The Apostle Paul exhorted his disciple Timothy with
the following words, which apply to us today.
You may turn in your Bibles to 2
Timothy.
We're going to be in chapter 4 and
in verses 1 through 5.
Paul is telling Timothy how to preach and
reprove sinners and rebuke sin, to exhort his
hearers with doctrine.
Paul even describes our sad spiritual condition today,
where we've picked for ourselves teachers who will
scratch our itch and nothing more.
Here now is the Word of God for
us today.
Season out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with
all longsuffering and doctrine, for the time will
come when they will not endure sound doctrine,
but after their own lusts shall they heap
to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they
shall turn away their ears from the truth
and shall be turned unto fables.
But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions,
do the work of an evangelist, make full
proof of thy ministry.
I'm sorry to say, friends, that we don't
have many preachers today who reprove or rebuke
anything, much less preach the great doctrines of
the gospel.
Sadly, we live in the day, friends, of
a diluted gospel that's been so watered down
it no longer has any teeth or power.
It grieves me how the American church has
become seeker-friendly, politically correct, and a house
of entertainment.
Many preachers today do not even know what
the gospel is, much less know how to
preach it to bring sinners to conviction of
sin and salvation through repentance toward God and
faith in Jesus Christ.
A seminary does not teach you how to
preach the gospel.
I know, I've graduated from two different seminaries.
They taught me theology, church history, apologetics, and
biblical studies, but not how to preach the
gospel of the Son of God.
I had to learn that outside of a
seminary classroom.
We live in a day of not only
a diluted gospel, which is diluted of all
its power, but we live in a day
of a perverted gospel that damns its hearers
and gospel-hordens them to the real gospel.
Listen, friends, it's hard to visit churches and
even hear the true gospel preached today.
The reason is we have a nation of
teachers today and not preachers.
Most men in the pulpit like to lecture
and impress you with their knowledge and win
you over with their personality.
Many resort to the popular method of fill
-in-the-blank program teaching, where you hold
your church bulletin in one hand and a
pen in the other and fill in the
next obvious word.
All this does is occupy a congregation and
give them some information.
But there's a vast difference between teaching and
preaching.
Teaching informs, preaching transforms.
I can sum up the American church with
the following observation.
A Chinese pastor recently came to America to
visit this country's churches and to hear what
our preaching was like.
Upon asking his impression of the American church,
he replied, first karaoke, then a lecture.
And that sums it up, friends.
But he forgot to mention, first warm up
the crowd with a few jokes and funny
stories.
That's the sad condition of the American church
today.
This morning, I'd like to spend some time
on the important subject of what comprises gospel
preaching.
And the title of my message today is
How to Preach the Gospel.
If you learn what I share with you
today and do it, you will be preaching
the full counsel of God and warning men
of their great danger of dying in their
sins and being cast into hell and its
torments.
As a revival historian, I have spent decades
studying spiritual awakenings and revivals of religion.
Often, there is a link between them and
that is many revivals have begun when the
doctrines of grace are preached with conviction and
authority.
And when I visit countless churches and listen
to what takes place behind most pulpits in
this country, there is a good reason why
we are not seeing revival break out among
us.
We refuse to return to the old paths
and preach what our fathers preached who saw
revival in third day.
We must warn men about their danger of
dying in their sins and being cast into
hell.
The outline of my message today is as
follows.
We should preach the gospel in its purity
and proper order.
We should not be afraid to preach the
great doctrines of the gospel, which are redemption,
repentance and regeneration.
And we should preach the gospel in its
proper order, which is as follows.
Number one, first preach the law.
Number two, then preach man's duty of repentance.
Number three, preach man's necessity of regeneration.
Number four, call men to Christ with the
gospel.
I'm not talking about giving an invitation for
someone to walk in hell.
I'm talking about calling lost sinners to Christ
with the rulings of the gospel.
Did you know that the majority of church
members in America today, friends, never have been
told that they had a duty to repent
of their sins and that they needed to
work a grace upon their heart through regeneration?
Most of them just made a decision to
become a Christian and they joined the church.
Ministers today fail to preach the full counsel
of God by preaching the law to shut
sinners up to God.
They fail to warn men of their duty
of repentance.
They fail to inform sinners that they need
to work a grace upon the heart through
the new birth if they ever wish to
get to heaven.
No, we make it real easy for people
to join the church today because we need
their money to pay our big bills.
So we just give them enough of the
gospel to come forward and accept Jesus so
they can join the church.
And we have a lot of entertainers in
our pulpits today who are mainly comedians.
But where oh where are the Jonathan Edwards
and the Asahel Nettleton's of our day?
You see, friends, men of former days knew
how to preach the gospel effectively.
To make room for the Holy Spirit to
work upon a sinner's heart.
Our fathers knew how to thunder the terrors
of the law around a hearer's ears until
they saw a sign all together on a
smoke and were bowed before a great God
of majesty.
The law was preached first to awaken a
sinner to his lost condition before the gospel
of the pearl of great price was presented.
George Whitfield, the great British evangelist, illustrated it
in this way.
He said, one must first bring a sinner
to Mount Sinai before they can be brought
to Mount Zion.
Both George Whitfield and John Wesley preached the
law before grace and preachers in former days
understood the work of the Holy Spirit in
bringing conviction to sin and how it is
the spirit of God applying the word of
God to the heart that brings a person
to salvation.
But today we have taken salvation out of
the hands of God and placed it in
the hands of men.
Even Charles Finney understood the proper use of
the law in preaching the gospel.
Listen to how Charles Finney explained how the
gospel was preached in his day.
Charles Finney used the example of the old
gristmill that operated by the force of water
upon two millstones.
There was the top stone and the bottom
stone, and these two millstones are laid one
atop the other, and as they turn, they
grind the weed into flour.
Finney said the bottom stone was the law
of God written on the heart of man,
which is his conscience from Romans 2.15,
which declares, which show the work of the
law written in their hearts, their conscience also
bearing witness and their thoughts to mean while
accusing or else excusing one another.
So the bottom stone was the law of
God written on the heart of man, which
is his conscience.
The top stone is the preached law of
God thundered about the ears of the hearer.
And when this occurs, friend, then the Holy
Spirit can operate by grinding upon the heart
and conviction of sin.
Listen, friends, the main problem with our evangelism
today is that we do not make room
for the Holy Spirit to operate because we
do not preach the gospel in its purity
and proper order.
We must change the way we preach to
make an opening through the spirit of God
to work upon a sinner's heart.
So the law must be preached to show
a lost person that they are a sinner
in need of a savior or weakness in
our evangelism today is that we offer people,
Jesus, the remedy for sin before we even
show them why they need a remedy for
sin.
If a man is not sick unto death,
he will see no need of a medicine
to save him.
He will refuse the medicine or casually take
it without applying it to his need.
But if that same man is deathly ill
and there is a cure for his illness,
he will sacrifice no cost to obtain that
remedy which can save him.
So this matter of the gospel being preached
in its purity and proper order is of
great importance.
Friend, if we start on the wrong foot,
we are off balance altogether.
First and foremost, the law of God must
be preached.
This is how the apostle Paul did it.
Listen to Paul from Romans chapter seven in
verses seven through nine.
What shall we say then?
Is law sin?
God forbid.
Nay, I had not known sin, but by
the law, for I had not known lust,
except the law had said thou shalt not
covet.
But sin, taken occasion by the commandment, wrought
in me all manner of concussions.
For without the law, sin was dead.
For I was alive without the law once,
but when the commandment came, sin revived and
I died.
Listen, friends, without the law, sin was dead
like a snake in winter.
But when the law shone its holy spotlight
upon the flesh and sin, it irritates and
quickens to where a man sees his sin
and the foulness of it.
He feels the guilt of sin because he
has seen his sin and the great evil
of sin.
Paul said sin revived and I died.
He realized he was a lost sinner who
was dead in sin and he needed life
found only in Christ Jesus.
So the first step in preaching the gospel
is to thunder the law about the ears
of our hearers.
This is what you say to them, brother
preacher.
Listen, you are a guilty rebel who has
broken the strict and severe law of God.
And God is a God who must punish
sin for the sentencing of the law must
be carried out.
God requires perfection to get into his heaven.
And you are not perfect.
In fact, there is a common day, a
future day of judgment where the judge of
all the earth will try each man's case
and a person's life will be reviewed.
Your sins will be stacked up against you
on that day, friend.
Your sins are the evidence which show you
your need of a sin substitute.
You cannot stand in your own merits and
be held up against the strict and severe
law of God because you will fail that
test.
Listen, friend, I know I'm a sinner and
I need a sin substitute in the person
of Jesus Christ.
And so do you, friend.
So do you.
But many pastors today offer people a casual
Jesus like they would hand you a stick
of chewing gum and folks take that Jesus
and chew on him for a while and
join the church without ever first seeing their
need of a savior from sin.
So they remain in their sin because they've
never been awakened to their lost condition, never
been convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit
and never have been truly born again through
a supernatural work of grace called regeneration.
Listen, friend, you are not a sinner because
you sin, rather you sin because you are
a big sinner.
My Bible says we are born with a
rude nature and that man drinks iniquity like
it's water.
A person is either dead in sin or
dead to sin.
But our preaching must bring people to the
place where they see their great danger of
dying outside of Christ.
A person must be awakened to their lost
condition and shown they are a rebel who
has broken the strict and severe law of
God and who deserves punishment for that crime.
Their sins condemn them and the sense of
the law must be carried out by a
just judge who hates sin.
He hated sin so much.
He sent his only beloved son into this
world to hang on a bloody cross because
of sin.
And Jesus Christ shed his precious blood for
sinful man.
But one must stand under the blood to
be saved.
Friend, let me ask you, friend, are your
sins washed in the blood of the lamb?
And are you born from above through the
new birth, which is the act of regeneration
upon the heart?
A sinner must be brought to the place
where they see they are lost and guilty
before God.
They must see their need of a remedy
for sin in the person of Jesus Christ.
And only the preached law can bring about
this effect through the conviction of sin by
the spirit.
We must shut men up to God and
have them begging God for mercy.
With our preaching, we must make men beggars
for grace because although saving faith is something
God requires, it is only he who can
give it.
We must preach effectively to get men lost
and shut them up to God.
This is the exact opposite of our pulpit
preaching today.
That's why few are being saved today in
this country.
A few preachers are given the Holy Spirit
room to operate on a sinner's heart like
Finney's millstone, which grinds upon the heart and
conviction of sin.
So the gospel must be preached in its
proper order.
First, the law must be preached to awaken
a person to their lost condition.
Apart from God, they must see the peril
of their lost condition before they can appreciate
the pearl of great price.
And the second thing we must do as
preachers is to preach an exalted God.
We have shrunken God down to our size
today to where he's just our pal.
We look at him like we look at
another man.
But men of former days preached an exalted
God.
They referred to him as the great God
or the almighty.
And we must preach the full counsel of
God, which declares that God is a God
of wrath, as well as a God of
love.
Listen, friends.
My Bible declares God is angry with the
wicked every day.
If he turned not, he will wet his
sword.
He had bent his bow and made it
ready.
We have today taken all the teeth and
terror out of the gospel message.
But we must be faithful preachers and warn
men of their great danger of dying in
their sins and being cast into a place
of eternal misery called hell.
But we must preach that hell is hot
and sin is black and the law is
strict and severe.
And man is a guilty rebel who has
offended a sovereign king.
And if you want to be saved, you
must come to that king and throw down
your shotgun of rebellion and repent of your
sins.
You must surrender your all to a sovereign.
You must bow to the living Lord.
Jesus Christ sits on a heavenly throne at
the right hand of the father.
And he earned that right by way of
a bloody cross.
And if you want him friend, you must
come to him there and bow to him,
surrender to his lordship, because if he's not
your lord, he's not your savior.
I can promise you that we live in
a day that hates the doctrine of repentance.
We live in a day that hates the
doctrine of the lordship of Jesus Christ.
We live in a day where the average
church member cries, we will not have this
man reign over us.
But but he is a living Lord.
And if you want him, you must bow
to him now, or he will place his
foot on your neck when he makes his
enemies his footstool.
Listen, friend, Jesus Christ never preached a sinning
religion.
God's gospel is no less severe than his
than his holy law.
Jesus Christ did not come to earth to
suffer and die on an ignoble cross, which
had his blood all over it because of
sin.
So you could stay in your sins and
still believe you will go to heaven.
Listen, friend, God will have no rebels in
his kingdom.
You must repent, you must throw down your
shotgun of rebellion and surrender to the king
of kings.
So the third thing we must do as
preachers is to warn men of their duty
of repentance.
Jesus declared, except you repent, you shall all
likewise perish.
We live in a day of a perverted,
only believed gospel, and that is not the
gospel of the glory of God.
Friend, you must repent if you want to
go to heaven.
Hell is full of unrepentant church members.
The next thing to do when preaching is
to explain to man their necessity of regeneration.
There was a time in this country about
150 years ago where you could not join
a church unless you provided clear evidence of
regeneration.
When George Whitefield was in Boston in 1740
during the Great Awakening and he was preaching
in the open air on Boston Common to
20,000 people at a time, a minister
approached him one day and asked, Mr. Whitefield,
how many converts have you had since you've
been among us?
To which the great Whitefield replied, I don't
know, sir, but I shall return to these
parts in a year or so and look
for the evidence of their salvation.
But today, most people join the church through
a decision rather than through a regenerated heart
through the new birth.
They are merely decisionists who have believed a
text or made a decision to become a
Christian based on a text.
I fear there are many today in our
churches who believe in the death of Christ,
but they do not believe on the Christ
who died today in our churches.
You'd be hard pressed to find much evidence
of one's salvation through a new life.
You see, friends, when you get saved, something
happens.
God takes the heart of stone and makes
it a heart of flesh.
When you get truly saved, friend, a self
is dethroned and another is enthroned there, the
Lord Jesus Christ.
The last thing to do when we preach
the gospel is we must call men to
Christ.
I do not mean ask them to walk
an aisle or repeat a prayer, which is
the way most people do things today.
No one gets saved by walking an aisle
or repeating a prayer.
That's not even in my Bible.
Just because a big evangelist made stadium invitations
popular doesn't mean we have to follow his
example.
Our job as evangelists is not to get
someone to walk an aisle or get them
to repeat a prayer.
Our job is to preach the gospel in
its purity and proper order, get men lost,
make room for the spirit of God to
work conviction upon a sinner's heart, then call
them to Christ.
We can call them to Christ by preaching
gospel words to them.
Let me tell you who the gospel is
for.
It is for the person who is conscience
of their need.
It is for the hungry, the weary and
the thirsty.
Are you hungry for God?
Are you weary of your sins?
Are you thirsty for Christ?
Then come listen to these calls to come
to Christ.
We must preach the gospel first and foremost.
Listen friends to the gospel.
Seek ye the Lord while he may be
found.
Call ye upon him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way and the
unrighteous his thoughts and let him return unto
the Lord and he will have mercy upon
him and to our God for he will
abundantly pardon.
Look unto me and be ye saved all
the ends of the earth for I am
God and there is none else.
All that the Father giveth me shall come
to me and him that cometh to me
I will in no wise cast out.
Come unto me all ye that labor and
are heavy laden and I will give you
rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn of
me for I am meek and lowly in
heart and ye shall find rest unto your
souls for my yoke is easy and my
burden is light.
In the last day that great day the
feast Jesus stood and cried saying if any
man thirst let him come unto me and
drink he that believeth on me as the
scripture hath said out of his belly shall
flow rivers of living water and the spirit
and the bride say come and let him
that heareth say come and let him that
is a thirst come and whosoever will let
him take the water of life freely.
Well I hope this little exercise has helped
us today to be better preachers of the
gospel of the Son of God.
Pray that the Lord of the harvest will
send workers into his harvest.
Listen friends we need God called man anointed
with the spirit of God to preach the
full counsel of God to this generation of
hell-bound sinners.
Though we must warn men to repent and
that they must be born again.
Preach it brother preach it be like old
Paul and reprove rebuke and exhort with doctrine.