Woe to Me If I Do Not Preach the Gospel

What I have been doing these past few Sundays is helping all of us see the biblical and theological foundations of the evangelistic calling, and we have been looking at it from different perspectives. For example, with the account of the Gadarene demoniac, we saw that the Gospel is spiritual warfare; it is deliverance, freeing people from the bonds and shackles of the enemy. We have seen that the Gospel is something entrusted to us and that the very nature of the church and of the Christian is to reproduce—the mustard seed, the yeast.

Incidentally, after I preached the sermon yesterday, I started making bread, and two of the beneficiaries are here, because I became interested in it again. I said, “I am going to revisit the matter of yeast and bread,” so we made bread, and I believe we are illustrating it physically. But it is yeast that leavens the whole batch of dough.

The invasive nature—in the most beautiful sense of the word—of the Gospel: it is contagious. Every believer should be a contagious person, so that everything we touch is leavened by the Gospel. That is its nature. And all of this, once again, is designed with that purpose in mind.

And today I want to speak once again about the same idea, and I want to show you how, throughout Scripture, we clearly see that from the very beginning of time, God’s intention has been for the principles of his Kingdom to be incorporated into every activity of his people. This is not an option; it is an obligation. It is the very nature of the believer: the call to evangelize.

And if you asked me for a title for my sermon, I would say, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.” Woe to us if we do not preach the Word of God. And I want to invite you to turn to 1 Corinthians 9, verses 16 through 23. Paul is speaking about all the benefits we have received and how glorious and privileged it is to proclaim the Word of God. In verse 16 he says:

“…For if I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to boast about…” In other words, when you spend all day preaching the Gospel, making every effort, giving everything, and doing all you can, do not act like, “Oh, I am really something; what a good Christian I am.” Do you know what? It says here, “I am an unprofitable servant.” After you have done everything and spent the entire day at it…it is not as though the Lord says, “Oh, wonderful! How can I serve you?” No, he says, “You did what you were supposed to do.”

Paul says, “If I have preached the Gospel, I have nothing to boast about.” We must understand that everything we do to advance the Kingdom of God—when you serve in the church so that those little children receive the Word, because that is evangelism, you know—when you preach to a child, people say that you are saving a soul twice. Do you know why? Because you are saving that person from all the mistakes they might make in adulthood, and you are also saving them for eternity.

So, in one sense, the work of educating children is one of the most evangelistic things we can do. We are sowing the Word of God. Therefore, when you serve and help with that, you do not regard it as something extraordinary that deserves special praise; it is simply what I do. I am not going to boast about it or regard it as something extraordinary. Everything I do to advance the Kingdom of God is simply part of my job description. It is right there on my résumé.

Then he says, “…because necessity is laid upon me…” That is a sophisticated way of saying it is an obligation. It has been imposed on me; I have been compelled to do it; it has been given to me as a command. And look at what he says: “…and woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.”

And that is something I want to impress upon your heart and spirit: first, it is an obligation; second, if we do not do it, there are negative consequences in our lives. I do not want to use fear tactics to encourage you. On the contrary, I believe that the satisfaction of seeing people come to know Jesus Christ and seeing the impact on their lives—the transformation the Gospel brings when it truly enters a home or a life—is more than enough satisfaction and encouragement for us. But the reality is that next Sunday, if God allows me, I am also going to speak about that, shall we say, darker dimension of not preaching the Gospel, about the fact that God regards it as an extremely serious matter. That should rid us of the complacent attitude that says, “Well, if I do it, that is very good, but if I do not, it is optional.” It is an obligation, and it is something you must carry out as a citizen of the Kingdom. But we will leave that for later.

But Paul is very clear here: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel! For if I do it willingly, I will have a reward; but if unwillingly, a commission has been entrusted to me.”

In other words, even if I do not feel like doing it, I am doing it because I have this commitment and commission. Now, obviously, it is good to do it willingly.

“What then is my reward? That in preaching the Gospel, I may present the Gospel of Christ free of charge, so as not to abuse my right in the Gospel…”

In other words, Paul is saying here, “I regard preaching the Gospel as such a great privilege that I do it free of charge.” Did you know that Paul was bivocational? In other words, Paul made tents to finance his evangelistic work. He viewed it as such a privilege that he did not want anyone to rob him of the privilege of preaching the Gospel free of charge. And in the rest of the passage, which I will not read, he adds how he humbled himself and did whatever was necessary. If he was speaking with Gentiles, he spoke in a certain way; if he was speaking with devout, Pharisaical Jews, he spoke to them in another way.

He did not mind, because he was a salesman who wanted to win the goodwill of his potential Gospel customers so that the Gospel could enter their lives quite naturally.

So we see here—and I want that expression engraved upon your heart—“Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.” Every institution on this earth, whether a corporation, a university, a hospital, or a nonprofit agency—every corporate institution—has a vision, a reason for being, and a modus operandi, something that gives meaning to its existence.

The vision of hospitals is to heal the sick and improve people’s physical quality of life. A university ultimately exists to educate people. Nike exists to provide physical resources for every kind of athletic activity. Every institution has a reason for being, a vision, a goal, a purpose that drives its activities.

I would define vision as a unifying principle that guides and determines the various actions of an individual or an institution. In other words, every institution and every individual has many different activities. In the corporate world, there is a principle called alignment. This means that the activities of any institution must ultimately align with and reflect that institution’s reason for being. If, in one way or another, they do not contribute to fulfilling that vision, they are off base.

All the various activities of a corporation—and the church, in a sense, is a corporation with an eternal and divine nature, but it is a corporation—must be aligned with the purpose for which it exists, with its vision. And I maintain that the vision and mission of the church of Jesus Christ is to win souls, impact the world for Christ, and impart to the world the nature and essence of the Kingdom of God.

The church of Jesus Christ receives its vision and mission from God himself. He is its founder, and he has imparted its vision to the church. And we cannot—none of us has the authority—to substitute another vision, no matter how exalted or praiseworthy it may be. The only one who can change an institution’s vision is its original board of directors, its founder, or the principal owner of a corporation. A church can do many things, but the question is how those things fit into its ultimate vision.

As I was saying, take the children, for example. We carry out many activities for the children, and we invest a great deal of money—tens of thousands of dollars—in staff and programs, as well as energy from many of you. Right now, there are adults over there giving their time to educate our children. That is wonderful, but if we orient ourselves exclusively toward saying, “Okay, we want to be a church that is known for preparing children to be good evangelicals,” yes, that is fine, but there are many other things to consider.

Their activities must lead to children who love the Lord and to adults who will one day be healthy members of the Kingdom of God. So, in one sense, as I was saying, that is oriented toward the evangelistic vision. The social work the church does here—we invest a great deal of money and space in many things: immigration initiatives and efforts to prepare young people for college. And we believe all of that is also part of the yeast that goes on penetrating the whole batch of dough. People come to León de Judá and encounter Christians serving in those positions. They breathe the atmosphere of a Christian institution when they come to receive information about immigration.

The secular political and social powers of the city realize that there is a church carrying out activities to serve and bless others, and their hearts are softened and prepared for the Gospel.

This morning, while looking for something, I came across some papers from when we served as the venue for the inauguration ceremony of the governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker. That was last year or two years ago. And I was reading an article in The Boston Globe devoted to León de Judá and specifically to me, for reasons that would take a long time to explain. In fact, it was a very extensive article that spoke about our church, our theological positions, and the fact that it was serving as the venue for that major event in the state of Massachusetts. And again, free publicity—free publicity for the Gospel. People had to read about our identity. Look it up in The Boston Globe: Charlie Baker inauguration ceremony. Ways of preaching the Gospel.

Everything must be oriented in that direction. If we cannot connect it with the evangelistic calling God has given us, then something is wrong. It may be very good and very nice; one can do any number of good works… In fact, there are churches that, after abandoning the biblical Gospel, have had to become merely places that offer social services. Because they lack that spiritual, eternal, supernatural content, they justify their work instead by doing social work, offering good jazz concerts, working in society, and doing various other things… That is not the mission of the Gospel.

One can and should use those things, but ultimately, how many people are we winning for Christ? How are we growing? What impact are we having? How are we lifting up the Son of Man so that everyone who looks to him may be saved? So all those things are very important, but that must be the primary vision.

Did you know that evangelism goes back to ancient times and was not something new when Christ came onto the scene? Evangelism does not date only from the days of the early church; it was already embedded in the DNA, in the genetic code, of God’s people in the Old Testament. Did you know that God called Abraham to be a light to the nations?

If you read what God tells Abraham—that he would be the father of the entire Jewish nation and therefore the progenitor of the human race in its relationship with God—it was already understood that God was raising up a people who, though surrounded by pagan and idolatrous nations, would be an example to all those nations. Israel would worship the one God instead of many different gods—a holy God instead of the impure and sexually active gods of the pagans, who were associated with supposedly sacred prostitution and were the source of human sacrifices, the sacrifice of children, and great violence. The Jews would worship this one holy God—not multiple gods, but one alone—and would be a prosperous, blessed, healed people with great ethical values centered on serving others. All of that is in the original Law.

Israel was supposed to be an example and an evangelistic resource in the sense of preaching the truth to a world that was in darkness. But what happened? Israel kept that privilege for itself and thus set itself up as God’s chosen people. They did not share the Gospel in the sense of proclaiming this God who wanted to be exalted before the nations. They themselves became corrupt; rather, they allowed the nations to corrupt them. They became an idolatrous, materialistic people and abandoned their reason for being: God wanted them to be his witnesses.

Look at Isaiah 43 and how God views the calling he extended to the Hebrews. Isaiah 43, verses 10 through 12. It says:

“‘You are my witnesses,’ says the Lord…” Incidentally, there are groups out there that have claimed this exclusively for themselves, but if you read it in its original context, God is speaking to the Hebrews and, by extension, to all his people in general—not merely to a little group that arrogates to itself the right to use that verse for its own purposes.

“…You are my witnesses, says the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen…” Who is that servant? The Messiah, Christ. “…so that you may know me and believe—that is what we must do, every one of us: know him, believe in him—and understand that I am he. Before me no God was formed, nor shall there be any after me…”

In other words, the first thing a person has to do is know the God he serves, have a personal experience with Jesus Christ, and become immersed in that sense of a personal relationship with God—in who God is. And then, from there, it says in verse 12:

“…I declared and saved and proclaimed, and there was no foreign god among you; you therefore are my witnesses, says the LORD, that I am God…”

In other words, we are called to testify and to make the nature of God evident. Of course, now in Christ Jesus that divine nature is revealed much more fully. The Hebrews knew certain dimensions of Jehovah, but they did not know as they should have that humble, personal, immediate, accessible, generous, forgiving, grace-filled God who becomes man to experience our condition and intercede before the Father in the mystery of the Trinity. Now we understand God in a much deeper way: the immanent God, the God who is within us. Emmanuel, God with us.

The Hebrew world knew that God more as being outside creation, although he was evidently involved in creation, but as a God who was fearsome to a certain extent and distant. Christ comes to teach us a much fuller understanding of God. We have known him, we have experienced him, and we are witnesses of his mercy, his grace, his forgiveness, his generosity, his provision, his healing power, his illumination, and his complete word; and now we are supposed to reveal that nature to those who do not know him.

Verse 21 says, “…This people I have created for myself; they shall proclaim my praise—and verse 22 says—but you have not called upon me, O Jacob; rather, you have grown weary of me, O Israel…” This is God’s sorrow: that his people, whom he had commissioned to be a witness and a voice, a spokesman for the message of the Gospel, had abandoned him.

But that was Israel’s mission: to be a light to the nations. And what happened? Since Israel did not fulfill that mission, what did God do? He took it away from them. When you do not use the gifts God has placed within you, when you do not use God’s grace, energy, and endowment in your life to do what God has called you to do, the Bible says very clearly that if the branch bears no fruit, it is cut off and thrown into the fire because it is good for nothing. If salt loses its flavor, it must be thrown in the trash. If a Christian does not reproduce, if he is not investing in the Kingdom, if he is not being a resource for the Kingdom of God, if he is not being used in some creative way to advance the interests and purposes of the Kingdom of God, he is a useless servant; he is a vine that bears no fruit, and if it does bear fruit, its fruit is sour.

It is a barren fig tree. Why was Jesus so offended when he reached into that famous barren fig tree, with many leaves, but when the Lord looked for fruit on it, he found none and cursed it? Why? Because he saw in it a symbol of a nation that had an immense religious apparatus, as Israel did, but bore no fruit and did not advance the interests of the Kingdom of God.

And so it is with every believer who does not use his gifts in some way to advance the Kingdom of God. Bearing fruit can take many different forms, but ultimately the fruit one bears is meant to advance the interests of the Kingdom of God and bring souls to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

If you do not use your gifts, your gifts wither. The Bible says that the one who has much will be given more, and from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. That is a rule we see again and again in the word of God, and we are going to see it very clearly next Sunday.

So Israel does not use its gifts and its evangelistic calling, and the Lord transfers it to the church and calls a people who were not a people—the Gentiles—to provoke Israel to jealousy. Let me tell you in passing: God is not finished with Israel. There is a purpose, but Israel is, as it were, in parentheses right now, and what we have now is what the Bible calls the time of the Gentiles, in which the Gentile church is carrying out the work of God. At some point God will remove the parentheses around Israel and resume his very intentional relationship with Israel. But in the meantime, the church carries out the work of that Israel which refused to accept the original vision God had imparted to it.

And now it passes first to the Messiah, who will be the foundation of the church’s work. And Jesus Christ himself also saw his mission as an evangelistic mission. Isaiah 42, verse 1—this is a Bible study as well as a sermon. Isaiah 42, verses 1, 6, and 7. In this prophetic word about the servant of Jehovah and what his nature and fundamental activity will be, verse 1 says:

“…Behold my servant, whom I will uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights. I have put my Spirit upon him, and he will bring justice to the nations…”

The divine focus has always been the nations. Go into all the world, preach the Gospel, making disciples of the nations. And the Messiah will bring justice to those nations. Verse 6 says:

“…And I will appoint you as a covenant for the people, as a light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring prisoners out of the dungeon and those who dwell in darkness out of the prison house…”

We read that verse earlier. When the Lord appears before a group in public for the first time, the first thing he does is read from that passage. The Spirit of God is upon me and has given me power to do these things written here. The Lord knew that this was his mission.

There is an instance, for example, when he is at that well and a woman approaches who is like a symbol of all the souls throughout history who have needed Jesus Christ, and of what our commitment should be. The Lord is sitting there, and the disciples tell him, “We are going to find something to eat because it is already mealtime and we know you are hungry.” What does the Lord answer them? He tells them, “I have food that you know nothing about. My food is to do the will of my Father.” And what was his will? There he was at that very moment, preaching to her.

They were surprised that he was speaking with a woman in the first place, since, as a rabbi, he was not supposed to; according to the Jewish ethos, there was not supposed to be any kind of contact. The Lord loved that soul. She represented an evangelistic opportunity, and he set his agenda aside and preached the Gospel to her.

And how interesting—and that is a study we may perhaps do someday in terms of teaching and training—how to lead a soul to Jesus Christ. He begins with an immediate need she has: she wants to draw water from the well. And he speaks to her about that; as we say, he reels her in, a somewhat Caribbean expression. He goes… ah, you want water. Okay. Look, there is a kind of water out there that, if you drink it, you will never be thirsty again. And then he begins, and finally he delivers the thrust, telling her, “I who speak with you am he; I am the Messiah.” He leads her there and then turns her into an evangelist.

Notice how interesting this is: she leaves that place and immediately goes to her village and converts everyone, becoming one of the first evangelists in all of history. The cycle is evangelism, receiving the word, and then that person becomes a soul-winner.

Do you know what happens in a congregation that becomes a truly evangelistic church? The people from outside, when they come and meet the Lord, become evangelists. You know, those of us who have been in the Gospel for 10 or 15 years are practically useless by then because—and this is a danger, a problem—we immerse ourselves in evangelical culture, speak evangelicalese, eat with evangelicals, and have no contact with people who do not know the Lord. And it should not be that way, but often it is.

Now, the people who are converted and come to know Jesus Christ have what is called their first love—which should not be their first love, but simply their love, period, for Jesus Christ—but they are excited, God touches them, and they know 20,000 people at work and everywhere else who are unbelievers, and those people are the best evangelists of all. And that is the beautiful thing I see in this: when a church manages to unleash an evangelistic dynamic, it becomes an organism that reproduces itself. So evangelism produces more evangelism, which produces more evangelism, which produces more evangelism. More souls come to know the Lord and bring more souls, and those souls bring still more souls, and that is the glory of God on earth.

I wish that one day we would have to hold four services on Sunday. They will have to be shorter because my throat cannot take it… or we will have to have more preachers, or you will have shorter services—and glory to God, everyone wants that. The idea is that we need to make this thing explode.

But we see the Lord sitting there and taking advantage of the opportunity. Why? Because his calling, his mission, is to evangelize. He said, “I have come to save the lost.” He sees Zacchaeus up in the sycamore tree and tells him, “Come down; I need to speak with you. Tonight we are going to have dinner at your house,” and there Zacchaeus brings all his friends, a whole gang of scoundrels just like him—publicans, tax collectors—and the Lord carries out a tremendous evangelistic work there. They all turn to the Lord, and Zacchaeus publicly repents of his sins.

The evangelistic dynamic of the Messiah, called to evangelize the nations. And his greatest work of evangelism was on the cross of Calvary, because there he established the link and the means through which men and women could truly be reconciled with God.

Israel called to evangelize. The Messiah called to evangelize. The church of Jesus Christ—what was the vision of the early church in the book of Acts? They knew that their chief mission, their identity, lay in preaching the Gospel, and they had no other choice. Turn with me to Acts chapter 4, a famous scene in which we see the council, the Sanhedrin, arresting Peter and John because they are upset that these people are setting all Jerusalem on fire and thousands of people are being converted to the Gospel. They are concerned about their religious hegemony in the city and in Israel, and they arrest these men and threaten them, telling them not to preach the Gospel on pain of imprisonment or something even worse. And look at how Peter and John answer them in Acts 4:19.

“…But Peter and John answered and said to them, ‘Judge whether it is right before God to obey you rather than God, for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard…’”

How about we all say that together? “For we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.” That is both a confession and a commitment. It is also an assignment: we cannot stop sharing what we have seen and heard. If God has done something in your life, if you have experienced some measure of transformation, joy, benefit, or what it means to be a child of God, you have to share what you have seen and heard. Like the Gadarene, you have to go and share it. The Gadarene wanted to remain with Jesus, enjoy the company of this very powerful man, and devote his life simply to living in fellowship with the Lord. And he told him, “No, no. Go home, to your friends and relatives, and tell them what great things God has done for you.”

That is the message of the church. So Peter and John, speaking for the whole church, told them, “Look, we simply cannot help it; that is our identity. We have to preach the Gospel.” How did the early church begin its course through history? Peter preached his first sermon. How many were converted? Five thousand? And then he preached another sermon, and three thousand more were converted. My goodness, what an evangelist—filled with the Holy Spirit.

And the church set all Jerusalem on fire. At one point they called them those who were “turning Jerusalem upside down”; they were disrupting and overturning the life of all Jerusalem. Their impact was that great. Wherever they went, they preached the word of God. Read the opening verses of the book of Acts. The book of Acts records the Gospel spreading through the early Christians like wildfire. And you know what? God even used persecution. There was a great persecution in Jerusalem, and these Christians had to flee Jerusalem and went to different regions of Israel, where they preached the Gospel.

You know, I believe something is happening in this nation right now, where in a sense there is so much persecution. It is not violent persecution, but at times it is an institutional, political, and social persecution of Christians, and I believe that what it is doing is alerting believers and creating within us a sense of urgency and emergency about preaching the Gospel, because we have been resting on our laurels. Whenever the church of Jesus Christ becomes strong and socially influential, as happened in the time of Constantine in the fourth century after Christ, whenever the church attains a position of social hegemony, it grows drowsy and turns into a formalistic religion. And sometimes God uses persecution to awaken the people of God.

God uses every means, and if we do not preach… Do you know the best way to avoid persecution? Start preaching the Gospel, because that way you will evangelize those who persecute the children of God.

So the first believers knew that if they did not do it, God was going to use other means to have the Gospel preached. They knew that their mission came from Jesus Christ himself. In Acts 1:8 the Lord told them, “You will receive power and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and in every region of the earth.”

The Lord charged them in the Great Commission, Matthew 28, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth; therefore go and practice the Gospel, making disciples of all nations and teaching them to observe everything I have told you and commanded you.”

The Lord left his testament to the church, and it was to preach the Gospel. The clarity these people had concerning their mission! At times it went so far as to become specialized: not only did they know that they had to preach the Gospel, but they knew they had to preach it strategically.

Paul understood, inspired by the Holy Spirit, that he needed to go to the cities, and that is why we see him preaching in Corinth, Rome, Ephesus, and Philippi. They were key cities, and he knew that if he took hold of the cities, he would also possess all the surrounding villages. That was one of the great insights the Holy Spirit granted the disciples. And Paul preached the Gospel in very strategic and targeted ways. That is why he says, “With the Hebrews I become as though I were a Hebrew; with slaves, as though I were a slave, although I am free; with the free, as though I were a slave of God, although I am also a son of God.” He did it in every possible way.

They were very specific. Paul knew; he would say, “My calling is specifically to the Gentiles,” and that is why he preached in the places where he preached. Peter was the Apostle called to preach to the Hebrews, and his letters, for example, reveal his inclination toward the Hebrews. The Epistle of James is addressed to Jews in the Dispersion.

In other words, each one had his own way of preaching the Gospel. Did you know that the four Gospels—Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John—are each directed toward a different audience? Mark, for example, is believed, based on its orientation, to be directed toward the Roman people—the way Mark preaches. John is a Gospel that contains a great deal of Greek language; for example, “In the beginning was the Word,” logos, “and the Word was with God.” A Greek principle. And the Gospel according to Saint John is preached as though intended to reach those who had been Hellenized, the Hebrew Hellenistic world, and its orientation is in that direction.

Luke is a Gospel directed more toward the Gentiles. How is Jesus Christ presented in the book of Luke? The Son of Man. Each Gospel has… God is so tremendously strategic, and that is why we must ask him, “Lord, teach us specifically how to take this vision of evangelizing and direct it specifically toward this city of Boston, which is like a kind of Corinth.” Corinth was an extremely intellectually developed city; it was a very powerful commercial center, and it was also a very corrupt place, greatly developed intellectually.

Boston is a tremendously Hellenic city in one sense. Here there are great hospitals, great universities, great museums such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the historical center of the nation, and a great number of Hispanics from all the different nationalities. We cannot preach the Gospel as though it were directed only toward Caribbean people or Central Americans; we have to be a little more cosmopolitan. So this requires something different, just as Paul oriented his preaching of the Gospel in different ways.

And we are asking the Lord, “Lord, give us interventions that are highly adapted to this ultra-sophisticated culture that is the city of Boston.” That is why we are doing these surveys and other things, because… I always say this to cover myself: I have nothing against tracts; I think they are a lovely gesture. But you know what? Nowadays, you give people a tract on the train and they look at it as though it had three heads. What are you trying to sell me? Sometimes they do not even read it. There are other ways.

Now, if you want to distribute tracts, glory to God; that can be very useful. Some people have been converted. But there are other ways, using other means. We want to develop more dramatic, more attractive means, things that are more discreet, but all with the same purpose. But it has to be directed intelligently. We want these surveys to help us preach the Gospel in a way that is more focused on the context in which we are living.

The focus these Christians had helped them be very effective in preaching the Gospel. We have to say to the Lord, “Lord, teach us.” We cannot go around merely imitating and simply borrowing methods. I believe there are no limits to God’s creativity, and there is a way he wants us to evangelize; we have to find that way because he is infinitely creative and helps us in our purposes.

So that is the reason for being. Another thing I want you to keep in mind is something I briefly pointed out earlier: the gifts of the Holy Spirit are specifically intended to help us evangelize. Did you know that? It is not necessarily so that you can display your spirituality. It is lovely when we worship the Lord; it is lovely when God heals people. But whenever you see Jesus Christ healing someone, it was always to declare his lordship—whether over the devil, over nature, over sickness, or over whatever it might be. He performed his miracles to validate his messianic character, to declare graphically his superiority over every principle of the world.

That is, everything he did was for a purpose. When God gives the gifts of the Holy Spirit to the church or to a believer, he does not give them merely for the exercise of those gifts. If a person is healed, glory to God; that is lovely and it is good. But ultimately, that is supposed to validate and declare, in a highly convincing and apologetic way, the lordship, power, present reality, and enduring relevance of the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So if we do not evangelize, the gifts stagnate and churches cease to live. It is what we were saying earlier: if salt loses its flavor, what is it good for? If a church is not bringing souls to the knowledge of Jesus, I would say, brothers and sisters, that this grieves the Holy Spirit, and then the Holy Spirit withdraws in a sense, and that church is then trying to live with one hand tied behind its back. Because the gifts have to be put into action.

Take a bank, for example. Do you think a bank receives money simply to keep it in a safe? Banks exist to put their money to work. That is why they lend money. Why? Because they are earning interest from it. That is why banks are always developing different kinds of strategies. That is why, for example, they have a mortgage department: because they lend money, the community uses it, and they grow. They are always developing… They have to put the money to work. That is their reason for being.

McDonald’s always has to be inventing new things. If McDonald’s were only selling hamburgers the way they did 40 years ago, they would have died out long ago. No, now you go to McDonald’s and sometimes you can even buy movie DVDs. McDonald’s has other corporations that produce other things; they make fish sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, breakfast, and now even coffee, lattes, and cappuccinos. Imagine that: McDonald’s and Burger King making cappuccinos—God save us. But they do it because their business is making money, putting it to work.

The church—I am going to talk about that when the Lord says, “Do business until I come”—is one of the most profound passages in all of Scripture. Work in a thousand ways. Every one of us should be a small work agency; every Christian should be a combat unit, a unit of initiative. A group of brothers and sisters who love one another and are friends should be working. All of us have a gift, and the point is that God says, “I give this to you, but you had better invest it. Get to work on it.”

God has given us wonderful things here. We have a suitable physical facility. We have a community such as you—a beautiful one. I look at you from here and say, “Wow, what a beautiful community.” At least give me a round of applause for that. So diverse. Here, brothers and sisters, we have different races, different nationalities, different socioeconomic levels, different generational groups, and people from different parts of the city and its surroundings. What is here among you is incredible.

Now, that has to be put to work; it has to be put into operation. That is why we always have to be inventing new things, because the church must always be in action, carrying things out… because the gifts have to be set in motion. If the gifts do not flow, they die and smell bad. Anything that does not flow becomes stagnant and dies. Water that is supposed to flow freely will, if it stagnates, eventually smell bad and stink, and it has to be cleaned up.

The water of the Gospel was made to flow. I say that Christianity is a river; it is not a lake, it is not an enclosed well. Rivers of living water, the Word says. The church is identified with dynamism, exuberance, effervescence, multiplication, and multiformity, so to speak, and God gives the gifts so that we may preach the Gospel. If you do not use your gift, your gift dies. If the church does not preach, its endowment simply becomes unnecessary, and God is not going to invest in something that does not yield benefits for the Gospel.

Lastly, when you evangelize, you grow; when you evangelize, you experience the joy of the Lord; when you evangelize, you know God better; when you evangelize, the power of God flows through you and remains in you for a moment, and it blesses your surroundings and blesses your home as well. When the presence of God is alive in a life and that life is putting the gifts of the Holy Spirit to work, that is when prosperity comes, joy comes, and growth comes.

Many people say, “I do not feel the joy of the Lord. God does not speak to me. It is always the same. I am stagnant. I was told this would happen if I came to know…” Well, what are you doing to preach the Gospel? What are you doing to bring souls to Jesus Christ? What are you doing to set God’s blessing in motion? The joy of the Lord is something we experience when we are restless and are investing our lives, when we give, when we serve, when we invest in the things of the Lord. Then you grow, and the more you give, the more you receive.

John, chapter 15, verses 1 to 2. The Lord Jesus Christ says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.” Jesus Christ is the source of all vitality. He is the trunk; he is the origin of your grace, of your power.

Now it says, “Every shoot—that is, every branch—that does not bear fruit in me, he will remove.” If your life is not bearing fruit for the Kingdom of God, if in some way you are not investing… and that is what I want: to get us out of complacency, to get us out of the idea that the Gospel is simply about being religious and enjoying the benefits of the Christian position. It is about bearing fruit, and bearing fruit is an expression… The most immediate interpretation is bringing others to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, but bearing fruit can also mean investing your life for Jesus; it can mean helping those children come to know the Gospel; it can mean serving as an usher and thereby advancing the operations of your church; it can mean praying that the Lord will bring his Word to life in the city where you are. And it can also mean giving regularly to a cause at your church, because you know that by doing so you are contributing to the strengthening and stability of your evangelical Christian community so that it can preach the Gospel. It can mean serving as a teacher, and it can also mean helping someone, speaking to someone about Jesus Christ, always being eager and asking the Lord for opportunities, a message, and conviction.

And when you do that, then you bear fruit, and if you bear fruit, you can rest easy because you are doing the will of God. If you are not bearing fruit, the Word is very clear. It says, “Every shoot in me that does not bear fruit will be removed, and everyone who bears fruit he will cleanse so that it may bear more fruit…” Glory to the Lord.

Do you know what happens? Many times, if a tree does not bear fruit, the farmer says, “Look, why is it taking up space?” There is a parable like that. “Let’s cut them down; let’s remove it from there.” Now, when a tree bears fruit, a time comes when, after producing much fruit, the branches begin to spread and the leaves begin to grow more because the tree—the sap—is growing, and there is life in that tree.

But many times its excessive branching can divide and dilute the energy coming from the trunk. What does the farmer do? He prunes it to make it more economical, so that its sap is not distributed through too many branches, because then the fruit may be small, divided, sour, or whatever the case may be. From experience, the farmer knows that reducing the number of branches concentrates the sap within a more limited number of places, and that causes the tree to sprout with greater vigor and bear larger fruit. There is a lesson there for many of us.

You know that many times we are going through trials and God is pruning us. Sometimes God is cutting us back to make us stronger and more powerful. If at times you are going through difficult situations in your life, do not see it as, “God has abandoned me.” Who knows whether God is using that to make you more fruitful, to humble you by compelling you to pray more, to depend more on God, to draw closer to his Word, to feel weaker and therefore more in need of God’s presence and to seek more of him. God is pruning you and preparing you so that when you emerge from that trial, you will emerge stronger than ever and can be a more powerful Christian, a more effective, humbler Christian who better reflects the character of Jesus Christ and can therefore be more appealing to the people God wants to use you to evangelize.

So God invests in you. Everyone who bears fruit he will cleanse, so that they may bear more fruit. Stay close to the Lord. Verse 7:

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you desire, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified in this: that you bear much fruit and thus be my disciples.”

In other words, how does one truly become a disciple? By bearing fruit for the glory of God. I want to invite all of you to stand for a moment as a gesture of commitment before the Lord. Take a few seconds. If you receive what I am saying as the Word of God—and I believe I have been quite convincing; that is why I have been quoting so many verses—it is because at this moment I want to act as a kind of advocate for the Kingdom and make a legal argument before the people of God.

You and I exist for one thing, and it is clear from the beginning of time: to spread the principles of the Gospel, to spread the principles of that powerful God whom we know. Adam and Eve received an evangelistic calling. God told them, subdue the earth, bring it into order, create culture, create different kinds of expressions of my creative grace that I place within you. Take nature and tame it. Build cities, work in technology, make music, make films, and give me the glory.

You know, what God has wanted is for us to take his great creativity and all his boundless life-giving sap and embody it in different expressions that give him glory. Man, however, has claimed the glory for himself and, in a sense, has colonized the world and nature, but he has not given glory to God. We, as the church, are supposed to colonize the world for the glory of God through tremendously merciful and generous creative work—not to subjugate or exploit people, but to allow the life of God to manifest itself in them.

And we must disciple the nations. We must fulfill that mandate given in Eden itself to colonize the world in the way God intended, subduing it and ordering it according to the ways of the Kingdom, and that begins one soul at a time. Tomorrow, when you are at your workplace, in the classroom, on the train going to work or returning from it, driving your truck, punching something, operating a machine in a factory, sitting in the classroom listening to a teacher and perhaps answering a question intelligently and wisely, or talking with someone during lunch, remember that you have a commission, you have an identity, you have a calling, you have an obligation, you have a privilege, you have a code operating within you: to be a savior of souls, to be a reconciler of souls.

God has given us the message of reconciliation, meaning that there are souls who are at enmity with God, and we are the ones who will reconcile them through Christ Jesus by preaching the word of reconciliation. May the Lord grant it.

I ask God right now: Father, in the name of Jesus, look upon this people, Lord, so beautiful. Look, Father, at these physical, material, financial, and cultural resources that you have placed at our disposal and entrusted to our stewardship, and impart to us the life of the Holy Spirit. Give us authority, give us wisdom, give us boldness, give us the skills, the strategic ability, the conviction, the persistence, and the sense that there is no other option, no other legitimate state of being, than winning souls for Christ. And make us fruitful with the life of the Holy Spirit. Make us fruitful, Lord, with the ability to bring souls to the knowledge of Jesus.

We offer you this sanctuary. We offer you this machinery, we offer you this organism, we offer you this community, we offer you this family, we offer you this body with its different members, Lord. It is yours; bring it to life like the lifeless Adam. Breathe on us, Lord. Breathe upon us, give us your breath of life, and turn us into a living being that proclaims your Word.

We claim Boston for Christ. Not only the Latino community, Father; we claim African Americans and Asians, we claim Europeans, people of different races, people from the Middle East, Indians from different places, Hindus, but also people from this very nation. We claim the most remote villages of northern New England, Lord, along Maine’s northern border, Father, and in southern Connecticut, Lord, and Rhode Island. We claim these regions for Christ Jesus.

We are salt in this body, and we want to give it the flavor of the Gospel, Lord. Help us, Father; give us flavor to share. I bless this people, Father. I bless this concentration that you have placed within us, Lord, this vision. Breathe life into it so that we will not rest until we see your glory burst forth, Lord, in this city and in this region, and Christ lifted high, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. We receive that calling in the name of Jesus. Amen and amen. Glory to the Lord.