06.09. Chapter 9: The Soul-Winning Sermon

Chapter 9 THE SOUL-WINNING SERMON

WE HAVE just studied “Special Forms of Sermons” but in their consideration we have left untouched the most essential of them all; namely, “The Soul-Winning Sermon,” We did this purposely, believing that its importance demanded an entire chapter. The privilege and obligation of a divinely commissioned gospel preacher is made clear by the language of the Lord Himself. With infinite wisdom and power as qualities of His deity, and perfect freedom to choose what life-calling He would, He turned from all conceivable occupations and selected, on His own will, this one; “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

Soul winning, then, was the occupation for which He quit Heaven and journeyed to earth. Later, concerning the responsibility and privilege of His disciples, He said, “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.”

What minister could question, then, that however important other features of his office may be, its pinnacle of privilege and obligation is soul winning. That being true, the soul-winning sermon takes on a meaning and assumes an importance known to no other special delivery. Its creation involves the Choice of a Text, the Preparation of the Discourse, and the Objective of Decision. THE CHOICE OF A TEXT When one approaches a service devoted to soul winning, his necessary inquiry is, “What text shall I employ on this occasion?” The answer to that question is threefold: (1) The text chosen should be adapted to the objective, (2) It should clearly lend itself to enlightenment, (3) It is well if it contains encouragement.

It should be adapted to the objective! A soul-winning sermon should start with a text that looks to salvation. For instance, when one is reading the book of Jonah and comes to his declaration in chapter two, verse nine, “Salvation is of the Lord,” he realizes at once that he has, in that statement, a good text from which to prepare a soul-winning sermon. Or if his reading is in John’s Gospel and he arrive at John 3:16, he instantly senses his opportunity to develop from that Scripture, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” a soul-winning sermon.

These samples from Old and New Testament illustrate my meaning. There are scores, yea, hundreds, of such texts to be found in both sections of sacred Scripture. His daily devotional reading, if constantly engaged in, and carefully considered, will provide the preacher with more such texts than the time required for the preparation of sermons will ever make usable. There is, therefore, no poverty of soul-winning texts.

Such a text should lend itself to enlightenment. The two Scriptures to which we have above referred signally illumine; so with a multitude of others equally appealing. For instance, Romans 10:8-11 is ideal in this respect. It reads,

“But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

“For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

“For the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.”

Here the varied steps to be taken are enumerated. The Word of God is to be regarded and that Word emphasizes each step in turn. It is God’s medium for conviction of sin; but since public confession of Christ is also required, the text makes that equally clear! Since faith in a risen Lord is the only basis on which a man convicted of sin will even desire Christ as Saviour; and since faith in Christ alone, as such, will lead him to an open confession, it is made plain that belief with the heart, not a mere head assent, is the divine demand, and even the reason is given, “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” This is a sample of scores of texts found in the Sacred Volume, each of which shows the way and reveals Christ as the only “name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). But as we have said, It is well if the text contains encouragement.

Here, what a multitude! John 6:37 is a sample, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out”! Matthew 11:28, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” is a passionate appeal of love as well as a divine encouragement of promise. Such encouraging Scriptures abound in the Holy Book and await the preacher’s employment.

We reassert, therefore, the importance of the choice of a text when one sets himself to the task of soul winning.

However, that choice is but a beginning. Important work remains to be accomplished; namely, THE PREPARATION OF THE SERMON Needless to say, It should involve painstaking!

There are few large evening audiences in America. Undoubtedly a survey would show that attendance upon the morning services, if counted and compared with those present in the evening in the identically same sanctuaries, would be many times over greater at morning than at night. This is not due alone to either the indolence or indifference of Christian and non-Christian, resulting in their unwillingness to go to church but once a day. That is a potent feature of the fact, but not the lone feature by any means.

Another deleterious element affecting the night service is at the point of sermon preparation. Not one preacher in ten gives the same time and thought in preparing for his evening service that he devotes to the service of the forenoon. In a long ministry I have talked with men on this subject many, many times, and I have found that not a few think they can get up a night sermon on short order, some of them reserving Saturday evening for the purpose, and others frankly confessing that they used “an hour or two Sunday afternoon.” Such men, if they secure an audience at all, commonly resort to picture shows and famous singers and musical programs and other accessories to call the evening crowd. The man whose pulpit deliverance is of such mental and spiritual moment as to call, year after year, crowds to hear him twice a day, is, almost without exception, unwearying and diligent in preparation of the second service. He esteems it no whit less important than the morning one. In fact, he may even regard it as above the forenoon in vital interest, since without salvation, as a beginning, no soul progress can be marked, and, in fact, the individual is left “dead in trespasses and sins.” To painstaking care, forceful argument should be added.

There are preachers who think that argument is out of place in the pulpit. Such have not carefully studied either the ministry of Christ, the record in Acts, or the apostolic epistles. They are all saturated with argument; not only so, but if one will review Christian history, he will find the most outstanding evangelists, from the days of the Master Himself to the present moment, have been ministers who logically developed the authority of the Word, the deity of Christ, the doctrine of the blood atonement, the certainty of the resurrection, the evidences for the ascension and the Scriptural assurances of the Second Coming. To be sure, many of these men have been specialists in creating emotional effects and seeing them fruit in decisions, but others, equally successful, have been almost equally famed for their non-emotional but highly-argumentative deliverances.

Mr. Spurgeon moved men in mighty multitudes and stirred them, but it was as much by sound reasoning as emotional appeal, or more.

Dr. Reuben A. Torrey, whose round-the-world ministry has seldom been exceeded, was charged with preaching with a doubled-up fist, cold, logical, argumentative, convincing; and literally thousands of men, without a tear, were brought to accept his conclusions and confess his Christ, because he proved to their minds his claims for the Master and clearly demonstrated their guilty and lost condition, helpless and hopeless apart from Him.

Christianity is a religion that has won its way for twenty centuries and moved into every nation on earth by making, successfully defending, and intellectually imposing its claims upon the minds of men. That is why it happens that again and again men trained in law schools have proven more successful preachers than those who went from theological seminary to pulpit. The soul-winning sermon should be embellished with illustrations.

These may be drawn from almost every conceivable source: history, science, experience, observation, reading, nature— they all stand ready to contribute; and when an illustration illumines, makes more clear, more easy of comprehension the truth advocated, it becomes invaluable.

John A. Broadus’s volume, On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, contains this justifiable remark, “Illustration is a psychological necessity.”

Absolutely so! The man who can make a sermon interesting, engaging, convincing, without the use of illustration, is the rarest of ministers; and if one found such a specimen, he would discover that he indulged himself in pictorial speech, which, after all, would be only another form of this psychological requirement. But we pass from the preparation of the sermon to THE OBJECTIVE OF DECISION Decision is the sole objective of the soul-winning sermon.

It may and should contain information. It may and should involve argument, logical deductions, etc., but these are the incidentals, not the fundamentals. The preacher, in quest of souls, must have one habit in common with the best-trained foxhound of the South. He must not permit himself to be taken off the trail by any cross-tracks. I have a banker friend in Plant City, Florida, Pat Moody, with whom I recently went fox hunting at four o’clock one lovely winter morning. It was not a fortunate outing for us, as the hounds hit no warm trail during the day; but I recently received a clipping from the Plant City newspaper to the effect that my friend had sold his favorite hound, Hi Doctor, last fall for $1250.00 and had just bought him back in this month of February, 1945, for $2000.00—the highest price ever paid for a hound in the United States. If you asked him the reason, he would tell you, not because the hound was a good-looking dog—he was that —but because of his ability to stay on the trail, and the singleness and swiftness with which he followed his quarry. Our Master appreciates the disciple who has a kindred quality in the quest for souls; to keep after and finally to get his man for Christ. That indeed is, or should be, the objective of the sermonizer as well as of the personal worker. That objective should motivate the whole service. From the time one arises to announce the opening hymn or utter the invocation prayer until the after-meeting is closed, the entire service, including the sermon, should move in one direction; namely, that of soul winning.

More than once I have been in services where the opening songs and prayer had little or no relation to the soul-winning intent; and occasionally I have been in services where a good soul-winning sermon was preached, but a wretched choice of a hymn that had no decision in it and sometimes was even destitute of salvation-suggestion, was sung at the close. Such action is a decision killer. One reason Charlie Alexander became world-famed as a song leader and associate of Torrey and Chapman was due to his sense of fitness. He made his songs to harmonize absolutely with the content of sermon, and his closing hymns were always chosen with reference to fastening the nail that had been driven, by the minister, in a sure place.

I find in my evangelistic work that I hardly dare to trust either the music leader or the pastor being assisted, to choose that last hymn. It should always be a decision-hymn, if soul winning is the objective of the service. It is not a question now of music; it is a question of decision, and the hymn can and, if properly selected, does aid in making it.

If, on the other hand, it relates to some extraneous subject, it dissipates, in one verse, practically all that the preacher may have said and brings his endeavor to naught.

However, the test of the soul-winning sermon is in the altar call.

Here still more ministers fail than at the previously-named points. They seem to have never studied psychology or else to be utterly lacking in their knowledge of human nature and ignorant of the elements that enter into decision and produce action.

If I have heard it once, I have heard it a hundred times, in audiences sometimes of thousands of people where a great soul-winning sermon has just been finished and where taking over the after-meeting the preacher—sometimes the same man who gave the efficient sermon—puts his invitation after this manner,

“Is there ONE in this great audience who will lift a hand, or is there ONE in this crowd who will stand up for Christ and let it be known that you are deciding now and forever that you will be His very own?” My soul cringes under that non-expectant invitation. Instead of saying to the audience, “I am looking for a large number to give response,” as one has a right to where there is a large audience and many unconverted in it, it plainly asserts, “I am not expecting anything, but I am daring to hope that possibly one person may be willing.”

It almost reminds one of the story of the Irish woman who said, “There is a difference between hope and expectation. I hope to meet Pat in Heaven, but I don’t expect to.”

I believe that the spirit of expectation is a psychological influence that reaches the minds and souls of men. I think that a great auditorium is moved when the lone man, the minister, entertains and expresses that spirit of expectation; and I know that psychologically it is true that if he does not express it, their expectation is decreased to that extent, and if he does, it is accentuated. And what is expectation of results except another phrase or faith in God?

I have an idea that on the day of Pentecost, when Peter preached his remarkable sermon, and the time of the aftermeeting came, he was not surprised at the response. There is no indication in the second chapter of Acts that Peter was amazed over the twenty-five hundred decisions made that day, and added to the five hundred professions already existing. It is all recorded as naturally as though it were a part of the planned program, and Peter had shown that he anticipated the time, reminding his audience that “the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call, And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation” (Acts 2:39-40).

I conclude this lecture, therefore, with this bit of emphasis —in an after-meeting dare to indulge expectancy. “According to your faith be it unto you” (Matthew 9:29).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Truett, George W. A Quest for Souls (New York: Harper & Bros., 1928). Sanders, J. O. The Divine Art of Soul-winning (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1937).