Preaching for a Verdict

Most evangelistic methods today are focused on one's emotions and geared to get a person to make a decision for Jesus. An evangelist will make an emotional appeal to try to get you to accept Jesus as your personal Savior, even if that's not biblical. That's why so many in our churches today don't have a clue as to what the true gospel is, nor have they ever been born from above and washed in the blood of Christ Jesus.

They merely made a physical response to an emotional appeal and with their mind made a mental flip for Jesus. They're yet strangers to work a grace upon the heart and know nothing of a saving knowledge of a blood-stained Christ for forgiveness of sin. They want the benefits of heaven so long as they can have a God who won't get in the way of their daily living.

They maintain a high opinion of themselves and a low view of God as they rest upon an empty religious profession. The verse in Proverbs best describes their false assurance. There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness.

In other words, friends, they miss Christ and they are still dead in sin, even if they are the chairman of the deacons. But preaching that is true to the souls of men will not preach for a decision, but for a verdict. And that's the title of my message today, friends, Preaching for a Verdict.

That kind of preaching will hold up God's sovereignty and salvation and man's ruin and sin. It will thunder the law with all its unbending severity until the sinner sees his lost condition and feels his need of a remedy for sin. That kind of preaching for a verdict will proclaim God's demand for repentance and man's need of regeneration.

Preaching the doctrines of grace under the anointing of the Holy Spirit will bring conviction of sin as you stand on the very verge of eternity. What will you do? What's the verdict? Are you lost? Are you guilty? Will you take a stand against yourself and admit your guilt of sin as a transgressor of the law? Will you recognize your condemnation outside of Christ's blood? You have heard the strictness and severity of God's unbending law as it condemns you as a guilty rebel who's committed treason against a sovereign. What is your verdict, sinner? Do you see yourself sick with sin and in need of a remedy for sin? Do you see your need of a bloodstained savior who saves from sin? Will you surrender all you are to all he is? Hell is a hot region of outer darkness.

Will you go there as you die in your sins? Are you ready to throw down your shotgun of rebellion at his nail-pierced feet and surrender to a living Lord who has rights and claims on all followers of his? Preaching for a verdict will bring about an honest appraisal of oneself before a thrice-holy God. And the response will be like the prophet Isaiah's cry, Woe is me! I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Let us pray.