Hello, this is Alistair Begg and you're listening to Truth for Life.

Today we're beginning a series on evangelism called Crossing the Barriers. I'm introducing this personally because the work of evangelism is so vitally important.

Jesus instructs us to go into all the world and proclaim the good news, to share the truth of the gospel with those around us.

And with so many of our friends and neighbors increasingly confused about truth, our responsibility to fulfill this instruction is as important as ever.

And so for the next four weeks I invite you to listen as we work our way through a course on how to evangelize.

We'll cover why we need to overcome our reluctance to tell others about Jesus and by God's grace we'll learn how to be effective in our gospel conversations.

You'll immediately be able to tell that these messages go way back some 30 years. My accent I think a little stronger.

But we're bringing it to you this month because our evangelism efforts are as necessary perhaps even more necessary today than ever they've been living in the world in which we now find ourselves.

So listen up and I'll return with some closing thoughts at the end.

What is evangelism? You can't have any more basic beginning than that. And in seeking to address it I want us to begin by looking at a number of biblical words.

And the first word is the word to evangelize which is you and Jelit Somai and its essential meaning is simply to proclaim good news or to announce good news.

Verse 1 of Luke 8 after this Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.

And the word proclaiming there is the word which emerges from this root verb to evangelize.

If you go then following Luke's path into the Acts and to chapter 8 in the Acts of the Apostles and in verse 12 the story of Philip's proclamation and it reads but when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ they were baptized both men and women.

And the word that is translated there preached is once again our word. The second word that we want to notice is the noun which emerges from this.

You and jelly on which simply means the gospel or the good news. I want us to notice five things about this gospel.

First of all it is the gospel of the kingdom. The gospel of the kingdom of God turned to Matthew chapter 4 verse 23 and then 935 and let's just look at how we find this stated.

Matthew 4 23 Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues preaching the good news of the kingdom whose kingdom God's kingdom who reigns in it Christ reigns as king in the kingdom and the announcement of the kingdom rule of Christ is there in the midst of the phenomenal display of his rule as you read on in verse 24 and 25.

When you turn to Matthew chapter 9 you'll find the same thing Matthew 9 and verse 35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages teaching in their synagogues and preaching the good news of the kingdom and once again healing every kind of disease and sickness.

Jesus went around to say my kingly rule is here it is raining now as people's lives are touched and when we think about evangelizing and proclaiming the UN jelly on the gospel we are proclaiming is the gospel first of all of the kingdom.

Secondly it is the gospel of God now that might seem very straightforward but it is important for us just to underscore it mark chapter 1 you'll find the verse I think if you look and then verse 14 after John was put in prison Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God.

So obviously these phrases are used interchangeably it is God's gospel now this is important just in a moment as an aside because one of the things that will happen to us as we go out to evangelize is that we will run up against people who say this that's just your idea that's just something that you dreamt up and we may find ourselves unsettled by that until we remind ourselves that the good news that we're going to do is that we're going to do something that we're going to do.

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