Yesterday we looked at the rarity of evangelistic preaching (see here for definition). Today I want to explain the reasons why we should engage in evangelistic preaching.

The most obvious reason is biblical warrant. The Old Testament prophets were passionate pleaders for the souls of their fellow men and women. Deuteronomy reads like an Old Testament evangelistic tract, as Moses expostulates with Israel and beseeches them to embrace the God of Genesis to Numbers. Study the weeping reasonings of Jeremiah and the powerful pictorial pleas of Hosea. Even apocalyptic and enigmatic Ezekiel contains the most beautiful calls to Israel to turn from their evil ways and live. In encounter after encounter, in public and in private, Jesus exhorted souls to seek salvation. The Acts of the Apostles show us Peter and Paul pleading with individuals, groups, congregations, and public gatherings. “Teacher” Paul cannot resist tearful expressions of angst and desire in Romans 9-11, that most doctrinal of letters.

Then we could turn from the Bible to church history and consider the regular evangelistic sermons of Bunyan, Whitefield, Edwards, Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, etc. But I’d especially like to argue for evangelistic preaching by considering the effect of its absence

Preaching becomes lecturely and academic
When sermons are almost exclusively aimed at teaching Christians, and rarely aimed at the unconverted, preaching begins to sound more like cold, objective, academic lecturing.  

But, when a preacher has caught a glimpse of hell, when he really grasps the terrible spiritual predicament of the lost in his congregation, and when he is gripped by the urgency of the Gospel in the looming shadow of judgment and eternity, his preaching is transformed into present tense, personal, passionate preaching of the truth. The lecture hall is left behind as we enter the presence of God. The lectern becomes a pulpit. The “professor” becomes a preacher.

Christians become forgetful, proud, inward-looking, and prayerless
It’s not just the unconverted that are damaged by the lack of evangelistic preaching; Christians are too. As Dave Thomas commented yesterday, Christians also need to hear evangelistic preaching. Why? Well, in the absence of it, Christians forget. We forget the pit we were dug out of, we forget the debt we were in, and we forget the remarkable work of God in our life. In the absence of evangelistic preaching, the memory of saving grace fades, weakens, and disappears. In its place comes proud self-confidence and self-focus, which quickly drains prayerful concern for the souls of others. As the Gospel no longer grips our own soul, we have little motivation or desire to tell others.  

But, if the Gospel is regularly preached to Christians, then they are re-humbled, re-convicted, and re-minded of what they have been saved from. They re-repent, re-believe, and re-kindle their first love. The contagious Gospel passion in the preacher infects the hearers, and the hearers become enthusiastic carriers, as they go out into the world with a renewed and prayerful vision and mission for the lost and the perishing all around them.

Christians do not bring friends to church
One of the reasons why Christians seem to have stopped bringing friends to church is that most preaching is directed largely towards already well-taught Christians. Many Christians feel that if they take a friend to church, the message will go “way over their heads.” Many of us have taken someone to church, and to our disappointment and embarrassment, there was little or nothing that our guest could understand or relate to.

But, if Christians know that, say, every Sunday morning, or every second Sunday night, their pastor will preach “simple” evangelistic sermons suited to the special needs of the unsaved, or even the unchurched, then they will be much more motivated to invite their friends, family, neighbors etc.

Children growing up in the church assume they are saved
The absence of regular evangelistic preaching often means that children grow up in churches hearing teaching and doctrine addressed to Christians. Without being continually reminded that they must be born again, they presume they are “just like the other Christians” and so never seek regeneration or saving faith.

But, if they often hear of their vile natural condition, their perilous spiritual state, their need for personal regeneration and conversion, the insufficiency of their own worth, words and works, then they will much more earnestly seek the Savior. In the church of my childhood, I was reminded every Sunday night, in no uncertain terms, that I was not a Christian and that I needed to seek the Savior. It was not comfortable or pleasant. It ruined many a Sunday night sleep. But I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if I went to judgment in the same condition I was born in, I was going to hell…forever. I also knew, although I wished I didn’t, that Christ was calling me to turn, turn, why will you die!

Lost souls go to hell
I’m not saying that lost souls can’t be converted through teaching sermons. Of course they can, and of course they are. But evangelistic preaching is especially blessed to the conversion of souls. If you were to take a survey of the whole world, I’m sure that the vast majority of true Christians will say that it was an evangelistic sermon, a sermon specially directed to appeal to lost, perishing sinners that God used to turn them from their idols to Himself.

Who knows what a revival of preaching, evangelism, mission and worship might result from a widespread return to evangelistic preaching in the reformed church!

Tomorrow, I will survey the range of evangelistic sermons.

Yesterday I defined evangelistic preaching as preaching that expounds God’s Word (it is expository) with the primary aim of the conversion of lost souls (rather than the instruction of God’s people). I also said that while I welcomed the upsurge in “consecutive expository preaching,” I was concerned at the increasing rarity of “converting evangelistic preaching.” It used to be much more common. Even the great expository preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, made sure that at least one sermon every Sunday was directed primarily to the unsaved in his congregation. In the Scottish Highlands, it was traditional to preach a teaching sermon, mainly addressed to Christians, on Sunday morning, while Sunday evening was given to evangelistic preaching addressed to the unsaved (when more attended). But most reformed churches have no such distinction today. Both morning and evening sermons tend to be primarily teaching sermons for God’s people. Why is this so? That’s the question I want to address today.

The Preacher 
We start by pointing a finger at ourselves. Many of us have to admit that we much prefer to be teachers than pleaders. It’s easier to engage in explanation than application. It’s more socially acceptable, it’s more dignified and respectable to be engaged in calm reasoning and deduction, rather than in anxious weeping and beseeching. I think we’d all have to admit that it is easier emotionally and socially to be teachers than evangelists. And that prejudice, that bias, influences our choice of text and the way we preach our texts.

In addition to our prejudice, there’s also our pragmatism. Let’s get people in first. Get them used to our church. Then we will become more “evangelistic.” After all we don’t want to put them off by telling them they are sinners who need a Savior; or that they must abandon their own works and trust in Christ’s grace alone; or that without faith in Christ they will be punished forever in hell, etc. Surely it’s much wiser to begin more slowly, more carefully, more diplomatically; and then once they are in a while, we can begin to be a bit more confrontational and demanding. But then more new faces appear, and so the pragmatic cycle begins again.

Presumption also lurks in the background of many preachers’ minds. As Carine commented yesterday, some pastors dangerously presume that their hearers are already saved. Assuming that all is well with their souls, they teach, instruct, and give guidance on how to live the Christian life. They may preach on the Christian view of culture, sport, business, politics, family, etc., but rarely preach for conversion.

The Congregation 
When we preach evangelistic sermons, the mature Christians in our congregations, those we often lean on for our encouragement and strength, might feel (or even say), “Well there wasn’t much for me in that sermon…that’s more like milk for babies than meat for the mature.” They are maybe less than enthusiastic about simple preaching of the Gospel to lost sinners. They may not respond so appreciatively as they do to our epic sermons on Romans. That lack of response can impact what we preach and how we preach.

Also, we might not have many unconverted people in front of us. My first congregation had only 20-30 people. Sometimes there were maybe only 3-5 unconverted hearers in an evening service. It’s a lot harder to preach an evangelistic sermon in these circumstances, because everyone knows to whom you are directing your warning, wooing, and pleading words. Teaching messages are so much more comfortable than convicting messages – both to preach and to hear. That’s especially true if our few unconverted hearers are very “moral” or “churchy” people.

There may also be in our congregation those who might view evangelistic preaching with a suspicious eye, especially if they come from a hyper-Calvinistic stream of Christian upbringing. Maybe others have come out of Arminian easy-believism, hyper-emotionalism, and decisionism, and react against any kind of emotional appeal to the unsaved. We don’t want to offend these people, we want to keep them on our side, and so again perhaps we hold back from regular, full-throated evangelistic preaching.

The World
We are not pluralistic. We believe, surely, in the exclusive claims of Christ. That’s what we swear to, sign up to, and state at our ordinations. But, we live in such a pluralistic, many-ways-to-God world, that it’s extremely difficult not to be influenced by that, even subconsciously. Maybe, in the back of many pastors’ minds, the sharp edge of Gospel exclusivity has been blunted by worldly influence. They may not deny that Christ is the only way to heaven, and they may not preach many-ways-to-God. But they do not keep the believer/unbeliever distinction or the heaven/hell contrast constantly and vividly before their minds. And of course that’s going to affect their preaching – both its content and tone. The real test of incipient pluralism is, “How do we really view the unconverted?” Is our first thought when we see them, “These precious souls are hell-bound, without Christ, lost, under the wrath of God, however religious they may be?” I’m deeply afraid that a kind of incipient, subtle, often unnoticed pluralism has blunted the sharp edge of evangelistic preaching.

The Devil
Then, of course, there is our great enemy, the devil. If there’s any kind of preaching that has been more successful in stealing captives from him and claiming them for the Lord, it is passionate evangelistic preaching. No weapon in the Gospel armory has been so effective in rescuing souls. Of course, he is going to fight it, and he is going to supply every excuse not to preach in an evangelistic way.

Tomorrow I will look at a number of reasons for engaging in evangelistic preaching.

There’s been a welcome resurgence of expository preaching in the Reformed church over the last 20-30 years, and especially of “consecutive expository preaching” – preaching through books of the Bible, verse-by-verse and chapter-by-chapter. But together with that resurgence of consecutive expository preaching, there has also come a decline in what I would call “converting evangelistic preaching.”

What do I mean by “converting evangelistic preaching”? Let me give two negatives to begin with. I don’t mean teaching sermons with an evangelistic PS; a doctrinal sermon with a brief concluding appeal or call to the unconverted to seek Christ, believe in Christ, look to Christ, etc.

Neither, at the other extreme, do I mean content-less sermons made up simply of repeated evangelistic imperatives, commands, invitations, and exhortations; sermons that have nothing for the head but are all addressed to the heart or will.

What do I mean, then, by evangelistic preaching? Let me put it positively; evangelistic preaching expounds God’s Word (it is expository) with the primary aim being the salvation of lost souls (rather than the instruction of God’s people). Stuart Olyott says it is to “preach from the Bible with the immediate aim of the immediate conversion of every soul in front of us.”

So, what really distinguishes evangelistic preaching from all other kinds of preaching is its obvious and unmistakable aim – conversion. Its target is unconverted hearers. And its conscious and deliberate aim is to call, invite, and command needy souls to repent and believe the Gospel.  It’s this kind of preaching that has become increasingly rare in many Reformed Churches.

I’d like to look at this subject from four angles over the next few days. First, I’d like to examine the rarity of evangelistic preaching (as defined above): Why is it so rare? Then I will propose reasons in favor of it: Why should we engage in evangelistic preaching? Next I will survey the range of evangelistic preaching: the different kinds of sermons that come under this heading. And, finally, I will look at the results: What does evangelistic preaching look like and sound like?