The Danger of Preaching Without Preparing the Hearts of the Hearers!
The big mistake many evangelists make today is when they water down the Gospel presentation. Instead of starting with the issue of addressing sin and the need for repentance, so many times have they jumped into the benefits of salvation like a crooked salesman rather than telling anyone of the real need of salvation. Other times, it can be compared to somebody who is told to wear his or her parachute to "improve the flight" rather than to tell them the truth about the possibility of a plane crash or for it's for his or her safety. Another example involved that anybody would think you are crazy to sell anything you own to give a person the treatment he needed for his disease unless that person knew of his disease. Those are just a few analogies that you can see in there.
Based on Kirk Cameron's example of the flight course, it shows how dangerous wishy washy evangelism is. The problem of mankind in general is that there is the tendency to hate bad news but like it or not, the good news cannot be fully embraced without the bad news. Let us think of the instance that the passenger wore the safety jacket to "improve the flight" and then coffee spilled, would he not get angry? On the other hand, what if he was told that the safety jacket was there just in case if something goes wrong with the plane? He would hang on to that safety jacket even if he passes through all that bad experiences because he knows the safety jacket is for his safety.
In "The Gospel According To Jesus", Dr. John F. Macarthur had also noted in Chapter 11 of the book about the condition of the soil. The four accounts of the parable of the sower show the wayside soil, the shallow soil, the weedy soil and the good soil. Any good farmer would know the problem of the soil and the seed. You can't expect any unprepared soil to bear good fruit. The lesson of the parable of the sower is not only agricultural in nature but also evangelical in nature. If you expect to have a good garden, you must get to work. You must break the soil, you must soften the soil, yo must get deepen the soil, you must get rid of the weeds and thorns if you expect good harvest.
Now the problem of today's evangelism as I've mentioned earlier is the crooked salesman approach or to make sure that the person says "yes" even if that conversion is shallow and not genuine. While the truth is you can't lose your salvation, yet there are people who claim to be saved but they were never saved to start with (1 John 2:19). What is worse is when the Gospel preaching is watered down and a lot of times, more often than not that the Gospel is jumped into the benefits rather than focus on the bad news first. In "Hard To Believe", Dr. Macarthur's recent edition (where the erroneous entry was revised) had presented the idea of true converts vs. false converts. It's sad to say but shallow evangelists tend to believe that I teach works salvation, hence it leads to the "Lordship salvation controversy" which I was somewhat a participant into. These people are very hardened against the Gospel and can be seen as the obvious haters. It's just like the atheist's hardened heart that they more often than not, admit they want to harden their hearts against God. Romans 1:21-22 warns that they know God but they refuse to acknowledge him as God resulting to their foolishness as they profess to be wise.
The first soil is the hardened soil or the hardened heart. In the Old Testament, we have the example of the Pharaoh's hardened heart. Now God said He would harden Pharaoh's heart which is not in the case, He did it himself but he allowed (1 Samuel 6:6). Now why did Pharaoh reject the word of Moses and Aaron? It's simple as to the fact that his heart was hardened against it. In any practical application to gardening, if the soil is hard, there is no root to be bound to it. This heart is hardened for many reasons. You can have a love for sin and what can be worse is when, a sinful person does not even acknowledge the fact he is a sinner. You may name the religious adulterer or religious adulteress as this type of lost soul. They openly commit adultery, they go to Mass together, they claim to love God and they think nothing is wrong with their adultery. You may have the Pharisees of Jesus' day or the teachers of works salvation - many teachers of works salvation teach works salvation but a lot of them live life like they have a license to sin. Some charismatic preachers were hypocritical to preach "Sin No More" but were later followed by a string of scandals.
The second soil is the shallow soil or it's just on the surface. I remembered the illustration that Kirk Cameron placed that one day, there's this plant that bloomed so much than the other then some day later, the plant withered while the other plant that was blooming slowly soon survived. The problem with the first plant was because there was not enough root. This is like how somebody I knew supposedly converted to Christianity, his wife claimed to be a Christian but later, the husband re-converted to Roman Catholicism and the wife also converted to Roman Catholicism. It was quite different than one person I knew who after a messed up marriage (he was a Roman Catholic and his wife was a Christian) later got saved and got baptized and he is now a true Christian. Both examples can be used on showing the shallow conversion against the true conversion. This can represent a group that supposedly believed the Gospel, showed some impressive performances like helping out in missions but in the end, they leave the flock because they weren't truly saved to begin with. There was not enough root and when bad times come, they are most likely to jump the ship proving they weren't truly saved to begin with.
The third soil is where the weeds and the thorns are plentiful. Do you know why gardeners are told to remove the weeds and the thorns? It's because they intervene not only with planting but also with the growing of the plants. Weeds block out sunlight which is needed for the plant to grow. The thorns would choke the plants that are growing and a good example might be the parasitic matador plant. The matador plant is a thorny plant that can kill any growing plant it attaches itself to. If the matador is not just a picture of bitterness, it can be a picture of interfering with the person getting saved. The thought of worldly concerns is another like the rich young man whom Jesus witnessed to was more concerned about money than salvation plus he thought he was good enough already. Now not every true convert really counted the cost back then before they got saved but certainly, they were more than ready to accept the Gospel because their hearts were broken. However you cannot be a true believer if you are not willing to pay the cost of salvation because true salvation endures to the end. A Christian may temporarily get into the problem of worldly concerns but the uprooting there is really very constant. However the heart that is too focused on the world will end up returning to the world after a false conversion.
Now we have the good soil which is ready for plantation. Now don't get met wrong... no Christian right now is truly perfected. Pastor Paul David Washer had said something like, "Well even if you have had the fruits of a genuine conversion and continued fellowship but you can't expect a perfect repentance. I've seen tears but you can't expect to have repented of all your sins because you are not yet perfect but you are on its way to perfection. You will still fall into sin and the Father chastises you out of love so you will continue in the path of perfection and to assure you that you are His. God chastises you to assure you that you have eternal security, you are saved and you cannot lose it. On the other hand, I am against people who claim to be saved and we see no signs of God chastisement in their lives whenever they sin." When you think of it, the good soil may not be necessarily free of weeds, it may not be perfectly deep or there are still hard parts but the heart is continuously broken, weeded and softened so the Christian grows in grace all the more. When the good soil represents is the heart that is broken from sin, that sees the horrendousness of sin, this heart though not perfect is now repentant of sin and this heart is ready to undergo daily gardening with God. That is the good soil that we are talking about.
How are the hearts of hearers therefore prepared to receive the Word of God? Remember that a good old godly preaching begins with the Law. David acknowledged in Psalm 19:7 that the Law is the testimony that converts the hearts. Romans 3:19 acknowledges that by the Law of God all are guilty. Galatians 3:24 teaches that the Law is the schoolmaster that brings you to Christ. I find it absurd to preach to people the good news of salvation without having to preach first about the bad news of sin and damnation. People must first be convicted of their sins. Do you know how Billy Sunday won the drunkards to the Lord Jesus Christ? He told them that alcohol was offensive to God. Do you know how Martin Luther came to launch the Reformation? He soon saw that the Law as the mirror that shows us our sin and it is the hammer that breaks our self-righteousness. Do you know what Peter did in Acts 2:14-40? He quoted the Scriptures in context, gave warnings about the judgment of sin, convicted the people of their sins, preached Jesus for who He is and everything about Him and well his words pricked the hearts of the sinners, convicting them of their sins before he told them to get saved and then get baptized. Remember do not take Acts 2:38 out of context - it means first repent and the baptism happens because of the remission of sins. Salvation always precedes water baptism.
It's not enough to let the person say, "Well accept you are a sinner." then that person goes "uhuh" with the Roman Road. Now I don't deny some people got saved in spite of a shallow Roman Road presentation but the Roman Road is never complete without any Gospel explanation. People can easily ask, "Well I am not a sinner!" deep inside their heads while they pretend to agree. Again, it must be broken and show them the truth about sin. What might be best inserted into the basic Roman Road is to at least, convince the person that he or she is a sinner. Even the whole Romans 3 is already the Roman Road showing sin and the need for the Savior. When I thought of how Ray Comfort addresses the person, he uses the Ten Commandments to reveal their sinfulness. Remember Jesus revealed to the woman in the well of her ill repute as an adulteress who had five ex-husbands and is now committing adultery with another woman's husband in John 4:7-29 we see the adulteress' testimony. In John 8:1-11 we also see how the Law convicts us of sin that it made the adulterous woman only throw herself at the feet of the Savior.
It's also important to remember whenever Jesus preached, He did not say, "Well who wants to accept me into their hearts just by praying..." but instead He said, "Repent ye and believe the Gospel." That is, we must realize that repentance and believing come together. Some say I teach works salvation whenever I emphasize of a repentance of sin. To metanoneia (the Greek for repentance) about one's sin is to change one's mind about sin and the Savior... a repentance of sin may not necessarily result to a repentance of unbelief but a repentance of unbelief is always preceded by a repentance of sin. Again, I don't expect a perfect repentance but a true repentance is not just a one time event but it is continuously perfected. A true repentance does not only repent of sin and unbelief at one moment but it continues to grow, it continues to turn from sin, it continues to reach until the day of the Lord Jesus Christ as a mark of a true conversion. All other else, any false repentance will always lead to a false conversion.