Pastor in a Red Suit

In Revelation we read, And I saw a great white throne, And him that sat on it, from whose face The earth and the heaven fled away, And there was found no place for them. Picture in your minds, friends, that final judgment day, And if I may so speak, here is a scene at the final judgment day. A man is watching the proceedings with his son, and the son says, Dad, isn't that Pastor Joe up there, standing at the great white throne? Why is he wearing a red suit? That's not a red suit, son.

He's standing at the judgment covered with the blood of the souls of men. Pastor Joe wasn't honest with folks when it came to their soul. He was afraid to speak on hell and let us know of such a terrible place.

He just preached smooth sermons to us and taught us some nice little Bible stories and did his best to make us laugh. That's why we left Pastor Joe's church when you were in the eighth grade. We needed to get under some real preaching by a man of God who didn't fear men.

I'm afraid Pastor Joe has some explaining to do to Jesus, because God talks about the watchman's duty in Ezekiel chapter 33. So thou, O son of man, I have set the watchman unto the house of Israel. Therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth and warn them from me.

When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die if thou does not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it, if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul. Pastor Joe was afraid to preach against sin and inform men of their duty of repentance because he didn't want to upset his unconverted deacons.

So he just told us some funny stories interlaced with some Bible references here and there. And now Pastor Joe is standing up there before God covered in red. He's ashamed to lift his head and look at Jesus, and he is embarrassed to look at his former congregation because he has bloody hands.

I'm reminded about a story of Dr. R.G. Lee, the Memphis pastor who was famous for preaching his sermon Payday Someday. There was a member in Dr. Lee's congregation, an attorney, who had to be out of town on business frequently. But no matter where this lawyer went, he made sure to catch a train back to Memphis on Saturday night so he could listen to R.G. Lee preach on Sunday.

He just loved to hear that man preach. Eventually, this lawyer got cancer, and he was in the hospital dying, and he called for his pastor to come to his bedside. Dr. Lee entered the hospital room, whose windows overlooked the Mississippi River.

The lawyer told R.G. Lee, I want you to know how much I've enjoyed your preaching through the years, and I never missed a Sunday if I could help it. I lie here dying with only a few weeks left to live, so they tell me. And I want to reprimand you, sir, for never telling me how to be saved.

You never preached the cross to where I could see it. You never put the blood out there where I could reach it. But now I'm dying, and I will die in my sins and drop down to hell, and I chastise you, sir, for your lack of duty.

R.G. Lee left that man's hospital room with his head down, feeling berated and guilty as charged. It was now dark outside as he walked down to the banks of the Mississippi River. There, he got down on his knees in the mud, getting his white suit pants dirty in the process, while he dipped his hands in the muddy water.

He knelt there, looking out across the river as the moon shone across, and while he spent some time there, he reflected on what that dying man had said, and lifting his hands out of the cold water, he raised them over his head, and right there and then, he promised God from that point forward, he would preach up the cross so folks could see it, and he would preach the blood so folks could reach it, and he changed his message that night, and in two months time, there was a move of grace at his church that shook three blocks of downtown Memphis with revival.