The Value of Gospel Preaching

The Consumer Mindset and the Decline of Preaching

Participants are not just passive consumers. They want to talk with, not be talked to. Even if it's just a chance to tweet about the sermon. Tweeting about the sermon. They want to know their voice matters.".

And so we see in churches the ever-growing popularity of things like small groups. Small group meetings where people get together and talk about the Bible rather than being preached to about the Bible.

Very few people are interested in having someone proclaim a message. And it's not as if listening to someone talk for an extended time is unpopular. See people say that, well people just don't, people can't sit and listen to people talk anymore.

That is not true. Because never in history have people been so willing to sit and listen to people talk for hours. Sean Hannity boasts, three hours a day every day is all I ask. And people pay it with their attention.

Rush Limbaugh, three hours a day and some people tune in for a fourth hour and pay money to get a fourth hour to have somebody talk to them. Stand-up comedians can go for hours wrapping entire stadiums of people up with nothing but the spoken word.

Don't let anybody fool you for a minute when they say that people just don't want to sit and listen to someone talk. People pay good money to sit and listen to people talk. What's the difference? Well, why can folks like Jim Gaffigan give one-liners about Hot Pockets and McDonald's and command thousands for hours and a pastor only get 20 minutes?

What's the difference? Could it be that we've lost the sense of value of gospel preaching? Do you know when George Whitefield came to this great country of ours and he made his way around this great country of ours preaching that he did in fact draw thousands of people to hear the proclamation of God's Word?

Some who were in fields sitting on blankets and he was on the back of an ox cart standing and proclaiming it without magnification, without electronic amplification and yet commanded the attention of thousands.

One historian wrote and said that George Whitefield had more people see him than George Washington. As far as the amount of people in America who'd ever seen him and heard him speak, more people heard George Whitefield than George Washington.

Could it be that the proclamation of truth, which includes calling folks to repentance and pointing them to Christ as the only way of salvation, is just too much for folks to bear? It's not that we're asking you to sit and listen.

It's what we're asking you to sit and listen to. It's not that we're asking for your attention for more than 20 minutes. It's what we're pointing your mind and your heart to that's just too much for the average consumer because we have become a consumer-driven people.

And I'm not up here as a comedian. I'm not up here to tell jokes or to entertain you. And because I'm not tickling your ears and scratching you where you itch emotionally, that it's just too much to listen to.

The trend has gone away from the willingness to hear preaching and many pastors desire to be popular so they follow the times and they acquiesce to the desire to move away from preaching, especially hard gospel preaching.

And as a result, the very act of preaching has undergone a lot of change. Pastors have gone from seeing themselves as proclaimers and prophets of the Word of God to being life coaches and motivational speakers and even comedians.

Five Ways Pastors Replace Preaching

How many of you guys know who James MacDonald is? I think of walking the Word. Comes on the radio. Pastor James MacDonald. He gave a speech back in 2011 to preachers and he said there were five things that pastors are now doing instead of preaching.

And I wanted to just give these to you because I thought they were interesting. He said there were five things that pastors are now doing instead of preaching. The first, he said, they're entertaining.

They're filling the services with music, drama, video, sermons are filled with felt needs, topics, stories. They fancy themselves as comics, movie and book reviewers and nighttime television hosts. Gone are the days of we're trying to be John MacArthur and R .C. Sproul.

Now we're trying to be Jimmy Fallon and Jim Gaffigan. The second thing he said we're doing instead of preaching is we're sharing. He said many preachers have become a gross combination of Dr. Phil and Oprah.

Proclaiming truth is not what we're doing anymore. We're just sharing ideas. The third thing he said we're doing instead of preaching is we're wooing. That is we're trying to win the affections of our audience.

And MacDonald says that the messages are, quote, always comfortable, never pressured and have just a pinch of truth, but only when people are ready to handle it. Always comfortable, never pressured and just a pinch of truth.

He said we've become so careful not to offend that the message has become so watered down that not even the non-elect can reject it. I'll say that again. He said the messages are so watered down that the non-elect can't even reject it.

Because it's so watered down. There's nothing offensive. There's nothing for the unbeliever to be confronted with. Number four, intellectualizing. He said a lot of sermons stop at the shoulders. It's all ethereal.

It's all simply intellectual. It's not calling people to action or moving them toward going forward in Christ. It's simply relaying to them facts that stay in their brain. And this leaves people who've gained knowledge, but no call to change their lives.

And I know so many people like this. Pastor, I know my life is this way, but I have no desire to change. The fifth one, he said, is abbreviating five things. Of the five things, it's entertaining, sharing, wooing, intellectualizing, and abbreviating.

This is basically reducing the message to such a short time that it loses its ability to have any real depth. It's not really a sermon, it's a sermonette. And you've probably all heard the adage that sermonettes produce Christianettes.

I remember being told years ago that if I hadn't struck oil in 20 minutes, I should stop boring. James MacDonald said this as a response. He said, you know what, it takes 10 minutes to set up the drill, and it takes about 10 minutes to take it down.

He says, when do we get to drill? And at 20, I was with a pastor recently, had lunch with a pastor who told me his congregation does not allow him to go longer than 20 minutes. I said, who's the guy with the bat?

Who's the guy who's standing there who's going to take your kneecaps off if you hit 22 minutes? If you're limiting yourself to such a small window of time, when are you going to have time to actually dig into what the scripture says?

I'm not saying truth can't be relayed in 20 minutes, but I am saying that when you artificially limit your time like that, what do you, why are you abbreviating it? Well, people just can't handle it. Yes, they can.

You set the bar low and people quit trying to jump. The reality is this, preaching, however unpopular it may become, or however unpopular it has become, preaching is God's primary method for the proclamation of his truth.

Preaching is the primary method for the proclamation of God's truth. It's not the only method. Certainly we have conversations, certainly we have dialogue, certainly we go out and we witness individually and we invest in people individually, and there's always going to be a place for that.

But when we read the scripture, what does the Bible say consistently about the word of God is that it is to be proclaimed. It is to be proclaimed, not just here by the way, but it is to be proclaimed in the highways and in the hedges.

This is why I absolutely support open air ministry. Brother Mike and I were talking about this the other day, because I want to go out and do it more, he wants to go out and do it more. Necessity and time has kind of constrained us recently, but we love to go out and preach the word openly.

You know there was a time in history where there were certain denominations, and I can't recall to mind exactly which ones they were, but I want to say in the Presbyterian movement there was a time where if you did not proclaim the gospel publicly at a certain point, at a certain amount of times per year, they considered you not doing your job.

That the proclamation in the church was necessary, but the proclamation outside of the church was also part of what you were to do. And we've become a conversation now, we've forgotten the tremendous value of gospel preaching as preaching, as proclaiming.

The Apostolic Command to Preach the Word

How will they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they've never heard? And how will they hear without someone having a conversation? No, how will they hear without someone preaching?

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge of the living and the dead, and by His appearing in His kingdom, discuss the word. Preach the word. Acts 5 .42, And every day in the temple and from house to house they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus.

That's the apostles. They went preaching the word. You know, some people have called Spurgeon the prince of preachers. You know who Spurgeon called the prince of preachers? Jesus. I listened to a sermon by Spurgeon, of course it wasn't him, but I listened to him who read a Spurgeon message on audio this past week.

And that was one of the first things he said in the message because it was on this text. And Spurgeon was expounding the text where Paul says, you know, woe to me if I preach not the gospel. And Spurgeon said in the message, he said, listen, he said, who is the prince of preachers?

Who tells us that we ought to preach if not Jesus Himself who went about preaching the word of God? Did Jesus go into homes and fellowship with people? Yes. Did He have discussions and private conversations with people?

Yes. But over and over and over again in the Scripture, we see that Jesus Christ preached the gospel. Matthew 4 .17, from the time Jesus began to preach, He said, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew 11 .1, when Jesus had finished instructing the disciples, He went on from there to preach and teach in their cities. Mark 1, and He said to them, let us go to the next towns that I may preach there also.

Luke 4 .43, but He said to them, I must preach the good news of the kingdom. Jesus said, I must preach. There should be no question then to the tremendous value of gospel preaching. And thus we understand, when we open our Bibles and we come to 1 Corinthians 9 and we see what Paul has to say about preaching from his perspective.

Paul understood the value of what he was called to do. And here's the thing, it wasn't because of him being a preacher. I said kind of jokingly this morning, I said, you know, I'm going to stand up today and talk about the value of preaching, and from a preacher that may sound a little disingenuous because this is what I do.

It would be like a tire salesman getting up and telling you the value of tire salesman. Might sound a little unfair, right? But this is the key to all of this. It is not about the messenger. And one of the biggest problems that we see in American evangelicalism today is that pastors become pseudo-celebrities.

And it really does. The message gets lost and the messenger gets exalted. Said this a few weeks ago. Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten. Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten. Let the message live on, not your name.

It's not about you. It's not about me as the messenger. It's the message that matters. And it's the gospel that we proclaim. It's the preaching that endures. And I want us to look now at verse 16 because Paul describes preaching in two ways.

It's actually verses 16 and 17 because we're going to look at a word in verse 17 as well. But he describes preaching in two ways. In verse 16, he describes preaching as a necessity. And in verse 17, he describes preaching as a stewardship.

So we're going to look at those two words and see how he's using them and how that relates to the value of gospel preaching. So we have preaching as a necessity, verse 16, preaching as a stewardship, and verse 17.

Preaching as a Necessity and a Stewardship in 1 Corinthians 9:16-17

So let's look first at verse 16. He says, for if I preach the gospel that gives me no ground for boasting, for necessity is laid upon me. If you have a New American Standard Bible, it says compulsion is laid upon me.

And that is a good word for that because the actual word in the Greek means obligation. And obligation is laid upon me. Here's the thing to remember, Paul wasn't preaching because he wanted to. Paul was preaching because that's what he was called to do, and he was compelled to do it.

When Jesus saved Paul, it was for a purpose. Anybody remember what the purpose was? The Bible says in Acts chapter 9, verse 15, that God chose Paul as his instrument to take his gospel to the Gentiles, to kings, and to the children of Israel.

We often call Paul the apostle to the Gentiles, which he was. He identified himself as that. But when he was given the call to the gospel by Jesus Christ, and then when he went to the house and the man came and visited him, he said, you have been called to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, to kings, and to the children of Israel.

And when a man is called by God to preach his word, an obligation is laid on his heart. Let me ask you a question, did God wait for Jonah to be ready to preach? Y 'all remember Jonah? God called Jonah, take the message of judgment to Nineveh, and what did Jonah do?

He went toward Tarshish, which is modern day Spain. Where's that? The opposite way. Because Jonah did not want to preach the gospel to the Ninevites. Does anybody remember why? Because the Ninevites were the hated enemy of the Israelites.

And Jonah says later in that same book, he said, I didn't want to preach because I knew that you would give them grace. I knew that they would be given mercy, and I didn't want them to have mercy. Jonah, if you study that book, it's not just about a first submarine ride.

It's really got some interesting personal dialogue between a prophet of God and God himself because the prophet did not want to preach. And yet a compulsion was laid upon him. His very physically was compelled to preach.

I've often thought about what Jonah looked, scrolling into town, having been in the stomach of a whale for a few days, probably stinky and bleached white, tore up from the sea, walking up onto the shore saying, repent.

I would have repented had I seen a fellow like that coming to town. And everybody did. But that's what I mean when I say that the call of the gospel to the man of God is a compulsion. In fact, you know what Charles Spurgeon said?

He said, if you cannot do it and be happy, then don't do it. Now that's not talking about necessarily being in full time ministry or vocational ministry. But what he was saying is, he's saying if you cannot preach the gospel and be happy, that's not what you're called to.

If you cannot preach the gospel and be satisfied, don't. Because if you're called to preach the gospel and you don't, you will never be satisfied with not doing it. And again, that goes for vocational ministry and lay ministry.

I spent time this week, I called Brother Mike, and I talked to Brother Andy on Wednesday night, because they're the two men in this church that preached the gospel with me when we preached together. And I said, do you men understand what Spurgeon was saying?

Do you feel that way? They said, yes! We understand what Paul meant when he said, woe to me if I preach not the gospel, it is a necessity that's laid on me. That calling, it's a demand. Paul pronounces judgment on himself.

He said, woe to me if I don't do this. Jeremiah 20, verse 9. This is the Old Covenant text, but it's a very similar statement. Jeremiah 20 says this, he says, If I say, I will not mention Him, or speak any more in His name, there is in my heart, as it were, a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot.

If I, and basically what the prophet's saying, he's saying if I tried not to preach, I would be like I was on fire from the inside, and it would burst out of me. You know, I'm taking two weeks off next month.

I'm happy to have time away to rejuvenate, and to pray, and to be with my family, and to just enjoy being restful. But I am going to miss this. In fact, often times we go away, and I think, I wonder if there's a church up there looking for somebody to preach.

That's kind of sad, you know, because I want to take time off. I think, I want to preach the Word. I didn't know right after I got saved that that's what God was going to call me to. It was the first Sunday after September 11th, I preached my first sermon, and I knew then that that's what God was calling me to, 17 years ago.

And there have been seasons of dryness. There do come seasons of burnout. But the longing to preach is still there. The burnout is so many other things, but the call to preach is not where the burnout comes.

Because there's just this impulse, it's a compulsion to preach the Word. And Paul says, woe to me if I don't preach. A necessity, a compelling movement is in my heart that I must do this. But then in verse 17, he calls it a stewardship.

A stewardship, and we didn't read this in our opening, so I'll read it to you now. He says, for if I do this of my own will, I have a reward. But if not of my own will, I'm still entrusted with a stewardship.

Now, that's a little hard to understand there. I like it in other versions where it says, if I do this under compulsion, or if I do this voluntarily, that's more of the line. And I think the point Paul is talking about, he's talking about the fact of being paid.

Remember, that's the context of this whole thing, is whether or not a minister should be paid for his service. And he says, an ox shouldn't be muzzled when it's treading out the grain. And so he says, if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward.

If I do it under compulsion, I'm still entrusted with a stewardship. And I think basically what he's saying here is, you can do this one of two ways. You can do it voluntarily, or you can do it out of compulsion.

And if you do it out of compulsion, it's God who's compelling you in your heart to do this. God is compelling him. Are there men who are preaching that shouldn't? Yeah, obviously, right? There's false teachers out there.

There used to be a phrase, it's a little quaint now, but it was the mama called and daddy sent preachers. You know, God hadn't called them, but mama and daddy did. You know, and they're out there. They have no reason to be in the pulpit, except it's maybe their livelihood or maybe something else.

But Paul says, I've been given a stewardship. A stewardship is, in the King James Version, it says dispensation. That can be confusing because of dispensationalism. All it means is simply a responsibility.

So first, there's this compulsion that's laid on the heart of the preacher to do this. It's a necessity, but it's also a responsibility. Paul's under the obligation to preach, but with that obligation comes a great responsibility.

You know what the Bible says about teachers? I hope any of you have ever taught the Word of God, whether it be in Sunday school or anywhere else, you know this passage. What does James 3 .1 say? Let not all become teachers, because teachers will be held to a what?

A stricter judgment. Because we stand before the people of God, and we proclaim the truth of the Word of God. A few years ago, a man came to this church. Jack will remember this. I'm sure. He came to this church, visited a few times, and he came to me privately and he said, I want to be a preacher and I want to go to seminary.

Okay. And he said, I want the church to support me. Okay. That's a bold request when you've been here for a hot minute, but okay. We'll talk to you about it. What are you wanting to do? Right? So he comes and he meets with the elders.

I was not in the meeting at the time. This was actually prior to me becoming the pastor here. But I was here. I remember the story. He went in, and as it has been recounted to me, and I'm sure Jack will back me up on this, they asked him the question, why do you want to be a full-time pastor?

And he said, and I quote, because I like the idea of setting my own schedule. Never has a more honest, bad answer been given. You see, that's a man who doesn't understand the stewardship of preaching.

Paul says, if I do this, I am entrusted with a responsibility. Before anything else, the preacher must understand the tremendous value of the calling that he's been given so that when he stands, he stands under compulsion to take the responsibility he's been called to and convey the value of what he is saying to his hearers.

I hope that every time that you come and hear the Gospel preached here, that you understand that we believe here in the value of the Gospel. Notice that Paul says, woe to me if I preach not the Gospel.

He didn't say woe to me if I don't preach. He said, woe to me if I don't preach the Gospel. Because again, the value's not in the preaching either if the preaching is not Gospel preaching. A lot of guys can tell tremendous stories.

A lot of guys can move you with tremendous anecdotes, but they're not preaching the Gospel and what they're doing has no value. If it doesn't have Christ, it has no value. Woe to me if I preach not the Gospel.

Or woe to me, you could say it this way, woe to me if when I preach, I preach not the Gospel. Woe to me if I preach vain opinions. Woe to me if I preach men's traditions. Woe to me if I preach the latest political movement without the Gospel.

Woe to me if I preach false doctrines. Woe to me if I preach expediency. Woe to me if I preach pure entertainment. Beloved, where the Gospel is absent, preaching is absent. It's just speaking into the wind.

Do you know why so many people don't preach the Gospel? Because we have become, especially in America, we have become a place, the churches have become places that are consumed with popularity and the Gospel is so unpopular.

The Gospel does not draw the crowds that entertainment does. The Gospel does not draw the crowds that inclusivity does. The Gospel does not draw the crowds that political correctness does. And so what do we do?

We replace the Gospel with entertainment. We replace the Gospel with inclusivity. We replace the Gospel with political correctness. And then we have a messenger without a message. And he's telling you five ways to have a better bank account, or six ways to have a better marriage, but not about the internal condition of your soul.

Because to tell you that you're going to hell without Christ is too much to hear. Gordon Cook said this. He's a pastor, and he said this. He said, we have lost the urgency of the Gospel, because so many preachers have conveyed to sinners the sense that God is on friendly terms with them.

We've lost the urgency of the Gospel, because we've told everybody God is your friend. When the Bible says if you do not come to Him through Christ, God is your enemy. Adam said it funny, posted it on Facebook, because I posted that quote, and he said, we've got to change it now to sinners in the hands of a friendly God, rather than sinners in the hands of an angry God.

Everybody thinks Jonathan Edwards was out of his mind, because of his sermon, sinners in the hands of an angry God. I know of English classes that use that particular sermon as a way to demonstrate the outrageous nature of the Puritan mind.

That Puritans were so outrageous to actually think that God Himself is angry with sinners. How many of you have ever listened to or read sinners in the hands of an angry God? A few of you? I encourage you to.

The great thing about it is, Jonathan Edwards preached that sermon. It wasn't even the first time that he preached it. He was called to preach at another church to fill the pulpit, and he took the notes from a sermon that he had preached in his own church to this church that he'd already preached once before.

And he preached the sermon entitled, sinners in the hands of an angry God. The sermon that is credited as having been one of the reasons for the spark of the Great Awakening. And he preached this sermon which was a do-over sermon for him.

And it is said that he preached it without raising or lowering his voice. He preached it monotone. Read it straight from the page. And yet, there were people in the congregation who were literally holding on to the pews because they believed they said they could see the earth opening underneath them and themselves slipping into hell.

Such a movement of God in the preaching of one sermon. But it is a sermon filled with truth. You know what the text was? Their foot will slip in due time. Old Testament text. Their foot will slip in due time.

And you know what the meaning of the text was? Was one day this life will end. One day your foot will slip. And you are as if you were a spider on a web over an open flame. And the tops of the flame are licking the web upon which you rest.

And one day that web will collapse and you will fall into the flames. And God in His righteous indignation will bring upon you the fire of eternal hell. That's preaching. That's hard preaching. That's the type of preaching that today would be mocked and is mocked by the intellectual but is loved by the believer because they know the truth they're in.

Paul says, woe to me if I preach not the Gospel. The Gospel begins with an understanding that we are enemies of God outside of Jesus Christ. Another thing Gordon Cook said was this. He said, did you know it is impossible to have a good conscience without the Gospel?

That's my hope. Because I know a lot of people who would say I'm a good man or I have a good conscience or my conscience is clear. It is impossible to have a good conscience without Christ. Because the Bible says the Gospel is an answer of a good conscience toward God.

That's the answer. That's the answer men need. Because outside the Gospel our conscience is tainted with sin. Outside the Gospel it is black, it is dirty, it is wretched. But the Gospel cleans us. It gives us a good conscience towards God.

And now we have a new relationship with God where we were once enemies. We were once strangers. We were once aliens in the land. We have now been made partakers. We have been made family having been adopted into the family of God because of the work of Jesus Christ.

Woe to all of us if we don't proclaim that Gospel. Not everyone is called to do this part of ministry. Not everyone is called to preach on the street. Mike and I have had that conversation. Not everyone is called to go out and do what he does.

But we are all called to proclaim the truth. Sometimes it is the conversation. Many of you have that gift of individual personal testimony where you are able to talk to people and share the Gospel with them.

And you have that wonderful ministry. I am not diminishing that in any way. That is precious and that is important. But we should never forget the tremendous value of the preaching of the Gospel. Christ preached the Gospel.

The Apostles preached the Gospel. The church for 2 ,000 years has had men willing to preach the Gospel. Never ever should we forget the tremendous value of Gospel preaching. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your Word.

I thank you for your truth. And I thank you for your Gospel. Your Word tells us that we are enemies because of our sin, but that we have been drawn close because of our Savior. We have been forgiven. We have been covered in His blood.

We have been given righteousness through Him. And I pray now, Father, that by your mercy and grace that the preaching of the Gospel has gone out. That Lord, those who are believers have been encouraged in their faith.

And those who are not yet will be called to repentance of sin and faith in your Son. Father, we thank you for your blessing. All of your blessings. In Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen.