United5

United Proclamation Evangelism:

The Indigenous Principle

by J. W. Jepson, D.Min.

Life In Christ Center, 3095 Cherry Heights Road, The Dalles, Oregon 97058

(541) 296-1136

The Author hereby grants permission to reproduce the text of this article, without changes or alterations*, as a ministry, but not for commercial or non-ministry purposes.

*Permission is given for publication of excerpts and condensed versions.

* * * * *

EVANGELISTIC PREACHING

It is not the purpose of this chapter to go through a full-scale course in homiletics. To do so in one chapter would be an impossibility. The purpose here is to survey some of the basic principles of the great and noble art of evangelistic preaching.

When we share the good news of Jesus Christ, we are neither acting upon our own authority nor merely giving our own opinions. We are carrying out a divine mandate. This means two things: (1) we must stay with the message, and (2) we must speak with confidence. This is so when we are communicating in personal conversation; it is especially so when we are proclaiming the message publicly.

Second Corinthians, chapter five is the preacher’s manifesto. He must be a person who has been to the cross himself and who has also experienced the power of Christ’s resurrection. He must be a called messenger, yet more than a messenger; he is an ambassador. The message must be so deeply infused into his heart and mind that he and it are inseparable. He must feel strongly its reality. Many will not understand why he feels so deeply and acts so energetically, but he does. He sees clearly the issues at stake. He is moved by them and yearns that others be moved by them as they should be.

The evangelist knows his message well and has given careful thought to be best and most precise way of communicating it to his hearers. He has a great yearning over their souls. His whole personality is an agency through whom the Holy Spirit can make the truth effective in the hearts of the hearers. If He can use the human personality to convey the substance of the truth, He can also use the human personality to convey the urgency of the truth. Mind locks in with mind; heart touches heart. God makes the truth real to man by making it real in man. God uses the preacher as a living example of how the truth ought to affect the hearers. Because the evangelist is speaking for God, he should convey all that God wants to convey to the hearers, both in mind and heart, to bring them to think, feel, will and act as they should. Spurgeon expressed it eloquently:

"...when a man gets to fear for others, so that his heart cries out, ‘They will perish, they will perish, they will sink to hell, they will be forever banished from the presence of the Lord,’ and when this fear oppresses his soul and weighs him down, and then drives him to go out and preach with tears, oh, then he will plead with men so as to prevail! Knowing the terror of the Lord, he will persuade men. To know the terror of the Lord is the means of teaching us to persuade, and not to speak harshly."¹²⁰

Walter P. Doe quotes T. DeWitt Talmage:

"Why, it is enough to break a minister down in the midst of his sermon to think of what a soul is. A wheel within a wheel, wound up for endless revolutions; a realm in which love shall forever lift its smile, or despair gnash its teeth, or pain strike its Poignard, or hope kindle its auroras: a soul just poised on the pivot, and if it swing off or break away the lightnings of heaven have not feet swift enough to catch up with it. O my soul, my soul, my SOUL!"¹²¹

"Preaching ought to be so intense as to prove to the hearers that the preacher is linked with God in an utter longing for the salvation of men and women."¹²²

"The evangel must light a fire in the soul of the one who proclaims it. Men are not moved by logical arguments unless there is in the messenger the same sort of emotion there was in the appeals of Wesley, Whitefield, Moody, and Sunday. The note of urgency... must come back into the pulpit."¹²³

"...an evangelistic message must communicate at all levels. To do that it must be direct and simple and urgent, and speak not only to the head but to the heart and to the will.

"A preacher of an evangelistic message must ever keep in mind that his objective is to persuade, never to impress. And if he is to win people he must get down to where they live. It has been often said that no one can be a soul winner if he is afraid of simplicity of utterance."¹²⁴

The evangelist preaches for a decision--not a surface assent, but a true decision that results in discipleship. He must never make the common mistake of telling his hearers that they can "receive Jesus" as Savior without committing their hearts to Him as God and therefore Lord.

"Evangelism is truth demanding a verdict."¹²⁵

"John’s use of the concept ‘believe’ is an instructive one. His emphasis is not on the noun but on the verb! It is to him the act of believing which is important. This is vital for us to grasp. At heart, faith is a response to God, a readiness for wholehearted involvement in His will as He makes it known to us. Such faith integrates the totality of the human personality around what is known to be true."¹²⁶

"...it would have been inconceivable to the apostles that anyone could believe in Jesus as Savior without submitting to Him as Lord. ...the one exalted to God’ s right hand is Jesus the Lord and Savior. We cannot chop this Jesus into bits and then respond to only one of the bits. The object of saving faith is the whole and undivided Person of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ."¹²⁷

"The quality of faith must be that of repentance, and the dynamic of repentance must be that of faith, and when we urge upon men that they believe on the Lord Jesus, we must say that belief means submission to the Lordship, and that means turning from every other lord that has held dominion over the soul."¹²⁸

What an evangelist preaches is of fundamental importance. Content is essential. The content of evangelistic preaching must be firmly rooted in Biblical theology.

"It cannot be affirmed too emphatically that any attempt to divorce theology from evangelism and evangelism from theology would be uniformly disastrous to both."¹²⁹

"What immediately strikes us about the message of the first evangelists is its firm rootage in history and its inherently doctrinal character. It has to do exclusively with the great redemptive events of the gospel--the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, the Ascension and the Return. It is all about Christ: who He was, and what He did, and where He is now, and when He will come back.

"...this New Testament message was theological to the core. Evangelism and theology go hand in hand in Scripture."¹³⁰

"...any renewal of evangelistic concern will only prove fruitful to the extent that it is related to sound theology. "¹³¹

"An essential presupposition of effective evangelism is that the evangelist must be certain of his message. If the Christian faith is to be proclaimed with a conviction that is compelling, the truths of the Gospel must be mastered at a deep level."¹³²

Wood quotes F. B. Meyer:

"The ministry, therefore, which is most carefully based on Scripture, and honors Scripture, and saturates itself with Scripture, is the ministry which the Spirit of Truth can co-operate with in the most perfect abandonment."¹³³

Chapman reminds us,

"We cannot help the masses of humanity and weaken their confidence in the Bible."¹³⁴

Leighton Ford points out that Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost (1) appealed to the Scriptures as authoritative, (2) centered in Jesus Christ, (3) brought conviction and concern to the hearers, and (4) called for immediate and definite response."¹³⁵

The fact that evangelistic preaching must be theologically based and doctrinal in content must never be used as a reason to preach doctrinal distinctives in inter-denominational crusades and rallies. On such occasions the preacher must stay with "the immediate task."¹³⁶

Close in importance to what the evangelist is to preach is how he is to preach. In practice the two are inseparable.

"When a preacher comes before a congregation motivated by an evangelistic purpose, immediately the sermon should become definite and fundamental."¹³⁷

When Jesus and the apostles preached to Jewish audiences, they built upon certain doctrinal foundations that already existed in the minds of their hearers. Through the law and the prophets the people had more or less clear views of God, holiness, sin, blood atonement, and other fundamental truths. The same is true more or less of audiences today who have been raised in church.

But in our contemporary society we cannot assume that the primary target group of evangelism already knows certain basic theological facts. Many do, but many do not. The point is that we must not assume that they do. The result of this wide-spread spiritual ignorance is a lack of acute conviction for sin and of spiritual need. They are way out on the "conversion scale." Telling them that Christ died for their sins is like trying to sell fire insurance to a person living in a fire-proof house. There is a general lack of felt need. This calls for what is known as "pre-evangelism." The evangelist must be sensitive to what the audience knows and where they are in their response to the truth.

When addressing the Athenians on Mars Hill, the apostle Paul began with the most fundamental truth of all--God. In this age of religious confusion we cannot assume that people outside of the churches have a correct concept of anything concerning God. We cannot assume this even of many people inside of the churches. So it is important that we, as Paul, go all the way back to "square one" with people. This means reaching way out in our preaching to those who know and believe nothing, and bringing everyone together along the path of truth that leads ultimately to the foot of the cross and on into discipleship.

The reason for this is very sound. Ultimately, a correct understanding of all saving truth rests upon a correct view of God. People have to think right about God before they can think right about sin, and they have to think right about sin before they can think right about the cross. To express it in inverse order, people cannot have a correct understanding of what Christ did on the cross unless they have a correct understanding of sin, and they cannot have a correct understanding of sin unless they have a correct understanding of God. Genuine revival is characterized by an awakening to the holiness of God and therefore the sinfulness of sin.

This is part of pre-evangelism. The message of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is good news only to the person who is convinced of the bad news--all have sinned and, apart from Christ, are in bondage to sin, alienated from God, void of true life, and sitting in death row awaiting the execution of the terrifying penalty of the moral law.

People must be prepared to welcome the gospel. This preparation involves conviction for sin and can also include a realization of the emptiness and meaninglessness of life without Christ, a sense of spiritual responsibility to one’s family, and a confrontation with the fact of what sin is doing to one’s self. The Holy Spirit knows each person’s uniqueness and exactly what area(s) of truth are best suited to influence the mind and heart. Every moral agent is in some particular stage of awareness of the truth, even if the stage is general unawareness. The continuum extends from indifference to urgency, and people are at various points along that continuum. It is the objective of evangelistic preaching and an essential work of the Holy Spirit to move people from indifference to interest, to concern, to conviction, to urgency, to regeneration. At a particular point of awakening, some will "decide for Christ." The decision will be genuine, but predicated upon only a threshold of awareness of gospel truth; such converts need an immediate deepening of their understanding of the gospel to establish them in the faith and prepare them for discipleship. Others, who have been thoroughly convicted of sin, will "flee to Christ." Usually, these are the stronger converts; however, they also need a fuller understanding of the gospel to help them into abundant living in Christ.

In preaching about God, we must begin with His Person, move to His qualities, and climax with His grace and mercy revealed and offered to us in Jesus Christ. The self-righteous and self-satisfied sinner must see that he or she has lived in utter disregard for God’s interests, has not loved Him, and is not interested in knowing and doing His will. As a result he or she is in total disobedience, under divine condemnation, and is now under the most basic and urgent moral obligation to turn to God immediately and totally and to trust Jesus Christ alone for salvation. Such preaching is not a speculative lecture but an imperative proclamation.

"How weak is that sermon which, by its very assumption of opposition, raises doubts in the minds of the hearers where there had been no doubts before."¹³⁸

"You must remember that you are not conducting a debate."¹³⁹

In pre-evangelism the exposure of sin follows the declaration of God. We must return to a correct view of the guilt and consequences of sin.

"Conviction of sin does not imply necessarily conviction of particular sins, but rather a conviction that I am without God and away from Him, and that it is my fault and not His that I am away."

"This conviction of my radical need may arise from many more superficial symptoms--a general sense of neediness, a loneliness, a fear, a lack of purpose, some feeling of shame, the powerlessness in face of particular sinful habits, an inadequacy to meet life’s demands, a sense of frustration; it may arise from an intellectual clamour for a solid foundation of truth to rest on, a desire for immortality, the attractiveness of Jesus Christ as seen in His life and in the life of Christians, a realisation of wanting to help men, but having no Gospel or power with which to do it, the experience of human love and the insights which come with it, the way of suffering and pain; but whatever are the surface symptoms of a man’s frustration and lack of integration, conviction of sin does not come until he knows within himself that it is because he is not right with God, because he has not met Reality face to face and accepted that Reality as the basis of his life."¹⁴⁰

Albert Barnes urges preachers not to preach limited atonement, natural inability, and original sin.¹⁴¹ The blame for sin rests squarely on the sinner. Barnes goes on to say that as long as people

"regard sin as a trifle; hell as an aribitrary appointment, a place of holy martyrdom in the cause of injured innocence; and the scenes of Calvary as a pompous show, an unmeaning display, and a gorgeous parade, they will not repent."

"Men are called upon to repent by all the evils of violated laws; by all its solemn and awful claims; by the beauty and order which obeyed law would confer on the universe. That law, if obeyed, would have diffused peace and happiness in all worlds. That law broken, has been the source of all our woes, and is now the great terrifier of men in view of future calamities."¹⁴²

Walter P. Doe quotes Theodore L. Cuyler:

"Some people imagine that Sinai is extinct. Certain pulpits seem to be pitched so far away from the sublime mountain, that its august peak is no longer visible, and its righteous thunders against sin are no longer audible. With this school of rose-water ministers, the theology of law is voted obsolete and barbarous; the world is to be tamed and sweetened and sanctified entirely by a theology of love. They preach a one-sided God--all mercy and no justice--with one half of his glorious attributes put under eclipse. Even sinners are not to be warned, with tears and entreaties, to flee from the wrath to come. They are to be coaxed into holiness by a magical process which makes nothing of repentance, and simply requires a ‘faith’ which costs no more labor than the snap of a finger. This shallow system may produce long rolls of ‘converts,’ but it does not produce solid, sub-soiled Christians."¹⁴³

"He who thundered on Sinai invites from Calvary."¹⁴⁴

Engel and Norton remind us that the "self-sufficiency assumption" lies at the heart of sin. "It seems to be a pervasive world view that man by his very nature is complete, having the capacity to live a full and meaningful life."¹⁴⁵ The name for this is pride.

Although the preacher of the gospel must give proper emphasis to the sinfulness of sin, he must also avoid the temptation to dwell on it. The desire to "get something off his chest" and to harangue and brow-beat sinners is an emotional perversion that the evangelist must never allow to develop within his own spirit.

Once the holiness of God and the sinfulness of sin are given due consideration, the evangelist must move right on to the redemptive facts of the gospel and the call to repentance and faith.

"... the all important note in the kerygma was not exhortation, or for that matter an emphasis upon sin or guilt, but upon happenings in history interpreted as the acts of the living God resolved to uplift and save His people. That is why all true Christian preaching must place its emphasis upon something already done by God and offered to the hearers, something which remains true and all important even if they reject it. In that sense it has little to do with their feelings or their needs; but it is the truth about God and man, and as truth demands to be heard and obeyed; if neglected or repudiated it will inevitably serve as His judgment upon the hearers.¹⁴⁶

"This is repentance. Owing responsibility for what has been, wasting no time in self-punishment or self-hate, but getting on with the kind of behavioral changes that accept responsibility for what really is now, and what can be."¹⁴⁷

In genuine repentance behavioral changes are the result of an inner change, a true change of heart, and are more than mere external modifications. Nevertheless, a change of heart will produce a change of behavior. Thus repentance is positive rather than negative. It is dynamic through faith.

In preaching, two factors are important: content and delivery.¹⁴⁸ Content is vital; we have a life-or-death message. We must give careful attention to how we deliver it.

An effective evangelist must know the difference between preaching and teaching. Teaching is inclusive; preaching is selective and specific. Teaching takes a truth and expands on it; preaching takes a truth and compacts it. Teaching develops knowledge and understanding; preaching urges decision and action. Although truth is the content of both teaching and preaching, the thrust of each is different.

Because of the essentially hortatory nature of preaching, especially evangelistic preaching, conciseness is important. "Every sentence should be in its place and worthy of its place."¹⁴⁹ It should never go longer than the point of maximum effectiveness; extending an evangelistic message beyond that point creates hindrances that the Holy Spirit must work to overcome. And what is the point of maximum effectiveness? Probably much sooner than most of us preachers realize.

The sermon must move the preacher. Eliminate any point that does not move you, the preacher.¹⁵⁰

"Begin to preach in such a style that you shall nail every ear to the pulpit."¹⁵¹

"A preacher should speak quietly until his inner feelings demand that he speak enthusiastically."¹⁵²

Use humor sparingly, if at all, and never toward the end of the message. Never use humor or make remarks that might embarrass, offend, or hurt someone’s feelings (overweight, cross-eyed, handicapped)^.153 Always preach so that a young man can take his girl friend to hear you and not be embarrassed.

Preach for the salvation of souls, not for reassuring evidence that you preached a good sermon. And we should always aim at winning the lost, and never at defeating them.

"...now no longer have we any desire to score points or win a victory. We love him [the non-Christian] too much to boost our ego at his expense. Humility in evangelism is a beautiful grace."¹⁵⁴

The genius of evangelistic preaching is in taking saving truth, with all its sublime theological complexity, and making it plain and simple. It is a well known fact that D L. Moody used to watch the children on the front row while he preached. If they became restless, he knew that the message was not getting through to the people.

Clear illustrations are a part of the fabric of evangelistic preaching. Jesus Himself is our example in this. We must follow that example.

"No man has been a great revivalist who scorned a generous use of illustrations."¹⁵⁵

"No man need be at a loss for illustration since anything taught in the Bible has abundant proof both in nature and human experience. If it is taught in the Word, it can be found in the world."¹⁵⁶

"In the Bible, we find all nature and all history laid under tribute to furnish illustrations for the truth."¹⁵⁷

"Relevance" has become an overworked word in evangelism. The Bible does not have to be made relevant; it is relevant. People need to make their values and behavior relevant to the truth, not the other way around. The word of God stands; let us conform to it. Nevertheless, it is essential that we get the gospel into the unbeliever’s world.

"...unwanted messages can be avoided entirely (selective attention), miscomprehended (selective distortion), or forgotten (selective retention)."

"All the creative finesse and media muscle in the world will go for nought if we are not speaking to the audience where they are."

"...concentrate primarily on receptive audience segments."¹⁵⁸

"If we are to make any impression for God on the mind of this generation, we must learn its language. There is a desperate need today for preachers to acquaint themselves with current vocabulary and thought-forms.¹⁵⁹

"He [the preacher] is a messenger from heaven with a free pardon in his hand for a man condemned to die, and that man sits right there in the pew before him. He must get the man to see the pardon, to feel his need of it and to accept it before he leaves the house. He must get on to some basis by which he can make that man feel as well as understand the message."¹⁶⁰

It should be observed that there seems to be an on-going tension between being timely and being timeless. On the one hand is the need to put heavenly truth into terms that reach earthly people, while on the other hand is the equal need to avoid trivializing the truth and thus destroying its divine imperative. Speaking in the larger context of the Church’s mission in the world, Stott makes the following pertinent observation:

"Now it is comparatively easy to be faithful if we do not care about being contemporary, and easy also to be contemporary if we do not bother to be faithful. It is the search for a combination of truth and relevance which is exacting."¹⁶¹

The least that can be said is that in the attempt to be contemporary, the use of profanity, slang and crudities in preaching the gospel is totally inexcusable.

We should preach as though we were going to step from the pulpit directly to the judgment seat of Christ.

United Proclamation Evangelism--index page

INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 REFERENCES