In this chapter we will see something concerning how to preach the gospel in the church. According to church history, Christians in past generations have taken many ways to preach the gospel for the Lord. However, we would like to see something from the Scriptures concerning gospel preaching. At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord told us to go and preach the gospel to the nations, making them the Lord’s disciples (28:19). In the Scriptures, especially in the first three Gospels, there is the principle that Christians must be persons who go. We must go for the purpose of the gospel. In the Gospels we are called by the Lord to come, and we are commanded by the Lord to go. Christians are people who constantly come and go. We come all the time to the Lord, and we go all the time to others. We come to the Lord for mercy, grace, life, and power. However, this is half of the commandment. We also need the other half. We must go! After coming to the Lord, we must go to the nations for the gospel, to gain their souls.
It is very strange that most Christians are not balanced persons. The Lord calls us to come to Him, but after we come, He tells us to go to the nations. However, some Christians learn how to come to the Lord all the time, but they forget to go. Of course, other Christians today are going Christians, but I am afraid that they do not come enough to the Lord. Therefore, we must be balanced. The coming and going Christians are sound, normal Christians. On the one hand, we need to learn how to come to the Lord all the time, day by day; then on the other hand, we need to learn how to go. We come into the Holy of Holies, and we go outside the camp, to others, to the nations. If we have the intention and sincere desire to practice the church life, we must be brothers and sisters who come to the Lord day by day and go to others all the time.
When I was young, I was helped by a short but interesting writing. The writer said that in order to be a sound Christian, every day we must spend at least ten minutes to speak to the Lord, ten minutes for the Lord to speak to us, ten minutes to speak to sinners, and ten minutes to speak with the saints. Day by day we must have these four times of at least ten minutes each. This is not a small matter. Try to put it into practice. If we do this, we will be healthy in spiritual matters and in the spirit. However, we should not do too much; at the outset we should just do a little.
We need to be balanced. Even for our physical life we need many things, including eating, drinking, and clothing. It is the same in the spiritual life. We must include gospel preaching as an item to balance our Christian life. If we have not preached the gospel in several days, we are not balanced. If we are going to practice a proper church life, our church life and the Christian life of every brother and sister must be balanced by gospel preaching. In the four Gospels, whoever came to the Lord, the Lord sent him to others to preach. Matthew 28:19 tells us to go to the nations, but Mark 16:15 says that we must go even to all creation. This verse says, “And He said to them, Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to all the creation.” Christians have much to do to preach the gospel not only to the nations but also to every creature. We must do it!
In the Acts, we can see that gospel preaching is a matter of the church. It is when the church is built up that there is the impact in our preaching. After the Lord accomplished His redemption by His death and resurrection, and after He ascended, the gospel was completed. Then the first time it was preached, it was preached not by an individual but by the church. The first time the gospel was preached after the completion of the gospel was by the Body of Christ on the day of Pentecost. When Peter stood up, he stood with the eleven; twelve stood together to speak the gospel to the people. They had the oneness and the impact. No doubt, all the one hundred twenty also stood together. In this way, the entire church, consisting of one hundred twenty persons, preached the gospel. There must have been a great impact on the day of Pentecost.
The preaching of the gospel is a battle. Therefore, we need to pray. Before we plunder the strong man’s vessels, we must bind him. The strong man is the enemy, Satan, whom we bind. We must fight the battle so that we can preach the gospel in a prevailing way. However, if we are not built together as one, the enemy, Satan and the evil spirits, will laugh at us because we will not have the impact. We will have lost the testimony of the Body of Christ before the enemy. If we are going to preach the gospel in a prevailing way, we must be built together as one. Even though the brothers among us are few, if we would be one in the spirit and built together as one, we eventually will have the impact. However, if there are divisions among us, if we have opinions and quarrel with one another, the impact of the gospel preaching will be gone. This is something that transpires in the spiritual world. In any kind of world there are always certain principles. In the spiritual world with the preaching of the gospel, there is the principle of the oneness of the Body. If we are not one, we simply lose the impact, the power, and the authority to preach the gospel.
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