We Desperately Need Evangelistic Preaching

By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None of His Benefits:

FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS
volume 19, number 36, August 27, 2020

“We proclaim Him.” -Colossians 1:28

Only 23 percent of Americans attend church or synagogue every week while 40 percent of Americans claim they are very religious.[1] Another study paints an even bleaker picture, saying that only 17.7 percent of the American population attends a Christian church on any given Sunday. This means that only 52 million Americans normally attend church on Sunday.[2] The number of people actually attending church today, of course, due to COVID-19, is far less than that. And there is an alarming increase in licentiousness (people live as they want without consideration of the demands of God’s law) in evangelical churches where people are obviously ignoring the fact that without holiness no one will see the Lord (Heb.12:14). These realities strongly suggest that our churches very well may be filled with false professors of Christ. Can we not, therefore. agree that we desperately need evangelistic preaching? I know what the missional pundits are saying, that this sort of thing does not work in today’s culture. People could have told Paul the same thing when he embarked on his missionary journeys into utterly pagan cultures. Nothing has changed. People are no different today than they were fifty, one hundred, or one thousand years ago. If we still need evangelistic preaching more than ever, this then begs the question—what is evangelistic preaching? What were Paul and the other apostles proclaiming? We can summarize our answer to this question by saying that evangelistic preaching is to proclaim the whole counsel of God, focusing on the good news that Jesus Christ was crucified, buried, and was raised from the dead. It is to preach with complete dependence upon the Holy Spirit to bring conviction and conversion. It is to make clear the bigness of the true and living God, touching on His mighty attributes. It is to apply the Law of God to the conscience of the hearers, trusting the Holy Spirit to convince and convict them of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in ungodly ways, and of all the harsh things these ungodly sinners have spoken against God (Jude 15). It is to put forth in a glorious and winsome fashion the unfathomable riches of Christ, the great lover of sinners who gave Himself willingly for all His people. It is to lift up Jesus with great joy—His incarnation, suffering, death, humiliation, resurrection, ascension, and exaltation to the Father’s right hand in glory. It is to preach for a verdict. People must be cut to the heart by the convicting and regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, where they cry out, “What must I do?” It is to persuade people on the spot to call on the name of the Lord to be saved.

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HT: Vanguard Presbytery