Not Evangelizing is a fruit of Not Rejoicing.
By Tommy Moore
This past week I (Tommy Moore) preached a sermon from Luke 10:1-24 which looked at the mission of discipleship multiplication in some of the earliest followers of Jesus (watch the whole service or listen to the sermon podcast).
The passage chronicles one of the first “mission trips” that ever occurred as Jesus sends out 72 people who have made the decision to follow Him on a mission to reach other people with the Gospel. This Scripture is a fantastic guidebook for what it looks like practically to evangelize (share the Gospel with) people.
As a very brief four-point recap of the sermon, here are the key aspects I think we see in this passage regarding reaching people with the Gospel:
1. We reach others with the Gospel by praying and going.
Luke 10:2–3
2. We reach others with the Gospel with meekness and reliance on God
Luke 10:3–4
3. We reach others with the Gospel by... preaching the Gospel.
Luke 10:9
4. As we reach others with the Gospel… we must rejoice.
Luke 10:17–20
It’s all fairly straightforward. We see in the passage that as the disciples follow this guide during their reaching of people with the Gospel, they have an incredible experience that fuels their faith and encourages them onward in their following of Jesus.
As we read this today, it’s a natural point of application to consider our own efforts at evangelism. But what if that self reflection is mostly disappointing and discouraging? What if what comes to mind are our failed attempts at evangelism or our realization that sharing our faith and the Gospel really isn’t a priority?
Rejoicing is Critical
The point from this sermon that impacted me the most was the fourth one: As we reach others with the Gospel… we must rejoice. We see this in verses 17-20 when the disciples return all jazzed up from being on mission for Jesus. They’ve experienced true reliance on God, experienced his protection and provision, saw God do some miraculous things through them— they had a lot of reasons to ride a “spiritual high.” But Jesus quickly redirects them to the source of ultimate joy:
Luke 10:20 [20] Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (ESV)
In other words, “Don’t ride the joy of the fruit you’re seeing, but rather meditate on and make a home in the joy of your very own salvation.” Why? I mentioned in my sermon that the joy of our salvation is the greatest joy of our lives… there’s nothing else that really can compare to such a monumental experience, and nothing with further reaching implications. But how often do we take time to reflect on our own testimony of salvation? How often do we marvel at how God has opened our eyes and softened our hearts to see and respond to the Gospel message? How often do we just sit in contentedness with our eternal destiny sealed in Heaven as a result of the miraculous work of divine salvation in our lives? If you’re like me… the answer is, “not very often.”
But that’s Jesus’ exhortation in this context of the debriefing of their mission of reaching people with the Gospel. Why? Because rejoicing is critical, and in a world where circumstantial happiness can switch into catastrophic regret in the blink of an eye, there is nothing more firm to rejoice in than the never-changing, once-and-for-all rescuing of our souls by Jesus.
But I don’t feel the joy…
While we read Jesus’ exhortation to rejoice (the active verb form of joy, “to find great joy in”), it’s perfectly fair to respond with the realization that we don’t feel that joy. That’s one of the tricky things about Joy… it’s something we actively do but it also can’t be manufactured. It seems like a cruel paradox.
There are plenty of resources written on the pursuit of biblical joy, but the one place where it comes vividly to mind for me is in Paul’s letter to the Galatians:
Galatians 5:22–23 [22] But the fruit of the Spirit is love, JOY, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, [23] gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (ESV, emphasized)
Joy here is used in a different context— not as something you do, but something that is produced inside of you. Joy is a supernatural fruit that sprouts from God through His Holy Spirit that dwells inside of us as His followers.
How do these two concepts of Joy co-exist? How does one “do” joy while it’s something that’s produced inside of us? We do this by understanding that true Joy is a product of the Holy Spirit inside of us (passive), and rejoicing is our conscious and intentional decision to meditate on and ponder the source of our ultimate Joy (active). It is like receiving a gift (passive), and pursuing the gift (active).
The other truth we can extrapolate here is that Joy can be prayed for. Just as we pray for love to show compassion to our neighbors, patience to bear with our children, faithfulness to continue following Jesus on a daily basis, self-control to resist temptation… we can pray that the Joy of God would be blossomed inside of us.
Joy doesn’t terminate on us
There are obvious blessings when we’re able to experience and meditate on the Joy that God gives us. But it doesn’t end there! And I think that’s why it’s a critical step for the 72 as they return from their sharing of the Gospel. The joy that they experience in their own salvation motivates and compels them to share the joy they’ve experienced when being made alive in Christ with others who are dead in their sin.
It’s like delighting in a delicious bite of food and feeling compelled to exclaim, “you’ve got to try this!” Or watching an incredible film and texting your friends to say, “you’ve got to see this!” When we experience the joy of God, personally epitomized in the salvation of our souls, we are compelled to reach out to those around us to say, “you’ve got to hear this good news!”
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