The Comfortable Pulpit

The Apostle Paul wrote a swan song to his disciple Timothy while he was shut up in prison and in chains as he awaited the henchman's axe to fall and close out his ministry. In 2nd Timothy in chapter 4 we read in verse 1 and following, I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine, for the time will come they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.

I remember a story, friends, that my homiletical mentor, Dr. Stephen F. Olford, shared with me in a study one afternoon many years ago. He said he had been invited to a prominent church in Wheaton, Illinois to preach a series of messages, and upon preaching his morning and evening sermons, he felt that the entire church was in a spiritual stranglehold and he was getting nowhere. Walking back to his apartment that night after service, with the pastor of that church, he said, Okay, brother, let's have it.

Come clean with me, and tell me what's going on here. The pastor was silent and changed the subject, acted like he didn't know what Dr. Olford was talking about. Stephen Olford pleaded with that man to come to his room and join him on his knees and pray for the church and the meetings that night in prayer, but the pastor made an excuse he had to go.

So Stephen Olford spent the entire night out of bed and on his knees before God in prayer. When he arrived at church the next day, there was a noticeable tension in the air, and as he delivered the message he believed God gave him from that church, right in the middle of his sermon, the pastor of that church rose from his chair and walked up on the platform and asked if he could make an announcement. He unburdened his heart and confessed to his congregation that when he was first called to that church he was intimidated by all the college professors with all their PhDs, so he had tailored all his sermons to impress them intellectually.

Well, God was moving. Amidst his people as his pastor went on with his apology and confession to his church, suddenly the pastor's wife ran up to the pulpit and faced the congregation and confessed with tears that she was the one behind it all, that she made her husband preach to impress that church. Well, Stephen Olford told me that when this happened he was in the middle of a prayer meeting because that church was broken under the conviction of the Holy Spirit and a powerful revival was the result.

Now, share that story with your friends as I bring before you a message that breaks my own heart today. The title of my message is The Comfortable Pulpit. For a fear there are too many pastors who settle into a comfortable ministry and by doing so limit what God wants to do through them and their church.

Too many men standing behind the pulpits of this land preach for recognition rather than preach repentance. They preach to entertain rather than to awaken an alarm. They scratch the itch of their hearers rather than warn them of the dangers of dying in their sins and being cast into a burning hell.

Some pastors would rather please their deacons and offend a holy God. The Comfortable Pulpit, friends, is a dead pulpit for there be no life in that church. There will be instead much activity and busyness in the name of religion but without the presence of God Almighty.

A Comfortable Pulpit is a dry pulpit with no tears for the lost and no concern for the nation. A Comfortable Pulpit is a coffin for the pastor who occupies it for all he says and all he does has the smell of death attending it. A self-preservation in the pulpit will influence self-preservation in the pew.

The gospel will not be advanced because of the binding and blinding grip of covetousness that will keep that congregation sleeping, the sleep of death, while people perish minute by minute into a burning hell of fire. When I examine the lives in the history of the church of men and women who have been used of God to influence their generation with the gospel of Christ, it's those rare individuals like George Whitefield who, while he preached, he was pelted with rotten eggs and pieces of dead cats were thrown at him. Whitefield feared God and not man and preached a crucified Christ to the masses and God used him to shake two continents in a powerful revival.

For my part, I'd rather be abused by men and used to God. How about you, brother preacher? How about you? Let us pray.