How to Preach with Dynamite — E.A. Johnston

When you are driving down the road and you hear a siren from a fire truck or an ambulance, you heed the alarm and pull over. To hear such an alarm means to slow down, to pull over, to pay attention to your surroundings.

The Loss of Alarm in Modern Preaching

One hundred and fifty years ago, it was common for a pulpit to issue such alarms and warnings. Pastors in former days warned their hearers about the dangers of damnation in a burning hell, and they sounded the alarm that a future judgment awaited all mankind.

And those were days when God was moving in spiritual awakening and revivals throughout the land, and thousands were being swept into God's kingdom and being saved from a devil's hell. Then, as the twentieth century was ushered in, preachers slowly quit preaching against sin.

They changed their message to accommodate a new industrial age of advancing technology. The pulpits of America shifted from platforms of preaching to mere teaching podiums. The head was reached, but the heart untouched.

Many churches just became entertainment centers of laughter and loud music, and gradually, populace had new entertainments like radio, television, personal automobiles. Nobody stayed at home anymore, and if they did, they kept the TV on.

Nowadays, this generation of young people don't go anywhere without their cell phones, their media devices that connects them to a global social media network. They either have a Bluetooth in their ear or AirPods so they can tune out the world around them.

It's hard to get a hearing today. As a preacher, there aren't any big names anymore out there that capture the world's attention like a Moody or a Finney or even a Billy Graham. Consequently, people go to hell in droves, and a million souls a week drop into burning hell, and all the technology and money in the world can't keep them from going there.

It's hard to get saved today, because there are few preachers who are preaching the great doctrines of the gospel, which are ruin, redemption, repentance, and regeneration. Instead, we get nice, long theological essays just to be considered, or we get funny stories on the other spectrum just to be entertained.

Gone are the fire and brimstone preachers of old, but maybe this careless generation of stoned and inebriated, sex-crazed pagans needs to hear a sermon that will alarm them to their danger of dying in their sins and being sent to a horrible place of eternal punishment in a region of darkness called hell, but who will warn them who will risk their skin to warn the lost about the dangers of damnation?

Maybe there are some emerging young preacher boys who want to preach like a George Whitefield or a Jonathan Edwards. They want to make some waves, and they've counted the cost. If that's you, friend, then this message is for you.

Awakening Sinners to Their Lost Condition

I'm going to talk about what this generation of hell-bound individuals need to hear at this tragic hour when time evaporates through the busyness of our day. First and foremost, men need to be awakened to their lost condition, and they need to be alarmed to be awakened.

No nice little messages that don't disturb anybody. We'll cut the mustard at this dark epoch in history. It's time to unsheathe the two-edged sword of the Word of God and preach it in the power of the Spirit of God and cut men to pieces.

Jeremiah 23, 29 declares, It's not my word, like as a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. What does a fire do, friends? It alarms. If you're sleeping in your bed and you smell smoke, you awake to raging flames, then you are alarmed.

You'll grab your loved ones by the scruff of the neck and quick as you can drag them out of that burning house. We need an old-time revival in our pulpits today to preach like a finny in an Edwards to awaken men to their lost condition.

We must preach the unbending law of God. All its strictness and severity must be declared. We must thunder the law in the ears of our hearers and bring them to Mount Sinai and make them tremble beneath its demands to where they can't help but see the smoke gathering and see Sinai altogether on a smoke.

People must be awakened from their slumbers and this only comes from an earnestness in the pulpit over the lost to sound the alarm to awaken them to their lost condition. For a sinner must first get lost before he can be saved.

He must feel his need and see his guilt before he will seek a remedy for sin and pardon for sin in the person of Christ Jesus. People must be told plainly and directly about their ruined condition and their duty of repentance and their utter necessity of regeneration by which God performs a work of grace upon the heart.

If you're saved, friend, it's because God gave you saving faith. Salvation is of the Lord. Much of today's evangelism has taken salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of men. Many mistake church membership for salvation and there are many false professors in the churches who must be awakened to their lost condition and this is done by doctrinal preaching under the power of the Holy Ghost.

Preaching Ruin, Judgment, and Human Guilt

A series of sermons on the following subjects can be used of God to strike arrows of conviction to the conscience. Emphasis must be laid on man's ruin that we enter this world with a poison in our blood with a ruined nature and a bent toward sin that Job 15 .26 declares how much more abominable and filthy is man which drank at the iniquity like water meaning man can't get enough of sin.

That man is helpless, blind, and hopeless apart from Christ's redeeming blood. That man must be brought to see the badness of their hearts inside of a thrice holy God. Men must be warned of a coming day of judgment that awaits all mankind and on that day they will face a great white throne with the judge of all the earth sitting there and he demands perfection to get into his holy heaven but all have sinned and come short of the glory of God that that judge will bring to bear the utter strictness of his unbending law and the severity of that law will be carried out upon all guilty lawbreakers and that penalty is death, it's damnation in the devil's hell.

Men must be driven from their vain excuses and false refuges and brought to see their sinfulness and guiltiness and that their false foundations of self-righteousness and good works must be broken up with the hammer of God's word so they can be brought to the cross of Christ as their only refuge.

There must be a thorough work of the Lord in the conversion of sinners and ministers must be careful not to heal the wound slightly. Preachers must begin at the beginning by showing men and women and boys and girls the desperate wickedness of the human heart.

A faithful preacher must make the law thunder in their ears both to awaken and alarm them to their ruined estate. Whitfield did this, Wedley did this Edwards did this, Nettleton did this Sam Jones did this, Mordecai Ham did this.

That's why those men saw God move in powerful revivals to where countless thousands were swept into the kingdom of God through sound conversions. Sinners must be shown the badness of their heart and shut up to God alone for mercy and grace to see their utter need of help from an almighty arm as a sick patient won't turn to a physician until he knows his case is desperate.

So too a lost sinner will only apply himself to the great physician when he has exhausted all other avenues that lead to dead ends. Christ must be his only way of escape. And he must be born again and exercise repentance and faith.

Repentance, Regeneration, and the Call to Christ

Man must be shown God's demand for repentance. Man must see his duty of repentance. Man must know that he must be born again by the regenerating work of the Spirit of God and experience change. When Jesus was here in his earthly ministry as he passed through towns and villages those who encountered him experienced change.

There must be a lot of work to bring sinners to Christ. But among the claps of thunder from Sinai must be heard clearly the voice of mercy from Calvary. Man must be pointed to a bloodstained savior for sin.

A sinner's only hope of heaven is by way of Christ's blood. A saved individual is born from above and washed in the blood. To preach anything less than the full counsel of God is to do man harm rather than good.

The deplorable state of the American pulpit should make us hang our heads in shame for preaching a watered-down gospel with man-centered methodologies all we have done is produce false conversions. Listen friend if you are a God-called preacher and you desire true usefulness to God in the salvation of souls then you must warn man.

The Watchman’s Responsibility to Warn

Every one of us should tremble at the following passage in Ezekiel from God's holy word when I say unto the wicked thou shalt surely die and thou givest him not warning nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way to save his life.

The same wicked man shall die in his iniquity. But his blood will I require at thine hand. Let me close this message friends with the following story. When I was conducting my research on the life of Rolf Barnard I came across a true account of a story R .G. Lee related to him about his early ministry as a pastor.

R.G. Lee’s Failure to Preach the Cross

Here now is that story. There's a big baptist church in Memphis, Tennessee and one of the former pastors was R .G. Lee and he was pastor there for 33 years. He is known for preaching a famous sermon called Payday.

Someday early in his ministry R .G. Lee had the ability to gather a crowd around him for his wonderful oratory and as a naturally gifted speaker and narrator. Well back then there was a member in Dr. Lee's congregation a lawyer who had to be out of town on business frequently but no matter where this lawyer went he made sure to catch a train back to Memphis on Saturday night so he could listen to R .G. Lee preach on Sunday morning.

Why. He just loved to hear that man preach. Well this lawyer got cancer and he was in the hospital dying so he called for his pastor to come to his bedside. Dr. Lee entered the hospital room whose windows overlooked the Mississippi River.

The lawyer told R .G. Lee I want you to know how much I've enjoyed your preaching through the years and I never missed a Sunday if I could help it. I'm eating up with cancer and the doctors tell me I only have a few weeks left to live and I want to reprimand you sir for never telling me how to be saved never preached the cross to where I could see it never put the blood out there where I could reach it.

And I'm dying and I'm dying my sins and I chastise you sir for your lack. Well R .G. Lee left that man's hospital room with his head down feeling berated and guilty as charged. It was now dark outside as he slowly walked down to the banks of the Mississippi River.

There he got down on his knees in the mud getting his white suit pants dirty. In the process. He stared out across the mighty river and watched moonlight shimmer on the coursing water. As he knelt there he leaned forward while he dipped his hands in the cold dark water.

He knelt there a while as a man lost in thought reflecting on what that dying man had just told him. He wondered how many of his members were actually saved. That how many were really born again. Had he made the mistake of just drawing crowds to hear him by oratory and narrative.

As tears streamed down his face he looked heavenward and right there. And then he made a vow to God. From that point forward he would preach the cross and the blood and preach hard against sin and preach man's duty of repentance.

And he changed his message that night in three months time there was a move of grace at that church in three blocks of downtown Memphis. We're shaking with revival. Listen to me brother pastor the hour is late the day is at hand.

A Final Call for Fearless Gospel Preaching

The heart that cares for the souls of men will be honest with men and warn them. It's high time we stop diluting the gospel to make it more palatable to sinful man. Let's pull up our bootstraps and behave like men and warn men with rune redemption repentance and regeneration without fear in your good deacons.

Let us pray. Oh great God. Send us some prophets today who won't fear men but who only fear you almighty God. Raise up some preachers who may have emerged from the deep waters of Persian like a Jonah.

With a heart cry for repentance that will bring a nation to its knees. I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus Amen.