PREACHING-GOSPEL
Today, the
pressure to fill auditoriums and services has driven many pastors to place the
felt needs, or tastes, of the people above their duty to Christ. On every hand
we hear of the Gospel being molded into a non-confrontative
message intended to meet felt needs and impress the sinful heart. And, by most
standards, this new philosophy of church life is working, as more and more
auditoriums are filled with people hungry for a message that will affirm that
they are actually on fairly good terms with the Almighty. But the biblical
message is the message of the cross. It cuts right across the grain of the
modern age's preoccupation with pride, tearing down the façade and exposing the
wretchedness of the human heart… Unfortunately, while the modern “un-gospel”
may fill seats, it is the true gospel of sin and grace that is “the power of
God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16).
Appointed to Preach,
Christian Focus Publications, 1999, p. 46.
Many of the pulpiteers of the past fifty years acted as though the
first and last object of their calling was the salvation of souls, everything
being made to bend to that aim. In consequence, the feeding of the sheep, the
maintaining of a Scriptural discipline in the church, and the inculcation of
practical piety, was crowded out; and only too often all sorts of worldly
devices and fleshly methods were employed under the plea that the end justified
the means; and thus the churches were filled with unregenerate members. In
reality, such men defeated their own aim. The hard heart must be ploughed and
harrowed before it can be receptive to the gospel seed. Doctrinal instruction
must be given on the character of God, the requirements of his Law, the nature
and heinousness of sin, if a foundation is to be laid for true evangelism. It
is useless to preach Christ unto souls until they see and feel their desperate
need of him.
A.W. Pink
Some
Christians misunderstand God's plan for His kingdom. They want to establish it
their own way rather than waiting for God to do it His way. God's way of
establishing the kingdom is primarily through the preaching of the cross. But
that does not seem very effective to most people. They would prefer to use
force, which is the kind of thinking that leads to bloody crusades. Or they
would rather entertain people into the kingdom, which is the kind of thinking
that leads to man-centered worship.
Philip Graham Ryken
When You Pray, Crossway
Books, 2000, p. 82.
The reason
the church tries so many other things besides preaching Christ is because it
suspects the kingdom can be established some other way. But there is no other
way. People will not come into the kingdom because they like the minister,
support the children's program, or enjoy the music. They may come into a church
that way, but not into the kingdom. The only way people ever come into God's
kingdom is by hearing His heralds proclaim a crucified King.
Philip Graham Ryken
When You Pray, Crossway,
2000, p. 83.
Christ is
never fully valued, until sin is clearly seen. We must know the depth and
malignity of our disease, in order to appreciate the great Physician.
J.C. Ryle
The Gospel of Luke, 1858.
A ministry
which is weak and flabby on the subject of sin is a useless ministry. A
preaching ministry that does not result in conviction of sin is useless. If it
does not wound, how can it heal? The good news is only for sinners.
Erroll
Hulse
Who Are the Puritans? Evangelical
Press, p. 172.
I do not
believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the law. The law
is the needle, and you cannot draw the silken thread of the gospel through a
man's heart unless you first send the needle of the law to make way for it. If
men do not understand the law, they will not feel that they are sinners. And if
they are not consciously sinners, they will never value the sin offering. There
is no healing a man till the law has wounded him, no making him alive till the
law has slain him.
C.H. Spurgeon
I sometimes
wonder that you do not get tired of my preaching, because I do nothing but
hammer away on this one nail. With me it is, year after year, "None but
Jesus!" Oh, you great saints, if you have outgrown the need of a sinner's
trust in the Lord Jesus, you have outgrown your sins, but you have also
outgrown your grace, and your saintship has ruined you!
C.H. Spurgeon
The sermon
which does not lead to Christ, or of which Jesus Christ is not the top and the
bottom, is a sort of sermon that will make the devils in hell laugh, but make
the angels of God weep.
C.H. Spurgeon
I believe that
God will save His own elect. And I also believe that if I do not preach the
Gospel, the blood of men will be laid at my door.
C.H. Spurgeon
Let this be
to you the mark of true Gospel preaching – where Christ is everything, and the
creature is nothing; where it is salvation all of grace, through the work of
the Holy Spirit applying to the soul the precious blood of Jesus.
C.H. Spurgeon
Sermons, 42.586.
I have my own
private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him
crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname
to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not
believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith,
without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation
of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchanging, eternal, immutable,
conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we
base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen
people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel
which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of
God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having once believed in Jesus.
Such a gospel I abhor.
C.H. Spurgeon
Sermon, A
Defense of Calvinism.
I question
whether the defenses of the gospel are not sheer impertinences. The gospel does
not need defending. If Jesus Christ is not alive and cannot fight His own
battles, then Christianity is in a bad state. But He is alive, and we have only
to preach His gospel in all its naked simplicity, and the power that goes with
it will be the evidence of its divinity.
C.H. Spurgeon
I would
propose that the subject of the ministry of this house, as long as this
platform shall stand, shall be the person of Jesus Christ. I am never ashamed
to avow myself a Calvinist, but if I am asked to say what is
my creed, I think I must reply, "It is Jesus Christ." The body
of divinity to which I would pin and bind myself forever, God helping me, is
Christ Jesus, who is the sum and substance of the gospel, who is Himself all
theology, the incarnation of every precious truth, the all-glorious personal
embodiment of the way, the truth, and the life.
C.H. Spurgeon
Preach Christ,
always and everywhere. He is the whole gospel. His person, offices, and work
must be our one great, all-comprehending theme.
C.H. Spurgeon
Lectures to My Students, p. 194.
He who talks
upon plain gospel themes in a farmer's kitchen, and is able to interest the
carter's boy and the dairymaid, has more of the minister in him than the prim
little man who keeps prating about being cultured, and means by that - being
taught to use words which nobody can understand.
C.H. Spurgeon
Our Savior
has bidden us to preach the Gospel to every creature (Mk. 16:15). He has not
said, “Preach it only to the elect,” and though that might seem to be the most
logical thing for us to do, yet since He has not been pleased to stamp the
elect in their foreheads or put any distinctive mark upon them, it would be an
impossible task for us to perform. When we preach the Gospel to every creature,
the Gospel makes its own division, and Christ’s sheep hear His voice, and
follow Him.
C.H. Spurgeon
When
Christians preach, every command, every exhortation, every “how to” must be
grounded in the gospel…any and all challenges must be placed within the context
of announcing what God has done or promises to do. It’s the very opposite of
self-help teaching.
Jonathan Leeman
Reverberation,
Moody Publishers, 2011, p. 133.
People need
to be discomforted and delivered over to distress by indomitable preaching that
insists that if they refuse the love of God extended to them in the Lord Jesus
Christ, they are going to be physically tormented!... God is so seriously in
earnest about this that during the Tribulation, He will warn people through the
loud voice of an angel. This angel will tell them that if they worship the
beast or his image or receive his mark, they will be “tormented with fire and
brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb”
(Rev. 14:9-10). You are on the wrong side of this issue if you ridicule sincere
preaching that warns “with a loud voice” about the dreadful hurt of hell!
Mark Minnick
The Doctrine of Eternal
Punishment, Preach the Word Ministries, Inc., p. 28-29.
Your
shrinking from this truth about hell is not due to your sympathy with people’s
pain. It is due to your lack of sympathy with their pain. God is the one who is
sympathetic. He is the one who gave His only begotten Son to rescue us from
this misery and to inform us insistently, dogmatically, and compassionately
that we are in for an awful end if we persist in unbelief. Don’t say that you
feel for people when you blunt the edge of the word of the Spirit. What have
you ever done that shows that you truly feel for sinners’ eternal pain? Denying
the truth of God’s Word about it certainly offers them no help whatsoever.
Mark Minnick
The Doctrine of Eternal
Punishment, Preach the Word Ministries, Inc., p. 29.
Our
single-minded purpose in declaring the gospel is to give a clear and accurate
presentation of the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father
purposes and delights in His Son’s supremacy in everything – and not least in
the gospel and its preaching. Gospel preaching fails if it does not set forth
the glories of our once crucified and now risen and glorified Savior. Everything
we proclaim about the gospel must be viewed in its relationship to Him.
Derek Prime and Alistair Begg
On Being a Pastor, Moody Press,
2004, p. 140.