Listen to These Three Odd Old Preachers — Ian Paisley

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 this subject.

The Three Silent Preachers in Every Church

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 silent preacher make, but he is really never silent.

As the lighthouse is not in itself, but it shelters and displays the light of the gospel and the pulpit. The pulpit has a wonderful pedigree. It is most amazing. After man fell, the first pulpit was an entire humanitarian congregation.

The hosts of hell were represented by the old serpent himself. They represented the whole of mankind because they were the whole of mankind. And the odd-looking angels were there, both seraphim and charioteers.

...announcement from the lips of God himself. And it was the curse. He does not pronounce from the pulpit damnation on the devil and all his works. A preacher, he does not pronounce from the sacred sounding board, death upon death, damnation upon damnation, and curse upon curse.

He 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. And the curse did not fall on Adam. Please note that. But it fell on the ground, which Adam called the beast. The third message from God's pulpit was to Eve.

And it was the 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.

Abel's Blood-Stained Pulpit and the Blood Atonement

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.

He 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 evil 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 Jehoiakim 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. For his pulpit was drenched with blood, and thus the line of the martyrs of the faith and their blood-stained pulpits continued of New Testament was also true of Old Testament times, was also true of New Testament times.

Stephen, Antipas, and the Faithful Witnesses

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 gasped, cried out, Lord, kneel down, bow your voice to their charge.

And when they had said this, he finished his appeal, and after long and cruel on the block, and had it severed from his body, the block became his blood-stained pulpit. What about Antipas's 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, who 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 works, said the Lord Jesus, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seated, 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 ascended 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.

The Biblical Pulpit and Faithful Preaching

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 both pulpits. 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. He rolled 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. The 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 its accursed.

He had the hope that in such a man 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 he, 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 saints. 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 Charge to the Preacher

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.

Remember, you must preach your decreased increase. 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 do not 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, cried out, my son, come to the second.

The Pew's Witness to Attendance and Salvation

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.

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 log?

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 plea, 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. Others say some occupied me and my peer 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. 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. How many were gloriously singing and today are singing in the glorious choirs of Emmanuel's land. I would pray Lord fill up the seats in glory with converts.

The Offering Plate and the Widow's Two Mites

Let me come to the third odd. 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 plate. You say to me what the offering plate?

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 men 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 hath cast in more than they owe. For all these have by their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God. But she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she hath.

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 plates 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 contribution. Our blessed Lord sat down at these collection containers.

And we read that he beheld every gift that was placed within. That word beheld is a most suggestive word. It means observed diligently with awe. His observation in heaven, earth and sky. Sea and under the sea.

All things past, present and future. Still found time. 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.

Great Dean Virgin 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.

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. 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 of a truth. I say that this poor widow. Have passed in more than they all. For all these have of their abundance cast in.

To the offerings of God. But she of her penury. Have 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 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 ears. This was the final opportunity. Christ never returned again.

To the temple. He never stood within it. Tonight. The gospel invitation center friend. Is for you. I trust you will come. And you will say. Here Lord. I give myself away. For the whole realm. Of nature mine.

That we are an offering. Far too small. Love is so amazing. So divine. We thank thee for thy word. Thy word is true. Bless our God this message. Write it 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's sake.

Amen.