Observations while at church on Sunday night

By: American Decency Staff

Jan and I took a rare trip last week to celebrate our 44^th anniversary.   In addition to celebrating our years together, a top priority was also to go visit my mentor and our friend Donald E. Wildmon and wife Lynda (who we love and admire.)

What a time we had first at American Family Association headquarters in Tupelo, MS with Don and Lynda but then with our dear friends Buddy and Carol Smith, Randall Murphree, Randy Sharp and the great staff of AFA – and then on we went to spend the entire weekend in Townsend, TN (the peaceful side of the Smoky Mountains – 15 miles from Gatlinburg).

I’ve entitled this email alert as “Observations while at church on Sunday night.”
But first, I want to mention a special request that I recently made by mail to much of our mailing list.

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Observations while at church on Sunday night.

While in Townsend, Jan and I heard of a church where a pastor was faithfully preaching strong Biblical messages.  We arrived at the church only 5 minutes early. There were only two other cars in the parking lot.  We wondered if services were called off because it was Memorial Day weekend.  When all was said and done, there were less than 15 people in attendance. 

After a lively song service (despite the small numbers), the pastor preached. He was an expository preacher preaching through the book of Ezekiel.  It was a powerful message with rock solid application both through the word itself but through specific application to the sins of our current generation. 

Afterwards we spoke with an elder’s wife and asked “Aren’t there usually more people?”, and, we asked “How many attend in the morning?”  She answered that sadly the numbers are low – that the attendance is around 40 in the morning.  The elder’s wife stated that the pastor had been there for about nine years. Thankfully, she added, pastor doesn’t seem to get discouraged.

I downloaded a number of this pastor’s other sermons.  Each of them was characterized by strong Biblical reference prepared by a preacher desiring to feed His flock and to bring glory and honor to God.

The message preached by the pastor was that the sin in Israel, in the City of God, included idol worship, prostitution, greed, violence; that God, despite having warned His people repeatedly by way of His prophets, was about to judge after years of patiently waiting for them to return to Him.  The pastor showed us in God’s Word that the 80 elders in the city of Zion were hardened to the prophet Ezekiel’s words, to God’s messenger – they were so convinced that since they were in God’s Holy City and that they were Israelites that God would quite assuredly not deal with them.

God through Ezekiel and other prophets had warned repeatedly that the day was coming.  But they would not hear.  Ezekiel describes God’s removal of His glory from the people of God and ultimately God removes His protection and allows pagan nations to come in with violence and brutality.

I came away from that service particularly struck by wonderment as to how that church was not having people in line at the door to come and hear the word of God preached by this faithful preacher of God’s word.

In addition, I saw that the American church is similarly positioned:  Too often smug in our Christian heritage way back to our founding.  Aren’t we Americans after all? 

I pray that we aren’t like those 80 elders in Jerusalem who don’t even see when it’s too late, that God has left America and we are so stupefied in our hardheartedness – no tears, no repentance, no turning back, no confession of sins. 

Father:  Keep the fire of the Holy Spirit burning somewhere.  May it begin with me.  May it begin with each one reading this.  Help us, Heavenly Father.  Have mercy upon us once again.

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photo credit: tray via photopin cc

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