The Gospel In its Proper Order Preaching Institute

Well, hello friends. We are in the second section of our International Preaching Institute on how to preach the gospel, and today we're going to look at how to preach the gospel in its purity and proper order. We will deal with a proper understanding of what is the unvarnished biblical gospel as compared to the debased variation so many preach today.

That causes false conversions. If you want to be a well-rounded preacher, I highly recommend you start reading good Christian biography. Read biographies about godly men like George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, John Song, D.L. Moody, Sam Jones, and Mordecai Ham, and others.

Study their lives and see how God used them. Also, friends, make it a priority to read the sermons from the Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening. I strongly recommend getting a copy of a book by Richard Owen Roberts entitled Salvation in Full Color.

In it are some wonderful sermons from those time periods. You may have to buy it used on the internet because I believe it's out of print. Get that book and study the biographical information on each of the ministers listed to get familiar with them.

Then carefully read their sermons. Read the sermons of these godly ministers whom God used during spiritual awakening and revival. Men like Timothy Dwight, Gilbert Tenet, George Whitefield, Asahel Nettleton, Samuel Davies, Joseph Bellamy, Solomon Stoddard, and other worthies.

Reading the sermons of the First and Second Great Awakening is some of the best possible training you can get as a preacher, friends. Believe me when I say that. Also, study the time periods known as the Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening and become familiar with how the Almighty has moved in former times during periods of revival in spiritual awakening.

And when you study the sermons that were preached during these times, you will soon discover that doctrinal sermons were predominantly preached. The doctrine of the Great Awakening was an emphasis on regeneration, the need to be born again, the Second Great Awakening was primarily a law revival. So the main doctrine of that time period was repentance.

In the book of Jeremiah, in chapter 6, verse 16, we read, Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein. And ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said we will not walk therein.

And that's pretty much the atmosphere today, friends. We need to get back to the old gospel preached in times of revival and spiritual awakening, which was a God-centered gospel highlighting the glory of God in the salvation of men. Listen, friends, to the following story to get a sense of this.

In the 17th century, a wealthy English gentleman traveled to Scotland in his carriage because he'd like to hear good preaching. The first preacher he heard proclaimed the majesty and sovereignty of a high and lifted up God in all his glorious attributes. And the text was from Isaiah chapter 6 on the prophet Isaiah's vision of heaven where he states, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

And upon hearing this, the Englishman went away humbled by that vision of a holy God. The next Scottish preacher he heard preached on the rune of fallen man and the depravity of his heart. And because of man's rune nature, he has a poison in his blood.

And his text was from the book of Job. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drank the iniquity like water. And he left this sermon feeling guilty as charged, for he knew he drank sin like water.

The last Scottish preacher he heard proclaimed the beauty of Christ Jesus as the only remedy for sin, whose worth was inestimable, like a pearl of great price worth selling off for to be gained. The Scotsman text was Matthew 13, 45 to 46. Again, the king of heaven is like unto a merchant man seeking goodly pearls, who when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all he had and bought it.

The Englishman went away from that sermon desiring Jesus as the pearl of great price whose worth selling off for to be gained. On his journey back to England, he pondered all these powerful biblical truths of the gospel he had heard in Scotland. Finally, he could no longer resist the rights and claims of Christ set forth in the gospel.

He had his carriage driver pull under a grove of trees in a forest. There, the trembling man climbed down, knelt upon the ground. As he cried to God for mercy, he repented of his sins and surrendered his heart to God, putting his faith in the only remedy for sin, the sovereign Son of God, the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

He returned to England, a new man, full of joy and peace in his Savior. Well, that story, friend, is a picture of the gospel, a sovereign God, a black-hearted sinner, and a blood-stained Christ. The old gospel has power to save, but it must be preached in its purity and proper order, and that's our subject of our preaching institute today, friends.

The modern, seeker-friendly gospel has many flaws and many omissions, and many have diluted the gospel to make it more palatable to sinful man. You'd be hard-pressed to enter a typical church service in America today and hear a sermon on hell, or on man's duty of repentance, or on man's utter necessity of regeneration. Let me ask you a question, brother preacher, and how you answer this will say a lot about how you present the gospel.

Are men saved as a result of a decision they make, or as the result of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit? Is God the agent of salvation, or is man? If we can save ourselves, then we don't need to preach about a bloody cross on which a Savior died. We don't need to mention sin or the damnation of hell's punishment for sin, because the God many mention today is just a big, loving, Santa Claus God, who's so loving he will tolerate sin in the lives of his followers, and he certainly would not send anybody to hell unless they were really bad, like a serial killer or a sociopath. But that's not the God of the Bible.

That's a God of your ignorance and imagination. The God of the Bible must punish sin. Modern evangelism has serious omissions in the gospel, and they create spurious conversions, and one of these is the stark reality that the God of the Bible must punish sin.

Well, with this in mind, friends, it is imperative that we who preach the gospel, that we preach it in its purity, meaning undiluted, and that we preach it in its proper order. This institute on the message will focus on how to preach the gospel in its proper order so sinners can be saved. Allow me to explain.

Through preaching, men must be brought to the place where they feel their need of a savior for sin. Ezehiel Middleton, the primary leader of the second great awakening, often preached that men could not be saved until they first became lost. In his searching sermons, he brought many souls in these revivals to Christ.

Thirty thousand souls were converted under his wise and powerful ministry, but we preachers today ignore that. So we offer Jesus to a people who feel no need of him, and they gladly take our little Jesus as a free ticket to heaven when they never believed they were guilty sinners on their way to hell. We present the gospel out of order and first offer Jesus as the way to heaven.

We tell folks, just accept Jesus as your personal savior friend, and you can know for sure that you're going to heaven. Now come down front and make it public, because God said, who will be ashamed of me? I'll be ashamed of him in that day. And they come, and we pat them on the back, and we call them Christians, and they join the church and stain their sins.

And when they die, they just drop down onto everlasting perdition and punishment for sin. This is why it's so critically important, friends, to preach the full counsel of God in the power of the Spirit of God, and warn men and women and boys and girls that God is a God that must punish sin. Well, let's take a look at this from Jesus in the gospel of John, in John chapter 4, and in verses 7 through 31, relating his meeting the Samaritan woman at the well, noticed his dealings with her.

Well, let's take a look at that striking passage of scripture from John's gospel in chapter 4, friends. There's much to be learned in how to present the gospel in its proper order in this biblical narrative. Notice that after he tells her about the living water, he then confronts her with the fact that she is a sinner.

In John 4, 15, we read, the woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water that I thirst not. Here, she's responding to the truth that Jesus had shared with her, that he is the living water. But notice, he does not offer himself to her before he brings conviction of sin to her heart, but to have her feel her need of a Savior for sin.

He tells her, Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. But Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband, for thou hast had five husbands, and he who thou now hast is not thy husband.

In that saidst thou truly. Upon hearing this, the woman then responds, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Next, we see this same woman being a bold witness in her community about this Jesus who gave her living water, and she goes all around her community proclaiming, Come, see a man which told me all things that I ever did.

Is this not the Christ? And she goes to testifying, and her witness turns her city upside down for Christ. We read in verse 39, And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman which testified, He told me all I ever did. Then a revival breaks out in that city, friends.

We see in verse 40 to 41, So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them. And he abode there two days, and many more believed because of his own word. Well, I will stop there.

When the gospel is proclaimed in its proper order, then all hell will go to popping. The proper order of the gospel is this, friends. There are two messages of the cross we must faithfully and boldly proclaim.

The first message of the cross is, God must punish sin. The apostle Peter declared that God is a God who must punish sin. In 2 Peter 2, 4 through 6, we read, For God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment.

And he spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly, and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, and condemned them with an overthrow, making them an example unto those that after should live ungodly. Listen, friends. I know some folks think God has changed stripes, and he's now a more modern God, a more sin-tolerating God.

But Malachi 3, 6, God declares, For I am the Lord, I change not. Once people understand and acknowledge that the God of the Bible is a God who will and must punish sin, once they believe that, then you can preach to them the second message of the cross, which is Christ to substitute for sin. This will avoid spurious conversions, for one has to feel their need of a Savior from sin.

They must see Jesus as the pearl of great price, worth selling all for, and losing all for, so he may be gained. Christ Jesus is the only remedy and refuge for sin, and man is a sinner in need of reconciliation to the God of the Bible, who will by no means clear the guilty. Exodus 34, 7, God is a God who must punish sin.

Jesus spoke on this doctrine when he said, And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10, 28. George Whitefield, the great British evangelist, used to say that a sinner must first be brought to Mount Sinai before he can be brought to Mount Zion.

So we see that if we are to preach the Gospel in its proper order, then the law must precede grace, and man must know that God is a God who will and must punish sin. But the good news of the Gospel is that God has provided a remedy for sin in the person of Christ Jesus, and it's a fact that the Gospel that Christ died for sinners, Galatians 2, 20 declares, who loved me and gave himself for me. So the second message of the cross is that sin substitute who hangs there in my stead.

And only after folks hear the first message of the cross that God must punish sin can we then offer a savior for sin. A teenage troll Spurgeon was converted to Christ when he heard a simple man preach a simple message of Christ on the cross for sinners. The plain preacher spoke from one text from Isaiah 45, 22.

Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the earth for I am God and there is none else. Troll Spurgeon said, I looked and I saw that bleeding one on the cross and I looked and looked and looked until I looked my eyes away. Listen brethren, we can only we can hold up and offer Christ after we preach the first message of the cross.

And that's God must upon a sin when the gospel is preached in his proper order, then centers will feel their need of a savior from sin. In John 14, six, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the father, but by me here, Jesus answers the three greatest questions of the human heart.

How can I be saved? Jesus said, I am the way. How can I be sure? Jesus said, I am the truth. How can I be satisfied? Jesus said, I am the life.

And in John six, 35, Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger. And he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

The gospel is for the hungry, the weary, and the thirsty. Let me ask you, friend, are you hungry for God? Are you sick and tired of your sins? Are you thirsty for Christ? Then come to him and believe on him and own him as your savior and Lord. And he has a pure gospel promise to all who come.

And him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. So the gospel preached in its proper order will show guilty sinners their need of a savior for sin and point them to a savior from sin, the Lord Jesus Christ. The preaching of a God-centered gospel will result in genuine conversions and bring glory to God the Father.

Well, I hope this preaching institute, friends, has been some help to you. It is my prayer that God will strengthen your ministry by transforming your preaching of his holy word for the good of the church and to his glory.