Recovery Of The Gospel: Preaching Institute

Well, hello friends. We are in our second section of the International Preaching Institute. The first section was messages on the man, how to prepare the man to preach.

And we put five messages in that category. We now have moved on to the second section, which is from the man to the message. And these institutes will focus on preaching.

I believe there's way too much teaching today and very little preaching. Like my friend, Richard R. Roberts, always said, teaching informs and preaching transforms. The title of this institute is The Recovery of the Gospel.

Because we stopped preaching the gospel in this country years ago, that's one of the reasons we haven't seen a national revival in this country over 150 years. The word recovery assumes that the object sought has been lost or misplaced or debased. This indeed is the case in our day of easy believism, where the modern evangelist has broadened the way of salvation in ways Jesus never did.

Jesus said that few are saved and those who are, are saved with great difficulty. Read Matthew chapter 7, friends. Jesus said the way is narrow, the gate is straight, and one must press through.

Yet, the watered down version of today's gospel speaks of an easy way to heaven. All you have to do is believe. There's no mention of man's duty of repentance.

No mention of man's utter necessity of regeneration. No mention of the cross and the life of the believer. Listen, friends.

When we took salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of man, it's been a terrible, shameful day in the modern church. And as a revival scholar, I've read and re-read sermons from the Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening, and it shocked me to find out that there was such a vast dissimilarity between the content of the preaching in those days of spiritual awakening and revival. In our modern day of dryness and deadness, the old gospel that was preached in times of spiritual awakening was a God-centered gospel that produced reverence for Almighty God and heartfelt repentance toward God from guilty sinners.

I was at a preaching conference in Memphis, Tennessee one year, and I was talking to the late evangelist Jim Wilson, and he shared a story with me. Jim Wilson was Billy Graham's nephew. He said he had visited Billy Graham a few months before Billy died at 99 years old in 2018.

And they were sitting together out on the porch of the old homestead in North Carolina looking at a fantastic view of the mountains. When Jim Wilson asked the great evangelist the following question, he asked, Uncle Billy, if you had it to do all over again, what would you do differently? And Billy Graham's blue eyes gazed out across the North Carolina mountains as he pondered that question, and he took a long time before he answered it. Finally, he said, I would have preached repentance more, but that was Billy Graham's biggest regret.

He failed to preach repentance more. Listen, friends, too many evangelists today offer Jesus to people who feel no need of him, and he's offered like a free stick of chewing gum, and folks take it and chew on it for a while until the flavor goes out of their religion. This is why we need a recovery of the gospel, friends.

We need to move away from the man-centered gospel that focuses on the happiness of man and return to the God-centered gospel that focuses on the glory of God in the salvation of man. The God-centered gospel of George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and men like Charles Spurgeon, which emphasizes the holiness and sovereignty of God in the salvation of man. Oh, how we need this recovery of our gospel in our day, because our nation is sinking so fast into moral chaos.

It's lost its way. The nation's turned her back on the God of the Bible, and our churches have lost their way as well. We wanted to reach the world, so we brought the world into the church and lowered all our standards and corrupted the house of God, and where has that gotten us? The church today gets by more on money and manpower, but in former times it operated by prayer and holy ghost power.

Back then, we had men in our pulpits who preached about the blood and the cross, and they warned that sin was black and hell was hot. We had giants in the pulpits instead of pygmies. We had prophets instead of entertainers, and these men faithfully warned sinners about a future judgment that awaited all mankind.

They preached the full counsel of God to the glory of God. Those kind of preachers weren't afraid of men, but they sure feared the Almighty. Let me share a story with you, friends, about how God visited a church in revival.

When the pastor changed the message he preached, I learned about the following incident. While conducting research on my biography of the evangelist Rolf Barnard, Rolf Barnard was preaching at a Bible conference in the South with Dr. R.G. Lee, when Dr. Lee shared this personal story with him. If you're not familiar with R.G. Lee, friends, let me tell you a little bit about him.

He was the pastor of Bellevue, a big Baptist church in Memphis, Tennessee, from 1927 to 1960, and he preached the famous sermon, Payday Someday. Well, sit up straight, friends, and get the wax out of your ears. You pastors especially will love this story.

Here now is that remarkable story that R.G. Lee told Rolf Barnard. There was a member in Dr. Lee's congregation, an attorney, and this man had to be out of town a lot on business, but no matter where this lawyer went, he made sure to catch a train back to Memphis on Saturday night so he could hear R.G. Lee preach the next morning. Why, this man just loved to hear Dr. Lee preach.

Well, one day this lawyer got cancer, and he was in the hospital dying, and he called for his pastor to come to his bedside. Dr. Lee entered the downtown hospital room, whose windows overlooked the Mississippi River. As R.G. Lee sat by the man's bedside, the man told him the following story.

He said, I want you to know how much I've enjoyed your preaching through the years, and I never missed a Sunday if I could help it. Now, I lie here eaten up with cancer, and the doctors tell me I don't have long to live, but I didn't call you here for that. I want to chastise you, sir.

Your sermons were always engaging, and they kept me on the edge of my seat, but you never preached the cross to where I could see it. You never put the blood out there where I could reach it. Now, I'm a dying, and I may die in my sins, and I want to reprimand you, sir, for your lack.

Well, R.G. Lee left that man's hospital room with his head hung down low and feeling berated and guilty as charged. It was now dark outside, and he decided to take a walk down to the banks of the Mississippi River. The river ran silent with a beam of moonlight across the water.

Once there, he got down on his knees in the mud, getting his white suit pants dirty in the process. As he knelt there, he gazed out at the river, and he rolled up his sleeves, and he leaned forward, and he dipped his hands in the cold, dark water, and there he remained in that position while he contemplated and pondered the dying man's words. Finally, looking up to heaven with a heartfelt prayer, he promised God right there and then.

From that point forward, he would preach the cross and the blood, and he changed his message that night. And in two months' time, there was such a move of grace at his church that four blocks of downtown Memphis were shaken with revival. I love that story, friends.

I love the story of a transformed life and a transformed ministry and a transformed church. It thrills me, and it's possible for every one of you listening to these Institutes, if you only lay hold of God and believe him, believe the God of the Bible. He's not a paper God with just black ink on white paper, but the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in his arms not too short to save.

Listen, friends. Dig down deep. Dig down in your faith and change your ministry for the glory of God.

This Institute has made the case for the need of a recovery of the gospel, the old gospel. The following messages will focus on preaching, how to serve, and listen, friends, we need preachers. Oh, how desperately we need some preachers today that God would send us some men like these.

The Apostle Paul, Luther, Wesley, Whitefield, Knox, Edwards, Finney, Spurgeon, Moody, each shared a common denominator, a fire in their belly. They each were so eaten up with the gospel and thirsty for Christ and filled with the Holy Ghost, they could not stand, idly bow by while others perished. They saw nothing but eternity, worshiped the Holy God and served the risen Christ, living not for earth nor its gains, but living only for heaven and its rewards.

When they preached, they linked the devil with sin and the cross with salvation. They preached hell and its fire and Christ and Him crucified. Not one of them feared king, queen, or pope, and not one of them sought the compliments of men.