Preaching 101 — E.A. Johnston

Charles Spurgeon's Conversion Through the Gospel

Charles Spurgeon had a hard time getting saved as he went from church to church all over London in his day, trying to find a preacher who could show him the way of salvation. It was a snowstorm that forced him into an old Methodist chapel, where a simple man preached a simple gospel that the young Spurgeon could understand.

The preacher said, the text says, look unto me and be ye saved. All you have to do is look at the Savior, and as he preached out of Isaiah, he told his hearers to look. Young Charles said he looked and looked until he looked his eyes away as he finally saw a revealed Christ on the cross, and he got to that Christ and was saved.

The Purity of the Unvarnished Gospel

There's a generation of preachers up in glory who are scratching their heads at what we call preaching today. I believe the gospel should be preached in its purity and proper order. What I mean by purity is this.

I want the gospel straight from the can without some pastor diluting it to make it more palatable to sinful man. I don't want a watered down gospel. I want the real McCoy. I want a gospel that is not afraid of holding up a scandalous cross with a bloodstained Christ on it for sin.

Judgment, Hell, and the Exposure of Self-Righteousness

I want a gospel that is gunning for me of a future judgment that awaits all mankind and warn me against going to a devil's hell. I want a gospel that calls sin black and hell hot. I want a gospel that awakens me to my lost condition and strips me of all my self-righteousness so I can come to Calvary seeking a Savior from sin so I can find pardon from sin.

God's Sovereignty and Christ's Substitution

I want a gospel like the one the Apostle Paul preached and Whitefield preached and Edwards preached that put salvation in the hands of God and not man. I want a gospel that will reveal all the strictness and severity of the law of God so I can tremble at the foot of Sinai altogether on a smoke.

I want a gospel that will get me lost so I can be saved. I don't want a poor imitation that'll only be a band-aid to a deadly soul-killing disease called sin. I want to see a bloody cross with a Savior who has taken my curse on Him, taken my penalty for sin on Him, taken my dirty rotten sins and plunging them and washing them in His own blood.

That's what I mean, friends, by the purity of the gospel. Next, I want a gospel that is preached in its proper order. What I mean by that is the opposite of how we do it today in our weak evangelism. We hand folks our little Jesus before they see any need of Him, and they take our little Jesus like they'd take a free piece of chewing gum and chew on Him a while until the flavor goes out of their religion.

Human Ruin and the Natural Condition of Sin

The gospel preached in its proper order. We'll start with the story of man's ruin and sin, that man is hopelessly lost, poor, blind, deaf, wretched and miserable in his natural condition. He enters this world with a depraved nature and a bent toward sin.

He's so ruined that my Bible says in Job that man drinks iniquity like water. He can't get enough of sin. You just watch the evening news, friends, if you don't believe me. The gospel preached in its proper order.

We'll start there with man's desperate ruined condition where he is dead in sin. Next, the gospel will inform man of his duty of repentance. If he wants to get to heaven, then he must repent or just go on to hell.

The Duty of Repentance and the Coming Judgment

If you want to risk preaching a gospel different from the one Christ preached, then just go ahead, brother pastor, but you have to give an answer someday at a future judgment to the one who has eyes like fire.

If you want to fill up hell with your ministry by preaching an only-believed gospel and collect your paycheck now, I hate to tell you, you won't be able to cash that check where you're going because the ink will melt and the paper will burn before you can cash it.

God's Holy Law and Universal Guilt

Next in the order, the old-time gospel is to inform the self-righteous of the utter strictness and severity of God's holy law, that God requires perfection to get into his holy heaven, and no man is perfect, but all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, that every mother's son will one day be held up against the strict and severe law of God, and if you stand there in your own merits, you will fail that test.

Redemption Through Christ's Substitutionary Death

I know. I am a sinner, and I need a substitute for sin in the person of Christ Jesus. And that leads us to the next level in the proper order of the gospel, which speaks of our redemption in Christ Jesus.

As we preach up a blood-stained redeemer who suffered and died and rose again and ascended back into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross, that there's a sin substitute whose name is Jesus Christ, and if you're saved, it's because his life has been laid down for you and applied to you.

Regeneration and the Necessity of the New Birth

The next order of the gospel is to inform folks of their utter necessity of regeneration, that you must be born again, that a Christian on their way to heaven is a safe sinner who is washed in the blood and born from above.

If you're not born from above, friend, then you'll never pass muster to get into heaven when you die. Jesus said, marvel not that I say unto you, ye must be born again. When we start preaching the unvarnished gospel in its purity and proper order, then don't be surprised when all hell will begin to pop and sparks begin to fly as sinners tremble beneath God's strict law and are awakened to their lost condition and realize their need of a savior from sin and the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.