We are in the Evangelism Awakening Revival Institutes,
and if you turn in your handouts to
Session 17, Sermons for Revival, pastors in former
times knew how to preach awakening sermons that
singed their hearer's conscience with the fires of
judgment and hell.
They preached primarily to awaken and alarm their
congregations to the danger of damnation in a
crisis eternity.
They made sure that the law of God
thundered in the ears of their hearers and
preached the law before grace.
Both John Wesley and George Whitefield preached the
law before grace.
They believed that a sinner must be confronted
with his rebellion against Almighty God.
In fact, George Whitefield used to comment that
a sinner must first be brought to Mount
Sinai before he can be brought to Mount
Zion.
But today's evangelism says, God loves you, just
believe in Him and you will go to
heaven.
Is there no wonder that our congregations are
mixed herds of sheep and goats who cannot
get along and bite each other's tails?
But preachers in former times were wiser than
we, for they preached the gospel in its
purity and proper order.
They preached the full counsel of God and
proclaiming the great doctrines of ruin, redemption, regeneration,
and repentance.
They warned of a coming judgment and a
returning Christ.
We will examine some sample sermons in this
session today from ministers from Scotland in the
19th century.
I have a book before me here and
I highly recommend it to you friends.
If you can get it, it's worth its
weight in gold.
It was written in 1840 and it's entitled
Lectures on Revival by Ministers of Scotland.
It contains sermons by men like John Bonar,
A.
Moody Stewart, R.
S.
Candlish, and William Burns and others.
Each minister was given the assignment to preach
revival sermon and delivered at a conference on
revival in Scotland.
Listen to the title of John Bonar's sermon,
The Nature of a Religious Revival, State of
Religion Requiring It, Effects Which It Is Calculated
to Produce in the Church and on the
World, Vindication from Misapprehension and Prejudice.
Listen to his opening words, We meet this
evening in very peculiar circumstances.
For some years past, there has been a
growing impression on the minds of many of
God's people that it was time to seek
the Lord that he might reign righteousness.
Some suitable means were adopted.
The attention of the church was earnestly called
to the subject by public discourses.
I will stop there friends.
Notice that he mentions the necessity of the
church to address revivals of religion by preaching
revival sermons.
His contemporary, R.
S.
Candlish, has a sermon entitled, The Word of
God, Character of Preaching Fitted to Produce a
Revival.
This book is over 400 pages long of
wonderful revival sermons by men familiar with its
subject.
We must be familiar with revival and be
able to construct sermons to preach them to
promote revival.
It is important to understand homiletical principles in
sermon preparation as we preach expository sermons true
to the text.
My own homiletical mentor, Dr. Stephen F.
Oldford, learned sermon preparation from his homiletical mentor,
W.
Graham Scroggie, when he studied under him in
London.
I want to pass on the tool he
learned from him to you today friends.
I wrote a book with Stephen Oldford entitled,
Oldford on Scroggie.
In it, I took the sermon outlines from
Graham Scroggie's personal papers, which are in the
possession of Oldford Ministries.
I arranged them thematically and theologically.
Stephen Oldford commented on how to preach them
effectively.
The sermon preparation that Stephen Oldford used, which
he learned from Graham Scroggie, was the Golden
Hammer.
The Golden Hammer is a sermon construction tool
where each message must have a centralizing theme,
unifying thoughts, and a motivating thrust.
So many sermons a day just end flat
without giving our hearers an opportunity to respond.
The Golden Hammer will hopefully aid you in
preaching.
Well, we now have a written assignment to
do.
Between this and our next session, your job
is to construct a revival sermon using your
own originality with the goal of awakening your
audience to their lost condition.
We must give the Holy Spirit room to
operate on the sinner's heart to bring conviction
to sin.
Your sermon should be full of the gospel.
It should have all the elements of the
Golden Hammer, a centralizing theme, unifying thoughts, and
a motivating thrust.
We will review your sermon once you deliver
it.
Our problem today is we don't preach like
we should because we don't want to offend
anybody.
So our messages are nice little sermons that
don't disturb anyone.
The trouble is they don't save anyone either.
Are you more concerned about not upsetting your
deacons or are you more concerned that they
don't go to hell?
In Ezekiel we read, When I say unto
the wicked man, Thou shalt surely die.
If thou dost not speak to warn the
wicked from his way, that wicked man shall
die in his iniquity, but his blood will
I require at thine hand.
I wonder how many preachers will stand at
the judgment with bloody hands for failing to
warn folks.
Well this concludes our session today.
We will now prepare for our last session,
session 18, where we will each preach our
own revival sermon.