Preface: The following post is from September 3. Tomorrow is yet another Lord's Day....and this year it will undoubtedly be a day of Christmas sermons. So if you walk out of church without having heard a single thought that you hadn't heard on just about every previous Christmas Lord's Day....you might try listening to this sermon....just Google....John Piper, The Child To Be Born Will Be Called Holy....and if you need another....which you probably will....John Piper. A Savior Is Born.
If you are a baby boomer you might remember the comedian Alan King? Johnny Carson had him on a lot. It's been a long time but if I remember the story it went like this. Alan had three brothers....two very established medical doctors....and the third was just a gambler. Their father was elderly....and one day he developed a serious limp. The doctor brothers took him to the hospital....and examined him thoroughly....ran tests....but could find no obvious reason for the limp. So they took him back home. The third brother....the gambler....took the father in the bedroom to put him to bed.....and then came out and said that he found the reason for the limp. The father had taken his socks off and stuffed them in the toes of his shoes. The gambler diagnosed what the trained doctors could not find.
Charles Spurgeon gave a similar message in one of his sermons. As he had heard it....the famous French naturalist Buffon had a large gathering of fellow men of the French Academy of Sciences....all philosophers of one sort or another....to his estate....this about a hundred years before Spurgeon's time....and in his garden he had a decorative glass globe. One of the philosophers happened to put his hand on the globe and noticed that it was hot on the side away from the sun....and cooler on the side directly facing the sun. These great men....as Spurgeon described them....must have had a grand time speculating on how this could be....from refraction....to reflection....to absorption. Buffon was not satisfied with the answers and called over the gardener....who told them that the one side of the globe was getting too hot....so he had just turned it around.
That reminds me of some humor that Billy Graham added....I believe while given an honorary doctorate. It seems that a man went down south on his annual hunting trip....and asked the proprietor of the hunting lodge if he had a dog named Preacher. The owner said "No"....but the man persisted....."But I heard that you had a very good hunting dog named Preacher?" Then the owner remembered..."Oh yeah....we did have a good hunting dog named Preacher....but then someone came down here and called him Doctor....and he ain't been a lick a' good since."
I know a man....a preacher....pastor of a relative....I heard him preach....and I doubt that he's ever been a lick a' good. Am I allowed to say that....or are men and churches allowed to keep people away from the gospel of Jesus Christ for their whole lifetime without anyone permitted to criticize what they do in the pulpit? God can choose anyone to carry His message...to whomever He wants to hear it. It my have been ten or twelve years ago that I first put a message in these posts to pastors....with their seminary degrees....that God can choose the man who is cleaning out the drain in their basement to set them straight.
Spurgeon was converted on a snowy Lord's Day morning by a man filling the pulpit of a small church....who as Spurgeon told it....could not even pronounce many of the words correctly. John Owen wished that he could preach like the tinker....John Bunyan....the man who fixed pots and pans for a living. J Gresham Machen choose to defend the laughed at fundamentalists....for they at least were true to the fundamentals of the gospel.....and of course....God chose at one time to rebuke through Balaam's ass.
Woe to these shepherds today who think that their learning is over. Woe to the doctors and lawyers and academics who are incapable of humility as it concerns their own eternal life. Woe to all of us....to me also....if we place ourselves above another believer....for we have nothing that was not given us....and if something was indeed given us....we had better use it to God's glory!
Note: I spent an hour and a half today at the gym....(this note is also from September)....and on a walk. That is my physical love of exercise in life....lifting weights and using machines....and has been since I got my first set of weights for Christmas in 1963! Other men may enjoy golf in the same way. It is not the golf nor the fishing nor the running that can be a problem. I literally thank God every time that I walk out of the gym....for the ability to enjoy this....especially at my age. My new toy....(today is first time I used it)....is a mechanical counter.....so that I can finish a set on the weights....and just push the button....thereby listen more intently to the sermon on my headphones....and not have to remember what set I was on. No....it is not the golf....it is the mind. I knew a man who would praise God as he walked the golf course. When I was a runner....running the track....(the counter would have helped back then).....I spent the time in deep thought. As for doctors....(PHDs or otherwise)....or lawyers....or academics....as I mentioned in the above post....they are noble professions.....(I could not have been any of them).....but they are also a temptation to think one more important than the patient or the client or the student. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a tremendous preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ....in the dry land of England for over a half a century.....(late 1920s to his death in 1981.) He was known by many simply as....The Doctor....for he was rising fast in the medical field until he got tired of helping to heal men....only to see them return to rebellion to God....choosing instead to help in healing their souls.
