Preaching The Good News...

"The Desire of All Nations shall come" (cf. Haggai 2:7).
"Preach the Word, be instant in season and out" (cf. 2 Tim. 4:2). 
"Proclaim the message, persist in it whether it is convenient or not..." (2 Tim. 4:2, HCSB). 
"... And how can they believe without hearing about Him?  And how can they believe without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? ... " (Romans 10:14-15, HCSB).  

"Where there is no vision, the people perish," (cf. Prov. 29:18, KJV).  Our mission statement and vision from above should be to spread the word--the message of Christ.  "We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord," according to 2 Cor. 4:5.  But we cannot preach the good without the bad!  This is also called preaching law and gospel. Salvation is freedom from the yoke of the Law and put under a much easier yoke of  God's will and Christ's yoke.  We must get them lost first and make them realize their depravity and predicament before getting them saved!  The discerning theologian can distinguish law and gospel in the Scriptures.   Law is what God requires of us and how we measure up and fail; the gospel is what Jesus did and does for us and what we receive by grace.  Jesus and John the Baptist both inaugurated their ministries:  "Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand!"  clearly Law and our duty to God.  NB:  Although repentance is demanded of us, it's a gift of God (cf. 2 Tim. 2:25; Acts 5:31; 11:18).

We must first be convicted of our sins before we can confess them! It's not our job to convict--that's the prerogative of the Holy Spirit who shall convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (cf John 16:13).  No one is more lost or blind than the one who doesn't know his sin or realizes he's lost!  Jesus told the Pharisees that because they said they could see, they were really blind; for He came to seek and to save the lost--the precondition for salvation is that we realize we don't qualify for it.  In a play on words, we sue God for peace in His divine court!  We are spiritually bankrupt and have no options but to repent and turn to God in faith! He dictates the terms and makes the rules.

Preaching is a bad news/good news announcement and preachers ought to know where the parishioners are spiritually and reach out to them in love, not over their heads, nor getting personal, nitpicking, pointing to or stressing any one sin over another as a hobbyhorse or agenda such as taking up a campaign against smoking.  We aren't doing anyone any good by bypassing or skipping the bad news of sin, judgment, and hell but giving aid and comfort to the enemy and confirming people in their sins. Having false assurance is worse than no assurance.   It's really an act of love to tell it like it is and to warn people of the wrath to come and that there's only one escape through Christ's blood.

We must not ignore the hard sayings of Jesus or the offensive truths that people don't feel comfortable with because the preacher not only can comfort the afflicted gut afflict the comfortable--false assurance is worse than no assurance.  "Speak the truth in love!"  (cf. Eph. 4:15).  To preach the Word means to do it in love and honesty, not to water it down or domesticate it!  We don't gloss over the truths that seem like a hard pill to swallow! Martin Luther said that the sinner doesn't see his sin, and it's the preacher's job to show it to him.  Only when we know the whole truth are we able to appreciate the good news and put everything into a spiritual perspective.

In sum, Arthur W. Pink said, that "there some who say they are saved, even before they have any feeling that they are lost." We must see that the gospel must be preached clear enough to be rejected too; we must not preach easy-believism or cheap grace as Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it and offer salvation without repentance but realize that repentance and faith go hand in hand and can be distinguished by not separated--believing repentance or penitent faith--they cannot be divorced! Soli Deo Gloria!