How to Preach the Gospel in It's Purity — E.A. Johnston

Preaching the Gospel in Its Purity and Proper Order

We are in session one of Revival Institutes on how to preach the gospel in its purity and proper order. Today, we're going to study how to preach the gospel in its purity. We often assume that if we went to seminary, then we know how to preach the gospel, but that's not necessarily the case.

They may teach you some homiletical sermon preparation or how to project your voice and make eye contact with your audience, but chances are you will graduate without really knowing how to preach the gospel because it isn't taught.

I have an earned doctorate from two different seminaries, and they didn't teach me beans about how to preach the gospel. As we will learn in our session today, the gospel must be preached in its purity and proper order.

The Diluted Gospel and Man-Centered Salvation

First, what do we mean by its purity? Well, the counterpart of the biblical gospel is on display all over our country as pulpits present a diluted version of the real gospel. The modern church has removed all the teeth out of the gospel.

The modern church has watered down the truths of the gospel to make it more palatable to sinful man. The modern church has broadened the way of salvation in ways Jesus never did, and the modern church has taken salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of man.

This is why you can graduate seminary today and still not know how. To preach the gospel, because they tell you the gospel is John 3 16, and if you disagree with that verse, then you will be saved. All you have to do these days to become a Christian is to walk an aisle or raise your hand, or repeat a prayer to decide to become a Christian.

But we must ask ourselves a burning question. Are men saved as a result of a decision they make, or as a result of the regenerated work of the Holy Spirit? Jesus said, So is everyone that is born of the Spirit.

The modern church has taken salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of man. You decide. You make yourself a Christian, but that is error, and it's a dangerous heresy that promotes false conversions.

That's why our churches today, friends, are full of the unconverted who mistook church membership for salvation. So when we say the gospel must be preached in its purity, we mean we must preach the full counsel of God.

Ruin, Redemption, Regeneration, and Repentance

We must preach the great doctrines of the gospel, which are ruin, redemption, regeneration, and repentance. We must tell man of a future judgment that awaits all mankind, and we must warn man about a place of punishment for sin called hell.

God’s Sovereignty and the Lord of Glory

The second great error of the modern church is that it has shrunken God down to man's size. He's just helpless, standing at the door of the sinner's heart with his hat in his hand like a insurance salesman.

Won't you let him in? We put God in the same level as man. I'll never forget the seminary-trained pastor of a Baptist church who told his congregation, I can't wait to get to heaven. The first thing I'm going to do when I get to heaven is I'm going to walk up to Jesus and shake his hand for all he's done for me.

This foolish pastor thinks he can just walk up to the Lord of glory and shake his hand like he'd squeeze the flesh of a deacon in the hallway of his church. I guess he never read the passage in Revelation where the Apostle John encounters a risen Christ and falls down before him as dead.

No, he's just going to backslap Jesus like a deacon in the parking lot. So when I say we must preach the gospel in its purity, that means we must preach a Bible-sized God who rules the universe and who sovereignly holds the reins in his almighty hands.

Salvation by God’s Authority and Christ’s Sacrifice

We must preach that God is the author of salvation and not man, that man is a guilty rebel who's committed treason against the sovereign and the penalty is death, that the only hope a poor sinner has is to throw down his weapons of rebellion at the nail-pierced feet of a bleeding and dying Christ and to own him as Savior and Lord.

Fear of Man Versus Spirit-Empowered Preaching

The main reason why the gospel's not preached today is because pastors fear their deacons more than they fear a holy God. The fear of man has made cowards of us all. But where is the man who will pick up the Word of God and preach it in the power of the Spirit of God and declare without fear a reservation?

Thus saith the Lord. This ends session one, friends. We will pick up our next session on how to preach the gospel with authority.