Pigmies in Pulpit Pagans in Pew

Years ago, I was asked to do a radio interview on Christian Radio, and the female moderator related the following story to me. She said that she once had a job that was eye-opening in regard to ministry. She said she was hired by an organization to conduct a religious poll on the ministry, and her job was to randomly telephone pastors around the country and ask them the following question, why did you become a pastor? She told me that she had contacted a thousand ministers all across America, and she was shocked by their answers as to why they entered the ministry.

She related that one man said he became a pastor because he was a single man, and he wanted to meet women. Another man said that he was gifted with a winning personality that attracted crowds, so that is why he became a pastor. Another man said he wanted to be a downtrodden in his community, so he thought the best way to do that was to become the pastor of a church.

One man said he was a good public speaker, so this occupation best fitted his talent. Another man said he had graduated seminary and earned a doctor degree, and this was his credential for entering the ministry because he was properly educated. And this radio host told me that after speaking to hundreds and hundreds of ministers across the country, they each had a reason they became a minister, and it was mostly self-motivated.

And out of the thousand men she contacted, only one man, she told me, had a different answer from all the rest. He was a black pastor in the South, and he said the main reason he became a pastor was because God called him. Well, that's my little induction, friends, to my message today, and now I want to preface my message by saying I know several godly pastors in this nation and in other nations who sincerely serve God and believe their Bible and preach the full counsel of God, but I fear there are many, even a majority, that fit the title of my sermon today, friends, which is Pygmies in the Pulpit and Pagans in the Pew.

This sermon is a call to repentance and a return to God. It's a clarion call for revival and reformation, for revival is our only hope. My text can be found in Deuteronomy.

You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in chapter 18 and we will be in verses 20 through 22. Here now is the Word of God, and may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of His Holy Word.

But the prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously, thou shall not be afraid of him. I will stop there, friends.

Our text today presented a dilemma that faced the Jews during the period of monarchy, and that was how to distinguish between true and false prophets. Shortly after Judah went to exile in Babylon, but before the fall of Jerusalem, God called prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel had to contend with the rash of these charlatans who claimed the office of prophet. And during turbulent times, the people wanted to hear words of hope and security.

Security. And this produced the greatest outbreak of prophets for hire with optimistic lies. They basically told the people what they wanted to hear to be accepted by them and to be popular with them.

But if you read your Bible, friends, you will soon see that God's prophets each faced hot persecution, hot opposition from kings, queens, and even religious leaders. Jeremiah spent a good deal of time in prison, and a lot of God's prophets had stones thrown at them for delivering the message hot from the heart of God. And even today, in the chaotic times in which we live, where evil grows by leaps and bounds, and it seems that the devil has the highway, an easy message in hard times is often an unreliable one.

I've seen good churches that once did great things for God. When their pastor died and a new man was picked by the deacon search committee, that church became irrelevant for God. A big mega church recently in my area picked a man to be its pastor who never had had any previous pastoral experience before.

He was a successful businessman, and he was picked to be the pastor of that big church because he knew how to run a big organization. That's where we are today, friends. I'm sorry we're living in a day of sad spiritual apostasy.

I pity the members of that church who are starving spiritually under such a false shepherd. We've got CEOs in our pulpits today instead of prophets, but we need prophets. We live in a day of pygmies in the pulpit and pagans in the few.

Very few are truly being converted today under such false teaching. The apostle Paul exhorted his disciple Timothy to preach the truth, preach the word, be instant, in season, out of season, reprove, rebrook, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall heap to themselves teachers, heaven-itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned onto fables. I doubt you'll find many pastors today, friend, who rebuke sin and reprove sinners.

And if you walked into a thousand churches all across America this coming Sunday, I wonder, I wonder just how many sermons you would hear on sin and hell and a future judgment that awaited all mankind. Would you hear sermons on repentance and regeneration and the dangers of damnation? Or would you just hear jokes, funny stories, and pleasant encouragement to live a more peaceful life on your way to heaven? Would anybody hear a blood-stained Christ who demands first place in a person's life? Or would you just get offers of cheap tickets to heaven from a little Jesus? I repeat, we live in a day with pygmies in the prophets for our time.