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In his letter, the Apostle Peter will teach his original readers (and us) how to live faithfully in a hostile world, but first he wants us to understand something that will change our perspective. Even though they were exiles, these Christians were blessed with unimaginable privilege.

That's Peter's point in 1:10-12. Yes, life hurts from one perspective. But from an eternal perspective Christians are privileged beyond belief. Yesterday we learned we are privileged because we have been served by the prophets. Today we'll learn a second reason.

We Have Been Served By Evangelists

We sometimes use the word “evangelist” to refer to anyone who is an enthusiastic advocate of something, like the “evangelists” for CrossFit or Essential Oils. But the word evangelist comes from the New Testament. What we see as six words in our English translation is only one word in the original language. The phrase “those who preached the good news” is one word in the original language: evangelists.

When you picture an evangelist, what comes to mind? For many of us we think of someone like the late Billy Graham. We picture a man in a suit and tie, preaching to a large audience of people at a big event, with many people making decisions for Christ. In his book Evangelism as Exiles, Elliot Clark contends that because of this “we tend to envision evangelism as an activity—more commonly a large event—that requires some measure of power and influence. In communicating the gospel, one must have a voice, a platform, and ideally a willing audience. It’s also why, to this day, we think the most effective spokespeople for Christianity are celebrities, high-profile athletes, or other people of significance. If they speak for Jesus, the masses will listen.”[i]

That’s not what Peter has in mind in verse 12. Sure, there’s a few examples of large crowds hearing the Gospel in Scripture. Peter himself preached to thousands at Pentecost in Acts 2. But these were spontaneous gatherings, not planned events. And they were the exception, not the ordinary way people heard the Good News of salvation. They heard it through ordinary people like me and you who announced the Good News. These are the people the Bible calls evangelists.

An evangelist is an ordinary Christian who, in the power of the Spirit, announces Good News. That’s what they do. They tell people about Jesus. So who was an evangelist for you?

For some of you it was your parents. Mom and dad didn’t get everything right, but they told you about Jesus. Christian parents: nobody has a greater responsibility to evangelize your children than you. Regularly tell them the Gospel! If you don’t know how, go to the bookstall after the service and buy one of our children’s Bible story books and start reading your kids a Bible story every night before bed. Evangelize your kids!

Maybe some of you were evangelized by a faithful pastor. Someone invited you to church and you went. You heard the Gospel and over time you believed. Maybe it was a Sunday School teacher. In addition to my parents and my pastor, two of the most influential people in my young life were Rosie Caldwell and Bob Swaim. Ms. Rosie taught my 1st-2nd grade Sunday School class and Bob taught the 5-6th grade boys Sunday School class. They were faithful evangelists.

Sunday School teachers let me encourage you. You have no idea what impact you may be having on the young people in your class. I once heard the great Scottish preacher Alistair Begg say that everything he needed to know he learned from Sunday School. Thank you teachers, for being faithful evangelists!

Parents, let me exhort you. No, you shouldn’t outsource the training of your children to the church’s Sunday School program. But it is wise to view Sunday School as a supplement to your training! By God’s grace we have a wonderful group of men and women who teach God’s Word week after week. Take advantage of that! When your kids ask how they can know God’s Word is true, don’t tell them to take your word for it. Let them hear it from other faithful evangelists who love them!

Let me ask you again, who were the evangelists in your life? My guess is that most of us could list several people who faithfully announced the Good News to us along the way. We have been unimaginably privileged to be served by faithful evangelists. But before we move on, consider this sobering reality.

While you may have heard the Gospel dozens of times before you believed it, and have likely heard it hundreds or thousands of times since, there are over 3.2 billion people on the planet who have never heard it once.[ii]

90% of these people live in places that are resistant to the Gospel. They haven’t heard because they live in dangerous places. Like the Hazara people in Central Afghanistan. Out of 2.8 million people, only 0.03% are professing Christians. Or the Kazakh people in Central Asia. Out of 14 million Kazakhs, only 1500 are known believers. Or the Alawite people in Syria, who live in one of the most horrific, war-torn places in the world. With a Muslim population of 99.79%, virtually none of them have heard the name of Jesus.[iii]

We call these people unreached people groups. According to ministries like The Joshua Project, there are about 17,400 people groups in the world, and over 7000 of them are considered unreached. Being considered an unreached people group isn’t about how many Christians you have. Some people misunderstand this and they’ll say “there’s unreached people here in America!” That’s not true. There are unsaved people in America—boatloads of them!—but there are zero unreached people in America. Why? Because we can reach them! There’s churches, websites, podcasts, bookstores, Christian resources galore! Most importantly, unsaved Americans aren’t unreached because they’re living near Christian neighbors like you and me. To be unreached means you have no access to the Gospel. And there are untold billions who have little or no access. No one has announced the Good News to them.

The great theologian Carl Henry used to say, "The Gospel's only good news if it gets there in time." You and I are unimaginably privileged because we have heard the Gospel in time.

Even though we are exiles, all Christians are blessed with unimaginable privilege because we have been served by the prophets, and by evangelists.

 

[i] Elliot Clark, Evangelism as Exiles: Life On Mission As Strangers In Our Own Land (Denmark: Gospel Coalition, 2019), 15.  

[ii] “Unreached People Groups | Global Frontier Missions,” accessed August 14, 2020, https://globalfrontiermissions.org/gfm-101-missions-course/the-unreached-peoples-and-their-role-in-the-great-commission/, https://globalfrontiermissions.org/gfm-101-missions-course/the-unreached-peoples-and-their-role-in-the-great-commission/.  

[iii] All statistics taken from Great Commission Action Guide (Reach Beyond, n.d.), www.reachbeyond.org.