Preaching to the Conscience — E.A. Johnston

Preaching That Awakens the Conscience

Well, today friends, I'm going to give you some wonderful examples of preaching to reach the conscience of men through the salvation of souls. Preaching to the conscience involves preaching doctrinal sermons that are aimed to alarm the unconverted and awaken those who are resting upon an empty religious profession.

All the claims and rites of the gospel are pressed hard upon hearers in the power of the Holy Ghost. The following excerpt is taken from my new book entitled How to Preach Revival and it's available on Amazon and other book internet sites.

I highly recommend it to you if you want to learn how to preach more effectively. This chapter I'm reading from today is entitled Preaching to the Conscience, Hear Now or the Words. Ezehel Nettleton was the primary leader of the time period known as the Second Great Awakening.

Nettleton's Preaching Against Spiritual Complacency

His sermons were not like a shotgun that hits you all over, they were more like a sharp shooter rifle aimed at the very conscience of men. When preaching the evening service in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1828 out of Genesis 19, it was said of his descriptions of the burning of Sodom, they were so unsettling that it turned the heads of the congregation toward the windows to witness the conflagration.

The Conscience as the Aim of Revival Preaching

Well, there is a common denominator, friends, in revival preaching that can be found in the sermons of George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney and other men used during times of revival and spiritual awakening and it's also prominent in the sermons of the Puritans such as Solomon Stoddard, Thomas Brooks, Thomas Shepard and Joseph Alleyne to name a few.

This common denominator is the spark and fire of all good revival preaching and it's when a sermon is not preached to the head but to the conscience of men. Sound revival preaching will aim for the conscience to alarm it, awaken it, disturb it and make the hearer flee to Christ for refuge from sin.

It'd be the kind of preaching that has long term effects upon a people or town by pushing back the darkness in a community. I observed the following comments of an eyewitness to Sam Jones coming to his town of Thompson, Georgia in 1877.

Sam Jones and the Transformation of a Community

In the good year of 1877, Sam Jones lit down in this veritable town of Thompson and began to go for the devil and his angels in a manner which was entirely new to said devil also new to said angels. Someone happened to remark in my hearing that there was a little preacher up at the Methodist church who was knocking the crockery around in a lively style and who was dusting the jackets of the Amen Corner Brethren in a way which brought the double grunts out of those fuzzy fossils.

I was not ravenlessly fond of sermons. I did not yawn the day I went to hear Sam Jones, but there he was clad in a little black jumptail coat and looking very little like the regulation preacher. He was not in the pulpit.

He was right next to his crowd, standing within the railings and almost in touch with the victims. His head was down as if he was holding on to his chain of thought by the teeth, but his right hand was going energetically up and down with all the grace of a pump handle.

And how did he hammer the brethren? How did he peel the Amen Corner? How? He did smash their solemn self-conceit, their profound self-satisfaction, their peaceful partnership with the Almighty, their placid conviction that they were the trustees of the New Jerusalem.

After a while, with solemn, irresistible force, he called on these brethren to rise in public, confess their shortcomings, and kneel for divine grace. And they knelt with groans and sobs and tears. These old bellwethers of the flock fell on their knees and cried aloud in their distress.

Then what? He turned his guns upon us sinners. He raked us fore and aft. He gave us scrape and canister and all the rest. He abused us and ridiculed us. He stormed at us and laughed at us. He called us flop-eared hounds, beer kegs, and whiskey soaks.

He plainly said that we were all hypocrites and liars, and he intimated somewhat broadly that most of us would steal. Oh, we had a time of it, I assure you. For six weeks, the farms and the stores were neglected, and Jones, Jones, Jones was the whole thing.

And the pleasant feature of the entire display of human nature was the marked manner in which the Amen Corner brethren enjoyed his flaying of us sinners. Oh, well, the meeting wound up. The community settled back into its old ways, but it has never been the same community since.

Gambling disappeared. Loud profanity on the streets was heard no more, and the ballrooms were run out of the county. Well, if you want to find out more about Sam Jones and his remarkable ministry friends, you can order my new biography on him entitled Sam Jones, A New Biography.

Mordecai Ham and Moral Reform Through Preaching

Well, another man I want you to be familiar with who preached the conscience is a man who patterned his ministry after Sam Jones, and that man is Mordecai Ham. Mordecai Ham saw the entire moral community, life of an entire community altered when he preached.

One time he put up a tent in the red light district of a town, and after six weeks of preaching, they had to close all the brothels because all the girls had been saved. Well, the following description of him is typical of his preaching and the impact it had on the towns he preached in.

When Evangelist Ham preached, mockers were converted, families were restored, bars were closed, laws were changed, churches were filled to overflowing. One even advertised in the paper that no more new converts should attend as there was not room for them.

Hundreds were called to preach and crooked politicians either repented or feared the consequences. When some resisted God's work, God withdrew his grace in answer to Ham's prayers and God's judgment fell.

Jonathan Edwards and “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

Well, another man who preached directly to the conscience of men was Jonathan Edwards. In his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, caused such a commotion, a revival broke out in the Enfield Meeting House on July 8, 1741.

Stephen Williams was an eyewitness and he wrote in his diary, we went over to Enfield where we met dear Mr. Edwards of Northampton who preached most awakening sermon from these words, Deuteronomy 32, 35, to me belong at vengeance and recompense their foot shall slide in due time for the day of their calamity is at hand and the things that shall come upon them make haste and before sermon was done there was a great moaning and crying out through ye whole house what shall I do to be saved oh I'm going to hell oh what shall I do for Christ and so on so ye minister was obliged to desist he shrieks and cries were piercing and amazing.

Confronting Entertainment-Driven and Intellectualist Preaching

Well, I read those accounts friends and they challenged me. They also make me weep over the sad condition of our church today in our sad spiritual declension and deadness. What we have mainly in our pulpits today are either entertainers who want to make you laugh and have a good time or teachers who want to feed your mind with intellectual essays to be considered.

What we need are men who are willing to fight the devil tooth and nail and storm the gates of hell by preaching searching sermons aimed at the conscience of man instead of having our audiences laughing in the aisles.

We need them crying in distress. What must I do to be saved? Only a serious ministry burdened with the souls of men will invest the time to produce messages that will arouse men and women out of their spiritual slumber and show them their perilous position outside of Christ's blood.

The Cost of Spirit-Empowered Preaching

There's a cost to get the spirit's anointing for preaching but whatever the cost is I can assure you friends it is well worth it because eternity hangs in the balance.