Back in the days of the Gold Rush, a group of prospectors set out from Bannock, Montana (then the capital of the state), in search of gold.  They went through many hardships and several of them died on the way.  Finally, they were overtaken by the Indians, who took their good horses, leaving them with only a few limping old ponies.  Then they threatened them, telling them to get back to Bannock and stay there, for if they overtook them again, they would murder the lot of them.  Defeated, discouraged, and downhearted, the prospectors sought to make their way back to the capital city.  At one point as they tethered out the limping ponies on a creek side, one of the men casually picked up a little stone from the creek bed.  He called to his buddy for a hammer and upon cracking the rock, he said, “It looks as though there may be gold here.”  The two of them panned gold the rest of the afternoon and managed to realize twelve dollars’ worth.  The entire little company panned gold the next day in the same creek and made fifty dollars, a great sum in those days.  They said to one another:  “We have struck it!”  They made their way back to Bannock and vowed not to breathe a word concerning this gold strike.  They secretively set about re-equipping themselves with supplies for another prospecting trip.  But when they got ready to go back, three hundred people followed them.  Who had told?  No one!  Their beaming faces betrayed the secret!  (Illustrations Unlimited, 180)
 
That's a great illustration of what evangelism really is.  True evangelism is not about getting the words right or getting all the details of the story in the right order.  True evangelism happens when we have found that all-important treasure -- Jesus Christ -- and made him a part of our life.     Like many other things, true evangelism begins at home.  We tell the story to ourselves until it sinks in and changes us and changes how we live.  People cant help but notice.
 
“Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord,” Paul says, “we try to persuade others.”   The word fear does not mean we are afraid.  It means that we have reverence or awe for God.  I would paraphrase this to say, because we ourselves have found Christ and have become his followers, we try to persuade others to do the same.  Later on in our Bible passage, he says that we are ambassadors for Christ, God making the appeal to others through us.  The word ambassador has a strong meaning that comes from the history of the times.   When the Roman Empire conquered a nation, the Roman senate would send ten Ambassadors to arrange the terms of peace with this new province. These ambassadors had a direct commission from the Roman senate, and carried with them the authority of the Roman government.  They were responsible for bringing these people into the Empire, to help them learn their way around and become good citizens of their new nation.
 
We are ambassadors for Christ.  We have a direct commission from God to persuade people to become a part of God's family.   To present to them the terms of  God's peace.     Does that sound presumptuous?    To speak to people on God's behalf?  I have to admit that I often feel that it is.   Who am I to tell you what God is saying?  Yet this is my task.  And this is our task together.
 
So, what do we tell them?   This is where many of us fall flat, because we are afraid that we don't know enough to convince anyone.   I think that many of us are afraid that our words are no more convincing than these Bible bloopers that come from the mouths of kids:  Jesus was born because Mary had an immaculate contraption.  St. John, the blacksmith, dumped water on his head.  Jesus enunciated the Golden Rule, which says to do one to others before they do one to you.  He also explained, “a man doth not live by sweat alone.”   The people who followed the Lord were called the 12 decibels.  And finally, It was a miracle when Jesus rose from the dead and managed to get the tombstone off the entrance.

You don't have to be a Bible scholar to be an ambassador for Christ.  The great theologian Karl Barth was asked one time to summarize what he believed.  He started to sing:  “Jesus loves me, this I know. . .”  Remember that people are going to be convinced a whole lot more by your life than by your words.   I was reading an article in Time magazine about Billy Graham this week, and thinking about the high respect that so many people have for him, as opposed to many other high profile evangelists who seem like scam artists.   Billy Graham's integrity speaks as loudly as his words, and that's why people listen with respect to what he says.   That will work for you as well.  Get your life in line with the life that Christ has called you to live, and people will listen to what you have to say.

Still, we do need to know what to say, don't we?   There are many ways to talk about the content of the Gospel.   What I want to do is to give you a simple three-point outline that summarizes the message that God has given us to share with others.  Then, I want to show you a picture to illustrate it.   This is one way to present the Gospel message.  The reason that I'm choosing this way is because I think it's something that you could take with you and use in conversation with someone else.   At the same time, I hope that it might be helpful for anyone here today who is not clear about his or her relationship with Christ.

1.  You matter to God.
2. God has made it possible for you to become a part of God's family.
3. You have to make a choice.

 The bottom line is that people matter to God. We often feel pretty insignificant, and many people may treat us as being insignificant.  But we are not insignificant to God.  In Matthew 10:29 Jesus says that two sparrows are sold for a penny.   Then Luke12:6 quotes him as saying that five sparrows are sold for two pennies.  If two are sold for a penny and five are sold for 2 cents, that fifth sparrow is thrown in for nothing.   It is essentially valueless.  It doesn't even count.  But Jesus continues by saying that not one sparrow is forgotten by God.  Not even the one that was thrown in for free.  And then he says that we are worth much more than sparrows.

You matter to God.  And the people you meet daily matter to God.  In fact, you will never encounter someone that God doesn't care about.  Think about that next time you are talking to someone you don't really like.  God cares about that person.  Jesus died for that person.    That's what was behind the stories that Ed shared last week about the lost coin and the lost sheep.  Lost people are important to God.   Important enough to go looking for.  This is the most important part of the Gospel message.   If we don't get that across, we will not likely get anything else across either.   God wants to be in relationship with us.  But God, from the beginning, did not want to force people to be in his family.  God wanted people to return his love voluntarily, so God gave people something called free will.    And that is the explanation for a whole lot of trouble that the world has gotten itself into.  From Adam and Eve onward, people have chosen to sin—and that includes you and me.  In the Old Testament it says that none are righteous, no not one.   In Romans it says that all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.   God loves us, but God doesn't love sin.  In fact the Bible says that God is holy, and a holy God cannot abide sin.  Sin separates us from God.   Notice on the picture (figure 1)  that it shows us in a quandary.  Sin has created a giant chasm between us and God.   You'll notice something else in the picture.  At the bottom of the chasm is death.  In Romans Paul says that the wages of sin is death.  What that means is that if something isn't done about that sin business that is getting in the way of everything, the end result will be eternal separation from God.   Sin is kind of like an oil spill.   It gets all over everything.   It will just keep spreading out and getting worse unless there's some heavy-duty clean-up.
 
I think most people have at least a vague sense of this separation from God.  An uneasiness, a sense that all is not well, that there is something missing in life.  Though they may not identify it as sin.   When people become aware of this separation, what do they do?  Most people try to be good enough to bridge this gap.  To find a way across to God.  We do good things, we go to church, we may read the Bible or a variety of other things.  The problem is, how do you know when you've done enough?    And in fact the Bible says it's impossible for us to do enough or to be good enough on our own to make the leap across.    I like to compare it to swimming across the Atlantic Ocean.  If all of us lined up on the Jersey shoreline, and started swimming, some of us would make it farther than others (I wouldn't even get a good start).   But none of us would make it all the way across.   None of us is good enough.

 But as Jesus once said,  what's impossible for people is possible for God.   The good news is that God has made a way for people to be reconciled to God.  To become a part of God's family.   Paul says it several different ways in today's passage.  He died for all. . . .if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. . .in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.   For our sake he made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin of his own, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.   By his death on the cross, Jesus built a bridge between us and God.  (figure 2)
 
Our part of the equation is to take a step of faith, to accept what Jesus has done, and walk across to God.  When we take that step, our Christian life begins, and we can begin to grow in faith and in ministry.   The thing is, God won't do this part for us.  God has done everything else, but we must choose to be in the family.   This is the beginning of the adventure we call faith.  The question you need to ask yourself is, where are you in this picture?  Honestly.   Have you accepted the gift that God has given in Jesus, or are you still over here trying to paddle across on your own steam?
 
Maybe today's the day to take that step.  To make that positive, life transforming choice.  If that's something that you'd like to do, if you're not sure you've really ever done it before, I've included a prayer for you to consider praying.  In closing I will pray this prayer, and if it's what you want to say for yourself, I invite you to pray along with me silently.   And, if anyone wants to talk to Ed or me about this, we are available.

 “Dear God, I know that you love me and that you want me to be a part of your family.  I'm not sure that I have ever said this to you, but I love you, too, and I want to be your follower.  I ask you to forgive my sins, and I ask Jesus to come into my heart and be a part of my life every day.   I will do my best to follow.  Amen.”