Searching for Searching Preaching

The main need of the church today is a return to searching preaching. The main product of modern preaching is false conversions. When the gospel is no longer preached, then sinners become church members, even though they are yet strangers to work a grace upon the heart.

They have made a decision, but are not regenerated. They have made a mental flip for Jesus and performed a physical act like walking an aisle or repeating a prayer, but their heart is unchanged. They are but a walking definition of Proverbs 30, 12, which declares, There is a generation that is pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness.

A Christian man is a godly man. A Christian man pursues holiness unto God in his thoughts, words, and deeds. An ungodly, unconverted, unchanged man is still in his natural condition and is wedded to his or her sins and lives in those sins.

Though they may be sporadic at times, they still dominate the life, for sin is king in the life, and the product of faulty preaching is lost religious men and women. There is nothing more dangerous than a lost religious man. They can do more damage than a raging fire, inflict more harm than a spreading plague, and begin more wars than a power-mad dictator.

A lost religious man is a bane to civilization and a cancer upon society. How many hypocrites have turned people away from the church of Jesus Christ? How many hypocrites have turned hell into a highway by their lives of inconsistency and foul religious witness to the world? The mightiest weapon in the hands of Satan is the lost religious man. Pagan Roman authorities did not accuse Jesus of any wrongdoing.

In fact, Pontius Pilate, the governor, after examining the Christ, announced to the chief priests and the people, I find no fault in this man. It was the Jewish religious leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees who cried, Crucify him! And those lost religious men crucified the Prince of Glory. If there is a division in a church, it will arise from its lost members, whose hearts are full of contention in evil, even if they are the chairman of the deacons.

The need for searching preaching is obvious, for a man must first be lost before he can be saved, Jesus declared. For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. And Jesus said of himself, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

But you would be hard pressed today, friends, to find a minister who calls sinners to repentance. Or pulpits need searching preaching, for without a proper understanding of the badness one's heart, one will build a righteousness of their own. The terrors of God in the damnation of sinners bring to mind eternal things, for one must feel his sickness and see his wound before he can apply and see the remedy.

As long as they imagine they can help themselves, they will not come to Christ for help. They have merely improved on their own nature without having a spark of grace in their heart. Many sit secure in church on rotten foundations of an empty religious profession, and every time they move about, the rotten plank boards beneath them groan and creak, ready to give way through sudden death and send a good church member to a devil's hell, where he will turn as a pig on a spit, rolling in the burning flames of an eternal misery.

The unrepentant, unregenerate man lives his religious life with a false seal and a false purpose of being a judge over others. He is quick to find fault, ready to point a finger and give unwanted advice to those individuals who he sees as beneath him spiritually. The lost religious man entered the church by way of an easy-believed gospel that is man-centered and whose origins have the smell of the pit upon it.

He is a stranger to repentance, a stranger to regeneration, a stranger to conversion, and a stranger to Christ, whom he has never, ever encountered personally. He is a stranger to the reality of the life of God in the soul of man, and knows nothing of an experiential knowledge of Christ Jesus. Yet, he is a very religious man, full of zeal and passions.

Self reigns on the throne of his heart, and sin rules there as king. As much as he claims he loathes sin, he cannot do anything but sin. He is forever confessing, but never repenting nor reforming himself, for he lacks the power of life from above to stay above sin, for he is yet in his sins.

His brand of religion is an offense to mankind for all the wrong reasons. He is but a hypocrite with a false faith who knows nothing of submission to the Almighty. An earthly monarch makes his enemies submit before he pardons them.

So does God. God will never grant peace to a rebel who still has his shotgun pointed at him. The sad thing is, through the hope of the hypocrite, it's like a hole in the wall.

There is no substance in it. As we read in the book of Job, the hypocrite's hope shall perish, whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be as a spider's web. How flimsy is the foundation of a lost religious person.

One strong gust of wind will blow them down to hell. Searching preaching will allow God's spirit realm to work upon the hardest heart and to make God's word a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces and busts up every false foundation. Searching preaching will allow the Holy Spirit to take the word of God and make it a fire to expose sin, to smoke out sinners from every false refuge so they can flee from the wrath to come.

God is a God who must punish sin. If men fail to see themselves in danger and exposed to wrath, how can they come to Christ to save them from wrath? Men must be driven out of themselves to trust in Christ alone. Only searching preaching will accomplish this.

The modern church has turned the house of prayer into an arena of entertainment. It has men standing in its pulpits who are teachers and not preachers. Many pastors are derelict in their training to preach even though they have seminary degrees.

Some are unable to point men to Christ because they have yet to find Christ themselves. Others are good men, sincere men, but deficient men in searching sermons. The modern pulpit is more prone to give men what they want rather than what they need.

Why, why in the world do men not preach searching sermons? Perhaps like King Saul they fear their people more than God. After all, what did Jonathan Edwards get from his searching preaching to his people? A dismissal. But wait a minute, wasn't there something else gotten from his searching sermons? Oh yes, he got to witness glorious revival.