In was around 1994....I'm going to make this short.....it was a small mission church....twenty people maybe....and we called a pastor....it was his first sermon....and when it ended all the people stood up and turned to each other and started laughing and talking. We had just worked for many months to search and interview and call a pastor....from the South....a Southern Baptist....he preached a sound evangelistic sermon.....which is what we wanted....and now was the time for laughter and gaiety? I immediately walked to the front three or four steps up to the pulpit....collapsed on them.....and wailed....wailed! Do you know what wail means? I was crying out to God to help us to take seriously what we had just heard. I'm reading Joel tonight....and came to the following verse...and remembered that Lord's Day thirty years ago....
"Let the priests, who minister to the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar; Let them say, 'Spare Your people O LORD, And do not give Your heritage to reproach, that the nations may rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples. 'Where is their God'?" Joel 2:17 NKJV
It wasn't just our small congregation....for the problem is all across America. We can hear a sermon on the cross....(not often but now and then)....and when it is over....comment on a good sermon....and then say something like this to the person next to us....'So where are you watching the Steeler game today?" America is what it is today in no small part because of what our Lord's Days have become.
The following post is from January 23, 2021:
I've brought this up with brothers and sisters in Christ on a few if not a number of occasions....but always felt that it was never really accepted by the hearers....or possibly that I never really explained it properly. I've put the thought in a few posts....and there also had no confidence that I explained it adequately....but today while listening to a Charles Spurgeon sermon....he told a story that came very close to conveying what I have been for so long trying to convey. Here is that story...
There was a young man who was not a believer....who was utterly lost....but who heard a preacher at a small country church....who preached the gospel...."earnestly and fervently....with tears in his eyes".....and the young man felt the weight of his sins! He followed the preacher home after the service....conversing along the way....and they stopped at a friend's house and had dinner. The young man entered the house feeling as a sinner should feel....guilty and in need of a Savior....but the preacher's conversation on the walk and at dinner was worldly....lighthearted....with joking. The young man wished that he...."could unburden [his] heart"....but he could not....as the preacher did not talk...."on anything that he said in the pulpit." The young man left the house that night and stomped his foot.....saying that it was all a lie....for the preacher's words of great importance were obviously just words.
Later in life that man was ill and called for that preacher....who came....and he asked the preacher if he remembered him...."No"....was the answer. Did he remember once preaching at that country church....that the preacher did remember. He told the preacher that upon hearing the text of his sermon that he was...."laid very deeply at my heart"....on which the preacher said..."Thank God for that"....but the man told him not to thank God too quickly....for he had during the sermon...."deeply felt his sins"....but the worldly conversation afterwards.....on anything but Christ....."scattered" all those impressions....and he was now dying....and headed to perdition.
I can understand this common behavior....worldly talking and laughter...."frothy light-heartedness" as Spurgeon I believe put it....after a sermon that is typical of today....but not after Christ and His gospel are preached...."earnestly and fervently"....even at times with tears. I've experienced the latter on occasion when I could detect sadness in the preacher's eyes after the sermon....that the congregation had so soon joined into triviality....and I've experienced also where the preacher had himself....so quickly....returned to the world
This sermon by Spurgeon was titled....Not Of The World....and can easily be Googled.
