According to my records this is the 88th time that I have preached on the subject of evangelism.
Soul-winning is not the most common subject that I preach, but 88 messages are a fair number.
The last time was just a few weeks ago, when we looked at Philip and the Ethiopian.
And I have even studied some of them.
I’ve taken at least two seminary classes in this subject.
And I have read and heard dozens and dozens of sermons on it as well.
In fact, I’ll go a step farther and suggest that I’m not sure that there is anyone alive on earth today who is truly and expert in soul-winning.
My thoughts tonight are going to go contrary to 75% of all the books I’ve read and the sermons I’ve heard.
And this message will even temper and clarify my own sermons.
If I preached this message in the average preachers’ conference, I just might be lynched or pelted with rotten fruit.
But before you start throwing things, think about what I’m saying and compare it to the Word of God.
As I say, I have lots of books on Soul-winning, but few come close to teaching “Soul-winning by the Book.”
I have a couple of books which I think do teach scriptural soul-winning, but most do not.
Here are half a dozen things that most of those authors seem to miss.
Proverbs 11:30 says, “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise.”
And it is debatable that it relates to New Testament evangelism.
The Hebrew word is only translated “winneth” once; and 746 times it involves “taking” or “seizing.”
But to listen to some preachers, you’d think that “soul-winning” was found in every other chapter of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
And then, the soul-winning that I was taught in Bible school, was always a system rather than a revelation.
By that I mean that my teachers pieced together dozens of verses and scriptures, but they never pointed to a chapter and said, “This is what I mean by soul-winning.”
And when we do look at a single evangelistic event, such as Philip and the Ethiopian, what we read doesn’t sound at all like what I was taught to be soul-winning.
The books in my library on this subject outline things like praising the flowers and petting the dog.
They describe dozens of special cases and how to react if. . . .
They talk about Romans Road, Proverb’s Road, John’s Road and The Psalm’s Road,
Because all they did was hop to a dozen verses, skipping over hundreds of others.
All I’m saying is that what is often purported to be soul-winning isn’t a straight-forward Bible doctrine or Bible revelation.
If Acts 9 describes how the soul of Saul of Tarsus was won to the Lord,
Then what we have here is an illustration of soul-winning.
And what does this chapter teach us about this subject?
It was something along the lines of “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
“Lord, I am a sinner, and I need to be saved. I now ask Jesus to come into my heart and save my soul.”
This sort of thing is beyond unscriptural and borders on the edge of anti-scriptural.
Did Saul of Tarsus pray? Yes, he did.
Was it an empty “repeat after me” formula?
It was a spontaneous conversation with the Lord AFTER God had awakened and quickened his sin-dead heart.
What is described here in Acts 9 illustrates this fact.
Religious and educated Saul was totally ignorant about the Lord.
But when the Lord chose to save his sin-black heart, He revealed Himself to the man.
The reason was that what he had learned of the Lord had never made it past his brain.
His heart was clogged and plugged with the poison of sin and self-righteousness.
But it can’t go anywhere or do anything but create a disgusting mess in the sink.
Unless the clog is removed, the good stuff is going to do nothing but rot.
All of the things which he had learned of Christ and the Father became clear.
Salvation is not in a prayer, it is in a person’s personal relationship with the Lord.
Stephen was one of this man’s evangelists, and perhaps some of the Apostles were as well.
I can’t help but think that some of the people whom Saul had arrested earlier had witnessed to him before he had them silenced.
And then there was Ananias.
What part did Ananias have in Saul’s salvation?
Was it any more or any less than Philip’s roll in the Ethiopian’s salvation?
In verse 17, he called him “Brother Saul,”
He didn’t lead him in the sinner’s prayer, or anything else considered important by the modern soul-winner.
Do the words “Brother Saul” teach us that Saul was already a Christian brother or merely a fellow Jew?
I think that Saul was already saved.
So who was the soul-winner?
I am not trying to say that God saves souls without the use of human agents.
I’m not trying to justify our evangelical inactivity.
I’m just pleading for the proper Biblical perspective – the Lord is the true soul-winner, even though He might call on us to be the “evangelists.”
Why didn’t the Lord send one the apostles to reach this soon-to-be apostle to the gentiles?
And what about Philip, who was being used so successfully in other venues?
Why didn’t the Lord save this wicked soul before he caused the death of Stephen?
These are questions that only God can answer, and I’m not sure that He will ever tell us.
Furthermore, what happened to the people who were traveling with Saul that day?
How many men were accompanying Saul? Two, three, half a dozen, a dozen?
Why didn’t the Lord speak so that they could hear Him as well as to Saul?
Why weren’t they given the same opportunity to believe on Christ as the Lord gave to this persecutor?
Was the Lord actually trying to hide Himself from those other people? That appears to be the case.
But I find no proof in the Bible that this ever happened.
The Lord simply stepped over dozens of people around the pool of Bethesda and healed only one.
As Paul later said, “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardereth.”
The Bible knows nothing of this sort of thing.
He didn’t talk about the importance of escaping Hell and meeting mama in Glory.
So much of modern evangelism is completely ego-centric if not actually flesh-pleasing.
It’s not that the saved don’t eventually go to Heaven, and receive more good things than their imaginations can devise.
But we don’t read of any of that in either Acts 8 or 9 or anywhere else in the Bible actually.
We learn about the blessings of eternity, not in the context of soul-winning efforts but in the epistles of the apostles.
The primary thing about Saul was the Lord’s emphasis on his conviction.
“It is hard for thee to kick against th pricks.”
In this case of Biblical soul-winning, the man’s conviction over sin was highlighted.
Modern soul-winners are taught to convince people to agree with God that all men are sinners.
But there is a difference in forcing someone to agree that the Bible declares our sinfulness and seeing that the Holy Spirit actually convicts and strangles a person with that fact.
The Lord had been driving his sinfulness into the heart of Saul for months,
There comes a day in the middle or late spring when that seed you’ve planted explodes with new life.
But before that came the rototilling of the soil, the sowing of the seed and the watering of the garden.
Salvation is instantaneous, after the Lord has been working on that soul, for as long as necessary.
The first question that left his mouth after he came to know the Lord was:
And he meant all eight of those words.
If you want me to join the mission here in Damascus, then I will do it,
And if you want me to go to Jerusalem to suffer for my sins against the church there, then I will do that.
Of course I will be buried in the waters of baptism, that will be the first thing that I will do.
And Lord, if you want me to be blind for the rest of my life, that is far less than I deserve.
When I was pastoring in Deming, New Mexico, a typical high-powered evangelist somehow got our address and showed up on Wednesday night, planning on spending a couple of days before moving on.
On Thursday he joined us for visitation, and I gave him the name of a lost family.
He came back and told me that in 15 minutes he had the mother of family calling on God to save her.
Having known this lady for some time, I had serious doubts.
When she didn’t come to church on Sunday, Judy and I went to visit her.
It was the last time that we ever saw or spoke to her.
She did was he commanded only to get him out of her house.
When God saves souls they are truly saved.
When God saves souls they become new creatures in Christ – Christians, saints, servants of God.
Why is it that so many hundreds and thousands of the new-style new converts aren’t converted?
Isn’t it because they aren’t converts at all?
I believe that we should do all that we can to bring the gospel to the lost and the lost to the Saviour.
But it is the Lord who is the true soul-winner; we are only the evangelists.
Introduce them the way that Philip introduced the Ethiopian to the Saviour,
Then step back and let the Holy Spirit do His perfect work.