Preface: I sent out an email yesterday....and in that email my advice was to ...."stay in your church....and pray for your pastor....but do not die of malnourishment in the process." The implication was that today's preaching leaves us malnourished....and we need to supplement that preaching with preaching from the past. Modern sermons....and fellowship....can be a comfort....but only the preached Word of God can cut deep....and show us what we need to see about ourselves! Everything else is going to be too kind. Yet as kind and loving as a friend can be....the comfort cannot come near matching the balm that God's Word applies....after the incision has been made! This morning....upon rereading that email....I remembered a past post from two years ago that basically said the same thing....
Babylon was going to rule over Judah and all the lands surrounding them. That was the proclamation that Jeremiah had given to all the priests and prophets and princes and people. Judah had brought it all upon itself. Jeremiah had been warning everyone for decades. None of the aforementioned wanted to hear anything of the sort. Jeremiah's message went further....if the people accepted that which God said through His prophet was going to happen ....then they would get to live in peace in their own land and till their own soil....this being after Daniel and others....and some temple vessels....had previously been taken off to Babylon. If they did not accept this then everyone was going to be dragged off to Babylon....and the temple and the city and the walls....destroyed.
One false prophet....Hananiah....was incensed....and prophesied..."In the name of the LORD"....that within two years the yoke of Babylon would be broken....and all the temple vessels and the people would be returned to Jerusalem. Jeremiah walked away but God told him to go back and tell Hananiah that he would be dead within the year....and that indeed happened a few months later.
The America that we once knew is gone. I'm old enough to have lived in both. It is a different country today. We brought it upon ourselves.....and I was a contributor as much as anyone else. Trump is telling us....indeed he has been telling us since he came down that escalator in 2015....essentially....that the yoke of Babylon is going to be broken....and we are going to be greater than we ever were.
The power of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God preached in our pulpits once sustained us....just as the preaching of the Puritans sustained England and early America. Each and every believer needs the power of the preached Word of God. If we don't have it then we become malnourished and weak with no discernment. Today we have preachers in pulpits everywhere....new fangled churches with smiling faces and bigger buildings....with a ministry for literally everyone if they want one....but Ichabod....the glory had departed.
These posts exist for one reason. Oh yes I expound on politics....and there is humor in my life so there is humor in these posts....and I warn the best that I know how to warn....and I present the gospel in an evangelistic way that is representative of the way that my mind operates....but my main goal is that I might help the reader see that the high probability is that they are not hearing the power of the Word preached in their churches....that they are not...are not....hearing what they need to hear to humble themselves in this Babylon that we live in....but that there is a way if they would only but go there.
God gave the Baptist Charles Spurgeon to London in the latter half of the 1800s....and then He gave the Presbyterian Martyn Lloyd-Jones to the same city from the 1930s to roughly 1980. They....along with Anglican J. C. Ryle....and some others....kept the flame alive....and the remnant fed. When I was relatively young....Billy Graham crusades were on one of the four....that's right....four television stations....as his crusades were on TV all the time. Some quite remarkable preacher/pastor/teachers were given to us....R. C. Sproul and John MacArthur and John Piper to name but three. We were revived for a time.
Dear reader....you absolutely need this nourishment! Stay in your church....pray for your pastor....he needs it more than you or he knows....but add....add these men to your life who still preach the power of the Word of God! Show up on the Lord's Day....but get fed every day if you can from other sources! All you would have to do is Google....'Spurgeon sermons YouTube'....or....'Martyn Lloyd-Jones sermons YouTube"....or...."J.C. Ryle YouTube"....or go to....ligonier.org....or....gty.org...or....desiringgod.org.
Note: I would like to add Paul Washer's sermon to that list....and if you do go to John Piper's....desiringgod.org....look for articles written and read by Greg Morse....and this....I would to highly recommend a film to you....which I have watched at least a dozen times....it is part documentary and part drama....and very easy to boot up and watch....at....C.H. Spurgeon....The People's Preacher.
