Sermons of George Whitefield — E.A. Johnston

George Whitefield’s Sermons and Divine Commission

As we continue this afternoon, friends, in our study of the life and ministry of George Whitefield, I want us to take some time to study some extracts of his sermons. Regarding his sermons, when Whitefield preached, it was God speaking to mankind.

He was merely a mouthpiece for the Most High God, just as real as a prophet from the Old Testament and as fiery. He cared little for what his fellow man thought of him. He cared greatly how he was viewed by his blessed Emmanuel.

His sermons were preached in light of eternity. He preached them with the passion of a dying man, speaking to dying men. When he preached, he wept over his hearers. He laid his heart bare to them. He cared about his audience with the compassion of Christ.

Natural Oratory and the Power of the Holy Spirit

This cannot be stressed enough, for herein lay much of his secret power. Yes, he was a born orator, and probably one of the greatest in the history of mankind. But it was not his natural gifts that moved men's spirits and melted their hearts within them.

It was God in him, the Holy Spirit upon him. God did the work. He was the ready vessel, meat in the Master's hand. I want to look at Luke Tierman's comments on Whitefield's preaching regarding the power that Whitefield had and the actual reading of Whitefield's sermons.

And this is important to our study today. It's scarcely necessary to enlarge upon the foregoing extracts. The reader can form from his own opinion of Whitefield's oratory courage, tenderness, earnestness, and fidelity.

Excellent, however, as these sermons are, they necessarily fail to convey a full idea of Whitefield's marvelous preaching power. His words could be printed, but not his imitations, action, tears, smiles, solemnity, and pathos.

Whitefield was born an orator. His oratory was the gift of his creator. He could not be natural without using it. To have laid it aside would have been affectation. His oratory, however, is a thing not to be seen in his published sermons, but to be imagined.

There was eloquence in his very attitude, in the accents of his voice, in his gestures, in the features of his face, and in the motions of his hands. These things could not be printed. To say nothing of his almost unequaled voice, his versatility was wonderful.

At will, he could be a Boanerges or a Barnabas. One moment he would thunder on Mount Sinai, the next would whisper mercy on Mount Calvary. At all times, he was inexpressibly earnest, and his hearers felt he believed the truths he uttered.

Why Printed Sermons Could Not Capture Whitefield’s Preaching

A writer in the New York Observer eloquently observes,. We read Whitefield's sermons, and they disappoint us. Of all men in the world, he was the last who should have published his sermons. So much did he owe to physical temperament, to the volume and varied intonations of his voice, to the irrepressible fires of a soul all alive, to the grand and overpowering visions of divine truth.

To a sort of inspiration kindled by the sight of thousands whose eyes were ready to weep, and whose hearts were ready to break the moment his clarion voice rang out on their expectant ears. So much did he owe to these circumstances that his eloquence cannot be appreciated by any account of it which can be given verbally or delineated on paper.

Vain it is, therefore, to look into his printed sermons to find his power. His power as a pulpit orator also cannot be separated from his pious emotions nor from his religious views. Had he embraced the theory of religion less emotional, more after the pattern of rationalists or ritualists, his eloquence would have been lost to the world.

Never would his soul have taken fire, nor his lips glowed with the burning coal of enthusiastic passion. But he believed in man's ruin by sin, in the certain internal woe that awaited the impenitent, in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, and the free offer of salvation through faith in the cross.

Such were his views, and under these convictions he looked upon his audiences. He saw but one hope set before them, and with his whole soul moved and melted by the love of Christ on the one hand and the love of souls on the other, he pressed every hearer with all the energy of a dying man, speaking to dying men, to accept the great salvation.

Nor do we think that the pulpit can reach its appropriate power, nor any length of time retain it, unless these grand cardinal doctrines of grace are the inspiring themes. Well, I want to take the remaining moments, friends, and actually read us excerpts from Whitefield's sermons.

Whitefield’s Warning Against Self-Righteous Religion

The study of his sermons will prove useful to us as we study revival and praying for revival in our day. These sermon extracts will run together from different sermons, so bear this in mind as I read them to you.

They may not flow properly as you would think, but here now are extracts of George Whitefield's sermons. How many are there who go to church and say their prayers and receive the sacrament and give alms to the poor and then think themselves good Christians because they have done so, and when we tell them all this will not do, they immediately cry out, we are preaching them to despair.

But, O good God, Thou knowest that I wish I could bring all men off from this undoing delusion that will but betray them into everlasting misery. It is because I know such persons are more odious in the sight of God than the vilest sinners that makes me so earnest in warning them of their guilt and danger, for I have more hope of common swearers, drunkards, fornicators, Sabbath-breakers, harlots, of deists and infidels than I have of such self-righteous Pharisees.

It is against these that almost all our Savior's parables are leveled. If you depend upon your own duties, you are but Pharisees and hypocrites, for hypocrites may do all this as the Pharisees did. There is no doubt that you are to do your duty, but if you depend upon your duties, you make a Savior of them and deny the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ.

You may go in an easy, decent and polite way of religion and obtain a reputation in the sight of men, but you are odious in the sight of God and incarnate devils within. O you Pharisees, what fruits do you bring forth?

Why, you are moral, polite creatures. You do your own endeavors and Jesus to make up the rest. You esteem yourselves fine, rational and polite beings and think it is too unfashionable to pray. It is not polite enough.

Perhaps you have read some prayers but knew not how to pray from your hearts. No, by no means, that was being righteous over much. But if once, my brethren, you were sensible to your being lost, damned creatures, and see hell gaping ready to receive you, then, O then, you would cry earnestly unto the Lord to receive you, to open the door of mercy unto you.

Your tones would then be changed. You would no more flatter yourselves with your abilities and good wishes. No, you would see how unable you were to save yourselves, that there was no fitness, no free will in you, no fitness but for eternal damnation, and no free will but that of doing evil.

You Pharisees, who are going about to establish your own righteousness, who are too polite to follow the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth, who are all for a little show, a little outside work, who lead moral, civil, decent lives, Christ will not know you at the great day but will say unto you, depart from me, ye workers of iniquity, unto that place of torment prepared for the devil and his angels.

Judgment, Wealth, and the Consequences of Sin

Good God, and must these discreet, polite creatures, who never did anyone harm but led such civil, decent lives, must they suffer the vengeance of eternal fire? Cannot their righteous souls be saved? Where then must the sinner and the ungodly appear?

O the folly and madness of this sensual world! O consider this, you who think it's no crime to swear, whore, drink, or scoff, and jeer at the people of God, consider how your voices will then be changed, how you will howl and lament at your own madness and folly.

He, who is now your merciful Savior, will then be your inexorable judge, now he is easy to be entreated, then all your tears and prayers will be in vain. Your wealth and grandeur will stand you in no stead.

You can carry nothing of these into the other world. What horror and astonishment will then possess your souls? Then all your lies and oaths, your scoffs and jeers at the people of God, all your filthy and unclean thoughts and actions will be at once brought to your remembrance, and at once be charged upon your guilty souls.

Alas, our great men had much rather spend their money in a playhouse, at a ball, in assembly, or a masquerade than in relieving a poor, distressed servant of Jesus Christ. They'd rather spend their estates on their hawks and hounds, on their whores, on their earthly, sensual, and devilish pleasures than in comforting, nourishing, or relieving one of their distressed fellow-creatures.

But what difference is there between the king on the throne and the beggar on the dunghill when God demands their breath? There is no difference in the grave. There will be none at the day of judgment.

You will not be excused because you have had a great estate, a fine house, and have lived in all the pleasures that earth can afford you. You will be judged not according to the largeness of your estate but according to the use you made of it.

Sinners, how fearful soever you may be of appearing before this tribunal, you will be obliged to do it. Then you will call for the rocks and mountains to fall upon you to hide you from the face of the Lord God.

Then you will see Him whom your sins have pierced. Then you will be called to answer for your revelings and mockings against the people of God. Then it will plainly appear who are the enthusiastic and who are the madmen.

Then we shall see who have been fools and who were fitter for bedlam. You all, my brethren, must be born again. You must feel yourselves lost and undone in yourselves, or there is no salvation for you in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Whitefield’s Personal Cost and Urgent Appeal

Men may be angry with me for telling you these things and may come and carry me to prison or to death, but my inward satisfaction at having been made instrumental of bringing any poor sinners home to Jesus Christ, I esteem more than a balance for all that I can suffer.

If this is to be vile, I beg of God that I may be yet more vile. If this is to be mad, I pray God I may be yet more mad in my Master's cause. Let His own will be done in me, with me, by me, and upon me, so I may not be brought as a witness against you in the great day.

As this is my last time of speaking to you in this place, I would invite you the more earnestly to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, do not lay the blame of your perishing upon our doctrine. Do not lay the fault upon us, for the Lord now seeks His servants to call and invite you to Him, and if you still refuse both Him and us, what must I say?

I must appear in judgment against you, and oh, what shall I say? The very thought me thanks chills my blood. I come to you not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but with plainness of speech. Perhaps many may slight me for this way of preaching, but I am not willing to go without you to Christ.

It is a love for your better part that constrains me. Oh, that I had ten thousand lives to give away, that I might win you to Christ, had I the tongue of an angel, that I might speak so loud that the whole world could hear me.

The Free Offer of Salvation Through Christ

I would bid the Christian world preach a common salvation, a common Savior, unto all who laid hold of Him by faith. Are you seeking where to wash? I tell you not to go to the river Jordan, but to the blood of Christ.

You need not fear to go. Though He has given His grace to thousands, He has still enough. Come, ye publicans. Come, ye harlots. Come to Jesus Christ. Oh, do not let me go without my errand. Do not force me to say, who has believed my report?

I cannot bear the thought of it. I must lift up my voice like a trumpet, begging you to lay down your arms and return home, that your loving Father may dress you in His spotless robe. Come and see whether Christ will make ample recompense for all, for more than all this world can give.

Consider, if you do not, your damnation is from yourselves. Must I weep over you, as our Savior did over Jerusalem? I beseech you, by all that is good and dear to you, do not cast away your souls forever.

Oh, mind you in this day, the things that belong to your peace, before they are forever hidden from your eyes. Could I speak with the tongues of men or angels? With all the rhetoric possible, I could never tell the worth of Christ.

He is a good Master. Indeed, He is. I wish that all hear me this day would lay hold on Him by faith and take Him on His own terms. Do not be angry with me for my love. How glad would I be to bring some of you to God.

Come, He calls you by His ministers. Bring your sins with you, that He may make you saints. He will sanctify all who believe on Him. Come, come unto Him. If your souls were not immortal and you in danger of losing them, I would not thus speak unto you.

But the love of your souls constrains me to speak. Methinks this would constrain me to speak unto you forever. Come all ye drunkards, swearers, Sabbath breakers, adulterers, fornicators. Come all ye scoffers, harlots, thieves and murderers, that Jesus Christ will save you and He will give you rest if you are weary of your sins.

Oh, fly! Fly unto the Lord Jesus Christ. I invite you all to accept of Him. I offer Jesus Christ to the greatest profligate on earth. Surely, there are none can say, I preach damnation now. They cannot say, I'm sending you to hell now.

No, my brethren, I preach salvation to all of you who will come and accept the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, I know not how to leave you without some hopes of your coming to Him. The devil shows men to bait but hides the hook.

He promises great wages, but his wages are really death here and eternal damnation hereafter. If you want to know more what wages the devil gives his sermons, you need not stir from the place where you now are.

Look yonder at Cannington Common to the gallows where three men are hanging in chains, and there you will see how he pays them. He sees your souls to destroy them, but my brethren, fear him not. Though he is your enemy, he is a chained one.

He can go no farther than he is permitted. He could not hurt a herd of swine until he had the leave of Jesus Christ. Well, friends, those are some sermon extracts from George Whitefield. And I hope that these sermons can prove useful to us as we study historical revivals, particularly the Great Awakening and men like Whitefield, Gilbert Tennant, Jonathan Edwards, and others.

And I want us to take these sermons very seriously as we continue to read them and study them. These sermons were taken from my biography on Whitefield, my two-volume set. And we will further study him as we progress later into the week.

Thank you.