Virtue of Christ Ministry of Power — E.A. Johnston

The Missing Power in Today's Pulpit

I go around, and I watch men preach, I listen to them, I observe them, I see men with great ability, winsome personalities, much education, and often large congregations. But there is often a missing element to their preaching, and it grieves my heart that this missing element is the lack of power in the pulpit today, a lack of authority from on high, an anointing of the Holy Ghost.

Revival Preachers and the Authority of God

Old time preachers possessed this power because they were men who walked with God in a holy walk with Him, and were men under the discipline of the Holy Spirit. My message today, friends, is on the topic of power in the pulpit, and when I study men in a revival like George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards, and Azahel Nettleton, and Duncan Campbell, they each share a common denominator.

They had preaching ministries of power from on high. When they preached, the very atmosphere was altered by a sense of eternity, and a future judgment for all mankind. In a town in Connecticut during the Second Great Awakening, when Azahel Nettleton spoke on Sodom burning, his mighty preaching turned the heads of his congregation toward the windows as they looked for the conflagration of that town burning.

And when Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, his hearers trembled and cried out with shrieks as they were pierced through with conviction of God's Spirit as if a double-edged claymore had cut them down.

These men had power with God and influence with man. I'll never forget sitting under a preaching professor from seminary who, when he was through with his lecture, one of the students near me raised his hand and asked this question.

He said, Professor, I hear you teach us about projecting our voices and working on our personalities, but when I study history and look at men like Jonathan Edwards, I see men who are anointed with the Holy Spirit.

Why don't you teach us about that? The seminary professor looked at the young student with disgust in his eyes and answered in a condescending voice, he said, Young man, you are no Jonathan Edwards. That's what the old boy said, and I'm afraid that's the general consensus today in our seminaries and churches because we've convinced ourselves we can accomplish more for God with money and manpower than by prayer and Holy Ghost power.

The Virtue of Christ in Luke's Gospel

The title of my message today, friends, is The Virtue of Christ, a Ministry of Power, and my text can be found in Luke's Gospel in chapter 8. You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in verses 43 through 46, and let me read us a striking passage of Scripture at this time.

And may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of His Holy Word. And a woman, having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, came behind him and touched the border of his garment, and immediately her issue of blood staunched, and Jesus said, Who touched me?

When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee, and press against thee, and sayest thou who touched me? And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me, for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.

I will stop there. Here is Jesus walking through a vast crowd of followers, and people are bumping up against Him, pressing upon Him, and His disciples can only see the physical aspect of it. But something wonderful happens here, friends, something supernatural.

A woman, with a health issue that cannot be cured by human means, touches the Master, and she is immediately healed. And when she merely touches the hem of His garment, power flows out of Jesus into this woman.

Her transformation is immediate, and she has this healing right away, Jesus proclaims. I perceive that virtue has gone out of me. When I first heard Dr. Stephen Offord preach, I was impressed by his authority in the pulpit.

The Anointing That Carries Preaching Power

He was a man of little stature, but when he got in the pulpit, he seemed like a giant, friends. I wondered how he preached with such power, and one day I learned his secret. I was sitting with him in his study at the time we were collaborating on a book about his homiletical mentor, Graham Scroggie, and Dr. Offord looked fatigued.

He sunk in his chair as he entered the room and remarked to me, Give me a moment, brother. Give me some time to regather myself, for I have just preached, and virtue has gone out of me. And as he said that, my mind raced to our passage here in Luke of the woman with the issue of blood and how Jesus healed her when virtue left him and passed into her.

That word virtue in the original language is striking. Many of you know that it is the word dunamis, and dunamis means to have power, miraculous power, the great power of God, literally meaning His almighty energy, spoken of here in our text of Jesus, exercising the power to heal, power imparted from God, imparted by the Spirit of God.

This dunamis power to a preacher is the anointing of the Holy Spirit, to which John the Baptist alluded when he said in Luke chapter 3 and verse 16. John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier than I cometh, the latches of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose.

He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. O friends, how I long to hear a preacher who has this fire. They seem to be vanishing from among our midst, men who walk with God in a red-hot love relationship to God, who are dead to the world, dead to the compliments of man, and who possesses holy fire.

The Holy Spirit's Fire in Ministry

This dunamis, I want us to see several aspects of this as we proceed. I want to first mention them, and I will then elaborate upon each head. The first aspect of this power is, number one, it is referred to as a fire.

He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. I remember a story about D .O. Moody, who was met by two old women after he preached in his Chicago church one day. They said they were praying for him.

Moody told them, why pray for me? Why not pray for these poor souls without Christ? The ladies told him, we are praying for you, Mr. Moody, because we want you to be anointed with the power of God. And Moody, from that day forward, began to hunger and thirst for this touch of God.

He would pray daily for it, often on his face, rolling on the floor, begging God for this anointing. Then one day, when he was in the city of New York, the Spirit of God fell upon him, and he rushed into a friend's apartment to shut himself up with God.

He spoke of this time in his life. He said, I asked God to stay his hand. I could not take it anymore. Since then, I have preached the same messages, but with a new power. Many are now converted. So we see, friends, that this anointing from above is spoken of in terms of fire.

Divine Power as an Impartation

Once D .O. Moody caught this flame, the coals on the altar of his heart never went out. He literally burned himself out for his God. Secondly, I want us to see this aspect of virtue. When Jesus said that virtue had passed from him to this woman, it was an impartation of divine power.

This dunamis power. This is the very thing that Dr. Olford possessed. God was all over that man. You could sense it just in conversation with him. Dr. Olford had an authority from on high, both in and out of the pulpit.

Other preachers looked up to him and wished they had what he had, but few were willing to pay the price for this anointing, because what costs counts, and what counts costs. And I believe, friends, that God is looking for a man to be a channel of his divine power, through which his virtue can still flow through us as a means of blessings to others.

When Jesus healed this woman from her ailment, a transforming power flowed from him to her. I've often sat under the preaching of Stephen Olford and witnessed the very same thing. Lives were transformed by the Spirit of God working in the hearts of his hearers.

Transformation and the New Birth

Many were saved under his mighty ministry, and many men called into the ministry under his preaching. This was the case with me. Thirdly, and lastly, I want us to see this aspect of Christ's virtue in the sense of transformation.

Listen, friends, when Jesus was here in his earthly ministry, when he passed through towns and villages, those individuals who encountered him experienced change. Their lives were transformed. Dear brother pastor, do you hunger for a ministry of transformation?

Do you thirst for the salvation of souls? I'm afraid you and I cannot save a single soul by our preaching, apart from the Spirit of God attending it in power. You can win an argument for Christ and convince someone to accept Jesus as their personal Savior.

That's how most go about it today. And that's the very reason why we have a generation of unconverted church members who are now gospel-hardened. You hand them a tract, and they say, I've already done that.

I made a decision for Jesus a while back. But there was no transformation, no imparting of God's Holy Spirit to their stony heart. Salvation is the divine life in man. George Whitefield, the great British evangelist, was saved by reading a book by a Scotsman, Henry Scougal.

And before reading that book, Whitefield tried to reach heaven through good works, through self-sacrifice and self-denial. He was a member of the Holy Club with John and Charles Wesley and some other men, most of whom were still unconverted ministers.

One day, Charles Wesley loaned Whitefield this book, and the title of the little book was The Life of God in the Soul of Man. And the light came on in George Whitefield's soul. He saw that salvation was an impartation of the divine life in man by God's Spirit through regeneration of the heart, the heart of stone, being made a heart of flesh.

And from that day forward, Whitefield's message of the Great Awakening, which shook two continents, was, ye must be born again. George Whitefield was a subject of grace. He was born from above. His life was transformed by the Spirit of God.

Self-Denial and Becoming an Empty Channel

Listen to me, dear friends. A ministry of power is merely this. We must become empty channels, free from any obstructions that would hinder the work of God. A life of continued self-denial and self-emptying is mandatory to have this power.

Sid Lobaxter used to say, how can a man, full of himself, preach to Christ who emptied himself? And it's true, friend. Moody was so powerfully used because he was dead to the compliments of man, and he had power with God.

But many of us are too concerned about what our deacons think of us, rather than what God thinks of us. We fear man more than God. Oh, friends, this should not be the case. We must live our lives under the discipline of the Holy Spirit, for the dual purpose of bringing God glory and being an empty channel, through which the Spirit of God, this divine dunamis power, can flow through, as a means of being a blessing to others in lives of transformation.

Revival Through an Extraordinary Experience of God

It is God working through man. I once asked a friend of mine who knew Duncan Campbell personally and had labored with him on the Isle of Lewis during the Great Revival, which gripped the island back in 1949.

And I asked this man to describe to me in one sentence why Duncan Campbell had such power in the pulpit. And this man told me that Duncan Campbell was just an ordinary man who'd had an extraordinary experience of God.

Duncan Campbell often spoke about the Holy Spirit's anointing on his life and how God transformed entire communities by the outpouring of the Spirit of God and revival. And that's what we need today, friends.

We need to have an encounter with God. We need to seek God in a fresh way, in a longing to have our ministries touched with this fire from above so that Christ's virtue can flow through us by His Spirit as a means of transforming lives for all eternity.

Living in View of Eternity

Is this not the real desire of our hearts? Then why are we still taken up with this silly world and its amusements? This world's nothing more than a bubble soon to pop. I can almost hear the midnight cry of our Lord and Savior as He returns for His bride until He calls or comes.

Let us live our lives in view of eternity and pursue this holy fire of Christ's virtue in us. Is this not what the Apostle Paul meant when he said, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me, Christ in me, His virtue flowing through me to others in transforming dunamis power.

Let that be our prayer, let us pray.