OPEN AIR PREACHING

so they love Him because He first loved us.

AMEN!!!!

The Scriptures teach that we are saved by grace through faith. And Paul tells us that saving faith comes by hearing the word of God. And the content of that saving faith is that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that God has raised Him from the dead. Without such a belief and confession, no man can be saved, for such a belief and confession is the grounds of our salvation.

So above all, preach the cross of Jesus Christ. Preach Christ crucified. But as my pastor once pointed out: It's not the Jesus on the cross that can do anything for you, but it's the Jesus at the right hand of the Father in heaven that can do something for you. Unless men come to have a revelation that Jesus Christ is alive, they will remain dead in their sin.

So, to be a merely moralist in your preaching, and preaching the law will simply not do. While it is necessary to call out sin (as men must repent of their sins), all the conviction and repentance in the world will mean nothing unless they come to believe that Jesus Christ is alive from the grave.

If you closely study the book of Acts, you will find that was the true thrust of apostolic preaching. You can see that from Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost to Paul's preaching before Felix & Agrippa. Peter preached "You Jews sinned by murdering Jesus Christ, whom God raised from the dead." Paul preached, "God's appointed a day when all men will be judged for their deeds, by One whom God raised from the dead!"

This in a nutshell is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Christ must not be merely an "oh, by the way..." thing we add to the end of our preaching. It must be the very center of it. And such preaching can only issue out of the life of a person who has indeed made Christ their very life, and are dependent upon the resurrection power of Christ. It's easy to fake true preaching by going out to do open-air with a bag of tricks you learned from Ray Comfort and WOTM. But what you can't fake is resurrection power.

The problem with so much street preaching is that some of us street preachers go out merely to convince men that they are awful sinners in the hands of an angry God. And while this is true, and such must be preached, don't take a truth and make it the truth. For such ought not to be the grounds of their repentance. For what turned the world upside down in the book of Acts was not convincing men they were awful sinners (the Pharisees had long been doing that)... but what turned the world upside down was that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. As a result of such a belief, genuine repentance comes forth. For to believe such an awesome thing, that God raised a dead man back to life after three days, how can one ever remain the same after coming to believe such a thing?

Sadly though in my typing of this, many of you who read this will not hear. You'll go on with your silly moralizing sermons and bag of tricks. And why? Because you yourself have not truly had a personal revelation of the holiness of God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Instead, you will go out in your own power to preach, instead of going out in His. And as Art Katz has wonderfully shown, there is a difference between "went" and "sent."

There is a great book I'm reading now that I think every street preacher should read. I'm only 1/2 way done with it now myself, but have found it amazingly good.

"The Soul Winner" by Charles H. Spurgeon. He has so much more to say about preaching to the lost than what WOTM and others have credited him with. In fact, such a use of him is a rather shallow use of him. He had so much more wonderful things to say.

I recently posted a chapter out of his book from "The Soul Winner" here on SI. The name of the chapter is, "How to Raise the Dead." It would be something all of us should carefully read and digest:

[url=https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=18112&forum=34#142040]How To Raise the Dead by C. H. Spurgeon[/url]

Let them know they have the S.I.N. virus before we give them the gospel cure.

This generally is a nice idea, but nowhere in Scripture is such demanded as a logical first required order. A preacher once said, if you were to take somebody who had never known anything but poverty their entire lives and suddenly placed them in the house of a rich man, they would instantly notice the difference without somebody saying so much as a word.

So it is with Christ. Once a sinner truly gets a glimpse of Christ, and just how majestic He is, they will realize their poverty. It's much like Isaiah 6, where Isaiah had a revelation of the majesty and holiness of God, and instantly he realized something about himself and his people that he had never seen before... and he was one already well acquainted with the law. But until that revelatory experience, he still remained blind of his sin.

Such is why first and foremost with our preaching, whatever we preach we must convey a sense of God and who He is. For unless we bring heaven down, and actually make Christ known, then all our preaching is but vain repetitions.

This generally is a nice idea, but nowhere in Scripture is such demanded as a logical first required order.

KJ, it's very good that you understand this. Not many do. I suppose it must be experienced rather than acquired from a book. I've found out that there are no formulas with God, no efficacious orders of presentation. God looks for those who have purified their souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit. He searches for clean vessels that have no confidence in the flesh. Such men and women are filled with the wisdom of the Spirit and are led by God in their preaching and presentation of the gospel.

Once a sinner truly gets a glimpse of Christ, and just how majestic He is, they will realize their poverty.

Precisely! As Zac Poonen would say, [i]the expulsive power of a new affection.[/i]

Brother Paul

My point is that if you told me every attribute of God and the beauty of who He is, the great I AM. A sinner would say 'that's cool but what does that have to do with me'.

I'm not talking about merely naming the attributes of God in a sermon. I'm talking about actually manifesting the presence of God in your preaching. I'm talking about bringing the realities of heaven down so as to manifest them while preaching. If God's presence is truly made known, such alone will convey His awesomeness in a way merely listing His attributes will not.

The sinner must recognize what he is because he is blind and dead to ever understanding what you're talking about.

While the law is a school master, unless you actually convey the dread of God in your preaching through His manifest presence, the sinner will never understand. Moses is still read in the Synagogue today, but still a veil remains over the eyes of the Jews.

KJ, it's very good that you understand this. Not many do. I suppose it must be experienced rather than acquired from a book. I've found out that there are no formulas with God, no efficacious orders of presentation. God looks for those who have purified their souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit. He searches for clean vessels that have no confidence in the flesh.

Amen.

Way of the Master is a great place to start out, using the law to bring about the knowledge of sin (although there are dozens of NT scriptures that you can use in place of the 10 commandments)... however it is a terrible place to stay and can result in preaching that is just as fleshy and powerless as the modern gospel presentation.

Amen. Let it not be misunderstood that I am by anyways condemning WOTM. It, like Evangelism Explosion and so many other things, are great tools to utilize when preaching, and we can glean many principles from them that are indeed, rooted in Scriptures. But to use WOTM and other systems as a substitute for seeking the Lord yourself as to what you will preach, and seeking Him for an anointing and life-giving word, is error.

Any system of preaching, no matter how grounded it is Biblically speaking, will result in life. Look no further than the Law and the temple system for examples of this.

KingJimmy, I think we have a misunderstanding, my topic is on open air preaching, not preaching to sheep at the church.

Indeed, I'm talking about open-air preaching.

I'm saying that if you preach and convey God's attributes God-hating, sin loving, dead in sin, rebellious sinner; he will mock you or at best raise his eye brow.

I don't think you actually understand what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actually demonstrating God's attributes through His manifest presence. Do you actually understand what I mean by God's manifest presence?

When we show sinners how dark and depraved their nature is through the law, then they can properly see all the glories of God through Christ crucified and resurrected.

Indeed, and the law is good for pointing out sins. However, without a tangible expression of God's presence that accompanies preaching, such is all one will do.

Yes this is true but it doesn't change the fact that presenting the law makes sinners see that they must repent. You guys are acting like your above using the law when in fact Jesus, Paul, the apostles, and great preachers in church history all used the law as a top priority.

I think you may be misunderstanding KJ. From what I gather he essentially is saying, "It's not a method people need, nor a 5 step plan, but a revelation of God."

Surely God can and does reveal himself through preaching "law" but He isn't bound to a principle that says "law first, then grace."