Preaching in Revival

E. M Bounds quotes Principal Lindsay, who wrote:

The history of the Church flows on from one time of revival to another, and whether we take the awakenings in the old catholic, the medieval, or the modern church, these have always been the work of men specially gifted with the power of seeing and declaring the secrets of the deepest Christian life, and the effect of their work has always been proportionate to the spiritual receptivity of the generation they have spoken to.1

Harold Bosely is right when he says that preaching is, “one of the oldest forms of witnessing in the history of the Hebrew/Christian tradition.”2 It is a unique enterprise. Sometimes it is compared to other forms of communication, such as the speculations of philosophers, or the rhetoric of politicians. But, Christian rhetoric in the mouths of Christian preachers has little in common with these other forms of communication. There are similarities, for preaching is communication; but, it is a unique kind of communication, associated with a uniquely divine enterprise. If the task of preaching is to be understood at all, it must be from the perspective of that divine dimension.

The revelation of God in Jesus Christ remains the “raison d’etre” for all preaching communication. It is also the anointing of the Spirit of Jesus that makes homiletical communication effective. At the same time, the act of preaching must not be removed from the context of the world in which the Word is preached. There is a social dimension to Christian preaching. After all, the Church’s dialogue with the world is reflected, or should be reflected in its pulpit. It is evident from a cursory glance of preaching that the content, manner, and form changes from age to age and from culture to culture.

Above all, preaching is central to the history of revival in every age. It has always been and will remain “the cutting edge of a growing church.”3 Whatever our analysis may be of Finney and his notorious “means to revive,” it cannot be denied that preaching is the chief means for awakening and converting sinners. It is “the hammer and anvil” for the shaping of broken lives and the saving of a needy world.

The theme of all revival preaching is “the Word of God.” A brief examination of revival sermons will demonstrate how the text was more than a starting point for a religious discourse. The Word of God written has always been a “pillar of cloud and fire.” The history of revival is marked by a high view of Holy Scripture as God’s Word to world and Church—the transcript of divine revelation and the key to the heart of God.4

Zeal has also been characteristic of revival preaching. “Every method was assayed,” writes Gillis, “to reclaim men from error, and bring them to the acknowledgment of the truth.” He adds, “The teachers of the primitive Church preached boldly, and prayed heartily, for the reformation of mankind.”5

Elements of Revival Preaching

In the introduction to his book Seasons of Refreshing Keith Hardman identifies six elements to the preaching associated with seasons of awakening. First, is the proposition that all are sinners. The revival preacher preaches the fall. He shows how the human condition is radically corrupted by a sin nature hostile to the gospel and the claims of Christ. He shows how the human personality is defined by a fundamental alienation from God.

Second, is the proposition that as sinners we are all spiritually lost. Not one sinner is more lost than another, which means conversely that no sinner is less lost than another. A great gulf exists between us and our Creator, and in this circumstance of life we are without hope. Our human condition qualifies us for eternal separation from the Holy One.

Third, “we cannot save ourselves from the just wrath of this holy God.” Preaching associated with revival invariably emphasizes not only the drastic plight of the human condition, but the utter inability of fallen people to rescue themselves. We are not merely depraved in every part of our being, we are also without strength. We are weak and helpless, incapable of doing anything to make ourselves righteous or reconcile ourselves to a God we have injured with our iniquities.

Fourth, it is Christ alone who is able to save us from this condition, and He does so through His work upon the cross. The Lord Jesus Christ is not a way to God. He is not one route to the divine. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one will ever come to the Father other than through His accomplishments on Calvary. In Him, God reconciled the world to Himself, not imputing our trespasses to us. God united our sins to His Son, and dealt with them in Him. Jesus’ death was more than an example of human nobility, or strength through weakness; it was atonement, an offering, whereby redemption was obtained for broken and lost sinners.

Fifth, “God will forgive, cleanse, and renew a person who confesses his sins and receives Christ as Savior and Lord.” This is the application of redemption. The preacher must show how the work Jesus accomplished on the cross deals with the problem of human sin. It provides cleansing. It cleans and sanctifies. It not only makes us right with God, it makes us feel right. Forgiveness is a release, and as Hardman says, “God is more ready to forgive than humans are to be forgiven.”

Sixth, such forgiveness is complete and total. The price for all of our sins was paid by the Son of God, and He bore it all. All our iniquities converged on Him and nothing was left unatoned for. By believing in Him His accomplishments are applied to us and His righteousness becomes ours.6

Connections Between Preaching and Revival

One of the first clear and unambiguous connections between preaching and revival was the remarkable ministry of John Chrysostom, who left six hundred sermons to posterity. He was a spell-binding orator who often preached for two hours, holding his congregation in silent awe. This was not merely due to the culture or the capacity of the people for careful listening. Caesarius of Arles could not hold an audience for more than fifteen minutes; and, poor old Origen, that great heretic of the Alexandrian school, continually complained of the lack of attention to his sermons by those who came to hear him.7 Yet, revival broke out in connection with the ministry of the silver-tongued orator, Chrysostom, which led to enormous crowds gathering to hear him preach. The effect of his words was of such a kind that it provoked a violent response from the imperial court of the Emperor Arcadius.8 The thirteenth century saw the rise of preachers of repentance like Francis of Assisi, again a ministry associated with a season of awakening. In the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries St.Vincent Ferrer delivered thousands of sermons to enormous numbers. His emphasis was the expectation of Christ’s return, with a call to vigilance and faith in the cross.

Preaching, however, has not always been in good repair. As Gordon J. Murray points out, in the first decades of the sixteenth century it had reached an all-time low in the churches of England. “The contents of Scripture were unknown to the bulk of the population,” and England’s clergy neglected preaching as an “impossible exercise.” By the accession of Elizabeth, changes had occurred in the political culture that were so dramatic that Parliament was forced to adopt laws to manage and control them.9

The Puritan era was associated with a social transformation that can only be described as revolutionary. It transformed an entire socio-political and cultural order. It produced parliamentary democracy and economic reform, favoring the poor. It made England a more equitable society. However, as Peter Lewis puts it, “the real…Puritan revolution was bloodless, spiritual and verbal.” Indeed, it was the pulpit that proved to be the “mightiest assault on world, flesh and devil.” More was accomplished through the earnest exhortations of Thomas Goodwin than through the blood-stained swords of Cromwell’s Roundheads. Peter Lewis writes,

From the despised prophesyings of Elizabeth’s lay to the hounded conventicles of Restoration England the Puritan preaching was a power in the land. It was by turns tolerated, encouraged and opposed; it was applauded, refuted and mocked; it was venerated and it was blasphemed—but it could not be, and never was, ignored.

Lewis contends that the popularity it had among the proletariat was due to the fact it made religion the “possession of the poor.” The Puritan preachers did not present a heavenly inheritance that was “far away” and removed from the plight of this world’s difficulties and pains. They presented the first fruits of an inheritance which could be enjoyed in the here and now. Heaven could be enjoyed on earth. Canaan could be possessed by the people of God in this life, at least to a measure. The puritan pastors exhorted their peoples to “boldly claim all its territories.”

The language was intentionally vivid, as is evident from an excerpt of a sermon preached by Robert Barnes, Prior of the Augustinian House at Cambridge. He preached on the privileges of belonging to Jesus Christ and having Him as Savior:

therewith to give unto all that repent and believe, all his goods: that is to say, his life wherewith he swallowed and devoured up death; his righteousness, wherewith he banished sin; his salvation, wherewith he overcame eternal damnation. Now can the wretched man that knoweth himself to be wrapped in sin, and in danger to death and hell hear no more joyous a thing, than such glad and comfortable tidings of Christ.10

The method of these preachers was to begin with the law. They would move from the condemnation it brought upon sin to the free offer of the gospel in the grace of God. The preaching associated with revival in the Puritan period was also doctrinal. They opened the Scriptures, and expounded the meaning of the Word systematically and carefully. They opened “the mystery of Christ,” to quote Richard Sibbes. They did not merely preach the message of Christ; they argued from the Scriptures who Christ was and is, what He came to accomplish, and what His accomplishments meant for those who believed in them.

Their preaching strongly emphasized application. Indeed, this was one of their major characteristics. The Puritans were physicians of the soul. They are unsurpassed in this regard. They sought to show the interest believers in Jesus have in the One in whom they have believed. Sibbes described preachers as “friends of the bridegroom,” who are match-makers, seeking to bring the Savior together with those He came to save. So they opened the riches of Christ, and showed their usefulness to each and every state and station before them. They appealed to people to repent and believe the gospel. They urged people to flee from the wrath to come. They pleaded with people to find mercy and grace in the arms of a loving Savior. Every sermon was a long appeal for decision and for conversion.

The eighteenth century was filled with revival blessing and with preaching associated with it. When John Wesley was promoted to glory, he left behind his books, his clergyman’s gown, and his abused reputation. He lived his life and conducted his ministry driven by the thought of life’s brevity, the momentous challenge to win the lost, and the need to resist all forms of procrastination in this regard. As a result, he marched through his years of preaching pleading, exhorting, beseeching, and urging repentance, conversion and a holy walk with God. He left a legacy of congregations that vibrated with renewed spiritual life.

When Wesley preached, power descended on those who heard. It was quite common for hundreds of people to suddenly come under the influence of the Holy Spirit. What we read of Cornelius in the tenth chapter of the book of Acts was written of those to whom Wesley preached. As he proclaimed the gospel of Christ the Spirit fell upon those who heard the Word. His sermons consisted of strong appeals to conversion, beginning with the call to repent. He insisted he could not preach love and grace unless he first preached law and wrath. It became a paradigm for his sermons, especially those preached in the open fields. He was gripped by the conviction that like the ancient prophets of Israel he would be held accountable for the eternal destiny of those to whom he proclaimed the Word of God.

He also preached that the call of the gospel included the invitation to live the holy life. A methodical approach to Christian piety was the backdrop to his doctrine of sanctification, and it became a part of his legacy. This was one of the areas where he diverged from the theology of his friend George Whitefield.

Whitefield’s ministry was earnest, practical and fearless. It evoked the “remarkable exhibitions of bodily excitement” we have referred to earlier. People often “cried out, fainted and were torn with convulsions.”11 Indeed, his preaching shook the world and the church, both of which it affected permanently.

J. C. Ryle described George Whitefield as “chief and first among the English reformers of the eighteenth century.”12 Given the fact that he wrote no books, except for the sermons he left behind, founded no great movement (there is no Whitefieldian Church), but simply preached guileless and pointed sermons, it is quite amazing that his legacy is as extensive as it is. Indeed, his powerful and gifted sermons helped turn a loosely connected confederation of states into a unified nation prepared for independence.

Like others of his contemporaries, he came under assault for enthusiasm and zeal. He bore the reproach revival inevitably brings upon those used of God to initiate, promote, or extend it. At the same time, people like Ben Franklin spoke of the remarkable change his preaching brought to the city Philadelphia.13 Whitefield’s sermons were filled with doctrine. He was a deliberately theological preacher. He preached the doctrines of the gospel with a direct simplicity, as well as with great conviction. He preached the necessity of regeneration, justification by faith alone, and the finished work of Jesus Christ. He was a Calvinist and so he preached the sovereign, distinguishing grace of God as the only antecedent for gospel blessing.

He preached as a dying man to dying men. His sermons are filled with urgency. He presented to his audiences the holiness of God, and urged them to consider their dreadful and lost condition in the light of it. He would plead with people to flee from the wrath to come into the arms of a glorious and all-sufficient Savior! Unlike the preaching of the nineteenth century these men did not follow their sermons with altar calls; their sermons were altar calls! He was an aggressive evangelist, who did not wait for souls to come to him, but went out after them. He sought the lost as his Savior before him. “He dived into holes and corners after sinners. He hunted out ignorance and vice wherever they could be found.”14

It is a fact that no preacher in England has ever succeeded in arresting the attention of such crowds as Whitefield constantly addressed around London. No preacher has ever been so universally popular in every country that he visited, in England, Scotland, and America. His popularity never waned. It was as great at the end of his day as it was at the beginning. Wherever he preached, men would leave their workshop and employments to gather around him, and hear like those who heard for eternity. This of itself is a great fact. To command the ear of the masses for a quarter of a century, and to be preaching incessantly the whole time, is an evidence of no common power.15

Charles Finney is associated with fiery emotion, and for good reason, his homiletical method was much more dependent on the Puritan tradition of lineal argument. He even built his sermons as a lawyer builds his case. For example:

The first point to be established, under the fourth head of this discourse, is, that impenitent sinners hate God. I shall pursue the same method, appeal to the same sources for proof, and go into the same field and gather facts to establish the truth of this position that I did in proof of the position that men do not love God. My appeal is to the well known laws of mind, as they are seen to develop themselves in the transactions of every day.16

While he advocated the use of common-life illustrations, his sermons betray a distinctively expository style, with their “carefully arranged and numbered forms of argument.”17

In 1875 D. L. Moody was “charming his audiences with a style more like that of a lay exhorter.”18 This may well be because he was a lay-exhorter! However, the great evangelist also represented a marked departure from Charles Finney who preceded him. One of the distinctives in his method was his Bible reading. Sandra S. Sizer writes, “It consisted of choosing a topic….then with the aid of a popular concordance finding all the Biblical references which bore on the topic.” She says he would “synthesize” Scriptures into “a coherent and evangelical interpretation.” This would be followed by the chief feature of his style—anecdotes taken from daily life, usually revolving around the home and the family.

Moody stood in the tradition of folk preaching. Sizer writes,

He preached only from very brief notes, which served as little more than cues to Scripture references or anecdotes he already knew well. He sometimes took on the highly excited style of a folk preacher. One of Goodspeed’s informants reported that “many times he suffers under very strong emotions, and his thoughts come so fast, and sometimes in such confused forms, that he is wholly unable to find relief in words” and other accounts mention the rapid tempo of his preaching.

Moody’s language was often “rhythmically repetitive” and “formulaic.” He would string words together so that they ran on as verses interspersed with anecdotal prose.19

While Americans may think immediately of Finney and Moody when they hear the word revival, most British evangelicals will think of the name Charles H. Spurgeon. Few other preachers have had a greater impact on the way we think of preaching in revival than the ”boy preacher of the Fens.”20 In his teens Spurgeon preached two or three times a day. He would seek God for his subjects and texts. After receiving them he would meditate upon them for his own soul’s comfort—he writes, “Not in the professional style of a regular sermon-maker, but feasting upon it for myself.”

Spurgeon’s sermons were marked by a vivid use of metaphor and simile. He spoke in the language of the ordinary man of the street. He used anecdotes, quoted noted persons, and abounded in humor. Spurgeon spoke directly to the people, which is one of the reasons they flocked to hear him. He was also dependent on the Spirit to an unusual degree.

It would be folly to try and develop any pattern or structure, form or fashion to the preaching that might be calculated to evoke and initiate revival in the church. Indeed, what is form? In the final analysis, whether a man reads a manuscript like Edwards, or preaches with fiery rhetoric like Whitefield it is not the form that is ultimately determinative of the effect. Of course, it is also the case that a long and boring sermon, delivered in a monotone voice is more likely to put a congregation to sleep rather than awaken it from sleep. God can use such preaching to bring revival, of course. After all, He opened the Red Sea. However, the sovereignty of God should never be an excuse for bad preaching, anymore than it provides cover for churches who fail to evangelize. There are hindrances to revival, and sometimes they include the preaching.

There are certain characteristics which emerge from the study of sermons preached during seasons of revival. The sermon that brings revival will usually be pointed. It will be clear and transparent. It will ordinarily be delivered with intensity and passion. Of course, we must be careful here. Passion does not necessarily imply a loud, demonstrative, or thunderous style. Dr. Haddon Robinson is one of the most powerful preachers in America today. He preaches conversationally to great effect. The same could be said of the Pentecostal preacher Rev. Jack Hayford. Passion is not about style or physical demeanor. Revival preaching is associated with that anointing of the Holy Spirit without which all passion and intensity is merely feigned religious sentiment. Language carries its own intensity and its own power.

In the case of acting, a performance is only great to the extent that more is going on inside the actor than is visible to the audience. The same is true for preaching. In a conversational style more is felt by the preacher than is heard from the preacher. However, it is that felt-intensity grace uses to awaken the unconverted, along with those who are asleep in Zion.

Revival preaching will be orthodox. It will proclaim and defend the truth. It will be an exposition of the Word.

Illustrations will illustrate and not detract from the truth proclaimed. It will also be filled with power.

Revival preaching will be bathed in prayer. Prayer is the energy of true effectual preaching, and without it the sermon is nothing more than words spoken into the air. Prayer is essential for both preacher and people. When both are prepared through prayer, an atmosphere is created conducive to expectations of blessing. The reformed synthesis of Word and Spirit means that without the Spirit, the Word is a dead letter.

When thinking of preaching in revival there can be no greater model than Peter on the day of Pentecost. For many centuries that remarkable sermon preached by that unremarkable man has remained the model for earnest preaching. In his book The Tongue of Fire William Arthur reminds us how Peter’s Pentecostal sermon was an unwelcomed message addressed to an unfavorable audience. This is one of the things that made it so remarkable, and which sets it apart as a paradigm for effective preaching in every age. If a sermon could be effectively preached in first century Jerusalem, under the shadow of the cross, there is no environment that can be considered inconducive to gospel preaching. Arthur writes, “Such is the power of utterance given him, that he produces an effect, the like of which had never been known before in the history of mankind.”

Arthur regards the Pentecostal sermon of the Apostle Peter as the “first example of prophesying in the New Testament sense.” He defines prophesying as “not the limited sense of foretelling, but the more comprehensive sense of delivering a message from God, under the impulse of the Spirit of God, and by His aid.” In that sense, he argues, prophesying has continued, given the “double advantage of ascertained truth to declare— truth which his own understanding has received, which he can enforce by citing the Word of God—and of aid direct from the Spirit in uttering it.”

While the identification of the prophetic gift with preaching raises serious exegetical problems, the powerful effect the proclaimed Word of God can have on unbelievers is unquestionable. When delivered in the power of the Spirit, the effect witnessed in Christian assemblies during times of revival is similar to that which Paul describes in the fourteenth chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians. William Arthur uses that same passage to illustrate what happens when the Word of God is proclaimed under the anointing of the Spirit of God. An individual without faith enters an assembly where other people are speaking under the influence of the Spirit. Words, he says, convey ideas, “and those ideas are accompanied by a strange power which pierces, lays open, and searches his heart.” What he feels, says Arthur, is that God has “found him out.” It is as though someone related all his sins to the speaker.

An unaccountable impression of God’s presence, of a message, a warning, a call from God, sinks down into his soul. He feels, as he never felt before, God is in this place, and, falling down upon his face, forgetful of all appearances, and heedless of consequences, periling his temporal peace, and exposing himself to every manner of remark, he worships, in bitterness of penitence, an offended but a forgiving God.21

Arthur defines preaching as that gift through which the whole of man’s nature works in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, the intellect illuminated with divine light, the moral powers quickened by divine feeling, and the physical organs speaking with divine power.22

The preaching gift, he says, not only has utility and “universal application,” but was permanent, and is needed as much for the conversion of sinners as for the edifying of saints. He then says:

If the preaching of the gospel is to exercise a great power over mankind, it must be either by enlisting extraordinary men or by the endowing of ordinary men with extraordinary power. It does often happen that men whose eloquence would affect and sway, whatever might have been their theme, give all their talents to the gospel; yet in such cases it ever proves that the religious impression produced upon mankind is never regulated by the brilliancy or natural force of the eloquence, but always by the extent to which the preacher endued with that indescribable something commonly called the unction…of the Spirit. It often happens that a man, in whose natural gifts nothing extraordinary can be discovered, produces moral effects which, for depth at the moment, and for permanency, are totally disproportionate to his natural powers.23

Arthur points out that on the day of Pentecost, “Christianity faced the world, a new religion and a poor one.” It was, he says, without its own history, priesthood, college, or patron. The Church stood against well-established religious and political systems and ingrained “moral habits.” All she had were two sacraments, “and a tongue of fire.” That tongue of fire, he says, ”burned her way through innumerable forms of opposition.” This is both the gift of God, and the Church’s chief weapon against her foes. Arthur writes that when any preacher, “in critical circumstances, is enabled to declare and magnify the truth, we are told that he does so being filled with the Holy Ghost.”24

If preaching is to be effectual in revival it must never be divorced from our experience of the presence of God. This is critical if we wish to experience revival through our preaching. Scripture consistently affirms that when God manifests His presence in a special way to His people quite extraordinary things happen. Indeed, this experience of the presence of God gives preaching the unique quality it has during these seasons of revival.

C. R. Vaughn showed in the last century how God is often said to come in judgment upon a land, or in peace and love to comfort His people. It is preaching which makes the difference. God can judge a people by giving them terrible preaching. When the people of God abuse their preachers there is no reason to believe they will continue to enjoy richness in the Word. There is every reason to expect the ordinance of preaching will become a thing of the past. On the other hand, when God is preparing to bless a people with revival He sends them great preachers, marked by the anointing and equipping of the Spirit of God.

“No ordinance,” writes Vaughn, “has any effective spiritual power, except as the Spirit gives it.” What was true for this nineteenth-century theologian is true for us also. Revival is in the air when the people of God gather to worship a God they expect will meet with them in order to speak to them.25 Indeed, it is as the preaching of the Word raises such expectations and fulfills them, that a sense of God’s felt presence intensifies the normal and regular influences of the Spirit to the heights of revival blessing. Karl Barth helpfully observes that:

there can be no doubt that the revivals and quickenings continually granted to the preaching and theology of the community have had their basis, not so much in the bearers of the great names which have come down to us in Church history….but…in the community from which they sprang.26

In other words, these great preaching events, leading to large numbers of awakened sinners and comforted saints, took place in the context of a work of grace which was occurring in the community out of which the preaching came.

A cursory glance at the history of revivals will lead inevitably to the conclusion that those ministries that flourished during seasons of great religious awakening were characterized chiefly by unusual spiritual authority. Jonathan Edwards, whose famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God, is often referred to as an example of such preaching, read every word of his sermon, lifting his manuscript up before blood-shot eyes. We know that his preaching did not just entertain the erudite and sophisticated academics of his times, but rather that some of his listeners were so affected by the Word he preached that they fell to the ground, gripped by fear in the presence of a wronged God. Undoubtedly, the effect of this man’s preaching was due to the authority given him by the Spirit of God.

What was the secret when Whitefield preached Christ to sin-hardened miners in Bristol England, causing their coal-dusted faces to show streaks of white? Two hundred years ago Howell Harris preached throughout the principality of Wales during the same season of revival. In his diary he could write of “the old authority,” and of its lack. He knew when he had it and when he did not.27 Haddon Robinson is surely correct to insist that “in order of significance the ingredients making up a sermon are thought, arrangement, language, voice and gesture. In priority of impressions, however, the order reverses.” This is especially evident as we study the history of preaching in connection with revivals of religion. “Gesture and voice,” says Robinson:

emerge as the most obvious and determinative. Every empirical study of delivery and its effect on the outcome of a speech or sermon arrives at an identical conclusion: delivery matters a great deal. Not only do the speaker’s voice and gestures first strike the audience’s senses, but his inflections and actions transmit his feelings and attitudes more accurately than his words.28

Nevertheless, as critical as voice and gesture are in reflecting the affections of the preacher, behind all preaching, associated in any way with religious revival, is the unction and authority of the Spirit. This takes primary place as the antecedent of the blessing. It is undoubtedly the central and most critical observation to make from our study of this matter. What is the unction of the Spirit? As Lloyd-Jones puts it,

It is the Holy Spirit falling upon the preacher in a special manner. It is an access of power. It is God giving power and enabling, through the Spirit, to the preacher in order that he may do this work in a manner that lifts it beyond the efforts and endeavors of man to a position in which the preacher is being used by the Spirit and becomes the channel through whom the Spirit works….Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire.29

This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Mar/Apr 2000).