SermonIndex Audio Sermons
SermonIndex - Promoting Revival to this Generation
Give To SermonIndex
Discussion Forum : Scriptures and Doctrine : Preaching to Sinners vs Saints

Print Thread (PDF)

Goto page ( Previous Page 1 | 2 | 3 )
PosterThread
pastorfrin
Member



Joined: 2006/1/19
Posts: 1406


 Re: Preaching to Sinners vs Saints

re:How do we preach to sinners.

2 Peter 3:1,2

By having our pure minds stired by way of
remerance:that we may be mindful of the words
which were spoken before by the holy prophets,
and by the commandments of the apostles of our
Lord and Saviour.

By which we receive the words from the Holy
Spirit that we should speak.

 2006/3/6 20:10Profile
Graftedbranc
Member



Joined: 2005/11/8
Posts: 619


 Re:

Quote:
I guess I would need to know what you mean by "preaching Christ." I would say if you preach Christ you must preach all aspects of His character. His hate for sin, holiness, righteousness, love, and grace. And if you do that you inevitably will preach repentance and remission of sin.



To preach Christ is to preach Him in all His Person and work as the incarnated Son of God, the manifestation of God in the flesh, crucified for our sins, raised from the dead and now as the Life Giving Spirit to indwell us and make us sons of God through faith in Him.

The gospel is not to turn your life around and be good. The gospel is Jesus Christ.

The gospel is 'repent toward God and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. What is it that we repent from? It is an independant Life apart from God whether a good or bad life, it is an independant life.

What is it to repent to? Repentance is toward God. That is to turn from a Self centered, a Self sufficient, a self realized Life and to come to God to recieve from Him eternal Life in Christ and to live by that Life.

The gospel is Christ who is our redemption, our holiness, our rightousness, and our indwelling Life.

To preach Christ is not to preach the Law which is unto death, but to preach a crucified and resurrected Christ who makes us sons of God through faith in Him and who regenerates us and indwells us and become to us everything.

Any true preaching of Christ leads us to appreciate Him, to see something of Him, to know our need of Him, our condition apart from Him and to take Him, to recieve Him, and to live by Him.

The gospel is not about deeds which we have done in rightousness, but the Christ whom we believe into, and who indwells us and who seeks to live out from within us as the Life Giving Spirit to manifest the attributes of God through us in our human virtues.

The gospel is about regeneration through faith and the operation of God in our spirit to make us sons of God brining the Life and nature of God into us.

The gospel is Jesus Christ. It is not the Law. The Law can only condemn, it cannot give Life, but Christ is the embodiment of God and through faith in Him we are regenerated and born of God to be His children with His Life.

The Gospel teaches us to live by Christ by recognizing that" He who is joined to the Lord I s one spirit (1 cor. 6:17) and fellowshipping with Him, by knowing Him, by feeding on Him in His Word, by living by Him.

The gospel brings us into an organic union with the Son of God. It brings us into the True Vine as branches deriving our LIfe from the Vine. It brings us into an organic union with the living resurrected Christ who lives in us.

Galatians 2:20 "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ Lives in me and the Life I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God who loved me and give Himself for me".

"YOu have died to the Law through the body of Christ that you might be joined to Another, even to Him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God."

That I might be found in Him, not having a rightousness of my own derived from Law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the rightousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. That I may know Him, and the power opf His resurrection, and the fellowship of His suffering being conformed to His death..."

This is the gospel of Christ and this is the true preaching of Christ as our redeemer and our indwelling Life and Lord.



Graftedbranch

 2006/3/13 13:28Profile
h2oboy
Member



Joined: 2006/3/12
Posts: 89
Georgia, USA

 Re: repentance

Graftedbranc wrote:

Quote:
What is it to repent to? Repentance is toward God. That is to turn from a Self centered, a Self sufficient, a self realized Life and to come to God to recieve from Him eternal Life in Christ and to live by that Life.



I have this strange notion. Maybe the best thing to preach to sinners is "What is sin?" I used to think that sin was violating or breaking the Law. I couldn't figure out why I felt guilty when I had not broken any laws.

NT:264 hamartano (ham-ar-tan'-o); perhaps from NT:1 (as a negative particle) and the base of NT:3313; properly, to miss the mark (and so not share in the prize), i.e. (figuratively) to err, especially (morally) to sin:

(Biblesoft's New Exhaustive Strong's Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright © 1994, 2003 Biblesoft, Inc. and International Bible Translators, Inc.)

Sin, to aim and shoot at a goal or mark on a target and miss (without quantifying the severity of the miss) so that no prize (reward) is given. Now that is a definition I could understand. Of course the problem then is "what is the mark?"

Rom 14:23 "whatsoever is not of faith is sin." ASV

So now I have the mark, the goal. Alas, "what is faith?"

Heb 11:7 "By faith Noah, being warned (of God) concerning things not seen as yet, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; through which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith." ASV

So faith must be hearing God's voice, believing what He says, and then acting upon whatever He says. Now I understand why I felt guilty. Sin is not listening to God or not beleiving what He says, or choosing not to act upon what I say I believe.

So how do I hear God's voice?

Here is what is really missing from our preaching. Jesus Christ did not come to save us from Hell. Jesus Christ came to save us to something.

John 10:10 I came that they may have life , and may have (it) abundantly. ASV

John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, (even) Jesus Christ. ASV

John 6:63 the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life . ASV

John 6:68 Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. ASV

Col 1:19-20 For it was the good pleasure (of the Father) that in him should all the fulness dwell;
and through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross; through him, ASV

2 Cor 5:18-19 But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation. ASV

"The word of reconciliation" the message of intimacy with Father God, Creator of the Universe, is the one message that separates Christianity from every religion on earth.

Why do we preach Christ crucified without declaring why He was crucified?

The "Kingdom of God is at hand" is a message that every person on earth needs to hear. Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of David, came not to re-establish Israel, the nation, as His throne. He came to open our hearts that He might come in to reign and abide.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. ASV

Now that is an understanding of repentance that I can comprehend, to have changed thoughts, changed beliefs and therefore a changed direction. I will no longer follow what I think, what I feel, what I want, but will listen to and obey the voice of the Lord who resides and rules in my heart.

When we only preach "Jesus came to save you from your sins and from Hell," we rob God of the intimacy with His children for which Christ died.


May we adopt the same goal and message that Jesus had and preached.

Jeff




_________________
Jeff Smith

 2006/3/13 20:52Profile
CJaKfOrEsT
Member



Joined: 2004/3/31
Posts: 901
Melbourne, Australia

 Re: Preaching to Sinners vs Saints

Quote:

PreachParsly wrote:
How do we preach to sinners?

Ravenhill once said that the main hinderence to revival is evangelism. Why? Do we preach differently to sinners, than to saints?

What is the thrust of our message to sinners? So many focus on Law. Some focus on Grace. Some on the resurection. Is there anything that needs to preface the preaching of the Gospel?



I think that Ravenhill is referring more to what is dished up as evangelism than evangelism as such. Often times he would refer to our habit emphasising God's love rather than alerting sinners to the fact that God is angry with them.

For myself, it's more a matter of embracing the philosophy of evangelism, than applying a technique. Don't get me wrong, if techniques of biblical evangelism (as taught by the likes of Ray Comfort, or Jack Chick) work for you, great. Better something than nothing, as long as it emphasises the core issue. However a firm understanding of the core issue will produce a good technique. In the Way of the Master series, Comfort admits that the WDJD technique was developed as a result of Kirk Cameron's insistence that a technique would help more people to evangelise, himself preferring the spontaneous approach.

What has this got to do with the topic discussed? Alot. Robert Wurtz has been releasing a comiplation of data entitle [url="https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=9750&forum=40&39"]"The Betrayal Of The Ages", a documentary on the de-emphasis of the 'New Birth'[/url] which I would urge all to follow. In it he describes the issues of evangelism and the history of the alteration of evangelism toward the heretical "modern gospel" that is often presented today.

We tend to think in terms of "Saved or Unsaved", "Sinners or Saints", etc... and have trouble describing false converts and their conversions. He hop back and forth by refering to false converts as "christians" and "saved". We say things like "I think that those ten people who got saved last night were false converts." There is often confusion over the issue, once someone beings to accept the possibilty of a false conversion.

A discussion with a friend of mine, about the flippant use of "sinner's prayers", led to him saying:
"But isn't it better that someone [b]gets saved[/b] and then later gets a handle on it all a repent?"
I replied by saying, "I guess, but when was he actually saved?"

David wilkerson put it well by saying that our job is to call for:

Repentance from sin
Faith in Christ
Receiving the Spirit
Separation from the world


I personally preach the same thing to both "sinners" and "saints". Consider this, if the hearer is genuinely converted, they would rejoice over the fact that they are hearing a faithful delivery of the gospel, and are personally receiving further exhortation to separated from the world (which we all need regularly). If the hearer is either falsely converted or totally heathen (really, there is no difference) then they'll either react or respond to the message. Either way someone is brought one step closer to being dislodged from this world.

I guess the main thing is that a call to awaken is the main thing. Preaching should be precisely suited to the hearer. As Finney stated, one way to ensure that the hearer is not converted is to preach on sin, without mentioning the sins of the hearers. Whether "saint" or "sinner" we all have sin, and we all need a little nudge to disloge ourselves from it.

*Edit* The only real difference is that "sinners" need to be educated on what would seem obviously wicked to the "saint", where the "sint" tends to need to hear about self righteous issues (ie, things that appear good, but really aren't).*Edit*


_________________
Aaron Ireland

 2006/3/14 12:15Profile
Graftedbranc
Member



Joined: 2005/11/8
Posts: 619


 Re:

I would suggest that the reason there is so little "preaching of Christ' is because there is so little knowlege of Christ.

The problem is most preacher's (and as a result, most Christian's) knowlege of Christ consist in the one fact that Christ came to die on the cross for our sins and was raised from the dead as a testimony to the sufficincy of his death to save. This is about as far as it goes with maybe the addition that Christ is ascended and interceeds for us as our High Priest.

And because this is the extent of it, once you have gotten people "saved" by this message, there is really not much more to do with them other than encourage them to speak the same message to others to get them saved from hell and then begin to try to apply "godly principles" to teach them how to live a "godly" life to be a "good witness" and to get them involved in church activities and "service" (ushering and keeping the kids and such).

I would suggest that this is as far as it goes in most churches in the United States.

But who knows Christ as their indwelling Life? Who knows the "power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death? Who knows Christ in all of His aspects as the Bread of Heaven, the True drink, The True Vine, the reality of the sin offerings, the meal offerings, the heave offerings, etc. Who knows Christ as the indwelling fountian of Eternal Life springing up from within them? Who knows Christ as their patience, their holiness, their wisdom, their endurance, their satisfaction? Who knows Christ as the "lover of their soul", their Spouse, etc.

Who knows Christ as the indwelling transforming Spirit to transform them into the same image from glory to glory ("now the Lord is the Spirit...")

Who knows Christ as their all sufficiency for all things in all situations at all times?

Who can say, 'for me to live is Christ and to die is gain?

Who can say that they live their life daily in the spirit as a branch abiding in the Vine to express the Life of the Vine to bear fruit?

How many siminaries teach and train "pastors" to rise up daily, contact the Lord in their spirit, feed on Christ as their food and sustinance, pray through the scriptures and enjoy Christ as their rich supply?

How many siminaries teach and train "pastors' to die to themselves, take their cross daily forsaking their soul life and living by and being constituted with the resurrection Life of the Living resurrected Son of God who indwells them?

Preachers must preach other things because they have nothing else to preach. They preach knowlege and "correct doctrines' and the law and such. They preach what the Bible has to say about this or that issue. But they do not preach Christ because they do not know Christ (beyond the basic doctrine of salvation from the penalty of sin). One cannot preach above his experience of Christ and one cannot experience Christ above the knowlege and revelation he has of Christ by the Spirit.

A. W. Tozer said, "We know only so much of CHrist as the Spirit reveals and we have only so much of Christ as the Spirit imparts". And we can only impart to others so much of Christ that we ourselves have, enjoy, and are constituted with. We cannot give out gold that we don't have and we cannot lead another beyond our own level of Christian experience.

I submit that this statement is either true or false. And if it is true (and it is), then anything else is a waste of time. It is really, genuinly, and absolutely a wast of time and literally a person would be just as well off fishing than pursuing religious knowlege, doctrines, and techniques for "effective preaching" because what does not originate with the Spirit and what does not communicate the Living Christ is dead.

Until we come to the place where we see that this is a fact, and Call on the Lord crying, Lord, if this be so, then bring me into the reality of Christ. No matter what it takes, no matter what practices or concepts I must release or forsake, I care for nothing but Christ, and the knowlege of Christ and the experience of Christ that I might be a minister of Christ for the sake of building up the body of Christ with Christ."

And only when we come to terms with this absolute reality will we see that the one thing we must do above everything else is to enter into intimate fellowship with Christ daily, in His Word, contacting Him through prayer and recieving the Spirit's revelatin of Christ through His word.

And only when we see God's eternal purpose for His redeemed is not to take them to heaven to worship him as an angel, but to make them sons of God constituted with His Life and nature by despensing Himself into them as the Tree of Life will we be able to advance becasue we understand what God is doing with us and within us.

And only when we have the revelation that God has united Himself with us in Christ through the Spirit and intends to constitute us with Himself as our Life to make us His expression, can we begin even to ask the Lord for it. If we don't see our need we will not ask and if we do not ask, we will not recieve and not enter into the reality of Christ as our indwelling Life.

Graftedbranch

 2006/3/14 13:13Profile
madmatg
Member



Joined: 2004/5/25
Posts: 96
asia

 Re:

eee gads man! whats that in your hand grafted branch? is that a sword, no dont, not me dont stick me! *pierced*(to the heart)


_________________
matt

 2006/3/14 16:35Profile





©2002-2024 SermonIndex.net
Promoting Revival to this Generation.
Privacy Policy