Proverbs 28:1 “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”

Contrasting Righteousness and Wickedness

Once again at the “corner of righteousness” we encountered a group of pornographers who were passing out their own “tracts” for admission to a local strip club. At the time they appeared, good brother Kurtis was preaching.

Kurtis preaching in the rain with his Waterproof Bible by Bardin & Marsee Publishing.

Kurtis didn’t actually see the folks peddling immorality, but he preached God’s Word with “the boldness of a lion.” I was slightly bothered, because, if you read last week’s post, you know that I intentionally preached against the immorality in order to drive away the evildoers.

But God, who can do exceedingly and abundantly more than I can even think, had plans to drive these folks away without my wisdom. Whether it was the rain, the godly preaching, or just a lack of response, these purveyors of sex, and abusers of women only lasted a few minutes at our corner and left!

God certainly didn’t need me or my best ideas to accomplish what I asked him to do in prayer. We can trust that the wicked flee when no one pursues, and that the preaching of God’s Word with lionlike boldness may be used by God to drive away evil, even when the specific evil isn’t being preached about! Praise the Lord!

The Just and the Unjust

God sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45). This was a day where commitment was questioned, and love for God and the lost tested. Four people who were expected to minister along side of me canceled, as well as two others who normally help who could not make it. Thank God for Kurtis who recruited a friend from Cedarville to come and give out the gospel. It was great to welcome Adam Burd to our team and get to know him a little. It turns out this was his first time evangelizing!

We stood in rain for almost 3 hours and preached the gospel the entire time. Kurt and I took turns preaching, while Adam tracted the crowds. I noticed one lady stop to ask Adam questions and he was able to speak to her.

We try not to be fair-weather evangelists.

Adam and a lady with her daughter.

If God send rain on the Buckeyes game, the fans who bought tickets will still be there. We will be there too. But it is especially encouraging when a person will stop and talk to you in the rain. I was very impressed with Adam because he was not raised around street preaching, yet he seemed entirely comfortable with it. Truly we can trust this is a work of God’s grace in his life.

Around 30 minutes prior to game time, I actually went to another corner so that Kurtis and I were letting everyone who came near us hear the Word. Normally, we try to stick together, but we thought it important that the people on the other side of the street be given the gospel as well.

Some Apologetic

“That’s a form of sanity,” said a guy at the corner as I preached.

“Oh. Yes. To not believe the Bible would be crazy,” I replied.

“No. You don’t understand,” his buddy let me know, “that’s your personal truth, and as long as your good with it, it’s a ‘form of sanity.'”

It seems this “form of sanity” concept was important to him and his buddy. So I told them the reason that what I was doing is sane is that I was preaching {trigger warning} “objective truth.” They took exception with this idea. They challenged that the Bible was objective truth, raising the fact that Hemingway wrote stuff, too, “so why isn’t that objective truth as well.”

Ponchos kept us dry underneath, but we weren’t ready for how cold it was standing outside that long. Our hands stopped working!

These young men were in a hurry to be somewhere, so there wasn’t much time to get deep with them, but I told them their own philosophy was a failure because it couldn’t support itself. I told them that the mere concept of personal truth was just their own personal truth and thus easily refuted by me saying I didn’t believe in it.

Not understanding the point, one of the guys said to me, “your belief in Christ and the Bible is a philosophy, too.”

“Yes, it is,” I told him. “But it’s internally consistent. That is, it does not refute itself — like your philosophy which is self-contradictory. You believe in personal truth absolutely, so much so you project that idea onto me. You believe absolutely that personal truth exists.”

I was encouraged that as I was saying those last couple sentences, they had already started to cross the street to their destination, but they walked backwards, as if continuing to converse with me was quite important to them. Maybe when they crossed the street, Adam gave them a tract and they heard gospel preaching from Kurt? God knows!

Not Without Difficulty

Grateful for the gospel fellowship we shared afterward over a meal, and for young men who give up their Saturday to minister to the lost.

A note to all who follow the ministry and support us in various ways. We are forever under various trials, some minor some major. After we had our fellowship meal and departed, I stopped to buy some food for my wife which she needed to cook for our church fellowship meal the next day. This was around 5:30.

My car battery had died. After all was said and done with a tow truck and a replacement batter in the rain, I didn’t get home until 8:30, making for nearly a 10 hour day. Praise God for a godly woman who takes care of my home and kids and sends her husband out as her good sacrifice to Jesus for all He’s done for her. It isn’t just those on the street who are dying to self for Christ, we’re just the ones who get our pictures on websites for our labors.

Secondly, I met up with some other guys that day who are street preachers as well. I had some reservations about them due to encounters in the past with folks like they are and folks they associate with. But I didn’t want to judge a book by a cover so I was happy to give them some tracts and fellowship with them briefly. I was caught off guard the next day when one of them called me to accuse me of supporting idolatry because I wore an OSU football jersey. As he described me as participating in worldliness and the works of darkness I responded like I hoped Paul would; I gave him a sharp rebuke for his apparent legalism and unrighteous judgement and exhorted him to become an actual submitted member of a local church (which he is not). I warned him that I have seen guys like him come and go and make shipwrecks of their faith as they travel the USA with no accountability to anyone but themselves.

These are difficult situations to deal with and only by the power of God can we hope to come out of them without sinning against God and man. And I hope that you would partner with me in prayer, not only for God to send His elect to the corner of righteousness on tOSU game days, but that he would sanctify me and my team by His Spirit and the Word, that we might be prepared to honor Him in the day of battle.

P.S. As I sat in my dead car waiting for a tow truck, I said to myself, “Well, I guess God wants someone else to hear the gospel.” Thanks to the dead battery, I was able to speak to the tow truck driver about Christ, hand out a few tracts at the autoparts store, and give the gospel to one of the employees and really challenge his lack of commitment to the local church.