Preach to the Dry Bones — E.A. Johnston

The Need for Solid, Transforming Preaching

I receive emails from all over this country and Great Britain from true believers who cannot find good preaching in their hometown. These Christians are hungry for solid preaching and the proclamation of the Word of God.

The main problem is we have a nation of teachers and very few preachers. Teaching informs and preaching transforms. We have a plenitude of fill-in-the-blank sermons today, but a dearth of stimulating preaching.

The Apostle Paul exhorted Timothy to preach the Word, be instant, in 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 show they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears.

Did you hear that, friends? That time is now where men and women cannot endure sound doctrine and they've sought out teachers to itch their ears. That is what the church in America has done. It's ceased preaching doctrine that reproves and rebukes and instead it teaches nice little sermonettes that soothe and itch the people's ears.

That's where we are in this land today in regard to the pulpits. If you don't believe me, go visit ten churches in your city and sit in their congregations Sunday after Sunday and try to find one that's preaching sound doctrine that's a reproof and a rebuke to hard-hearted sinners.

I have visited countless churches and I have sat and listened to intellectual discourses, funny stories, bathroom humor, dry lectures and teaching, but there's very little preaching. In many of these churches the only time you'll hear the Word of God is when the pastor is reading the passage chosen for the day, but he races over the Word of God in such a hurry to get to what he has to say.

My late mentor, Dr. Stephen F. Olford, trained me with the following advice. He said, God does not have to bless what you have to say, but He must and will bless and attend the preaching of His Holy Word.

But where, oh, where are the Stephen Olfords of our hour? He was a giant in the pulpit. Today we have pygmies in the pulpit, men of lesser stature than the men who preceded them. Instead of preachers in the pulpit we have personalities and entertainers who want to make you laugh and entertain you.

Preaching for Repentance Rather Than Applause

We have comedians in the pulpit instead of God-called preachers. Listen to the words of Charles Finney, which contradict the philosophy of many of our pulpits today. Finney 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.

Did you hear that, friends? We need a revival of preaching like that in our land today. Men who care not one whit what others think of him or his preaching, but that sinners are brought to repentance and souls are saved.

Somewhere in America in the last few decades the pulpits decided they needed to be funny and entertaining as the first and foremost feature of their church service so everybody who came to church would have a good time.

Guess what, friend? God didn't send his son to be nailed to a bloody tree so you could laugh and clap your hands in church. Rather, he sent his only begotten son to suffer and die because of your rotten sins.

Listen, brother pastor, if you want to laugh and have a good time, go to a ball game or the movie theater, but don't bring that nonsense into God's holy sanctuary. Church was never meant to be a time for hand clapping and laughter.

It's not the theater. Church was meant to be a place where broken hearted Christians come to weep over the sins of the land and pray in anguish over lost souls where you hear the word of God proclaimed with power and authority and where lives are transformed for all eternity.

Church was never meant to be a place of entertainment, but a house of prayer. Isn't that what Jesus said? If Jesus came back today, he sure would clean out many a pulpit with a whip. I want you to turn in your Bibles now to the book of Ezekiel in chapter 37.

Ezekiel's Vision of the Dry Bones

I will begin reading from verse 1. Listen to the striking imagery found in the word of God. The hand of the Lord was upon me and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones and caused me to pass by them round about and behold there were very many in the open valley and lo they were very dry and he said unto me a son of man can these bones live?

And I answered oh Lord God thou knowest again he said unto me prophesy unto these bones and say unto them oh you dry bones hear the word of the Lord thus sayeth the Lord God unto these bones behold I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live and I will lay sinews upon you and bring up flesh upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord.

So I prophesied as I was commanded and I prophesied there was a noise and behold a shaking and the bones came together a bone to his bone. I want us to see tonight friends certain aspects from this passage in regard to preaching the word of God.

Your typical church today is a valley of dry bones full of dead people dead in sin. There is no life there no spiritual life. When the word of God is proclaimed to those dry bones then they begin to stir.

There is a noise and a shaking going on. That's true preaching friends when the word of God is preached in the power of the Holy Spirit with an anointing from on high then God can go to work and breathe life into dead people.

He can raise the dead through the new birth. It was the ministry of the word which was the means of those dead bones being quickened with life. Ezekiel proclaimed oh you dry bones hear the word of the Lord.

And this means that dead souls are quickened by the ministry of the preached word the trumpet of Jesus Christ. When the trumpet of the gospel sounds God can bring those dead and trespasses and sin to life.

My message this evening is entitled preach to the dry bones. If our pulpits in the land could once again get on fire for God and preach the great doctrines of the Bible once again in the power of God.

Oh how this nation could be shaken for God. There could be a revival of preaching that could usher in a heaven sent revival a spiritual awakening that would truly be out of the book of Ezekiel. For if that occurred there'd be a noise.

The noise would be the sound in the tops of the mulberry trees. That means revival. Friends the next thing that would occur would be shaken the shaking of a spiritual awakening that would shake this nation from coast to coast raising the dead to life through the new birth.

Revival Through the Preached Doctrines of the Gospel

Every great historical revival with the exception of the Welsh revival of 1904 was a time where God moved in conjunction with his preached word. It was God called men who were preaching the great doctrines of ruin redemption repentance and regeneration.

They were preaching those doctrines with authority from on high. And there was a mighty shaking in this land. The gospel had power then. Preachers had an anointing then and thousands upon thousands were converted under such mighty preaching.

But today we sit under teaching joke tellers and entertainers and people leave the church the same way they came in unmoved and unconverted. And because of this dearth of preaching a few are getting saved.

Today effective preaching should be gripping and life transforming. I recall Leonard Ravenhill saying that he felt most preaching in his day was as exciting as a weatherman given his report. The great British evangelist George Whitfield on the other hand would preach outside in the open air and thousands would stand out in the rain to hear him preach at any hour of the day because his preaching was gripping and life transforming.

Listen to these quotes taken from Whitfield's journal dated in the year 1739. Preach this evening at Kennington and God was pleased to send us a little rain not withstanding. The people stood very attentive preach this morning at Moorfields to about twenty thousand and God manifested himself still more and more.

My discourse was near two hours long. My heart was so full of love and people were so melted down on every side that the greatest scoffer must have owned that this was the finger of God. I wonder friends how many today would stand for two hours to listen to someone preach.

The Transforming Power of Anointed Preaching

We can't make it twenty minutes without looking at our watches and wondering where we're going to have our lunch. Let me share a personal incident with you in regard to preaching and its transforming character.

Over a decade ago I went to hear Stephen Alford preach. I had never heard him preach before. This short frail man entered the pulpit. He was in his 80s at the time he began to open up the word of God in a powerful way.

His preaching was striking. It hit me all over. When he was through preaching I was turned upside down and inside out. I felt like a wrung out dishrag. My life was dramatically changed under his preaching.

I've never been the same since. In other words I came into that chapel one person that day and left quite another person altogether. God moved through the preaching of Dr. Alford in a remarkable way to such a degree it changed my life.

Have you ever heard preaching like that friend. Would you like to. There was a pastors conference years ago where the preachers were Vance Havner and Stephen Alford and God came down powerfully and met those pastors in a remarkable way.

Many pastors came forward with broken hearts and changed lives. One of those men approached Vance Havner after he just finished preaching and left the platform. This pastor said brother Havner your preaching is tearing me up.

Vance Havner looked him in the eye with that squint of his and said if it's having that effect on you imagine what it's doing to me. Listen friends powerful preaching affects both preacher and hearer.

Jonathan Edwards said that when George Whitfield preached at his church in Northampton the town was visibly altered. And as Whitfield preached Jonathan Edwards sat in the pew crying like a baby. We need men like Whitfield and Edwards in our day friends in our day of famine of hearing the word of God in our day of people wanting teachers to scratch their itching ears in our day of sad spiritual declension in the church and moral bankruptcy in the nation.

A Call for Firebrands to Preach to the Dry Bones

We need a revival of preaching of preaching the great doctrines of the Bible and to preach those doctrines to the dry bones in our sanctuaries. And we need to address those dry bones like old Ezekiel did and say oh you dry bones.

Hear the word of the Lord. And maybe just maybe God will begin to blow his spirit upon those dry bones and there will be a noise and a shaking and somebody will get saved. Oh great God. Use your preached word like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces.

Send us oh Lord some firebrands to reach this generation for you and your great namesake. Send laborers into the harvest. We pray. I want to share with you a quote from F .J. Hegel. Actually he was a German and his name is really pronounced Hegel.

Listen to his thought-provoking words on preaching. Christ must be preached in the power of a Christ-centered Christ-possessed Christ-empowered life. Christ is never truly preached until the one who bears the message is himself so hidden away with him in God that it is no longer the messenger who speaks but Christ speaking through him.

I believe that friends the only way you're going to be saved under my preaching is that you no longer hear this poor preacher's voice but you hear his voice as it comes in all authority and majesty. But we need some men in our pulpits who are willing to be like John the Baptist and decrease so he may increase.

Oh God. Send us such men. These are the kind of men we need friends. Listen. The apostle Paul Luther Wesley Whitfield Knox Edwards Finney Spurgeon Moody. Each shared a common denominator of fire in their belly.

They were each so eaten up with the gospel and thirsty for Christ and filled with the Holy Ghost they could not stand idly by. While others perished they saw nothing but eternity worshipped the Holy God and served a risen Christ living not for earth nor its gains but living only for heaven and its rewards.

When they preached they linked the devil with sin and the cross with salvation. They preached hell and its fire and Christ in him crucified. Not one of them feared king queen or Pope and not one of them sought the compliments of men.