Driven to Christ

We are in our series of how to preach the gospel more effectively, to bring sinners to Christ for salvation. A God-called preacher must seek to awaken sinners and make them sensible of their peril of dying in their sins and the danger of damnation. Men must hear about the badness of their own hearts and the strictness of the law before they will be convinced of the preciousness of Christ.

Men must see their need of a Savior from sin, for the gospel is for the hungry, the weary, and the thirsty. Men must see themselves poor and miserable, wretched, blind and naked, before they will receive the counsel of buying of Christ, gold dried in the fire. Unfortunately, many believe that God is an all-loving being who does not merit out justice and who will not punish sin.

So they flatter themselves that God will not deal so harshly with them to send them to hell. They find themselves in the words of the psalmist, He flattereth himself in his own eyes until his iniquity be found to be hateful. Men must be driven out of themselves before they come to Christ, like Lot was driven out of Sodom before all was fallen hellfire and brimstone.

Because their hearts are as hard as stone, men are insensible to their great danger of perishing in a burning hell. They must be awakened to their lost condition and warned of their danger of damnation, and they must be driven out of all false refuges to the rock of Christ Jesus. The false refuge of a good opinion of themselves must be broken asunder beneath the divine hammer of the word of God, and all false foundations must be broken up through the preaching of the gospel that holds up the unbending law of God, that all lawbreakers are guilty of treason against the sovereign, and the sentencing of the law must be carried out upon all guilty rebels.

Men must be driven out of their self-complacency and brought to see the truth about themselves, that they are swollen with the poison in the blood and shown their imminent danger so they can be driven to Christ, the remedy for sin. Men must be driven out of their worldliness and indifference, and like in a house fire where one is first awakened and then alarmed, so too the sinner must be driven out of the doomed city to a place of refuge for sin. A God-called preacher will be faithful to the souls of men and preach hard to break up all sandy foundations that sinners rest upon stupidly while they await judgment.

And he will do his best to drive men out of their false refuge to the only remedy for sin, the Lord Jesus Christ, to where the awakened sinner feels his need and is driven to see the preciousness of that pearl of great price who's worth selling off for and losing off for so he may be gained. This way men can undergo a thorough work of conversion where they come to Christ, being born from above and washed in the blood. Let us preach the gospel more faithfully.

Let us pray.