Lessons from the pulpit

 

Yesterday my wife stumbled on to an old wooden pulpit sitting out in a pile of junk to be sent to the trash.  Convinced we needed this “gem”, she pursuaded Jeremy and me to quit our all-important Black Ops 2 conquest and go and grab it.

 To say it was “rough” was an understatement.  I took one look at it and could tell it had about six coats of touch up paint on it and the last coat was probably put on when it was moved to the basement youth room area.  (Somehow white and orange didn’t seem to be the colors you would find in an auditorium.)  For some reason, maybe it was my wife’s voice in the back of my head, I told Jeremy, “Let’s get it – we will sand it up and see what happens."

Later that night we decided to pop the little 1’x1’ top off the stand and you wouldn’t guess what we found.  Under this simple top was a message for the builder – “Built by L.W. Sayer for the F. M. Church, July 11^th, 1895”.  To say we were shocked was an understatement.  117 years had past since that pulpit had been placed in the church – 117 years.

Today I started to strip away the old paint.  I have to tell you, I am fascinated by this junky old piece of Guernsey County history.  Several times I stood behind the pulpit and every time my heart flooded with so many thoughts.  Let me share a few of them with you:

1 – As I stood there, I reached out, like most preachers do, with both hands on the back corner of the pulpit as if to steady myself before the message.  I said to Jeremy, “look at how worn down these corners are!”  The paint was gone. The sharp edges were gone. Just years of oil off the sweat of the men of God who were leaning on the pulpit, moved by the Spirit of God to preach the word to eager and listening hearts. 

I imagined the fire and brimstone evangelist letting them have it- face-red, veins popping out of his throat with his voice billowing through the room. 

I thought about the quiet preacher, the humble theologian, who had slaved over and over the message all week, and now felt solely unworthy to bring what he had prepared. 

I wondered, “How many men had the privilege to stand behind this old chunk of wood and preach to the people?  How many revival services did this old pulpit attend?  How many missionaries returned home to stand and tell their stories of the nations hearing about the Lord Jesus Christ?”

Worn corners…because the word of God was heavy upon their spirit…WOW!

2 - I also thought about all the people sitting in that building for 110 plus years.  O, the messages they must have heard.  How many times did the pastor or missionary share the greatest verse in the Bible?  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” How many weddings and funerals did the congregation come too?  How many times were they comforted by the 23^rd Psalm?  How many broken souls wondered in on their last leg and received mercy when they heard the Romans road?  How many times was this place packed to hear God’s word expounded at Christmas?  How many people heard about Jesus for the first time on Easter?

You know, the more I work on this old chunk of wood, the more special it seems.

3 – The smell of the citrus paint remover now is filling the room.  I’m sure it would be important for me to have a mask on, but none the less I work on.  As I was removing the 6 or so layers of paint, I thought about the burden I felt the first time I was the interim pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Cresaptown, MD.  I recall leaving my office and going to the auditorium to practice my delivery and completely breaking down in tears.  How can I speak for this God?  How can I do anything for Him?  Of course, as I scrapped away, I thought – “How many times did the pastor(s) weep on that very pulpit for souls to come to Christ?” 

Ministry is a series of heartaches surrounded by moments of great joy.  Pastors are often broken, beaten men who feel the weight of the responsibility of preaching the Word.  I know the tear stains are there, I just couldn’t see them yet.

4 – Of course I had to post this rare find on Facebook, right? Quickly someone responded “just think, that guy is now with Jesus now...”- I hope so.  In 117 years this pulpit has had many men grip its wood work and pound its top.  I am sure that most have now gone on to glory.  I thought about every pastor who truly preached the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ our messiah.  How upon breathing his last breath stood face to face with our Savior and heard  - “well done…well done! Welcome home.”  I thought about these brothers in Christ now “seeing face to face…” the glorious King of kings and being comforted for all those moments when in this life, comfort fled from their grasp.  They now know what their song leader sang - "what a day that will be, when my Jesus I shall see.  When I see him face to face, the one who saved me by His grace.  Then he took my by the hand and lead me to the promise land, what a day, glorious day that will be."

Now, I am starting to feel a little bit more impressed with this old pulpit.

5 – Then I had a somber thought.  It's only 117 years old!  I have lived just 3 blocks from the building where we rummaged through the trash and rescued the old pulpit.  For the last 3 years the building was empty – EMPTY!

 Somewhere along the line of time,  a preacher decided to stand behind this pulpit and preach something other than the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The gospel of self or maybe the gospel of prosperity – either way, the Word no longer went out like a light - piercing the darkness of evil; or like salt seasoning and preserving.  It slowly dimmed. Now the glory has departed.  "Ichabod" had been written on the pulpit and on the church.

In my soul I stopped and prayed, "Lord in my lifetime, should the you tarry, I want to see Your glory return as I preach from this pulpit." My iphone was ringing out my prayer – “Show us, show us your glory, show us, show us your power, show us your glory Lord…we want to see you…” (Track 13, The Vertical Church Band). 

I am pretty sure that when I finish this little project and I use this old piece of wood, I'm pretty sure when I open the Word of God for the first time, I will be overcome with emotion.  I thank God for men who have come before me with such a burden to follow the Lord.  Men with a passion for the lost.  There is nothing sacred about this pulpit.  It's wood and nails and that's about it.  The power is in the Word that is proclaimed from the man of God who is using the pulpit.

This old thing is a lot like you and me – once tossed aside but now being restored to what it was created for –Did I mention, this project is going to be fun!

Pastor Nate

I am sitting in WVa with snow all around and its only the first of November.  So depressing! Yet, I have forgotten how beautiful it really is here.  For example, yesterday eight pastors went caving in the Lost Caves Cavern.

What an amazing time, and what an amazing look into this glorious earth the Lord has created. 

I want to go back an touch on PASSIVE WORSHIP again.  One of the reasons they chose WVa. is apart from cow-tipping and cave spelunking, there was really very little to do but spend time together and to read.  I got stuck on Psalm 40.  I wrote in the top of my Bible, “David’s Psalm against the Passive Worshipper.  Let me show you a few verses and see if you agree. 

Verse 3 – “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.  Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD.”  Did you see it?  “MANY WILL SEE AND FEAR…”  David was overwhelmed with God’s work to the point that he wrote a new song about it and did not keep it quite.  Many saw it and were amazed.  Now this is going to be a theme, so hold on – People who are fired up about what God is doing tell others about it.  Are you telling others about what God is doing?

Verse 5 – “You have multiplied, O LORD, my God.  Your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you!  I will PROCLAIM and TELL of them, (I love this next part) yet they are more than can be told.” 

Isn’t that incredible.  David says, in essence, “I can’t write songs fast enough. I can’t tell my family quick enough…it’s like, God did this and then he’s already done something else amazing…I can’t keep up!”  That’s great.

Verse 9 – “I have TOLD the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD.”  Now David moves to church.  At the temple he is proclaiming the glad news.  But did you see it, I hope so…he says “I have not restrained my lips…”  Passive worshippers are ok with restraint.  They are afraid of what man might think.  They won’t engage at all for fear that others will laugh, or even worse ridicule what they say God is doing.

Verse 10 – More of the same – such a blessing, notice: “I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; (so what did you do then David?) I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;  I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation…”  Now that is Worship.  In front of thousands or even millions, King David models real worship.  He is unafraid to ascribe worth to all the people.  WOW

One more verse, notice the affect he wants for the congregation: Verse 16 “But may ALL who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation SAY continually, “Great is the LORD!” “  David is saying – “Down with passive worship Israel, Great is the LORD.  Great is his Faithfulness.  Great is his Salvation.  Oh I long for every one to join in and say GOD IS GREAT!”

And as your pastor, I desire that as well.  People need to hear your story of the great things God has done for you.  Let it start with Salvation.  Tell them how he rescued you from the kingdom of Darkness.  Let them hear about how he has healed you, or others in your family.  Let them hear about how he has provided at just the right time, and met your need no one else knew about.  There is so much we can praise him for every day. 

Lastly, Don’t be shy about what God is doing when we all come together.  Be like David…”I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation…”

Pastor Nate

All the Jewish Holy Days Point Us To Jesus.

Several weeks ago I shared in our message that all the holy days of Israel pointed us to Jesus and his work.  Acts one begins with the day of Pentecost.  The day of Pentecost - It was 50 days after the Passover.  It was the 4th of the Old Testament Feasts of Jerusalem.  Each Feast was fulfilled by Jesus.  To a faithful Israelite seeing Jesus in each one of these days should have been a no-brainier. 

The First was Passover -Passover,  where the blood of a innocent, pure, precious lamb saved you from Death Angel and brought you out of bondage.  The tradition was that prior to the sacrifice you were to bring the lamb into the house and it lived with the family for three days.  Think of how attached the children would have been to this precious little innocent animal.  Then, the lamb was slain and the children and adults were to eat it all in one setting.  It is not lost on me that Jesus came and lived among the people for 3 years and so attached were the children and adults to him that they would chase him and follow after him from the shore as he traveled the sea of Galilee.  Yet they crucified him and in Jesus' death on the Cross, he paid the penalty of our sins for those who would believe.  His blood poured out rescued many from the power of Sin and made a way for all to come.

The Second Feast was Unleavened Bread - It was the same time as Passover.  It was a week long and started the day after Passover ended.  Every  family was to search his house for leaven/Yeast and remove it...search for Sin.  get it out of there so that can have fellowship with God.  Leaven was seen as the thing that separated us from God.  Their house had to be clean of leaven and Our "house" has to be clean.  Paul say to the church in Scripture - "7Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. 8Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."  Now, Paul is saying because of Christ death, let us repent of our sin - (clean out the old leaven...) and come to him

3 days into the festival of Passover and Unleavened Bread you had the festival of First Fruits.  In First Fruits the first of fruits of your grain harvest was brought to God so that the rest of the Harvest would be acceptable.  Question - Who is worthy to be the first fruits for all mankind - You or me?  NO!  Only one.  Jesus.  Do you see the connection?  Jesus dies on Passover and 3 days later is raised gloriously for our justification.  Don't believe me that he is the first fruits prophesied in the OT.  Notice what Paul said in 1 Cor. 15;20-23 - "But each in his own order: Christ the first-fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ."  His death, and subsequent victory over death provides a way for all who come to be acceptable to God.

That brings us to what we talked about a few weeks ago, the feast of Passover. It was  50 days after Passover.  Pentecost in the OT was a feast to celebrate the ingathering of the crops.  It was the first reaping of the Harvest.  Oats and Barley were brought into the storehouse. Pentecost celebrated the bountiful harvest the Lord had blessed the people with that year.  Now, after Peter's sermon, we will see the beginnings of a Harvest.  The harvest is the birthday of the first church, where 3000 souls will come to be saved and gathered in under the name of Jesus as Lord and Savior, the first fruit.

Now in Israel you did nothing for 7 months but work and wait.  At the end came the feast of trumpets.   During the  feast of trumpets you laid down your work utensils and went home and worked no more.  It was the end of the season.  Paul speaks of the end of this age  in 1Thes. 4:17 - "Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord...."  Our work is not done yet.  We are to work until we are called to be home with Jesus and we can lay down our weapons of our warfare and go home and rest with him and enjoy the feast he brings to the table.

Only two more!   Next was the day of Atonement.  The Day of Atonement was where the people's sinfulness was judged by God. (Lev. 23)  Now,  one day Jesus will Judge the world and anyone not resting in him alone and trying to do any work to justify their personal righteousness will be put out of his kingdom, and destroyed.

And that brings us to the final feast which was the Feast of Tabernacles.  The Feast of Tabernacles was a week long feast where everyone would come together as the people of God and would set up booths or tents around the temple and live in community and communion with the Presence of God.  They would remember what it was to live in exile and in wandering for the week.  It was the people of God in communion with their creator.   It is so much a picture of the eternal state were we come together and tabernacle with God and go home an worship the king....whose kingdom has come and whose will is being done. 

All of the feasts pointed to Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith.  What a wonderful Savior - foretold from days of old and coming again to rule and rain.  "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done..."
Rejoice in Him
PNate OUT

Passive Worship

I have been thinking about a statement I made in a message a few weeks back..."One thing that angers me is PASSIVE Worship."  I  got to thinking about what that looks like to me.  Maybe I should define that a little better.  After all, I don't want you to come to church and sit there and wonder if I think you are being passive in your worship and upsetting me.  So I ask myself, "what are some words that describe a person passive in worship?"

First off, maybe we ought to describe "worship".  I am not saying that this is about all that singing that we do...that is only part of it.  We are so blessed to have Shawn who is picking out some God-glorifying songs for us to sing.  Our lifting our voices is only one part of it.  Part 2 would be, (at least in our service), the worship of giving.  Then there is Part 3 - the worship in Prayer and Preaching of the Word of God.

Worship is ascribing worth to something - a object, a person, a god, a sport, a feeling - etc.  It is what we spend our time on.  It is how loud and vocal we are in praising the efforts of something.  It is what is captivating our souls.  Often worship is loud, and cheerful.  Sometimes it is silent and reverent. Most often your true worship is evident by others.  Evident in what they see you doing.  Evident in how often they see you doing it.  Evident in what symbols or emblems grace your house or yard or even your bumper. 

So, with all that ground work aside, back to the question - what does passive worship look like to Pastor Nate?

1) Passive worshipers come to church with NO JOY.  The fruit of the Holy Spirit of God, that lives in you, is LOVE, JOY, and so on.  Passive worshipers look like they sucked on a lemon and had to eat coal prior to coming to church.  They forget that they are coming to worship the God of the universe.  Their creator and thier sustainer of their very life.  Now I am not saying there are moments when I feel the burden of life and I am not joyful...but I think about Nehemiah who couldn't come before an earthly king with a sad face, and feared for his life when he did, (Nehemiah 2:2), and then I think - HOW MUCH GREATER IS GOD!  Too often pettiness and self-pity rob us of the utter joy of worshiping God.
2) Passive worshiper come to church TIRED.  Being tired is no excuse for not maximizing your worship.  I am saddened that the days have passed where Saturday Night was a night of being home and getting ready to for worship.  My dad reminded us often that "tomorrow we are going to worship King Jesus...You need to be wide awake and ready!"  I often scoffed at his notion, but now I see it.  To many Christians come to church and have no chance of ever getting anything out of the message from God...because they are exhausted from staying up all night doing needless things instead of allowing the mind to rest and meditate on the thought that "tomorrow I am going to worship King Jesus!"  I realize some people work, and I look at those troopers and I rejoice that they are doing their best to stay awake...They are not passive...they are trying.  Passive worshipers have chosen an all night movie marathon, or playing the latest video game, or chating with friend on some on-line site, or worse.  The truth is, I wonder how many would act differently if they knew Jesus Christ was physically going to be there?  Would we lay our our cloths? Would we go to bed early and get up even earlier?  Would we shower and use some good smelling spray before we left our house?  Would we line up ready to see him?  Would we sign up to help set up the room so everything is just right?  And when he came - would we sing our loudest and listen our very best?  Or would we sleep right through every thing he says?
3) Passive worshipers care more about how they sound then engaging in songs of praise.  The truth is church, none of us would make any reality show and all of us are off just a bit.   But when God says in his word, "Praise the LORD! Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly! " (ps. 149) - what I don't see there is anything in relationship to how good you sound.  Praise for what he has done must pour forth from you mouths, whether you are tone deaf, or an opera singer, monotone or have a 4 octive range.  I say, let it fly sister, let it fly.  Passive worshipers would never stoop to do that, rather to stand silently.  God doesn't tell us to "do" to many things - He does tell us to SING!  (and to sing a new song...God loves new songs)
4) Passive worshipers are too proud to participate. Participate in what?  Good question. 
- To proud to participate in welcoming and greeting - "People can come to me...I don't want to get to know people."
- To proud to participate in the pastors "zingers" that our designed to help keep other awake, (those who have worked all night) or designed with a purpose - "they didn't make me do that at my last church...(right, and they didn't care about you either)."
-  To proud to participate in giving and sharing.  Giving of tithes and sharing of burdens.  It is not to infrequent that the most sharing I get on our friendship registers is so surface level, that I wonder if people really want to have God help them in their big problems.  Scripture says - "Cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for you."

Well - that's a pretty full list.  Did you find yourself there?  Here is the good news...1 John 1:9 tells us that we must confess our sins to God, 9and passive worship is a sin), AND - he will forgive us and cleanse us from that unrighteousness.  God, who is faithful and just, will not cast you aside, but welcome you back with open arms...

Also, consider these helpful hints:
- If tomorrow is worship, get plenty of rest.
- If tomorrow is worship, come with the goal of blowing away your pastor with you enthusiasm
- If tomorrow is worship, message the pastor and ask him what the passage of scripture is, so you can read it ahead of time.
- If tomorrow is worship, unplug the Xbox/ps3 gaming system at 10pm
- if tomorrow is worship, invite all your on-line friends to Harvest.  "that's crazy, they won't talk to me..." Exactly, and then you can get some sleep.
Lastly, if tomorrow is worship I hope you get butterfly's.  Why?  well it's not the President you are meeting, or the Queen of England, or even some famous person or athlete...no, I hope you have butterfly's because you are going to see the King of Kings and to tell him of all his wonderful love and grace and mercy and how much you have adored his death on you behalf.

PNate Out

May Newsletter