A man....any man....can enter a pulpit....and preach. It might be eloquent....or it might be inarticulate. The greatest preacher in modern church history....Charles Haddon Spurgeon....1834-1892....was a fifteen year old unsaved youth....and he knew it....who had pastors going back at least two generations. He walked into a small Primitive Methodist church...."a dozen or fifteen people" was the way he described it....in a snowstorm....unable to make it to his family church....this on January 6, 1850....almost a hundred years to the day that I was born....and listened to a sermon by a man who was filling in for the regular pastor....and Spurgeon used a word in describing him....a word that in his day wasn't as harsh as it is today....Spurgeon said the man was...."really stupid"....meaning that he was untrained in preaching....and that young man was converted that day....and the world ever since has felt the reverberations of his conversion....from a sermon given by that...."really stupid" elder who was just filling in in an emergency!
John Owen was a great Puritan pastor and teacher....renown then and now....who one day stood before King Charles II of England....and when questioned why he wasted his time listening to that uneducated "tinker"....preacher John Bunyan....said to the king...."Could I possess the tinker's ability for preaching, please your majesty, I would gladly relinquish all my learning."
I was in conversation earlier today with a wonderful Christian woman....my age....who is married to a man who had a fine career as a major league baseball player....so I used this analogy in talking about the same thing that this post is about. I gave the example of a major league baseball team that may go twenty years without ever winding up with a win/loss record over 500. She knew what I meant. Well....that is the church today....for much longer than twenty years....we have had losing seasons in the our pulpits!
Now we do not know this....for this isn't baseball....and we do not have win/loss records....as a matter of fact....we may be losing them all....and think that we are winning them all! We think....just about all of us....if the conversations that I have had over the past forty years are indicative....we think that our pastors preach just fine....maybe really good. Meanwhile....our lives are as trivial as any unsaved person....and we are uneducated in the deeper doctrines of the faith....and we would never as if need oxygen after a sermon....because of the power that the Holy Spirit laid on the words of a preacher....(Thirty years ago I would just sit in the pew after a sermon....catching my breath at the power of the words glorifying our Savior that I had just heard!)
Oh they are indeed around....preachers today who preach like preachers of the past....but they are hard to find....because the glory has departed from the church....and we have thus lost all discernment on preaching! That man....that pastor that I described in the paragraph just above this....left his church....because save for a few of us....no one in the pews realized that they had a genuine Puritan in their pulpit. They were not receptive....but only wanted their ears tickled.
I commend you if you have read this far....for these are not easy thoughts to consider....especially from a tinker like me....but I don't care what other people think.....do you? Every one of us has to break that peer pressure bondage....and trust God that we will hear the voice of our Good Shepherd!
So....tomorrow is yet another Lord's Day. The world is crumbling but the people will enter the sanctuary happy as a lark....and smile through a sermon with no power....and then exit church....again....happy as a lark? You have got some work to do. I can't do it for you....but if you put your mind to it....and reach out as if to touch the garment of Jesus....just as that woman with the issue of blood reached out to touch His cloak....He will surely....for He has promised....turn to you....and feed you....and lead you....and give you a joy in the glorious gospel....of a glorious Savior.... and majestic and powerful....'coming'....Kings of kings....a joy that you may not have felt since that first day when you believed!
We....each and every one of us....need the food of the power of the preached Word of God! We may enter heaven without it....emaciated....but we would have run a poor race....and been a poor soldier.
Addendum: That great and wonderful ministry of Ligonier....ligonier.org....has gone through a lot of turmoil since R.C. Sproul was called home. Even R.C. stumbled in his last year....as his 30th annual Ligonier Conference....this back in early 2017....the 500th anniversary of Luther starting the Reformation....chose for its conference title....The Next 500 Years....which was a very poor choice....considering that a better title would have been....The Next 500 Weeks. John MacArthur stumbled greatly in his last few years....where only God could have permitted this to happen....as Pastor John....that great defender of the faith....fell for a genuine false prophet in Trump....and championed keeping church doors open in the pandemic....a pandemic which I heard with my own ears....when he denied its existence...."There is no pandemic." Alistair Begg's wonderful ministry collapsed in one episode of his radio ministry....and the next thing you know....he retired from the pulpit. Billy Graham's Evangelistic Association....led by his son Franklin after Billy was called home....although it retains its founder's extreme evangelistic zeal....and although Franklin does have a wonderful charitable ministry....he has been one of the biggest voices in supporting the false prophet that is destroying the very evangelicalism that his father was used in building. Pat Robertson's 700 Club....is now led by his son...who totally sincere as he is....is nowhere near the help that his father was in times of decision. God has permitted all of this to happen....maybe to show us that we got too big for our britches. Whatever the reason....God had had enough of us....and the glory has departed from the church....and no more evident than in its pulpits.
