The Impossibility of Evangelism & Preaching

Just after preaching the worship service at Sovereign Grace, I went to lunch with an unbelieving man. We had a great conversation and I was able to talk extensively about the gospel. He enjoyed the conversation and was more than happy to engage. He seemed to understand what I was saying conceptually, yet looked at me through the eyes of someone who wasn't connecting to my descriptions of the grace of God in the gospel at all. I enjoyed my time with him and hope to spend a lot more. I also was reminded of some precious biblical truth with regard to the impossibility of evangelism and preaching.

Christianity does not teach that truth is merely conceptual. Truth is personal. It is personal because Jesus is himself the truth. As a result, I can explain the truth and provide biblical descriptions of the truth, but it is impossible for me to describe the truth sufficiently enough for you to actually know the Truth. You can't know a person by hearing a description about him. You must meet and experience him. The problem is that men are not, in and of themselves, able to know the Truth. They can understand the descriptions I provide in preaching and evangelism. They can't, however, taste and see that the Lord is good through my descriptions of him. In the moments when I realize this, I feel like a man trying to describe honey to someone who has never tasted its sweetness.

The Bible is clear that the eyes of unbelievers have been blinded to really knowing and believing the truth. They can't see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 4:3-4). So, trying to describe the grace of God in Jesus to them is like describing the majesty of a sunset to a blind person. They can't see it based on my descriptions. They must receive sight. The Bible also refers to unbelievers as those who are spiritually deaf. I can sign the greatest description of a symphony to them, but they still don't know the beauty of its sound. So, in one sense evangelism and preaching are an impossible task. Apart from God opening the eyes of the spiritually blind, giving hearing to the spiritually deaf, or giving life to the spiritually dead so they can taste and see that the Lord is good, no man will ever know and trust in the Truth, Jesus Christ our Lord!

This reality drives me to my knees to plead with God to give spiritual sight, hearing, and life to unbelievers. The impossibility of evangelism and preaching in this regard should inform the church's prayer life. We must pray for men to be saved because God must work in them if they are to see and hear and know the Truth. So, I will continue to describe the goodness of the Lord in the gospel to people and I will also continue to pray that God enables them to taste the sweet honey of the gospel.

Prayer for Preachers

“Crucified preaching can only come from a crucified man." -E.M. Bounds

We live in a day in which our model for preaching and pastoral ministry is being pulled in numerous different directions by competing voices in the world of “professional ministry.” All of these cries for more faithful ministry are indeed needed. Yet, the flood of answers to the problems we face in ministry can become overwhelming and discouraging. What we see little of, in the midst of all these calls for reform in the church, is the cry to return the pulpit to the central place of ministry for the pastor. Perhaps the weightiest exhortation given to a pastor in the Bible is Paul’s command to Timothy. Listen to how the apostle Paul closed his final letter to his son in the faith, Timothy:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. 2 Timothy 4:1-5

Paul grounds his charge to preach the word in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, in Christ as the judge of all men, and in the appearing and kingdom of Christ. Can there be a loftier basis for an exhortation? It is this central privilege of the pastor to be a herald of God’s word that is so often minimized and overlooked. It is this glorious burden of preaching which can seem crushing and discouraging. It is faithfulness to this sacred charge where pastors most need continual encouragement, instruction, and prayer.

A Person, not a set of principles...

“Our faith is a person; the gospel that we have to preach is a person; and go wherever we may, we have something solid and tangible to preach, for our gospel is a person. If you had asked the twelve Apostles in their day, 'What do you believe in?' they would not have stopped to go round about with a long sermon, but they would have pointed to their Master and they would have said, 'We believe him.' 'But what are your doctrines?' 'There they stand incarnate.' 'But what is your practice?' 'There stands our practice. He is our example.' 'What then do you believe?' Hear the glorious answer of the Apostle Paul, 'We preach Christ crucified.' Our creed, our body of divinity, our whole theology is summed up in the person of Christ Jesus."[1]

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[1] C. H. Spurgeon, "De Propaganda Fide," in Lectures Delivered before the Young Men's Christian Association in Exeter Hall 1858-1859, pages 159-160.

What I Mean by Preaching...