(NOTE: A brother wrote suggesting I republish an article from November 7, 2018. Here it is, greatly revised.)
Driving to New York for a conference of reformed pastors and elders a few years ago, Mary Lee and I listened to Moby Dick. If you’ve read the book, you may remember how, just before his ship sets sail, Ishmael attends a small chapel where former sailor Father Mapple preaches. Titled “The Pulpit,” chapter eight is the story of Father Mapple’s sermon from the text of Jonah.
Ishmael prefaces the sermon with a description of the pulpit, but then a declaration of the pulpit’s universal authority, which we know God Himself has ordained:
[The pulpit’s] panelled front was in the likeness of a ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed beak.
What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.
Published in 1851, Moby Dick’s author is Herman Melville. At that time, his declaration of the pulpit’s power was universally held across our land, and had been for centuries. Now it’s dead.
Surveying the many battles among Christians over how to salvage our beloved homeland from it’s present foundering in moral degradation and shame, no one ever proposes the pulpit as any solution. This is not surprising.
Going back long before the fifties, for well over a century now the preaching of our pulpits has been devoid of proclamations of God’s Law followed by calls to repentance and faith. Across our land, the pulpits of Christ’s Church almost universally this present day are mired in the low tide mud of verbiage and rhetoric that is soft and caressing. Naturally then, men no longer look to the pulpit to proclaim the very Biblical themes preachers have long been carefully avoiding.
So again, quite naturally it is political rhetoric and the electorate Christians hype and trust to restore “Christendom.”
Not the pulpit.
The pulpits of the past
During previous centuries of our country, though, God’s power was at work in the preaching of His servants. In previous centuries, the pulpit of Christian churches has been on constant display as the prow, power, and authority of the homeland, whether colonies, states, cities, or villages.
Recall the preaching in Colonial America of Solomon Stoddard, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, the Tennents, and George Whitefield. No true history of our nation can be told or written without diving into the historical record of preaching’s Divine power at the center of the of shaping our land and culture. The voices and words of many faithful heralds of Christ were what formed our government and culture.
Yes, Thomas Paine awakened men’s baser instincts of rebellion against authority through the Enlightenment rationalism of his best-selling tracts, but Paine’s massively-popular rebellion against Biblical doctrine was less formative to the structure of our nation and the character of our culture than the preaching which preceded Paine and Jefferson.
Common Sense was hugely influential in peeling God’s people away from their sovereign, but it was the proclamation of the Word of God that awakened men’s souls to sin and righteousness and judgment, putting them on the path of the justice and truth that always is the fruit of regenerated hearts and unfailingly forms the bedrock of any healthy society’s governors and governed.
In 1740, the population of Boston was around 16,000, and that same year George Whitefield preached on Boston Common to a crowd of 23,000. From one of his sermons of the time also preached in Massachusetts, we get an idea of what sort of preaching awakened our New World:
Come ye Pharisees, come and see, in spite of your Satanical Rage and Fury, the Lord Jesus is getting himself the Victory. And Brethren, I speak the Truth in Christ. I lie not. If one Soul of you, by the Blessing of God, be brought to think savingly of Jesus Christ this Day, I care not if my Enemies were permitted to carry me to Prison and put my Feet fast in the Stocks, as soon as I have delivered this Sermon.
Brethren, my Heart’s Desire and Prayer to God is, that you may be saved. For this Cause I follow my Master, going outside the Camp. I care not how much of his sacred Reproach I bear, so that some of you be converted from the Error of your Ways….
Behold I come to you, as the Angel did to Lot. My dear Brethren, flee, flee for your Lives! Make haste! Linger no longer in your spiritual Sodom; for otherwise you will be eternally destroyed. Numbers, no Doubt, there are amongst you, that may regard me no more than Lot’s Sons-in-law regarded him. I am persuaded I seem to some of you as one that mocks.
But I speak the Truth in Christ, I lie not, as sure as Fire and Brimstone rained from the Lord out of Heaven, to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, so surely at the great Day shall the Vials of God’s Wrath be poured on you, if you do not think seriously of and act agreeable to the Gospel of the Lord’s Christ.
Behold, I have told you before—I pray God, all you that forget him may seriously think of what has been said, before he pluck you away and there be none to deliver you.
Now to GOD the Father, &c. (END)
Reading this, one cannot miss the theme of the hatred and opposition Whitefield endured as a constant across his pulpit ministry. Inside the church and outside in the fields and city common, every listener knew what this man of God was suffering for this Gospel proclamation of repentance and faith; that they must flee their wicked neighbors and cities, and run to God for forgiveness of sins. The pertinent phrases:
- ye Pharisees, come and see, in spite of your Satanical Rage and Fury
- I care not if my Enemies were permitted to carry me to Prison and put my Feet fast in the Stocks
- I follow my Master, going outside the Camp
- I care not how much of his sacred Reproach I bear
- I am persuaded I seem to some of you as one that mocks
Throughout this sermon, Whitefield never stops defending himself, his Gospel preaching, and His Lord from the hatred of the religious and political authorities. Back then, true Gospel preaching brought unrelenting hatred upon the men of the pulpit because of what and how they preached. And note this was Colonial Boston residents back in 1740 that Whitefield declared to be “in your spiritual Sodom.”
The pulpits of today
Skip forward two and a half centuries to the first decades of the twenty-first century and we have no similar preachers. Instead, what is the thrust of the pulpits which have been leading our present world?
Let us take, for instance, the pulpit and preaching of the most admired preacher over the past three decades filling the pulpit of Redeemer in—not Boston—but New York City.
There in Manhattan, Pastor Tim Keller was universally acclaimed to be our prow, and a myriad of preachers held (and still hold) him in the highest esteem, copying and preaching his own words and style. From the pulpit of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, the preaching of the late Pastor Keller caught on and spread across North America and the world. His pulpit ministry became the template Protestant and reformed pastors judged as successful, and emulated.
Having formed the suave and sophisticated words and tone of men working with him such as the PCA’s Scott Sauls, Tim sent them out across the country where they now repeat what they heard their master say. Through his disciples Tim’s pulpit has, and will continue to, lead the world for many years past and to come.
Contrast Pastor Keller’s preaching with that of Cyprian, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Knox, and Whitefield (above), and the dissonance could not be more stark.
No wonder pastors today repudiate the historic preaching of Scripture’s prophets, our Lord, and the Apostles. Refusing to follow these men of God documented in God’s Word and church history, it is the blind leading the blind. What we don’t understand, though, is that this is intentional.
A short story
Finishing our cross country drive, Mary Lee and I arrived in New York and, during my first message at the conference, I quoted Melville’s maxim, “The pulpit leads the world.”
During the following Q&A, a pastor preaching in a reformed pulpit in the Washington D.C. area was quite exercised over the statement, and cried out, “What’s your authority for saying ‘the pulpit leads the world’?”
After explaining that I hadn’t cited it, but my source was Melville’s Moby Dick, he interrupted saying he didn’t care where the quote came from, and “Where does it say that in the Bible?”
“The entire Bible says it,” I answered. From the prophets through the book of Acts where we read of the preaching of the Gospel causing the Jewish religious leaders to gnash their teeth in hatred, and the Roman Empire to be turned upside down.
He continued to be adamant in his denial and arguments, at which point he was so angry and disruptive that I asked if I might be allowed to continue speaking without interruption? He refused to grant me my request, so I asked his classis gathered there around him whether they agreed and would like to withdraw their invitation? Calmly, I said I would understand and leave, if they voted so, but that if I were to continue I would need to be allowed to speak without constant interruptions.
Not hearing any motion forthcoming from the floor, I finished that afternoon’s messages uninterrupted.
Truthfully, I was astounded that it was the statement “the pulpit leads the world” that was so offensive and caused such unhinged anger to flow unrestrained from that reformed pastor, my brother in Christ.
Pulpits that put the world to sleep
Why would a pastor publicly and relentlessly attack another pastor for the observation concerning the pulpit which has been universally understood and affirmed as a fundamental truth of Scripture across Protestant history?
Maybe a better question is whether the location and context of his pulpit ministry, Washington D.C., has something to do with his anger? Why would a man whose calling is to preach repentance and faith to the civil authorities of our nation want to deny that his pulpit leads the world?
Sadly, though, his fellow classis pastors and elders made no defense of the statement as he went off on it. They had ample opportunity to do so, but the most they could muster was silence when presented with an opportunity to make a motion for my speaking invitation to be withdrawn midstream. The rest of the men there did not minister to our national political authorities, yet they did not defend the pulpit’s Divine power and authority over the world, and not just the people already regenerated.
The power of the Word of God is declared by God Himself:
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Heb 4:12.)
Yet we must face the incontrovertible fact that we who are called by God to occupy the pulpit today are fully committed to the relative impotence of our prow; and so, like the Sanhedrin, Pharisees, and chief elders of our Lord’s time along with the pastors, deacons, bishops of Whitefield’s time, we also resent, are jealous of, and hate those who preach repentance and faith.
Biblical preaching is scandalous
Kierkegaard sums it up well:
Folios and folios have been written to show again and again how one is to recognize what true Christianity is.
This can be done in a far simpler way.
Nature is…acoustic. Only heed what the echo answers, and thou shalt know at once what is what.
So when in this world one preaches Christianity in such a way that the echo answers: “Glorious, profound, serious-minded Christian, thou shouldst be exalted to princely rank,” etc., know then that this signifies his preaching of Christianity is, Christianly, a base lie. It is not absolutely certain that he who walks with fetters on his legs is a criminal, for there are instances when the civil magistrate has condemned an innocent man; but it is eternally certain that he who—by preaching Christianity!—wins all things earthly is a liar, a deceiver, who at one point or another has falsified the doctrine, which by God has been so designed, in such a militant relation to this world, that it is eternally impossible to preach what Christianity is in truth without having to suffer in this world, to be repudiated, hated, cursed.
When one preaches Christianity in such a way that the echo answers, “He is mad,” know then that this signifies that there are considerable elements of truth in his preaching, without its being, however, the Christianity of the New Testament. He may have hit the mark; but presumably he does not press hard enough, either by his oral preaching or by the preaching of his life, so that, Christianly speaking, he glides over too easily, his preaching after all is not the Christianity of the New Testament.
But when one preaches Christianity in such a way that the echo answers, “Away with that man from the earth, he does not deserve to live,” know then that this is the Christianity of the New Testament.
Without change since the time of our Lord Jesus Christ, capital punishment is the penalty for preaching Christianity as it truly is: hating oneself to love God; hating oneself to hate everything in which one’s life consists, everything to which one clings, for the sake of which one selfishly would desire to have God’s aid to get it, or to console one that one did not get it, console one for the loss of it—without any change capital punishment is the penalty for preaching this in character.
Preaching this in character; for if the preacher (doing what our age regards as the far greater thing) plays at being objective, so that his life expresses precisely the opposite of this, then we get forms of the interesting, and the interesting never arouses persecution; on the contrary, all characterlessness is pleasing to this world.
The electorate is the fruit of the preachers they have chosen
Now in connection with the current fad of political action making the rounds of youngsters within the conservative church today, let me make the obvious point that everything going on in these United States right now, from our White House to our Congress and Supreme Court down to our state capitals and governors’ mansions, down to our mayors and school districts’ superintendents, even to the words squawking in our police cars and the smiles and frowns of our crossing guards; everywhere, the product of our own pulpits is eminently visible.
Pastors are the prow and this nation is their ship. Women are taking over our professions and courts and public offices because Tim Keller leads the world. Sodomite marriage was legalized because his acolytes lead the world. Reparative therapy is outlawed because Russ Moore and Al Mohler lead the world. Revoice was held because Bryan Chapell at his Covenant Theological Seminary, and before him Ed Clowney at his Westminster Theological Seminary, and before him Harold John Ockenga at his Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary taught the Reformed pastors of our nation never to preach the law of God, the fear of God, the wrath to come, repentance and faith; the necessity, instead, of their preaching something gentle and lowly enough not to scare the women and children, thus keeping and adding to their tithe-paying constituents.
The women and men we elect who lead us couldn’t have greater clarity in demonstrating the quality of our preachers’ work.
Let us bring this long missive to an end with another excerpt from Moby Dick, once again from the sermon preached by Father Mapple coming after Melville’s statement “the pulpit leads the world.” Bear with it patiently; before you finish, you will reap a wonderful reward:
Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down from this masthead and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me, as a pilot of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa.
But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along “into the midst of the seas,” where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and “the weeds were wrapped about his head,” and all the watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet—”out of the belly of hell”—when the whale grounded upon the ocean’s utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet when he cried.
Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and earth; and “vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;” when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten—his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean—Jonah did the Almighty’s bidding. And what was that, shipmates?
To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!
This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!
[Father Mapple] dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm:
But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him—a far, far upward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges.
Dear reader who has sway over the pulpits of America today, and the men called by God to fill them, read that last sentence above once more. Then:
Delight,—top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven.
Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath—O Father!—chiefly known to me by Thy rod—mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world’s, or mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God? (Emphasis added.)
Our final words are this charge given us by our pilot, the Apostle Paul:
I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.
But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing. (2Timothy 4:1-8)
