Well, I want to just dive right
into this, and I want to start with what I want to call the
concern. Why is this so rare? Why is it
so rare that someone is committed to be an expositor of the Word
of God, and yet he is not the evangelist that he should be? Why is it like Martin Luther
talked about the drunk man on the horse? He's always falling
off on one side or the other. And there is a tendency for men
to either be strong in exposition and they're weak in evangelism,
or they're strong in evangelism and they're pretty weak in exposition.
I mean, why does it have to be either or? Why can't it be both? Well, I want to try to answer
that. Why is evangelistic exposition so rare? And I want to just go
through this rather quickly. Number one, a naive assumption.
A naive assumption that all church members are saved. A naive assumption
that if someone prays a prayer, they're actually converted. A
naive assumption that just because someone professes Christ, therefore
they possess Christ. A naive assumption that just
because someone is doctrinally orthodox, that they are genuinely
converted. That that is a very naive assumption. And Jesus said in Matthew 7 and
verse 21, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter
the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father
in heaven. And many will say unto me in that day, did we not
prophesy in your name? Did we not cast out demons in
your name? I mean, they were involved in
church work and ministry. to the nth degree. And Jesus
says to them, depart from me, you who work iniquity, I never
knew you. So I think it's so rare, number
one, so many pastors naively think that everyone in their
church is converted. I would say over the...I pastored
for 34 years. I saw hundreds of people come
to faith in Christ. I can easily tell you that 19
out of 20 were church members. Elders, deacons, pastors' wives,
Sunday school teachers. I had one deacon converted in
a deacons' meeting. sitting next to me. So, I believe
that we are so naive, so therefore we do not preach the gospel because
we think we're just preaching to the choir. Second, why it's
so rare, rigid exposition. And I'm all about Bible exposition. But there are some men who only
teach what is immediately in this text. And if the cross is
not in this text, if Jesus is not in this text, if salvation
is not in this text, if grace is not in this text, then it's
not going to come from their lips during this sermon. And
they are so rigidly painted into a corner, they are boring a hole
down to China in the micro. but they have lost sight of the
macro. And the cross is not in every
text, but we ought to be able to get to the cross from every
text. Thank you. I'm here. I'm here. I love churches when they talk
to you while you're preaching. They start yelling, "'Hep him,
Jesus.'" And I'm thinking, wow, I must really be bad for shouting
that at you. So, come on. I'm talking to you. You've been wrong too long. All right. So, rigid exposition. You've got to always have your
hand on the cross as you preach. And I am not saying that the
cross is in every verse. I'm not one of these allegorizers
who want to see Jesus in every jot and tittle. That's more imagination
than interpretation. But I can get to Jesus, and I
can get to the cross. And Spurgeon said, all roads
lead to London, and all texts lead to the cross. But why it's
so rare, it's just a rigid exposition. Third, historical overreaction. We are so scared of Charles Finney. that we have swung the pendulum
so hard that we've just knocked a hole in the wall on the other
side. We want to be as far away, and rightly so, in so many ways,
but we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, he was
manipulative. Yes, he had a false gospel. Yes,
his methodology was wrong. But nevertheless, we cannot overreact
just because of Charles Finney, or some church 27 verses of Just
As I Am, and people start coming forward just so we can go to
lunch. So, we can't overreact. We have to be red-hot evangelistic
expositors. Fourth is hyper-Calvinism. And someone may not be hyper-Calvinistic
in their theology, but they are in their methodology. They are
never calling people to faith in Jesus Christ. And if that
is the case, you have your toes right up to being a hyper-Calvinist. I would rather you be a red-hot
Arminian. than to be a hyper-Calvinist.
It is the stench and the death blow to dynamic Christian living. I would rather you be John Wesley
or Charles Wesley than to be a hyper-Calvinist. Fifth, a contemporary
bubble. So many people, so many pastors
are not really students of church history. and that we just live
in a little bubble of this time. and have really never read George
Whitefield, have really never read Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
have never really read Jonathan Edwards, have never really read
Martin Lloyd-Jones, have never really read James Montgomery
Boyce, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's just living
in a cul-de-sac. It's just living in a kind of
the corner of a room, and you need to read the great preachers
of history. And put your finger on the pulse
of their preaching and for it to be contagious with you. Sixth is what I want to call
the indicative rut. The entire sermon is in the indicative
mood. Statement of fact, statement
of fact, statement of fact, statement of fact, statement of fact, statement
of fact, statement of fact, statement of fact, statement of fact, statement
of fact, statement...for an hour. Great evangelistic preaching
knows how to shift gears out of the indicative mood and shift
into the interrogative mood and begin to ask questions. Where
are you today with the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you committed your
life to Christ? Why do you postpone? Why do you
procrastinate committing your life to Christ? Have you believed
in Christ? What evidence do you see in your
life? What fruit do you see in your life? What would it take
for God to bring you to the place where you come through the narrow
gate and enter into the kingdom of heaven? Where are you in relationship
to the narrow gate? Are your toes right up to it?
Have you seen others go through it? You admire the narrow gate,
don't you? Then what is holding you back? All of those were just questions.
And when you begin to speak with the indicative mood, people put
down their pen, they put down a piece of paper, they look up,
and they, for the first time, have to think because you're
not giving them the answer. The indicative mood, you're giving
them the answer. They're just taking notes. They're
just listening. the interrogative, you begin to audit their life. And they begin to examine themselves. But then you shift into the imperative
mood, which is a command. Repent. Believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Enter through the narrow gate. If any man thirst, let him come
to me and drink, and out of his innermost being shall flow rivers
of living water. Come unto me, all you who are
weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." That's the imperative
mood. It's commanding. Now, the whole
sermon cannot be in the imperative mood, but when you use it, it
is extremely effective. And that's how the Bible is written,
by the way. But then there is also the exclamatory
mood. That is the sentence with an
exclamation point at the end. Oh, what a great Savior we have
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, the righteousness of Jesus
Christ. He is mighty to save. Evangelistic preaching knows
how to shift gears from the indicative mood to the interrogative mood
to the imperative mood to the exclamatory mood where it's like
the ocean goes in, it comes out, it goes in, it comes out. But
you're causing people to think, but you're also commanding them
to believe while you're teaching the truth. Number seven. small church. I've pastored a
small church. You know everybody. And you want
to pull back from preaching the gospel because there's no visitors
here today. I mean, we all know one another.
I mean, we're all cousins that have married in this church. I mean, if one family went down,
the whole church would go down. And so, we tend to pull back
from more aggressive preaching because we've grown up with one
another and there's not a lot of traffic that's going through
the church Sunday by Sunday. Eighth would be spiritual lethargy,
that the preacher is complacent, has become apathetic, lukewarm. somewhat in a rut, somewhat going
through a routine. Let me give you just two more. Ninth, hell forgotten. We need to remember that hell
is a real place where real people are going. And everyone enters
this world on the broad path headed to hell. What do you have
to do to go to hell? Nothing. Just continue to float
downstream like a dead fish. You're already going to hell.
That's why you must enter through the narrow gate and exit this
path that is taking you to destruction. And then the tenth thing that
I would say is mistaking a lecture for a sermon. There are too many guys in our
part of the body of Christ who are so smart and so brilliant
that they give lectures on Sunday morning. And a lecture is not
a sermon. There is a world of difference
between teaching and preaching. All preaching begins with teaching
and includes teaching, but it goes beyond teaching. Preaching
stands on the shoulders of teaching. Preaching has a fifth gear shift. Preaching goes to meddling. A
young man once came to Martin Lloyd-Jones and said, Dr. Lloyd-Jones, can you tell me
the difference between preaching and teaching? And Lloyd-Jones
said, young man, if you have to ask me the difference between
preaching and teaching, it is obvious you have never heard
preaching. Because if you've heard preaching, you know the
difference between teaching and preaching. Teaching is all information-oriented. That's wonderful. We need that.
And it is usually given in a lecture. We need lectures, just not in
the pulpit. We need them in the classroom.
But preaching takes the teaching and then advances with it. So,
this is why evangelistic preaching is so rare. I could also add
bad mentors. I could add being overly intellectual,
etc. So, second, I want to go now
to the second heading, from the concern now to the compulsion. Why must we do evangelistic preaching? Why is it so incumbent upon us? And the first thing that I would
say is the Great Commission. In Luke's gospel, Jesus commanded
His disciples to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sin. Luke's
Great Commission is the only commission that actually gives
the message that the disciples are to give. It is to preach
repentance for the forgiveness of sin. Now, the Great Commission
is non-negotiable. It's not a suggestion. It's not
an option. And so, we are commanded to preach
repentance for the forgiveness of sins. There are only two types
of preachers. There's an evangelistic preacher and there's a disobedient
preacher. Well, I heard a little mumble
there. All right, number two, Jesus' example. Jesus was an
evangelistic preacher. In fact, Jesus was an itinerant
evangelist. Jesus was constantly on the move,
moving from city to city and from place to place. And when
you read Mark 1, 15 and 16, and when you read the beginning in
Matthew 4, as Jesus begins His public ministry. He comes preaching,
repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And the Sermon on
the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7 is a tour de force of evangelistic
preaching. Now, it's also geared to His
own disciples who know Him, but there are also there those There
are those there that Jesus says, He who hears these words of mine
and acts upon them is like a wise man who built his house upon
the rock. And when the rains came and the winds blew and beat
against the house, it did not fall because it was built on
the rock. He who hears these words of mine and does not act
upon them is like a very foolish man who built his house upon
the sand. And when the rains came and the
winds blew, and all that picture is the gathering storm that will
be unleashed on the last day and the final judgment. Great
will be its fall because it was built upon the sand. That is the greatest sermon ever
been preached in the history of the world by the greatest
expositor and by the greatest evangelist who has ever walked
this earth, the Lord Jesus Christ. And it was a passionate evangelistic
sermon. And number three, Jesus' discipleship. He trained men to be to be evangelistic
in their preaching. Jesus said in Matthew 4 verse
19, "'Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.'" They understood
exactly what Jesus was saying. You're going to have to follow
Me, and as it were, get in the boat with Me, and we'll launch
out into the world together. And I'm going to have to teach
you how to cast your net. I'm going to have to teach you
where the fish are. But you're going to have to learn how from
me to draw the net, and for the fish to be in the boat, and for
us to take them back to shore. Follow me, and I'll make you
fishers of men." We could easily say, if you're not fishing, you're
not following. In Matthew chapter 10, Jesus
sent them out. He said, go to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel, those who were perishing. And so, Jesus'
training with the disciples involved equipping them for a lifetime
of evangelistic preaching. Fourth, the apostolic pattern.
When you read the book of Acts, you see preaching that is directed
to win people to faith in Jesus Christ. Do you know that one
out of every four verses in the book of Acts is a sermon? or
the equivalent of in a very passionate witness with other people standing
around. Twenty-five percent of the book
of Acts is evangelistic preaching. And then apostolic command, number
five. In 2 Timothy 4 verse 2, when
he says, preach the Word, be ready in season and out of season,
reprove, rebuke, exhort with much patience and instruction,
you come down to verse 5, same context, and he says, do the
work of an evangelist. In the context, I believe he
is saying this to Timothy for his ministry within his own church
there at Ephesus. that those who are wanting to
have their ears tickled, those wanting to accumulate for themselves
teachers in accordance to their own desires, are those within
His own church. And He must fulfill His ministry
and do the work of an evangelist. That is incumbent upon us as
well. The charge to preach the Word
and the charge to do the work of an evangelist as we preach
the Word is just as binding upon us. And number six, the book
of Hebrews. The book of Hebrews is an evangelistic
sermon. At the end of the book of Hebrews,
in Hebrews 13 verse 22, the entire book is called a word of exhortation. And that very same phrase is
used in Acts 13 to describe one of the apostles' sermons. And the warning passages within
the book of Hebrews, those five major warning passages, are evangelistic
pleas to come all the way to faith in Christ. Today, if you
will hear His voice, do not harden your heart. And it issues warning
not to trample underfoot the precious blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ and insult the Spirit of grace. Those, in my estimation,
are passionate evangelistic sermons. Here's an entire book in the
New Testament that R.C. Sproul says, after the book of
Romans, is the second most important epistle in the New Testament. And it is a word of exhortation. It is an evangelistic message. Well, if we had time, we could
look at other reasons why we should be so committed. the arrangement
of the Psalms. Psalm 1, Psalm 2, like two gatekeepers
as you enter into the book of Psalms. They weren't the first
two Psalms to be written. The first Psalm to be written
was Psalm 90. The last Psalm to be written was 126. There's
about a thousand years in between. Psalm 1, Psalm 2 are placed there
by the compilers intentionally to let us all know Psalm 1. There's
only two roads in life. There is the way of the righteous
and there is the way of the wicked. And everyone is traveling one
of these two roads. It is black and white. It is
stark contrast. These two roads are not close
together. They are headed in opposite directions. One is like a tree that's been
firmly planted by streams of water. The other is like the
chaff that is blown away in the judgment. The book of Psalms,
which is the most important book in the Old Testament in my estimation,
begins with this evangelistic plea, and then Psalm 2 is like
the other bookend on the other side of this entrance, and it
concludes by calling the reader to kiss the sun, to do homage
to the sun, to take refuge in the sun. How evangelistic is
the book of Psalms. etc., etc., we could talk about
so much more. Third main heading, the clarity. What does the gospel include? And I wish I had time to go,
to take us through Romans 1, 1 through 7, and just break out
the different aspects of the gospel. But to synthesize this
in the short amount of time that I have, we would very simply
put it this way, and in evangelistic preaching, we must be crystal
clear. Clarity can never be overrated
in evangelistic preaching. It involves a message about God.
Number two, a message about man. Number three, a message about
Christ. And number four, a message that
demands a response. Now, I wish I had time to fill
in all the gaps in the headings, or rather the headings under
that, but it's a message about God, that we've been made in
the image of God. We are accountable to God, our
Maker, and that God by His holiness is the standard by which all
of us will be measured. That man has sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God. That when Adam sinned, the whole
human race was thrown into sin. We became sinners before we were
ever even conceived in our mother's womb. And we inherited a sin
nature that has been passed down from Adam. And we enter into
this world speaking lies and going astray from our mother's
womb. And we ourselves have transgressed
the law of God. We are lawbreakers. And the curse
of the law is upon us. And that curse is death. Cursed
is everyone who breaks the law. And the wages of sin is death.
And then it's a message about Christ. And in that order. There
is no good news so you know what the bad news is. The good news
just makes you yawn if you don't know what the bad news is. The
good news is just interesting, curious, nice. But when you know
what the bad news is, that you've been weighed in the balances
and found wanting. And then you hear that God has
sent forth His Son into this world, that God has demonstrated
His love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us. It becomes not just good news,
it's great news. It is the greatest news that
anyone will ever have or ever know. That is why Paul said,
we preach Christ and Him crucified. And so there's five main things
in my mind as I preach Christ that are like anchor points for
me. And you can anticipate what I'm
going to say. His virgin birth, His sinless
life, His substitutionary death, His bodily resurrection, and
His present enthronement at the right hand of God the Father. We have to preach Christ if people
are to be saved. Spurgeon said, if we want more
conversions, we must put more of Christ into our sermons. He
said, a sermon without Christ is an awful thing. He said, a
sermon without Christ is like the day without the sun. It's
like the night without the moon. It's like the river without water.
It's like the fall without a harvest. It's like a body without a soul.
And as only Spurgeon can go on and on, he said, a sermon without
Christ is an empty well that mocks the traveler. A sermon
without Christ is a cloud that never rains. There is no blessing. apart from Christ. And then a
message that demands a response, repentance and faith. Repentance
is the turning away from sin, and faith is a turning to the
Lord Jesus Christ and embracing Christ as one's Lord and Savior. It is the commitment of all that
you are to all that He is. It is crossing the line and entrusting
your life to the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, when I stood at the front
of the church and when my bride came down the aisle, I was saying
to her, I forsake all others and I give myself to you completely. Should my commitment to Christ
be any less than that? I mean, it would be idolatry
if my commitment to my wife was greater than my commitment to
Christ. to commit my life to Christ necessitates that I turn
away from the things of the world. I turn away from my own selfish
living and my self-righteousness. I turn away from all other religions
and anything else, and I turn exclusively to the Lord Jesus
Christ, and I take Him to be my own. And I wish I had time
with you today to go through all the metaphors of saving faith
that is used in the New Testament. But there are so many aspects
of saving faith that are expressed with different metaphors. to
receive Him as you would receive and welcome someone into your
life, that you would eat of His flesh and drink of His blood,
that you would enter through a narrow gate. Just like you
would thirst and drink of Christ, you take Him and you bring Him
into your soul just like you would take water into your mouth. and swallow it. And there are
so many different images to deny yourself and take up a cross
and now to begin this journey of following after Jesus Christ. But just think in your evangelistic
preaching under those four main headings. It's a message about
God, a message about man, a message about Christ, and a message that
demands a response. And it ought to be that we could
wake you up at three o'clock in the morning, and within two
seconds, you're on the third point on that. That it just naturally
flows out of your mouth. Now, the next heading that I
want to give you is the summons. And I have four things under
this that are so needed in our evangelistic preaching. The first
is invitation. We must be inviting people to
come to faith in Christ. And by this, I do not mean to
get up out of your seat and walk forward and sign a card. I mean right where you're seated
this very moment, you need to take the step of faith and to
come all the way to Jesus Christ. And we must be inviting people
to come. We have to do more than just
tell them about Christ. We have to invite them to Christ. And think about the preaching
in Jesus' own ministry. He was continually inviting people
to come to Him. I just quoted some of those verses. Come unto me, all you who are
weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon
you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart. And
you shall find rest for your souls, for my burden is easy
and my yoke is light." And Jesus is throwing open the gates of
paradise, and He's standing in this open door. And He is summoning
and calling and inviting those who are outside the kingdom of
God to come into the kingdom through Him. Listen, when I met
my wife, I remember when I asked her to
marry me, I had to do more than do word studies on agapeo. I had to come to that point in
the conversation. We were sitting in a car in front
of a restaurant in a parking lot, and I finally had to say those
words that I was so nervous to say. Will you marry me? You have to, what they say, pop
the question. I said, "'Wilt you?' and she
wilted." She rolled her eyes over at me,
and I picked them up and rolled them back. It's just us guys here, okay?
No, but we need to be inviting people to come to Christ, and
I think we're too scared or we're too proud to beg. We need to
be inviting people to come to Christ. Second is persuasion. We need to be persuasive. There
is a Greek word, pitho, P-E-I-T-H-O, pitho. It's translated into the
new American standard as persuade. Paul was constantly persuading
men. He wasn't just tossing it out
there and, hey, you can take it or leave it. He's trying to,
according to 1 Corinthians 9, to win you to Christ, to win
you over to Christ. And that necessitates being persuasive. I need to sell you, and I mean
that not in a crass sense, on the positive benefits if you
will commit your life to Christ, what Christ has promised to do.
And I also need to warn you that if you do not commit your life
to Christ, what Christ has also promised to do, and I need to
be persuasive. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 11, therefore,
knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men. If you don't persuade men, you
do not know the fear of the Lord. You know the fear of man. You
don't know the fear of the Lord. So there has to be this persuasion
of seeking to win people over to Christ. And then third, under this, I
would say questions. To ask questions. To ask diagnostic
questions. that force self-examination. You need to be continually saying,
where are you today with Jesus Christ? Have you come to faith
in Jesus Christ? What prevents you from coming
to Christ? Is it the sin you would have
to give up? Is it the embarrassment that people have thought you've
been saved all along and now you would have to admit you've
really never been born again? Is it the peer pressure? Is it
the friends you would lose? What is it that is holding you
back? But what does it profit a man
if he gains the whole world, yet loses his own soul? Or what
will a man give in exchange for his soul? And please note, those
are two questions Jesus asked in His evangelistic preaching.
They're heart-searching. They force the issue in the heart
of the listener. You need to be a skilled asker
of questions, and then forth under this urgency. You need to press for the commitment
to Christ now, this moment. Boast not yourself of tomorrow,
for you know not what a day may bring forth. The Bible says,
behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, today is the day of salvation. I think we let our fish off the
hook. We let people get away. We need to press them now, today. We need to tell them tomorrow
is the devil's day. Today is God's day. That hell
is filled with procrastinators who waited and waited and waited
until there was no time left. And now they're in hell. We need
to reason with them, but with a sense of the immediacy of the
moment. Here's a sermon you need to pull
up on Google and read, not while I'm preaching, but...let me put
that qualifier. By the Prince of Preachers, Charles
Haddon Spurgeon. Here's the title of the sermon,
now. 2 Corinthians 6, verses 1 and
2. I've never preached a day in
my life after reading that sermon. In Spurgeon reasons with his
listeners, my text says, behold, now is the accepted time. Behold,
today is the day of salvation. I know what some of you are saying,
I want to go home and think about it. My text does not say go home
and think about it. My text says now is the accepted
time. Some of you say, oh, I want to
go home and I want to pray about it. My text does not say go home
and pray about it. My text says, behold, now is
the accepted time, and as I see you now in this pew, and as I
see you now under the sound of the Word of God, I call you by
God's grace to believe now in Jesus Christ. We need a sense
of urgency. And sometimes we get into these
long book series, and I love long book series. You know, four
years in the gospel of John, five years in Romans, but we
think that we always have tomorrow, next Sunday, next month, next
season. That's why Richard Baxter said,
we must preach as a dying man to dying men as never to preach
again. It needs to be consciously in
our mind that this may be the last sermon I will ever preach. This may be the last sermon they
will ever hear. I need to put it all out on the
table. Now, I want to talk about how to improve your evangelistic
preaching, how to improve it, how to get
to the next level. And every effective preacher
is always trying to get to the next level. John MacArthur has
said, effective preachers are intensely competitive in the
sense they're competitive with themselves. And they want to
be always becoming more effective, sharpening their sword. So, how
can we improve our evangelistic preaching? Well, number one,
know the gospel better. I mean, this is our currency
as we preach. We need to know the person of
Christ, the life of Christ, the work of Christ, the offices of
Christ, the terms of Christ. We need to know Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John inside out, outside in, and to speak in the language
of the Scripture itself. So we need to know the gospel
better. We need to know the book of Romans. And we need to know
the theological intricacies of the gospel so that as we preach,
we go beyond our notes and we bring into the sermon these gospel
truths that we have accumulated. Second, listen to great evangelistic
preaching. It's as much caught as it is
taught. Just to hear great men preach
evangelistically. I'll give you a couple of names. I was called into the ministry
under the preaching of a man named Adrian Rogers. He was a
powerhouse of a preacher. A powerhouse. I was literally
catapulted out of Bellevue Baptist Church to go off to seminary
under that strong, passionate, fiery, evangelistic preaching. I went from that church to another
church as I went to seminary, W.A. Criswell. First Baptist
Church, downtown Dallas. It was the largest Protestant
church in the world at that time. When it was Dr. MacArthur's 25th
anniversary here, the only preacher they could think of to bring
in to preach John MacArthur's 25th anniversary was W.A. Criswell. And it was a landmark
Sunday. People still talk about that
Sunday, that sermon when Criswell came to preach. I sat under his
preaching for five years. I sat under Adrian Rogers preaching.
I learned how to preach evangelistically by listening to pastors in one
pulpit, Sunday by Sunday, Wednesday night by Wednesday night, as
they preach the gospel, as they preach through passages of Scripture.
Third, James Montgomery Boyce. I love James Montgomery Boyce.
And you can even read James Montgomery Boyce, but it is so interesting
to me how he concludes so many of his sermons. That last paragraph
may be a series of eight questions. And they're heart-searching and
they're directed at an unconverted heart. And then his calling people
to faith in Jesus Christ. And John MacArthur, I love John
MacArthur, I love his preaching, and I especially love his preaching
when they had church here in this gymnasium when he was a
young man. And it would be like five sermons
in one sermon. You would buy a cassette tape
and there would be so much on that. And he talked so fast and
he was so passionate. And listen to great evangelistic
preaching. Third, read effective evangelistic
preaching. Read Jonathan Edwards. Read George
Whitefield. Read Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
Read Martin Lloyd-Jones. You'll learn how to preach evangelistically
by sitting at the feet of these masters. And I would add in this,
read evangelistic books. And I'm going to give you a couple
of titles. Matthew Meade, the Puritan, the
almost Christian. I could preach for three months
on just the outlines from the almost Christian. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Around
the Wicked Gate, Joseph Eileen, A-L-L-E-I-N-E,
An Alarm to the Unconverted. And he has another book, Sure
Guide to Heaven. You learn how to incorporate
framing the gospel in your sermons as you read great men like this. Number four, preach specific
evangelistic sermons. Just designate one a quarter. Tell everyone, you're going to
preach an evangelistic sermon. Get your in-laws here. Get your outlaws here. Invite your neighbors. Invite
your work associates. It's going to be an evangelistic
sermon. Do you know that Martin Lloyd Jones, He preached three
times a week regularly, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Friday
night. We normally identify him by his Friday night Roman series. Every Sunday night was an evangelistic
sermon. His wife, Bethann, said when
people asked her about her husband, she said, you'll never know my
husband until you know two things about him. Number one, he's a
man of prayer. And number two, he's an evangelist. And you think of him as an expositor.
And he was an expositor. But she said he was in reality,
in his heart, he was an evangelist. And Lloyd-Jones, throughout the
week, had many invitations to preach in many different places.
And he, like Spurgeon who was before him, would go on a Monday
and a Tuesday or a Wednesday off to other cities in England
to stand in the pulpit of a young preacher in order to help him
in his ministry and stabilize his ministry. And so as Lloyd-Jones
would be ready to hop onto the train to take him to where he
was going to preach during the week, guess which of those three
sermons he picked up? It wasn't the Roman study and
it wasn't the Sunday morning. sermon, it was the Sunday night
sermon that Lloyd-Jones put in his briefcase to take to preach
around England. Because in his heart, he was
an evangelist, and he was wanting to win people to faith in Jesus
Christ. And you and I need an IV hookup
of that. I need that, you need that. Number five. Vary your evangelistic
preaching. Preach from Old Testament narrative. Preach from the law. Preach from
Hebrew poetry. Preach from the prophets. Preach
from the preaching ministry of Jesus Christ. Preach the parables. Preach the discourses. Preach
the sermons in the book of Acts. Now preach from the epistles.
Preach from the book of Revelation. Don't be predictable. Don't be
just repeating yourself constantly. Use all the full counsel of God
in your evangelistic preaching, and people will always keep their...will
tend to keep their ear attentive. And one more, speak with stark
contrast. Make the issues black and white. Set them at polar opposites. People, everyone, are either
saved or they're lost. They're either believers or they're
unbelievers. They're either going to heaven
or they're going to hell. They either walk in light or
they walk in darkness. They're either in Adam or they're
in Christ. They're either lost or they're
found. And Lloyd-Jones, as you know, was a physician, a very
eminent physician before he entered the ministry. And he was an expert
at diagnosing disease. And he brought that into his
preaching. And Lloyd-Jones loved to think about it in this way
for those Sunday night sermons, especially out of the Old Testament.
He would think of the disease and the cure. And there's one
fatal disease, and it is sin, and there is only one saving
remedy, and it is the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And from
whatever text he took, he had those two main headings and ideas
before him. Let me give you one more. What
would this be? Number seven? Number eight? Seven? Address the whole person. Mind, affections, and will, and
in that order. Instruct the mind. Teach the
truth of the gospel and the doctrines of the gospel. But don't just
stop there. Raise the affections of the heart. Bring people under conviction
of sin, which only the Holy Spirit can do. and then invite the will and
summon people to faith in Jesus Christ. So address the entire
person, and the only person who plays with a full deck on this
is the evangelistic expositor who is teaching the mind, who
is exciting the heart, and who is summoning the will, all three
of those areas. And then I'll give you one last
one and then I've got to finish. Preach with the vivid metaphors
of the Scripture. The Scripture uses analogies,
metaphors to paint pictures in the minds of the listener. Think
about Jesus. Enter through the narrow gate,
for the way is broad and the gate is wide that leads to destruction
and many are those who find it. But the gate is narrow and the
way is small that leads to life and few are those who find it."
painting with pictures on the canvas of people's minds. He ended that with building on
the solid rock, building on shifting sand. He talked about sheep and
goats. He talked about foolish virgins
and wise virgins. He talked about wheat and tares. He talked about good fish and
bad fish. He used so many different metaphors
and so did Paul. Paul talked about vessels of
wrath and vessels of mercy. Jesus talked about fruitful branches
and barren branches. Jesus talked about flavorful
salt and salt that has lost its savor. And so, there's so much
more that I wish that we had time to talk about. But you've got to start somewhere. And I know that you've already
started. But as God gives you the opportunity,
include the preaching of the gospel as you exposit passages
of Scripture. And if you can ever come to one
of my institutes on expository preaching, I would love to have
48 hours with you to be able to talk about how to do this
and open it up for questions and for us to interact and to
talk about it. But grab a handful of seed and
scatter as much of it as you can, as far and wide as you can,
and pray and trust God to cultivate the soil that it will germinate
by the sovereign grace of God and bring forth much fruit. Well,
I need to close in a word of prayer, and then we're going
to be heading over and hearing Mark Dever preach. Father, thank
You for this time that we've had together to talk about preaching
the gospel. Lord, I feel we've left so much
unsaid and so much that needs to be said, but I just ask of
You to use what we've discussed today to stir up our hearts and
to renew our minds and to rekindle within us a passion and a desire
to be used by You to be a harvester of souls, to be a soul winner,
to be one who would be an instrument in Your hand to bring others
to faith in Christ. Oh God, we ask that You would
do this for the honor and the glory of Your own name, and so
that there would be more voices singing the praise of Your Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's in His name that we pray.
Amen.