Sermon Series Sin — E.A. Johnston

Historical Judgment and the Sins of England

The great fire of London in 1666 prompted the Puritan Thomas Brooks to write a lengthy sermon on why God brought his fiery judgment upon the city and burned it, and Brooks lists the sins of England in this sermon one by one, naming them, and he delivered this sermon to the Mayor of London.

The title of his sermon was London's Lamentation or Serious Discourse Concerning the Late Fiery Dispensation that Turned Our Once Renowned City into a Ruinous Heap. The sins that he listed, some were mentioned like drunkenness, violence, licentiousness, adultery, sodomy, and it read like a description of America today.

National Wickedness and the Modern Church's View of God

Why doesn't God just rain hell out of heaven upon our wicked and sinful nation? Perhaps he's waiting for us to fill our cup of iniquity before terrible judgment of destruction befalls us. If you had to make a list, friends, of the sins of this country, what would they be?

How long would the list be? But sin is a taboo word in our sin-loving society today, and the majority of the modern church no longer views God as a God who must punish sin because we have turned him into a big jolly Santa Claus who exists only to bless and favor his little darlings.

I doubt you'll hear many sermons on sin this coming Sunday in our churches. We'd rather be entertained. But the most devaluing, debasing, degenerating, debauching, destroying, and damning thing in the world is sin.

Peter's Warning About Divine Judgment

The Apostle Peter, who himself was humbled by his own sins, spoke of sin in the most pernicious and descriptive of terms by warning us of it, and in 2 Peter chapter 2 we read,. For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into change of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment, and spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly, and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them with an overthrow, making them an example unto those that after should live ungodly.

Preaching Against Sin Without Fear of Man

There used to be a time in America and England when preachers preached hard against sin, and the people who listened to them came under conviction of sin, but we preachers today have thrown a blanket on sin and we're afraid even matching it for fear of driving away some of our bigger givers, and we don't preach against sin in our churches today because we fear men more than God.

I was reading a sermon by the great British evangelist George Whitefield on the sin of profanity, that was the name of his sermon, and he devoted an hour and a half to preach against the sin of profanity to his hearers.

Whitefield's Confrontation With Profanity

First, he laments about how England had become a profane nation that you couldn't walk down the street without hearing men cuss and blaspheme God, and this so offended George Whitefield because he knew it offended his master, the Lord Jesus Christ, so he preached against the sin of profanity, and while he did he had to dodge rotten eggs, pieces of dead cats, and rocks that were thrown at him, but we don't want any rocks thrown at us today, so instead of preaching against sin to a sinful nation, we cover our messages with honey and sunshine and soothe and comb their hair while they're just going to hell, but men like Sam Jones and Mordecai Ham preached hard against sin and they saw revivals that changed the entire life of a town for God.

Sam Jones's Story About Compromised Preaching

Sam Jones even had a story about this very thing, he said. I once knew a pastor who, upon taking charge of his church, was met by a delegation of the deacons previous to delivering his inaugural sermon.

They said, now brother, you mustn't preach about fashion because our fashionable members will be out to hear you, and you mustn't preach about dram drinking or liquor selling because several of our members who are liquor sellers will be out to hear you, and you mustn't preach about covetousness because several of our millionaire members will be out to hear you.

Well, what can I preach about, he asked in great perplexity, about the Mormons replied the good deacons. Give them blazes, there won't be a Mormon to hear you. Well, I'm not going to preach against Mormons because many of them live cleaner lives than a lot of Baptists I know, but I will preach against sin, and we're going to explore the subject of sin, friends, in a sermon series on sin, and I'm not afraid of offending anybody because most folks don't like me anyhow, but I will preach God's truth as I find it in my Bible, and the subject of sin runs all throughout my Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.

Sin's Cost and Christ's Blood

Sin costs God his dearly beloved Son, and sin costs the Son his very own blood. In Revelation 1 -5 we read, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth, unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.