Alan Shlemon explains that as ambassadors for Christ, Christians have a mission to proclaim the message of reconciliation to Muslims.
Transcript
Are you ready to talk to a Muslim? Well, they’re ready to talk to you. In fact, despite most Muslims not having a lot of formal training, they actually have very strong convictions about God, Jesus, and the Bible. And, in fact, most of what they believe is actually hostile to your Christian beliefs. Well, the challenge that Islam brings to the world and to Christianity is not going away. In fact, the Muslim population is growing, and projected estimates are that Muslims will total 2.2 billion people and make up over one-quarter of the world’s population by 2030.
My point in telling you all this is not to instill fear. Rather, it’s to encourage you to take notice and to prepare. You see, Christians—especially in the West—have a unique opportunity to reach Muslims with the gospel. The only question is, are you ready?
In the Stand to Reason University course “Engaging Muslims,” we’ll take a closer look at Islam, and in doing so, I’ll help you understand the most relevant aspects of this belief system. Specifically, we’ll look at the required behaviors and beliefs of Muslims. By better understanding the key tenets of the Islamic faith, you’ll better navigate your conversations with Muslims that you encounter. I’ll also provide you with some valuable tactics that will make engaging Muslims more streamlined. But perhaps the most important thing is I’ll teach you my strategy for how to share the gospel with Muslims and answer the most common and serious objection that virtually every Muslim will present. By the end of this course, you’ll be prepared for your next conversation with a Muslim friend or neighbor. In this class, you’ll learn what the Bible tells us about our identity and mission when it comes to the topic of Islam and the Muslim people, and you’ll also learn about the unique opportunity that we Christians have when it comes to engaging Muslims. So, let’s get started.
You know, I remember when I first started witnessing to Muslims. I drove to a Muslim neighborhood in Los Angeles and found a strip mall. I could tell I was in the right place because the store signs were written in an Arabic-type font.
So, I parked my car, got out, and started looking around for some Muslims to talk to.
Now, there were these two men. They were in their mid-20s, and they had a dark complexion. They were walking toward a restaurant, and I thought to myself, “Here’s my chance.” So, I ran up to the restaurant door and asked them, “Excuse me, are you guys Muslims?”
Hesitantly, they said, “Yeah, we’re Muslims. Why?”
I said, “Great! Hey, look, I’m a Christian. Would you like to talk about God, Jesus, and the Bible?”
To my surprise, they said, “Sure, why don’t you come inside with us and join us as we eat?”
And so, I said, “Wow, great!”
We sat down and talked for almost two hours about God, religion, Jesus, the Bible, and a whole host of other things. Of course, we didn’t agree on most things, but we actually had a very enjoyable time going back and forth. Eventually, I realized that I needed to get back home, so I figured I should probably give them some money to pay for my food. As I pulled out some money to pay for my part of the meal, the two Muslim men stopped me and insisted on paying for my meal.
Now, I want you to contrast that experience with what would have happened if I went to a typical American mall, walked up to two average Americans, and said to them, “Hey, I’m a Christian. Would you like to talk about God, Jesus, and the Bible?” What do you think they’d say?
“No!”
That’s right! They’d probably tell me to get lost. You see, this tells us something about Muslims. They love to talk about religion. In fact, starting a conversation about religion with a Muslim is like starting a conversation about Tesla with Elon Musk. You just start it, and it goes. It’s virtually effortless. And so, we should take advantage of this huge opportunity that we have to talk to a group of people who are very open to discussions about faith.
Now, it also turns out there are a lot of Muslims to talk to. In fact, estimates suggest there are nearly 2 billion Muslims in the world. That means nearly one in four people on the planet is a Muslim. That’s a lot of Muslims. In fact, Islam is on track to become the largest religion in the world by the end of the century. But even now, you no longer need to cross the ocean to do cross-cultural missions. All you have to do is cross the street. In fact, often there are Muslims in your neighborhood and in your community.
Now, here’s a more sobering statistic. Muslims are the largest unreached people group on earth, and our best estimates are that around 4,273 Muslims die each day and enter eternity without Christ. With this in mind, how should we Christians approach the topic of Islam? How should we view Muslims?
Fortunately, the Bible helps us answer this question. In fact, it’s something that the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:18–20. In this passage, Paul has just told the Corinthian believers that they are a new creation. So, this is a very well-known passage where Paul says, “The old is gone, and the new has come,” and he tells them some of the benefits that come with being a follower of Jesus.
Then he comes to our passage and says this: “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us.”
Paul tells us two important things in this passage. The first is about our identity, and the second is about our mission.
Regarding our identity, Paul tells us that if you are a follower of Jesus, then you already are an ambassador for Christ. In other words, becoming an ambassador is not a title that is given to you after you’ve been a Christian for 20, 40, or 60 years, and then we pin the blue ribbon upon your chest and declare you an ambassador. No. The instant you step over the line and begin to follow Jesus, you become his ambassador, and you become his representative. That means you represent Jesus 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
So, how you come across to other people is how those people will perceive Christ.
What that means is every believer needs to ask themselves an important question: “What kind of ambassador am I? Am I an effective ambassador, or am I an ineffective ambassador?” Because, regardless of which one you are, you are saying something about your King.
So, the first thing Paul tells us, then, is something about our identity. But, notice, he also tells us something about the nature of our mission. In fact, there’s a word he repeated three times in different forms in that passage I read, and the word is “reconcile.” To reconcile means to bring together two things that are at odds with each other. So, Paul tells us that our primary job as an ambassador is to proclaim the message of reconciliation.
If that’s your identity and that’s your mission, the key question then is, how do we fulfill that role and accomplish that mission? Well, I think the answer is simple, and it’s exactly the way an ambassador would do it. And what do ambassadors typically do? Well, two things: they learn, and then they engage.
So, in this class, you’ve learned the role you play as an ambassador for Christ to Muslims. In the next class, available exclusively on Stand to Reason University, you’ll learn about the three most important sources of authority in Islam and learn an important tactic to help you determine whether a teaching or behavior is truly Islamic or not.