Preface: I wrote the words below this preface last Saturday evening....about twelve hours before men would enter their pulpits on the Lord's Day....and I looked it over....and just decided not to publish it. Nothing in it is new....for I have been posting the same commentary on the need for pastors to start weeping from their pulpits for many years. After the daily news of this past week....I reversed again and decided to post...but I wanted to add this anecdote....which I posted before and is buried somewhere in these paltry efforts of over fourteen years. The year was probably 1994....give or take a year. To shorten the story considerably my wife and son and I were part of a fledgling Baptist mission church....of maybe twelve people total. We had just called a pastor....a man from the South....who late in life had given up his 'sign' business to enter the ministry. It was his first sermon....and there was much laughter....(as I describe below in the typical church of today)....with the excitement of a new pastor and all. It was a very good evangelical sermon....powerful....as any good evangelical sermon should be. The benediction was given....and everyone stood up....and there was more laughter than at the beginning. Our son was only about eight at the time. I wonder if he remembers it....I walked up to the three carpeted steps before the pulpit area....knelt down....face in my hands....and wailed....'wailed' not being too expressive a description. I could not understand it....in our meetings we were all serious....the pastor was finally here....and we forgot everything that we were about.
Twelve hours from now as I sit here typing....Christians will be traveling to their churches. Their nation crumbles.....just as so often the faithful Israelites would gather for temple worship in similar times of pending judgment. There may have been armies gathering around Jerusalem....or it may be that Baal was being worhiped in Judah and Israel....and up on the mountains....as they sacrificed their children to Moloch. Armies are surrounding us at the present moment....they may be armies of hate....or idolatry....or violence....mixed in with pagan worship in the modern sense.
If you should go out today to the marketplaces....or just walk your neighborhoods....or if you are students....and take a break from your classes with a basketball game...or time in the student union....(do they still do that today? I had a professor recently tell me that students tend to stay in their dorms....with their computers....and gather there)....things will appear normal as normal can be....and if you venture out into the world....you would dismiss my statements of alarm.
Now in the time of Jeremiah's ministry....late into that prophetic ministry....as food was dwindling....and the Babylonians were at the gates....no one was confident anymore....as they had been previous years under false prophets who were telling them that God would defeat the Babylonians....but up to that point they were as we are today. We can see no further than the days shopping or the evening plans or the big game tomorrow....the Lord's Day. This was probably the same way that it was while Rome was collapsing. This seems to be the norm in how great empires collapse....no longer being vigilant....they play....as their enemies plan.
So tomorrow there will be continuous laughter at the door of the church....as people greet each other....projecting their false security. The pastor....because of his very calling....is more lost than they are....for it is his job to call them to worship.....to humility....and to constant prayer....but he has had that mantle taken away....and no more than gropes in the darkness with the rest of the congregation.
Zephaniah and Habakkuk and Ezekiel and Daniel and Nahum were either contemporaries of Jeremiah....or prophesying beginning in the days of King Josiah....just as in our day we have had Billy Graham and R. C. Sproul and John MacArthur....and many more....warning us that God would judge us....with a harsh judgment....but for every Billy Graham we have had ten thousand pastors who had no vision of what was ahead as to judgment...and therefore no warnings to give. For every R. C. Sproul or John MacArthur we had tens of thousands of teachers who had no idea of the holiness of God....and the need to be born again.
We have been oblivious to....increasingly for decades.....what should have been the obvious....our rejection of God....and His sure warnings of judgment. We will enter church tomorrow....and then an hour and a half later leave church....laughing as we entered.
The size of the church means absolutely nothing as to being in God's will. In fact....today....it might not be a good sign....for churches generally do not grow unless there is something worldly for them to offer....and much missing that they need. So for those pastors struggling with small to tiny congregations....may God encourage them....and give them strength to go on....knowing that they are in His will....tending His sheep....small as their folds might be....and may they take hope that a great ingathering is coming....of all the small sheepfolds. May their congregations be steeped in joy....not the joy of a Hallmark family day....but the joy of knowing that their King is triumphant....and is returning....the joy of reaching out with God's Word....shouting out....in effect...."All aboard to parts heavenward!"
