You’ve likely heard orthodox gospel presentations that got no reaction. Someone goes through all the essential facts of the Christian faith: man’s creation and fall, the coming of Christ as God and Man, His death, burial, resurrection and ascension–and even the theology can be fundamentally sound: that He died in our place to take our sins, that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, and that in Him we can become a new creation. So far, so good.
And then what happens?
Often, nothing. Just a big dud. “So what?”
This doesn’t seem quite right. The reaction to gospel preaching in the book of Acts, for example, is electric. When people heard that message they either came to faith by the thousands or picked up stones to kill the messengers. It was either a revival or a riot.
So what are we missing? Why does our message fall flat?
The answer lie in application. In order for the gospel to elicit that kind of response, it actually needs to be applied to the hearers, and this is where we so often fail.
You see, if we tell people that Jesus died to save them from their sins, the big question that follows is: “What sins do you mean? And are you saying I’ve committed them?” But it’s at precisely this point that most preachers manifest two of the seven dwarves, Dopey and Bashful, and get all shy, vague and nuanced. “Well, erm, I don’t know exactly. I’m sure you’re very well-meaning and good hearted. You’re not a serious sinner. But, you know, you should be nice to people. Have you ever been mean to someone? That’s something to avoid, I suppose.”
Right. Not exactly the sort of preaching that will ‘cut to the heart’.
In contrast to this, if you read through the gospel sermons in the book of Acts, you’ll find a common theme, one which marks every single presentation bar one. (The one exception is the message to the Gentiles in Acts 10 who were already described as ‘God-fearing’, which perhaps explains why what I’m about to say was absent.) The common thread is that all these gospel presentations mention, by name, a specific sin common among the hearers, and a call to turn from that sin.
In his inaugural sermon in Acts 2, Peter tells Jerusalem crowd: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”
Bear in mind, this was fifty days after Christ had been killed, and Peter proclaimed to them that they had seen the Messiah among them in the city of God, proven by His miracles, and rather than acknowledge Him had instead put Him to death. He closes his sermon with the same reminder, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
This was not merely some neutral presentation of gospel facts; it was a searing condemnation of their collective sin.
Later in Acts 7, when Stephen speaks to the religious leadership who prided themselves on their scrupulous piety and supposed honor of the prophets whom God had sent Israel in generations past, what does he tell them? “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.”
Once again, he takes the sin they were in the process of committing and exposes it without mincing words.
Or how about when Paul is in Athens, a city replete with idols–what does he tell them? He doesn’t go down the route of saying they crucified Christ, nor that they honored the prophets with their lips but denied them with their actions, but rather says the following: “Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
In short: your idols are worthless, worshiping them is idiotic, and the true God commands you to turn from them before judgment day. Seeker sensitive Paul was not.
We could go through all the other examples, but you get my point. The difference between most modern-day ‘gospel’ preaching and the apostles’ was that theirs actually took some guts. Indeed, the words ‘bold’ or ‘boldness’ are found 13 times in Acts, each time referring to speaking to people.* And it is a trait that is markedly absent from the church today.
Many modern preachers like to feign boldness, proclaiming all sorts of condemnations against sins that no-one listening is actually committing. Why do you think the church is so happy to “confront” ‘racism’, ‘misogyny’ or ‘bigotry’? Because these are not the prevalent, socially acceptable sins of our age–at least not in the way most understand them. These are yesterday’s sins. It may look courageous to tear down a statue of Baal, but if you do so in front of those who only worship Moloch, well that’s really just performative boldness, not the real thing. The vast majority of hearers will pair such condemnations with the aforementioned gospel truth and think that it’s a great message… for someone else.
The reason this tempts so many is because such preaching, though it will not produce a riot or a revival, will gain some respect. We’ve willingly sold our birthright of seeing the kingdom forcefully advance for the stew of polite applause.
Now imagine those same preachers depicted in the beginning of this article gave that same gospel presentation with its essential facts and orthodox theology, but ended it with a call to actually repent–not just of vague sins, or distant sins or someone else’s sins, but with the specific sins of the hearer. What if we told people to turn from their wild obsession with sexual immorality from fornication to homosexuality? Or confronted the denial of the basic truth that in the beginning God made them male and female, no matter what you feel inside? Or called them out on the commandment: do not murder–even if it’s an unborn child? Or if we said that theft and covetousness are damnable sins, even if it’s achieved by voting to take more of your neighbors’ stuff? Or talked about dishonoring your parents, which includes despising their faith, culture and way of life, and labeling them all ‘bigots’? Or said that yes, rightly understood, racism is a sin, even if it is done to white people and labeled ‘anti-racism’? What about if we told them that Jesus loves them and wants to forgive them for those sins? We have plenty of opportunities to demonstrate biblical courage. We just don’t want to.
To quote John Wesley, “Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on Earth.”
This is the preaching our age needs, and which is guaranteed to get a reaction.
*In the ESV translation.
