Sermons for Revival — E.A. Johnston

Revival Preaching Begins by Confronting Sin

We are in the Evangelism Awakening Revival Institutes and if you turn in your handouts to Session 17, Sermons for Revival, pastors in former times knew how to preach awakening sermons that singed their hearer's conscience with the fires of judgment and hell.

They preached primarily to awaken and alarm their congregations to the danger of damnation in a crisis eternity. They made sure that the law of God thundered in the ears of their hearers and preached the law before grace.

Both John Wesley and George Whitefield preached the law before grace. They believed that a sinner must be confronted with his rebellion against Almighty God. In fact, George Whitefield used to comment that a sinner must first be brought to Mount Sinai before he can be brought to Mount Zion.

But today's evangelism says, God loves you, just believe in him and you will go to heaven. Is there no wonder that our congregations are mixed herds of sheep and goats who cannot get along and bite each other's tails?

But preachers in former times were wiser than we, for they preached the gospel in its purity and proper order. They preached the full counsel of God and proclaimed the great doctrines of ruin, redemption, regeneration and repentance.

Historic Scottish Sermons on Revival

They warned of a coming judgment and a returning Christ. We will examine some sample sermons in this session today from ministers from Scotland in the 19th century. I have a book before me here and I highly recommend it to you friends.

If you can get it, it's worth its weight in gold. It was written in 1840 and it's entitled Lectures on Revival by Ministers of Scotland. It contains sermons by men like John Bonar, A. Moody Stewart, R .S. Candlish and William Burns and others.

Each minister was given the assignment to preach a revival sermon and delivered at a conference on revival in Scotland. Listen to the title of John Bonar's sermon, The Nature of a Religious Revival, State of Religion Requiring It, effects which it is calculated to produce in the church and on the world, vindication from misapprehension and prejudice.

Listen to his opening words. We meet this evening in very peculiar circumstances. For some years past, there has been a growing impression on the minds of many of God's people that it was time to seek the Lord, that he might reign righteousness.

Some suitable means were adopted. The attention of the church was earnestly called to the subject by public discourses. I will stop there friends. Notice that he mentions the necessity of the church to address revivals of religion by preaching revival sermons.

His contemporary, R .S. Candlish, has a sermon entitled, The Word of God, Character of Preaching, fitted to produce a revival. This book is over 400 pages long of wonderful revival sermons by men familiar with its subject.

Homiletical Mentors and Expository Sermon Preparation

We must be familiar with revival and be able to construct sermons to preach them to promote revival. It's important to understand homiletical principles in sermon preparation as we preach expository sermons true to the text.

My own homiletical mentor, Dr. Stephen F. Olford, learned sermon preparation from his homiletical mentor, W. Graham Scroggie, when he studied under him in London. I want to pass on the tool he learned from him to you today friends.

I wrote a book with Stephen Olford entitled, Olford on Scroggie. In it, I took the sermon outlines from Graham Scroggie's personal papers, which are in the possession of Olford Ministries. I arranged them thematically and theologically.

Stephen Olford commented on how to preach them effectively. The sermon preparation that Stephen Olford used, which he learned from Graham Scroggie, was the Golden Hammer. The Golden Hammer is a sermon construction tool where each message must have a centralizing theme, unifying thoughts, and a motivating thrust.

So many sermons a day just end flat without giving our hearers an opportunity to respond. The Golden Hammer will hopefully aid you in preaching. Well, we now have a written assignment to do. Between this and our next session, your job is to construct a revival sermon using your own originality with the goal of awakening your audience to their lost condition.

Constructing a Revival Sermon That Brings Conviction

We must give the Holy Spirit room to operate on the sinner's heart to bring conviction to sin. Your sermon should be full of the gospel. It should have all the elements of the Golden Hammer, a centralizing theme, unifying thoughts, and a motivating thrust.

We will review your sermon once you deliver it. Our problem today is we don't preach like we should because we don't want to offend anybody. So our messages are nice little sermons that don't disturb anyone.

Warning Sinners Before the Judgment

The trouble is they don't save anyone either. Are you more concerned about not upsetting your deacons? Or are you more concerned that they don't go to hell? In Ezekiel we read, When I say unto the wicked man, Thou shalt surely die.

If thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity. But his blood will I require at thine hand. I wonder how many preachers will stand at the judgment with bloody hands for failing to warn folks.

This concludes our session today. We will now prepare for our last session, session 18, where we will each preach our own revival sermon.