people moving out and going into those other regions, but they’re only preaching to Jews. Don’t forget that they’re only preaching to Jews because they do as far as they’re concerned the kingdom of God was for them and that was by playing Daniel points out with regard to that that there would be after Jesus dies in the last portion of those three and a half years Daniel teaches that

Jesus would confirm the covenant, but just with the Jews. And so you have the Jews who come in first, and then you have Gentiles who come later. But there were already people who had left Rome, or left Jerusalem, and were already Christians there. Paul writes to them before he gets there. Don’t forget that. Romans is written before he gets there.

little time before he gets in, not a lot. I’m not gonna go in all the time sequences, but the point I want you to see is do not think that there was no group of individuals, no church of our Lord in Rome before Paul got to it. That’s not biblical, and I need to keep that thought in my mind.

All right, an aspect of this one question here, how do you respond to those in our brotherhood and others who say it was okay for Jewish Christians to continue in their Jewish ways, was that a part of the Apostles’ doctrine? And actually when I first read that, I thought maybe of this, that I know culturally sometimes, and of course, to answer that question depends on what those Jewish ways are. If those ways are just customs that are optional, know, optional things, then that’d be all right.

But if there are things that they’re binding for salvation, that’s a little bit different. But I thought about this and the cultural thing, and I was reminded of this. We took the students about three years ago to ⁓ DeLand. Jim Turner was with us. And it was a very good weekend. And I didn’t know there were places in America that were like a third world country. But you go to DeLand.

It’s like that. there’s one little dirt road that we thought was, I thought it was somebody’s driveway, you a little dirt driveway. But it goes around here and then there’s a dirt road, probably about twice as long as this auditorium, and just houses that I can’t, that I didn’t know people in America still lived in. I mean, know, no windows, roofs crashed down. I don’t see, I mean, they must have been outside the view of the law because they’d have been condemned and all that stuff. But there people living in there. And just like in, you know, just like in, you know, Jamaica’s and…

outside the towns and villages and, well I say villages in Ghana, they had better housing than over here, know, but straw huts and stuff. But anyway.

There’s a third Sunday fellowship of Churches of Christ. like, man, I never heard of that. That’s pretty cool. But then what it’s all about is African-American congregations.

Now Jim and I went and we were treated fine, had great fellowship, good food. But I’m thinking about why do we have a African American fellowship and not the whole church invited? And I thought, well, there was a time for sure, shame, shame, shame on our history that that was needed with segregation and all that kind of stuff. But those days are gone.

and they should be long gone. But yet we still hold on to some of that stuff. And this kind of goes back to I think I said earlier, one of the lessons earlier about, ⁓ you know, about a year ago, maybe half a year ago, within a year, I had three different people call me up, two of them didn’t even know. One of them I did know that asked me that same question, is it scriptural for a church member

to have a Bible study with somebody without checking with the preacher first? as I said this morning, like, of course, that’s crazy. But are there some who are trying to hold on to a certain culture that we don’t want to let go of and we want to perpetuate to our children and grandchildren that’s detrimental to, number one, the strength and stability of a local congregation and, number two, evangelism?

Because I think it’s great and of course, you know when Rico if you heard Rico’s lesson yesterday, you know

You know, I think Rick lives in Portales, New Mexico, and he might could say the same thing if he was Rico, okay? That, I know some places there’s not a whole lot of cultural diversity in the population. And so you can’t really be too critical about you don’t have diversity within the congregation between different ethnicities, because if you don’t have that in the community, how do expect to have it in the church? But in a place like Florida?

where there’s all kinds of cultural diversity and we’re still trying to promote one culture, this is our, whatever, and you know, whatever ethnicity it might be, but ⁓ is that detrimental to evangelism? Because, know, I think a congregation that’s got all kinds of different cultures in it, I think that preaches to the world and the community especially, but the world that we are, we are one in Christ.

There are things like that. And so there are some who don’t want to be part of a big congregation, say like this, and say the place was packed amid all kinds of different ethnicities. They don’t want to be a part of this. They want to start their own congregation across town. And this is the Caribbean church, or this is this church, or that church. What? Come on. What would be more powerfully evangelistic?

that the world would see. And so that’s something that I thought of that maybe this question is looking at, I don’t know. Now, on the flip side of that, sometimes one culture is so strong and so like, you gotta do it our way or else, then it might drive people away. And so we have to kinda, I won’t say compromise, I’m just gonna say accept one another, receive one another. Romans 15 talks about it, let’s receive one another as Christ received us.

And so maybe we sing some songs differently than what we’re used to. And we can do that. That’s all right. Nothing wrong with changing up the tune of a song. mean, you know, what’s that song? ⁓ Safe on the mountain, I soon shall stand. Yeah, Hilltops of Glory, man. I mean, we sing that different ways all over the place and it’s awesome. And there’s other songs we can, in fact,

This song right here, Stanley Gavin right here. I mean, you go down to ⁓ Fort Myers and they sing some of those songs a little bit different, but it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. And so sometimes maybe, you know, we were here first, culture says, no, you gotta do it like us. And some of those areas where God gives us options. And so these are just some things to think about that, I mean, well, I have a picture.

I like when I’m teaching class and in class I put that picture up there and it’s a picture of my granddaughter when she was really little Avery and Larry Williams They’re sitting right there in that pew and There’s a huge difference between those two people’s cultures those two people’s backgrounds But yet they’re sitting right next to each other

singing a song or And that would have been unheard of 50, 60 years ago, or maybe longer than that. I don’t know, maybe 70, years ago. It might be unheard of in some places now, but that shouldn’t be in the church that that’s unheard of. And I make a lot of points out of that. When I’m teaching certain things, I put that on the PowerPoint and ask a bunch of questions about those two, and it’s pretty awesome.

But anyway, so let’s not let culture, so Jewish ways, this ethnicity’s ways, that ethnicity’s ways are all right if they’re optional things. But if we’re requiring them for salvation, whether intentionally or unintentionally, we’re leaving the impression that they’re required for salvation, then that’s going to be wrong. All right, so someone wants to say something more about that, that’ll be fine too right there. Yeah, it says.

Yeah, how do we respond to those in our brotherhood or others who say it was okay for Jewish Christians to continue in their Jewish ways? Was that a part of the Apostles’ doctrine? And so my point depends on what you mean by Jewish ways, you know. But anyway, but when it says…

our brotherhood or others. I’m thinking it’s a brotherhood name anyway. But if someone wants to say something about that, that’s okay. But here’s our next one. When confession is made unto salvation, how public does that need to be on what needs to be and or what needs to be stated? How about when confessing sins to one another? So basically about confession. And so that that may have had more to do with George’s lesson this morning.

But.

But anyway, so, yeah, go ahead, David. ⁓ yeah, okay. Okay, all right. All right, that question’s right there.

Thank

So when confession is made, of course we’re talking about there are two kinds of confessions in the scriptures. One has to do with confessing belief in Christ, and that’s the one that is required unto salvation according to Romans chapter 10 verses 9 to 10. Here, believe, repent, confess, be baptized. The confession there is confessing with your lips Jesus as Lord. I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, Romans chapter 10 verses 9 to 10. And then. ⁓

What about confessing sin? So that’s the other kind of confession. How public does it have to be? It does not have to be, it’s not necessary to come forward and make that confession before the whole congregation. How about Acts chapter eight, where you have the Ethiopian eunuch, for example, and he’s wanting to…

confess, he is to confess, he does confess in verse 37, given that the textual argument there is ⁓ sound. That is to say, he’s doing so in front of the eunuch.

So how public is that? I think that answers that question. With respect to confessing of sin, ⁓ James chapter 5 talks about confessing one to another. ⁓ why would you have to confess a sin against the whole congregation if you’ve sinned against one individual?

two individuals. So I don’t see that has to be any more public than the recipient of the sin.

Yeah, I was out of congregation one time where a fellow went forward. He started confessing all the stuff’s been going on between him and his wife. And his wife was furious. And that didn’t need to be there, you know. Go ahead.

will say something about the nature of confession of sin. George mentioned James 5, 16, and there’s been this principle that the confession needs to be as broad as the sin. If it’s private, a private confession. If it’s public, public.

And I don’t disagree with that, but I would say that there are times when people are struggling with private sins internally and taken too far. It might suggest you never need to come forward with anything and not necessarily be explicit and tell all of your marital business or anything like that. But there are private and silent sins that people have. And there wouldn’t be anything wrong with coming before the church to say, I’ve been struggling with X, Y, and Z not to inform the church because it was against them, but to solicit broader prayers because of the power of James 5 and verse 16. Now, James 5, 16,

is powerful individually with one person, but at the very same time, I think we do need to on occasion be careful that we guard against congregational culture where confession of sin is sort of frowned upon. And we’re trying to figure out how minimize we can keep that. If 1 John 1 and verse 9 is true, fellowship with each other is also connected to confession of sin. And so.

James 5 16 is true. You don’t have to tell everything you’ve done, but there is a time to solicit prayers from a broader group.

even if it’s something you’ve been struggling with internally and it’s just between you and God. And sometimes you’ve been doing that for a while and nothing’s changed. And you might need to shine a little bit of light on it so that you can get the necessary help that you need. And so of course wisdom and how explicit you are with that, but at the very same time, there are occasions where you say, I’ve been struggling with this privately. I’ve told two or three people, but I would like the prayers of the congregation holistically because it seems to be getting the best of me. And I would say that’s a good idea.

For sure, yeah, optional not required. Live open forum, here we go. Yeah, optional not required for sure. I thought I said that, but yeah, it’s optional not required, yes.

I just want to read something to you. This is Matthew 18, 15. If your brother sinned against you, we’re together on this, is, how many are involved? Two. If your brother sinned against you, go show him his fault between you and him alone. Now isn’t that interesting?

He didn’t say go take that in front of the whole church, did he? Matter of fact, he’s going to tell you something just a minute contrary to that. If he hears you, you’ve gained your brother. But wait, he hasn’t confessed it to the whole church yet, has he? Has he? I mean, he hasn’t, obviously has he? By the way, this has nothing to do with what Hiram just said. Hiram talked about there are going to be times when people want prayers for problems in their lives.

But even then, let me just give another thought here and I’ll tell you why in just a second. You need to be careful what is put out. You’ve got little tiny hearing ears and you’ve got neighborhood ears and if you’ve got people visiting among you and somebody says, yeah, they just need to know that we’re sinning here. I probably know it anyway. But anyhow, Matthew 18, 16 continues. If he hears you not,

Go tell the church, right? No. Take with you one or two more than at the mouth of two witnesses or three, every word may be established. Now that’s not talking about you’re getting somebody to witness the fact you went to him. That’s talking about witnesses to the wrong that went on.

that at the mouth of two witnesses or three every word may be established. Now look at this. I’ve moved it out but I’m still not full church. Verse 17, if he refused to hear them tell it to the church, do you notice that? This is not telling you we need to be putting out dirty laundry of everything that goes on.

It’s not telling us that. As matter of fact, we have to use a lot of wisdom in things at times. There have been times when things have happened in one congregation where a young couple planning on getting married already had the wedding date set, came forward, or came to me before surfaces, and they said, we’re both going to go forward and let people know we’re going to have a baby.

I said there might be a better way because it is going to become public. Y’all understand that? Well, how are we going to deal with this? Now the father of the bride-to-be came in and said, chew him apart. He wanted everything out. He wanted it. Yeah, of course, he was mad at him. That’s not wisdom. And so I said, here’s what maybe we can do.

The young couple can come forward confessing sin.

And somebody, yeah, but that’s not getting it. Well, hold on. It’s Sunday morning. Sunday evening, they said, come forward and announce the moving up of the wedding day.

There wasn’t a soul went out that door that didn’t catch it, but not a child understood. Do y’all understand that?

The way that worked was they had confessed sin and people said, you’ve got to tell it all. Wait a minute.

And then the second part was you mentioned that we’re moving up the wedding date. Every adult in that church knew what had gone on. Do y’all understand what I’m saying? Every adult. And you say, well, how do you know that? Because they came out the door and asked me. Very privately.

But there’s a wise way to deal with things. Sometimes people get angry, and anger never accomplishes anything for anybody. Only God truly uses anger the right way every time. It doesn’t mean I should never be angry, but I don’t want to be angry in sin. I also don’t want to be angry at something and create a worse situation than one started with. And the point that I’m making you, when you’re dealing with this idea

of the confession of sin.

And I appreciate the statement that was made, as public as the sin was. As public as the sin was. And that’s based on a scriptural concept. You didn’t take it before the church publicly until the two had discussed it, couldn’t come to an agreement. It had gone on because you got two or three other witnesses with it who go to remonstrate with the brother who did the wrong. But he won’t hear them either.

Well then you’ve got to move it to where it occurs. You’ve got to move it now beyond.

But please brethren, let us use wisdom in how we deal with what’s going on. I’ll tell you about one other brother.

Young fellow got up before the church one day and all his life he’d been told that you gotta, no matter what you did, you gotta admit to it. Brethren, that young man sat on the front row and for five minutes rattled off sins I haven’t even heard of before. The whole congregation is going, nobody knew anything about any of that going on. But by the end of it, the confession,

had turned in, in my opinion, a sin itself as to what it did and how it did it. And you had people that are sitting there in a seat listening to something they have no idea about.

I’ll give you one other. Brother I went to school with in Wisconsin. He’s there in Wisconsin now.

He got it in his head that this matter of public confession of sin had to be done at the Lord’s Supper table.

And so he actually went and got him a priestly. He fought big aprons, what he wore, but he would stand up before it. before they took of the Lord’s supper every Sunday, he gave every sin. This is based on personal testimony. He gave every sin, sin of every thought and everything else. I got news for you at the end of that.

Good luck trying to think about what supper’s for.

just be brief. I appreciate what George said earlier in his sermon about ⁓ the public nature of things and people’s trepidation. I was thinking about 1 Peter chapter 4, verse 8, and above all things, have fervent love for one another. For love will cover a multitude of sins. And as far as confessing sin goes in a public ⁓ way, as we’ve been discussing, is,

There was a situation I was thinking about is when I was young is that there was a girl in the congregation and she ⁓ was pregnant out of wedlock, ⁓ probably 16 years old. And it was one of those things where everybody in the congregation knew it. The baby bump was showing and everything like that. And so when she came forward, she’s on the front row. She’s bawling.

her friend is beside her hugging her and all that stuff and it’s like what do we do at that point? Do ⁓ you stand up and say, okay, I have committed the sin of this to the congregation? ⁓ Everybody knew it was implied, you know? And I think the same thing goes for public sin is ⁓ if I’m embezzling money and it’s on the front page of the paper or something like that.

You know, ⁓ it’s pretty well known in the congregation and, you know, people know. You know, you don’t, there’s not a formula that you say about that. It’s that the people that know know that you have turned from that, right? And so that’s the emphasis on what we’re doing. And the same thing as far as confession with the mouth in Romans chapter 10, verses nine and 10. You know, people that would have the fear of, you know, it’s almost like you come up and. ⁓

You put your hand up in the air and you say a pledge or something like that, almost like you’re declaring citizenship to be in the church. I mean, you are. But ⁓ you have this kind of process where you’re in front of everybody, and I’m worried about that and stuff like that. it’s like, if you’ve told me, and you hear preachers, probably heard preachers say this before, so-and-so has confessed.

⁓ that Jesus Christ is son of God and you go from there. So it’s all about loving the person and sometimes with the formula what people observe, we have to go back and think the things that we think are so obvious, we have to address those things again.

Here’s three questions on baptism. Two of them are almost the same question, the other one’s not. The first one is, if someone is alone and is ready to be baptized, can they baptize themselves? Another one, is it scriptural for a woman to baptize a man in the light of 1 Timothy 2, 9 through 15? And then number three, although there are no examples in Scripture,

Can a woman baptize if there are no men available? If so, this affect the, I thought I had all these rehearsed here, does this affect the, something to me, of the.

Something, scripturalness. Anyway, you can translate this, George, right up here. If anyone’s a school teacher, I used to have a wife that was a school teacher, she could translate that. anyway, if so, does this affect the something ⁓ of the…

of scriptures, well something scriptures, anyway. Well we’ll just go with this one here and we’ll leave this on the side. Is it scriptural for a woman to baptize a man in light of 1st Timothy 2, 9 through 15? And I think that has to do with George’s lesson, maybe, about the person of the one doing the baptizing, is that negate?

Thank

You think that it has to do with what again?

Yeah. I see. Okay. Right. So let’s see. They’re all on here, isn’t it?

Okay, so is it scriptural for a woman to baptize a man in light of 1st Timothy 2, 9 to 15? ⁓ And well, I’m going have to say, I don’t know ⁓ how everyone’s going to receive this, I don’t know, but I would have to say based on the Great Commission, go into all the world and preach the gospel, he that believes and is baptized shall be saved, he that disbelieves shall be condemned. I see no qualification as to who does the baptizing.

It says, he that believes and is baptized shall be saved. There is no other qualification anywhere in scripture that I can find. I’ll talk about 1 Timothy 2 in a moment, where the one doing the baptizing has to meet certain criteria. And so then I’m going to have to say that ⁓ it does not matter who does the baptizing. And I based that on

Mark 16, 15 to 16, plus the absence of any qualifier to it in scripture. Now, I believe there is a footnote to that, however, an exception. And that is we do not want to violate 1 Timothy 2, 9 to 15, which is teaching that a woman is not to exercise authority over a man. And that context, that’s a worship context. And so then I do believe that we have to be careful that the woman not

⁓ engage in what can be called position authority. That is, she’s up here and she takes control of the situation and here we have a worship assembly, whatever. There I would say she is infringing upon 1st Timothy 2, 9 to 15. With the exception of that, however, I see no ⁓ limitation, which is the meaning of qualification, no limitation as to who does the baptizing. That’s what I believe is the case.

Another one is if someone is alone and ready to be baptized, can they baptize themselves? Well, that gets into the question of whether be baptized. For example, over in Acts chapter 2 verse 38, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ. Are we talking about the voice of the verb here being in the middle voice or is it in the passive voice?

And you’ll have to find authority for ⁓ a middle voice, be baptized in the middle voice. And a middle voice, in Greek, this gets a little complicated, but let me explain it. In Greek, every verb has five properties. One of those properties is voice. And in Greek, there are three voices, the active voice, the middle voice, the passive voice. The active voice…

means that if the verb is in the active voice, it means that the subject is doing the action. ⁓ If it’s in the passive voice, it means that the subject is receiving the action. If it’s in the middle voice, it means that the subject is both doing and receiving the action. So ⁓ if you can find ⁓ with certainty that be baptized is in the middle voice, then you’d have authority for it. ⁓

So far, at least, I’m not convinced that that is the case. So it looks like ⁓ I would have to say that someone else has to do the baptizing. Now, let me just point this out. One brother said, if I were on an island and learned the plan of salvation and no one else is around, he said that he would be caught baptizing himself. ⁓ I do recall when I was ⁓ dating Marian ⁓ many years ago.

And we were going through the um, jewel mill of film strips. And, um, I did, uh, let’s see, I became convinced that I had to be baptized. And if I was not baptized scripturally, that, uh, either Jesus could come back or I would die and I didn’t know which one would happen. And so then I was at risk. There was an urgency for me being baptized. And I do recall, um,

On the way home, drop Marion off after those studies, on the way home there was a body of water. There was a week in between the time that I was convinced that I had to be baptized and the next study with this brother. And as I was taking her back, I did notice a body of water and it did occur to me even way back then. Can I baptize myself? Providentially, here I am.

I did not baptize myself. it looks to me like you need to have somebody else do the baptizing unless someone can show me that there is a middle voice ⁓ command in the New Testament scriptures. Was there another one, Brian? Was that it?

Okay.

Just to add to that, it’s not the, I mean, like George was saying, it’s not the ideal situation. Like in a situation like this, there’d be no reason in the world for a woman to baptize anybody. We’ve got plenty of men here that can do it, you But if you’re off on a desert island, just you and your wife and you find the Bible and baptize each other, you know. All right, so here’s the two Hiram questions. Hiram mentioned that preachers need to schedule evangelism into their work.

Can the speaker share ideas for making an effective and efficient weekly schedule for preachers? And then another one is Hiram spoke years ago about using the Gospel of Mark as a Bible study. Could he reference that lesson where it could be heard, etc.?

And oh yeah, I have a book right here. This is hot off the press right here. Maybe December though, I don’t know, December 2025. And Hiram wrote this for PJ.

GK, PG, GK. And this is actually about the Gospel of John, but the name of it is From Sin to Salvation, and it’s another personal work type of thing, but it’s mainly principles to use. He can tell you about that basic gist behind it, but these are available ⁓ in the fellowship room if you’d like, From Sin to Salvation. And so these two I’m just going leave right here. I just want to come up and address these two. And if we have time for more, I’ve got some more.

The first question in relation especially to preacher schedule, of course, preacher schedule varies from week to week. I did mention in the sermon about ⁓ placing evangelism into your schedule. And what I had in mind was several things. If you’re in a Bible study with somebody, for example, and they have this idea where certain people you could be studying with, Wednesday’s the day that they can study. Guard that time, keep that time sacred in a sense so that you can fulfill that. But also have some time in the week, just like you

and visit the sick where you might consider prospects. So maybe the secretary prints you a list of people who visited the services and you think about calling them or going to their house at a certain point or you say I’m gonna sit down and write letters to the visitors that are here or the secretary can draw them up and you can sign them where I preach, Neil does that, we do some sending letters and that sort of thing. But schedule some time in the week where you have some, there’ll be evangelism opportunities as has been preached throughout the week that naturally come to you.

Also, throughout the week, be actively considering some ways that you can connect with people in the community, visitors to the services, and that sort of thing. And that varies from person to person and how that’s done, but I also think we should be aggressive and active in how we do that. So think about making some visits to visitors, think about calling them, think about reaching out and thinking about having time in the week where you can have Bible studies with people that you’re engaged with and try to guard that time because things come up and you don’t want to call somebody who has rearranged.

their whole schedule to have a Bible study with you so now you can’t do the study because of X, Y, and Z. And so to the best of your ability you can do that. You want to do that. And I would even go this far on occasion and say even when it comes to like out of town events and that sort of thing, if you have a Bible study with somebody that’s always Friday and this person’s a non-Christian, if you can communicate with the lectureship or the gospel meeting or whatever and tell them, hey look, I need to be leaving because I need to get back and have this Bible study.

with a person. I just think that’s important because if you get engaged in personal work as everybody here is, you know how committed somebody can be one minute and all it takes is for one study to be missed for that interest to slip and we can say if they were interested they would have stuck with it and that’s true.

but we also need to strike while the iron’s hot. So building that into our schedule and trying to be committed to that. As far as the Gospel of Mark, I don’t remember that sermon, so you’ll have to show it to me. I do remember talking about the Gospel of John though, because ⁓ try to use the Gospel of John sometimes in personal work. And as Brian mentioned, in this book kind of gives an outline for how that can be done from sin to salvation. Wrote this to say there are various ways to do personal work. And one of the ways that you can teach people is use the Gospel of John.

which John says at the end in John 20, he wrote it so that people might believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And just this book shows how throughout John, there is a chapter by chapter thrust you can go through and point a person to how they become a Christian, how they can become a Christian and receive the salvation that God offers. But there’s also topical approaches in this book and using the gospels and Jesus’s words and all of that. So as has already been said, there are various methods, all the biblically sound methods work.

when we work the methods. And so this is just one. Specifically on the Gospel of Mark, I don’t recall, but I did preach a lesson years ago on using the Gospel of John, and that was that polish in the pulpit, and I think you can find that wherever they store their material. this book has some of that, all of that material, and it’s even more fleshed out, and so maybe this can help you, or if you know something about a lesson I did that I forgot, I’d be happy for you to re-give me the outline so I can have something to preach maybe this Sunday. So yeah, for sure.

give me enough time before. Let me… ⁓

We talked a whole lot about introverts, I appreciated that, introvert, extrovert, and convert. I thought that was a well-used phrase there. Getting into Bible studies, I think there’s a couple of things that bother people about that. Is somebody going to ask me a question I can’t answer, and then I’m going to be embarrassed?

I used to go around in Cuthbert, Georgia, first place I ever preached, and I knocked the doors of every house in that town. It was a town of about 3,000 homes all over it. I knocked every house in that town three times. And I know I did, because I left a little thing behind on a door if a person wasn’t there. I left it behind that said, strike one. Missed you. I went around the second time.

And if I missed them, I kept a tab on that. Who hadn’t answered and what doors hadn’t. Then I would go around the second time and hit the doors that hadn’t answered the first time. And when I did that, if they weren’t there, I said, strike two. And then after that, I would go around the doors that hadn’t answered yet. wasn’t anybody there. And then I locked that door. And if they didn’t answer the third time, said, strike three. I’m out, but you’re not.

still love to talk with you or invite you to services. Let tell you something that happened to me in all the doing of that. Every door in my memory, every door asked a question I couldn’t answer. Now I’d been to a school of preaching, of course I had all the answers, I’d just forgotten. Every door.

I don’t mean that they had every door, didn’t want anything I couldn’t answer, but every door I went to, I went home every day at the end of it with those questions in mind. And I studied until I got an answer to that. And I said, you’re not going to get me on that one again. But now I want to remove that a little bit more. If you are a family that has children,

Are you worried about your children asking you a question you can’t answer? Does that embarrass you? Does that make you not want to talk with them anymore? Well, of course not. What are you going to do? You’re going say, me think about that. Let me, let I brought that up for a reason. Your children are also.

They also need evangelism. They need to be evangelized. They’re born with little heads full of mush. They’re sweet and they’re precious. They’re first born, they’re clean, and it’s the fresh fallin’ snow. But they’re gonna grow up and somebody’s gotta evangelize them. By the way, that’s your job. Fathers, bring up your children. that, fathers, they literally means begetters. That’s parents.

bring up your children in the nurturing admonition of God. But now let me point out how this can really work in your advantage.

In my own home, as a child growing up, my father and mother, we always had a daily Bible study. And in it, we looked at that daily Bible study, we sat down and we… ⁓

we’d all come in, would be taught, read something by my daddy and questions could come out and then we would sing and we would pray within that. wasn’t long but it was a daily devotional, daily Bible study. Questions were asked there, I’ll never forget this. My brother got up big enough that he believed that he had come to the point where he could teach evolution with a great deal of belief.

And one day my daddy, in order to answer that, he didn’t have some long sustained answer, he picked up the book of Genesis and he started reading in Genesis 1 and verse 1, in the beginning God. And then he began to talk about God and the things about God. Now my brother, he never brought those things up again. He had somebody, helper there, evangelizing him. But now let me tell you how this really works for you now.

You’re not afraid to do that with your children. Even an introvert can do that with their children, right? If you do this and you have a ⁓ regular devotional study with your children, know children are the greatest evangelizers I’ve ever met in my life. I should put that another way. They’re the greatest greeters and interactors I’ve ever seen in my life. They have friends all over the place.

And so when it came time, they’d be out playing and they’d say, gotta go home. Why? Well, we’re have Bible study. And somebody says, these children, they’d never stand for that. They didn’t know any better. We’d done that since their birth. It was just a way of life. It was the custom of life. And they’d say, won’t you come with me? And they’d come in, and the children in the neighborhood.

would sit through that and somebody says, but they couldn’t stand that. No, they enjoyed it. But that’s not all that happened. One young man in particular coming up lived in an atheist home. His father was an atheist. His mother had some form of belief in Christ. But he started coming to the house. And he listened for I don’t know how long, how many weeks that he listened in our home.

And one day he said, well, I just don’t know why y’all even believe in God. Well, that ruined everything. You know it didn’t. That opened the door to evangelizing them. Out of that, we got to study with family too, by the way. But this young man came asking that question. And so I talked to him about it.

about why we believe in God and whatnot, continued our Bible study. I did that week, day in, day out. If I wasn’t there, my wife, day in, day out. I know that’s too much Bible for anybody, but day in, day out, we did that. A young man was baptized.

He attended Fried-Hardeman College with my son.

Not only was he baptized and attended the college, he found his wife there.

So I bring that, that’s just one. There were many who came in. And this can be done by introverts, because you’re starting with your children. And you don’t mind talking to them, do you? They’re bringing folks in for you to continue the conversation, and then out of that, others in the neighborhood. That’s one way. And how it works. I’ll say one other thing, and we’ll sit down. You ready for this?

Do you want to talk to somebody about the Bible? Here’s a conversation piece you’re not going to believe. All my children used to ask me, Daddy, how do you talk to people so freely? I said, you’ve to remember, the first principle of all conversation

Who’s the person that they’d rather talk to more than about anything else themselves?

Where are you from? Where were you born? What kind of work do you do? Every plane flight I’ve ever taken, I’ve taken some pretty long ones too, I’ve always found somebody I’m sitting by there and I turn around and I ask them, hey, where are you from? I’ve had a Bible study, almost every plane flight I’ve taken in the United States, any public transport, just ask them about themselves.

After a while, I know this is hard to believe, some people get tired talking about themselves and they actually have the audacity to turn around and say, where are you from? What do you do? Well, I’m a minister. Really, I’ve had some Bible and there you go. Very rarely in all those years. I didn’t reach out, poke somebody on the side and say, are you going to heaven?

I don’t mean that’s wrong or sinful, but I tell you, it’s not very effective. Talk to them. Talk about themselves first, and they’ll generally turn it back to you. And then you have a marvelous opportunity. And may you enjoy the study. You’re talking about your Creator in mind, and I redeem you.

Just gonna say this real quick and then we’ll close it. I’m gonna read two questions and we’re think about them and get to them tomorrow, I hope. ⁓ But yeah, when I was dating Jaji, she had four kids. She lived in a duplex over here. She had a white shed in the back and she would have one of the brothers over here with an AP DVD and play it and hit the side of her shed and all her kids would go through the neighborhood and invite them over on a Friday night.

to watch that movie about Christian evidences, have hot dogs and chips and all that stuff, and that’s pretty awesome. And that’s how awesome she was, she thought about that kind of stuff. Anyway, so we’re gonna deal with these two questions tomorrow. And actually, if you’re in the house and you’ve written these questions, you can maybe ask some of these guys. But one of them is, well actually one of them we can easily deal with. Is evangelism class something ⁓ that will help?

people who want to get involved and need to feel more comfortable and know a better way to approach someone to be successful. Absolutely, yes. Evangelism classes are excellent and that’s what they do. We just have to get beyond the class.

I know one of them.