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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/ea-johnston/laughing-your-way-to-hell/
I missed my chance to be a popular preacher years ago. If you want to build a big, successful church, all you have to do is get some TV time and preach patriotic messages on God in government, God in country, and God in the founding fathers.
Every old conservative will be pulling up a chair to hear you and sending you a check to support you. Soon, you'll be living high on the hog in a million-dollar house. But I had to go and ruin it by changing my message and preaching man's duty of repentance and his utter necessity of regeneration.
I began to call sin black and hell hot, and I held up a bleeding and dying Christ nailed to a bloody cross. People don't like to be disturbed. They will pull their support from a ministry that makes them uncomfortable.
They won't support a revival-based ministry that has a bloody cross right smack dab in the middle of it. They prefer smooth sermons and patriotic messages about God and country. People don't like pointed preaching, especially when it's pointed at them.
And they don't like searching sermons that search their hearts and souls. I guess I cared more for the souls of men than I did about making money. I like preachers who fear God more than man. I guess that's why I admire the preaching of Rolf Barnard so much.
He didn't care if he hurt your feelings or wounded your conscience. Barnard preached with a double-barreled shotgun in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other. His sermons hit you all over with buckshot, and it stung.
And then he lit the fuse on that stick of dynamite, and he blew up all your false foundations. Until you were covered with sand and stripped of all self-righteousness, he shut you up to God and pointed you to your only hope of a revealed Christ.
I'd rather warn men and women and boys and girls to flee from the wrath to come than to entertain them with some funny stories. I remember years ago going to hear a big famous preacher who had a big television ministry who just told one stale joke after another interspersed with some light Bible teaching.
And he told us that day that at his church in California they'd rather laugh than cry. I believe it, but there's a lot of folks laughing their way to hell in our churches today. I like what Charles Finney said about his preaching.
He said, I told the people at the close of my sermon that I had come there to secure the salvation of their souls, that my preaching, I knew, was highly complimented by them, but that, after all, I did not come there to please them, but to bring them to repentance, that it mattered not to me how well they were pleased with my preaching, if, after all, they rejected my master.
Well, I agree with Finney, friends, and I like what the Apostle Paul told his disciple Titus. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee. I'd rather have you cry bitter tears of repentance under my ministry than have you hold your belly and laugh your way to hell.
Let us pray.