John 20:27b  “Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”

REPENT! Isn’t that your first impression of exhortation from an evangelist?

What is the mission of the evangelist? Is it not to get all of those sinners to come to Christ?

Yes. It is.

For if any man love another, is it not the duty of every Christian to seek the lost and to show all the true and lasting love of Christ Jesus, who won our own hearts to eternity?

Matthew 12: ³⁰ “Anyone who isn’t with me opposes me, and anyone who isn’t working with me is actually working against me.  ^31a “So I tell you, every sin and blasphemy can be forgiven—

The evangelist has a passion for it – a passion to win new souls to the Lord. Yet there is more to it – much more – even for you and for me, my fellow believer, dear follower of Christ.

Exhortation the world may think is a loaded gun of scripture pointed squarely at the non-believer, but nothing could be further from the truth of the Lord’s teaching.

Exhortation is for the Christian – for the wavering believer, at times certainly for you and for me, dearly beloved brother and blessed sister in the Lord.

Hebrews 12: ²⁵ Be careful that you do not refuse to listen to the One who is speaking. For if the people of Israel did not escape when they refused to listen to Moses, the earthly messenger, we will certainly not escape if we reject the One who speaks to us from heaven!

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The church stands as watchman of the faith and sentry of scripture awake to the word of the Lord.

Ezekiel 33:

The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, speak to your people…

7 “So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. 8 If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. 9 But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul…

13 Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his injustice that he has done he shall die.

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Believer, do you trust in your own righteousness over your faltering faith in the Cross of Christ – the resurrection and return on the clouds of Jesus?

Should the church not call out to our wayward to repent?

Therefore return, o wayward christian, to the truth of scripture and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. For I am a watchman looking near to the clouds of heaven and here to the embrace of your soul beloved by our Lord.

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 17 “Yet your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just,’ when it is their own way that is not just.

18 When the righteous turns from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it.

19 And when the wicked turns from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he shall live by this. 20 Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ O house of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his ways.”

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Are you, fellow believer or confessor of your own wickedness, prepared that the Lord would judge YOU according to your ways?

Jesus confronted those who held onto their own righteousness, the fine leaders of the religious community, the preachers with not one regard for the Living God:

Matthew 23:28 Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness. 29 “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites!”

These false preachers are always seeking to lead the faithful away from the Cross of Christ! How unlikely are these worldly wise men and leading women to admit to the existence of God and the authority of the Lord.

Galatians 6:12b They don’t want to be persecuted for teaching that the cross of Christ alone can save.

The Evangelist of Bunyan describes these worldly hypocrites well:

The man that met thee is one Worldly Wiseman, and rightly is he so called; partly because he savoreth only the doctrine of this world, (therefore he always goes to the town of Morality to church;) and partly because he loveth that doctrine best, for it saveth him best from the cross: and because he is of this carnal temper, therefore he seeketh to pervert my ways, though right.

Are you convinced by false christians to keep Christ silent? Are you told to be tolerant of false gods by preachers of darkness cloaked as whitewashed tombs? Is your faith rooted in scripture and grounded in the truth of Christ’s death, resurrection and return?

Sound the trumpet, says the Lord; for the Day of the Lord will come unexpectedly!

Repent, christian in name only, to the only One by whom your soul may be saved: Christ Jesus!