Speaking to Divided Families — E.A. Johnston

Spiritual Division Within Families

Every time I preach, I speak to divided families. I'm not talking about divorce and remarriage. I'm not talking about that. When I stand in the pulpit of a church and preach, I'm speaking to divided families in a spiritual sense.

One spouse may be saved, and the other is not. Perhaps both spouses are saved, but their adult children are not. Or it's not uncommon for both spouses to be religious but lost. Or perhaps both spouses are saved, but the wife is the one living for God, and the husband is not.

How Spiritual Condition Shapes Hearing

One of them is backslidden. One of them is on fire for God, and the other is not. How your spiritual state is, friend, will impact your hearing and determine how you apply what you hear to your daily living.

The Need for Genuine Biblical Preaching

And now hopefully, you will be under some good, solid biblical preaching that comes from a man of God. And you won't be under just some professional who will tell you about God but who has no real experience of him himself.

But as I speak to you, I speak to divided families, spiritually divided individuals that need to hear from God. I could speak to some of you of deep spiritual truths, and they would just go in one ear and out the other because you have no capacity to receive them.

The New Birth and Spiritual Receptivity

You have no spiritual receptor. My message would just be a bunch of words or mumbo-jumbo to you because you do not have the Spirit of God in you. You may have been baptized, but you've never been born again.

That kind of hearer will miss most of my message because they can't receive it. The Pharisees missed all of Jesus' teaching because they had no capacity to receive it. So they rejected His message and ultimately rejected Him.

But if you are really saved, then you will hunger for a deeper reality of God in your life. You will want to become more and more like Jesus. You will live a God-centered life that brings glory to the Father.

The Preacher's Burden to Proclaim God's Truth

I don't preach topical sermons. I don't preach fill-in-the-blank messages where you write a word in your church bulletin, where the dotted line is or the blank space is. That's not preaching. That's teaching.

I'm not a teacher. I'm a God-called preacher who is serious about God and who has a burden for the souls of men. I'm not up here to entertain or amuse you with stale jokes and funny stories. There are plenty of other men who can do that.

Before I preach any message, I get on my heart what is on God's heart, and I bring those truths before you for your spiritual growth and enlargement. My messages are hard to hear because it's hard to sit and listen to someone who is honest enough with you to tell you about the rightness of your heart and the demands of the gospel.

Mordecai Hamm used to say when he first came to town, he had to strip the bark off of church folks before they could hear his message. When Ralph Barnard preached, his preaching could be summed up with one word, disturbing.

Disturbing Preaching and Conviction at Calvary

He was a disturbing preacher. He had a way of getting under your skin like a splinter beneath your finger which gnaws at you and makes you wince. He could get you mad, get you under conviction, but he could get you to the foot of Calvary at the feet of a bloodstained savior from sin whose fountain of blood can wash away y 'all's sin.

The Full Counsel of the Gospel

I preach the gospel in its purity and proper order, meaning I don't dilute it of its hard truths, and I preach the full counsel of God, which is ruin, redemption, regeneration, and repentance. I will hold up a sinner to the strictness and severity of God's unbending law until he comes under conviction of sin and sees his need of a savior from sin.

I preach the unvarnished gospel of God, which is a God-centered gospel that places salvation in the hands of God and not man. But your spiritual state, friend, will determine how you hear me and how you will receive or reject my message.

Revival, Accountability, and Healing Divided Families

Through the years, I've had the privilege of seeing God work in the midst of his people in seasons of revival. I've seen God disturb entire rooms of people. I've seen lives changed in light of eternity.

I'll go to my grave in peace, knowing I am free from the blood of men because I was honest enough with them to warn them to flee from the wrath to come. I'm not a popular preacher by any means. My own denomination ignores me, but I know my God, and I know his son Jesus.

Hopefully, God will use my preaching to transform a life and turn it upside down for God and in the process, bring some healing to some divided families by showing them the reality of God and a savior from sin.