Elder Bradley Calls on the Lost!

Just the other day I stumbled across an old sermon preached by Elder Lasserre Bradley, previous and longtime pastor of Cincinnati Primitive Baptist Church. He was gracious enough to send it to me roughly 15 years ago when I was going through a rough time.  I had often thought of it over the years, thinking that I had lost it, but thankfully I had not.

The sermon is entitled Believing In Jesus, the message being drawn from John 3:17-18.  After all these years, I popped it back in the CD player on my way to work.  The impact it had on me was just as profound as it was when I heard it for the very first time. Evangelical messages with appeals to the lost (and that’s what this was) can have a great impact on the saved, as well as the lost, for we are always “coming to Christ”.  Tears of joy poured from me, not only because of the message, but that I was listening to one who has broken free of the shackles which Hardshellism places upon the freeness of the gospel; a freedom that I now enjoy myself.

You will sometimes hear children of God speak of how there are certain men who can say a word or a phrase a certain way and it will have a great impact on them.  I’ve heard this said of Charles Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd Jones.  And I can say it for those sermons I’ve heard of Elder Bradley.

How refreshing it was to hear a sermon with an introduction, clearly stated heads, growing to a climactic appeal to the lost at the close!  This is preaching.  Sadly, such sermons were few and far between during my time among the Primitives. Most sermons were scattered with no clearly defined topic, hyper-calvinism’s deadly effect of balking at the responsibility of laboring in the Word, and sermon preparation, but rather relying on the Lord to pour it in the top of the head on Sunday morning.

I could not wait till the end of the sermon because I knew what was coming:

“And the wonderful good news of this gospel is that you cannot perish trusting Jesus Christ! You may feel wretched, undone, unworthy, missing the mark, coming short in every possible category, but the scripture declares ‘He that believeth the Son hath everlasting life’.  And so that night in the jail at Philippi when the jailor comes in and cries out ‘What must I do to be saved?’, did they say ‘We’d like to answer that question but there’s a lot of theological issues that will have to be resolved, and we’ll have to give some background and explanation, and only when we have covered a number of things can we get…’

No, they said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved!

That’s the gospel message recorded by divine inspiration in God’s Holy Word.

If you today see yourself as a needy sinner, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved! And he that believeth is not condemned, but has everlasting life.”

Glorious!