I take the promised Holy Ghost, the blessed
power of Pentecost, to fill me to the
uttermost.
I take.
Thank God He undertakes for me.
And the people of God said, Amen.
You may be seated.
I want to preach tonight upon the subject,
Listen to These Three Odd Old Preachers.
I'm not suggesting that the two brethren that
have just left the pulpit are odd old
preachers.
I'm sure many people would suggest to you
that I'm the oddest of them all.
Every church has three odd old preachers who
are in perpetual employment.
They speak not a word, but their message
is loud and clear.
In fact, they are the longest preachers ever
heard, for they never come to those words
that many people hope come soon.
Finally, brethren, Amen.
Their message cannot be timed, because they are
preaching for eternity.
The first great silent old preacher in the
church is the pulpit himself.
This pulpit brings a message.
Not a sound does this preacher make, but
he is really never silent.
As a lighthouse is not in itself the
light, but it shelters and displays the light.
So the light of the gospel and the
pulpit displays that gospel light.
The pulpit has a wonderful pedigree.
Its history is most amazing.
After man fell, God himself erected the first
pulpit in Paradise of Eden.
And he addressed an entirely ecumenical congregation.
The hosts of hell were represented by the
old serpent himself.
Adam and Eve represented the whole of mankind,
because they were the whole of mankind.
There was none else.
And the all-looking angels were there, both
seraphim and cherubim.
That pulpit heard the first announcement from the
lips of God himself.
And it was the curse of God on
Satan.
A preacher who does not pronounce from the
pulpit damnation on the devil and all his
works.
A preacher who does not pronounce from the
sacred sounding board death upon death, damnation upon
damnation, and curse upon curse is not a
faithful preacher.
Better have no pulpit at all if it
is not employed in the work to which
it was originally erected.
The pulpit which God used had secondly pronounced
from it the message of hope for the
sinner.
It was a good news pulpit that the
mighty Jehovah used that day in Eden.
The curse did not fall on Adam.
Please note that.
But it fell on the ground which Adam
cultivated.
The third message from God's pulpit was to
Eve.
And it was a message of supreme grace.
She had been an agent of the devil,
but she was to become the agent of
God.
And through womanhood, God the Son would be
incarnate in the flesh and become the savior
of the whole world.
If every pulpit conveyed those three points faithfully,
what a different world we would have today.
And what a different church every church would
be.
If you take up your Bible and look
with me at the pulpits from which the
words of gospel light have sounded forth, you
will be clearly instructed.
What about Abel's pulpit?
Abel's pulpit was the first pulpit occupied by
man to be stained by the blood, the
martyr's blood of the preacher himself.
The great argument that Abel declared to his
twin brother from that pulpit in the field
was the argument of the blood atonement.
Cain was a rejecter of God's way.
He was an enemy of God's gospel.
He was the first of the evil crew
of unbloody Unitarians, as Mr. Nicholson used to
describe them, who denied the blood of the
everlasting covenant.
But the voice of him who died after
he preached the sermon was still heard.
The crimson pulpit may have been silent, but
the voice of Abel's blood from the ground
cried loud enough to be heard by God
in heaven.
From Abel's blood-stained pulpits, there is a
great array in the history of the church
of blood-stained pulpits and blood-stained pulpiteers.
What about Zechariah's pulpit?
Our Lord paid testimony to Zechariah in the
following words, that upon you may come all
the righteous blood shed upon earth from the
blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of
Zechariah, the son of Barakas, whom he slew
between the temple and the altar, Matthew 23,
35.
Notice this is not the son of Jehoiakah
in 2 Chronicles 24, 20, and 21, but
Zechariah, we learn, was killed in the same
way as Abel, see Zechariah 1 and 7.
It could well be prophetic of yet a
later Zechariah, the son of Barak, who would
not be the last of that name mentioned.
Here we have one of the most interesting
coincidences in all the Bible.
Here was a preacher faithful unto death.
He erected his pulpit, he contended earnestly for
the faith and fearlessly.
But his pulpit was drenched with blood, and
thus the line of the martyrs of the
faith on their blood-stained pulpits.
What was true of New Testament times was
also true of Old Testament times, was also
true of New Testament times.
Think of Stephen, Paul, Peter, and Antipas.
What about Stephen's pulpit?
When Stephen made the dock his pulpit and
preached the truth to his accusers, what happened?
They that heard these things were cut to
the heart and gashed their teeth on him.
And they stoned Stephen as he called upon
God and cried out, Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit.
When he kneeled down and cried with a
loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to
their charge.
And when he had said this, he fell.
What about Paul's pulpit?
Paul fought a good fight.
He finished the course.
He kept the faith.
And after long and cruel imprisonment, he laid
his head on the block and had it
severed from his body.
The block became his blood-stained pulpit.
What about Antipas' pulpit?
And what of Antipas, an almost unknown man?
But Christ in heaven said, Antipas, my faithful
martyr, was slain among you where Satan dwelleth.
Antipas was a faithful witness in the very
teeth of the devil himself and in the
very seat of Satan's mighty authority, held fast
to the faith of the blood atonement and
refused to deny the name of Jesus.
I know thy work, said the Lord Jesus,
and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat
is.
And thou holdest fast my name and hast
not denied my faith.
Even in those days, for in Antipas was
it my faithful martyr who was slain among
you where Satan...
And what about Peter's pulpit?
What shall I say of Peter?
He never forgot the final words to him
as a young man, uttered by Christ before
Christ descended up into heaven.
When he was writing the last of his
epistles, old man Peter said, knowing that shortly
I must put off my tabernacle, even as
our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me.
The occupier of the pulpit on the day
of Pentecost, tradition records, sealed his ministry with
his own blood.
He refused to be crucified like his master,
saying he was not worthy.
We are told that his murderers crucified him
upside down.
Let it not be forgotten that the only
time this word pulpit is mentioned in the
Bible is in the book of Ezra.
We read Ezra the scribe stood upon a
pulpit of wood which they had made for
the purpose.
The gospel preacher requires a pulpit, both for
his ministry and it may be afterwards for
his martyrdom.
The preacher and his pulpit are inseparable.
When the famous and sometimes infamous Dr. Joseph
Parker died, the historic white pulpit of the
City Temple London was very difficult to fill
after the amazing preaching ability of Dr. Joseph
Parker.
At length the congregation called a young minister
from Northern Ireland, Campbell by name, to succeed
the great Parker.
Campbell had sold out and preached a gospel
which was bloodless and a Bible which was
powerless and he did not cover over his
infidelity.
An uproar shook London.
A man who remembered that Dr. Parker when
he opened his great City Temple said that
if any apostate ever became its pastor and
preached another gospel, let him be accursed and
expressed the hope that in such circumstances someone
would have the courage enough to write that
scripture over the very front of this church
that he had just opened.
One morning it was discovered as Campbell preached
his infidelity from the pulpit of the City
Temple that a man had obeyed what the
old preacher had said and the condemnatory scripture
had been erected over the front of the
church.
He that preaches another gospel, let him be
accursed.
The uproar particularly in congregationalism to which the
City Temple belonged denominationally and also in the
English non-conformist religious world generally was an
uproar indeed.
It became fiercer and fiercer each week.
Campbell was forced to resign and disappeared into
the ranks of the Church of England never
really to be heard of again.
Meanwhile the City Temple continued its descent into
apostasy and eventually had as one of its
pastors a Methodist, Leslie D.
Weatherhead, a graduate of Cliff College.
He sought to explain away Christ's virgin birth.
In his last book that he printed, The
Christian Agnostic, he suggested that Mary was a
strumpet and her child was illegitimate.
Meanwhile the gospel of Christ continues to prevail
and it shall prevail until every enemy licks
the dust at the Savior's feet.
Faithful preachers of the old time religion are
the true defenders of the faith once for
all delivered to the sea.
They may have to die for their faith
but their faith can never die.
It is in itself the seed of everlasting
life.
It is only powerful when it is tied
to the Bible which lies in its nest.
And its occupier at all times is diligent
to preach the Word of God.
Anybody can preach but only a born again
man walking in the light can preach the
Holy Word which has made him wise unto
personal salvation.
And he alone will make his hearers experience
the same salvation too.
The pulpit's long continuing charge to the preacher
is simple.
The pulpit would say to me, I elevate
you to be physically above your congregation.
I implore you to use that elevated position
to elevate your Savior above all earthly things
and demand of them loyalty to Him as
King of kings and Lord of lords.
Remember you must preacher decrease but Christ must
increase.
I would like to say that when I
started my ministry on this road 60 years
ago I quoted these lines.
I do not ask that crowds may throng
this building, that standing room be at a
price.
I only ask that as I preach the
gospel men may find Christ.
The great C.H. Spurgeon when he preached
at the installation of a son as a
minister of Greenwich Baptist Church cried out in
his sermon as he leaned over the pulpit,
he cried out, my son preach Jesus up.
Oh come let us adore Him, Christ the
Lord.
But I must come to the second old
odd preacher.
It is the pew upon which you sit.
There was a time when Protestant churches had
no pews and had no seating.
The people who came who did not want
to stand brought their own chairs and seats
with them.
You will remember when the Scots Protestant Jenny
Geddes wanted to protest against the Romanising of
the church service in St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh.
She threw the stool that she had brought
to sit on at the preacher's head.
And she cried out, will you dare to
say the mass at my lunch?
I wonder how many seats would fly in
the air tonight if the same spirit of
uncompromising Protestantism was suddenly resurrected.
Soon after the reformation Protestant meeting houses installed
seating.
We have heard what the pulpit preaches to
the preacher.
Let me tell you what that pew you
sit on is saying to you.
Sometimes I am fully occupied.
In fact I am uncomfortable at times because
more and more people want to take my
seats.
At other times I am half empty and
alas many times not occupied at all.
I have never missed any service in this
building since the day it was opened.
I have heard more sermons and listened to
more service than all of you.
I am never absent on Lord's Day mornings
or evenings.
I have never been given an absent mark.
On weeknights I am always in my place.
But the pew has something more to say
than that.
It says I am always very, very happy
when a whole family occupies me.
Father, mother, brothers and sisters.
I am really proud then.
I know I am in full use.
But when no one sits with me I
am distracted.
I mourn and say I am not being
used.
Some people say it is too cold to
come.
Others say it is too hot.
Some say the preaching is not good enough.
Others say it is very good.
I say perhaps if these people were preached
some really bad sermons they might appreciate the
good ones even the most.
Another thing that annoys me is those who
do not come in time.
I know it is better late than never.
But it is better never to be late.
But I have a more serious thing to
say.
I have given my seats to those who
are now in eternity.
Who never responded to the gospel appeal which
Christ really offered to them.
They sat in the comfort of God's house
on earth.
But alas, they are now in God's present
house for all eternity.
They left me one Lord's day morning never
to return.
And now they are lost, lost, lost forever.
But I have another sight to mention.
Some occupied me and my pew came to
know the Savior.
They were completely transformed.
Their attendance became regular.
They never missed a service.
And they sang as they had never sung
before.
Then one day they did not come again.
But I know from what the preacher said.
They now occupy one of the best seats
in the Father's house.
Could I as a preacher tonight comment on
the remarks of the pew?
I often ask myself this question.
How many have sat and listened to me
and went away into the darkness and shadow
of death?
How many were gloriously seen and today are
singing in the glorious choirs of Emmanuel's land?
I would pray Lord fill up the seats
in glory with converts from this church.
Let me come to the third odd old
preacher.
I have spoken of the pulpit.
I have spoken of the pew.
Now let me speak.
I know you will smile when I say
this.
Let me speak of the offering plea.
You say to me what the offering plea?
But let me tell you it was Christ
himself who introduced me to this third preacher.
If you turn with me to Luke 21
verse 1.
Where he looked up and saw the rich
man casting their gifts into the treasury.
And he saw also a certain poor widow
casting into their two mites.
And he said of a truth I say
unto you.
That this poor widow have casted more than
they owe.
For all these have by their abundance cast
in unto the offerings of God.
But she of her penury had cast in
all the living that she had.
The treasury of the temple at Jerusalem was
situated in the woman's courtyard.
That woman's courtyard was 200 feet square.
And was enclosed by a colony.
Inside and against the wall of the woman's
court were 13 receptacles.
Offering pleas called trumpets.
Because they were shaped like trumpets.
Nine of these were for the legal Jews.
Which the Jewish people must pay.
But four were for voluntary contributions.
Our blessed Lord sat down at these collection
containers.
And we read that he beheld every gift
that was placed within them.
That word beheld is a most suggestive word.
It means observed diligently and thoughtfully.
Just think about that.
Christ with all things under his observation.
His observation in heaven, earth and sky.
Sea and under the sea.
All things past, present and future.
Still found time to sit at a collection
plate.
And watch the gifts that were being given.
There came a woman.
She is described as a poor widow.
In the Greek text, one who works for
her daily bread.
She was her own bread earner.
The word occurs nowhere else in the New
Testament.
The great Dean Burgin said, So then amid
all the weariness of his human body, the
Lord Jesus in the anguish of his human
soul, amid grief unrevealed and bitterness of the
spirit inscrutable, the Lord of heaven and earth
sat down to watch the ways of one
of the humblest of his creatures.
He saw before him the destruction of that
temple.
The fall of Jerusalem.
The wrack of nature.
The crash of worlds.
The setting up of the great white throne.
The gathering together of all the tribes of
all the earth.
He saw all this.
But he had time to see a poor
widow.
And it was his divine pleasure to scrutinize
her act and weigh it in a balance
and to pronounce upon it, camely and at
length, as if life and death hung upon
the issue.
He called unto his disciples.
He didn't whisper to them.
He called them.
And he said, Oh, but truth, I say
that this poor widow hath cast in more
than they owe.
For all these have of their abundance cast
in to the offerings of God.
But she of her penury hath cast in
all the living that she had.
Truly the Lord sees not as man sees.
The offering plate is an odd old preacher.
But a preacher it really is.
It cries out to us all as it
presents itself for our offerings.
Oh, don't mistrust the reasoning of those.
Do not trust the reasoning of those who
like Judas discourage and criticize real liberal giving
to God's work.
For remember that Christ personally studies all responses.
He weighs them all in his eternal balance
for commendation or condemnation as he did to
the rich givers here in this incident.
Mark your, this was the final opportunity.
Christ never returned again to the temple.
He never stood within it again.
Tonight, the gospel invitation, sinner friend, is for
you.
Oh, I trust you will come and you
will say, Hear Lord, I give myself away.
Tis all that I can do.
Christ demands everything.
We're the whole realm of nature, mind.
That we're an offering far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine, shall have my
life, my soul, my all.
May that be your prayer this night for
Jesus' sake.
Let's bow our heads.
Father, we thank Thee for Thy Word.
Thy Word is true.
Bless our God this message right in all
our hearts.
Forbid us to leave this church still on
the road to hell and darkness and a
lost eternity.
Turn our feet into the way of life.
Bring us to the cross.
Wash us in Your blood.
And save our souls for Jesus' sake.
And everybody say, Amen.