You can relate that to the scene today. In so many churches the principle of the working church has been forgotten. There is no encouragement to the people to get into Christian service. Sunday Schools wane and are closed; the visiting is not carried out. People don't have avenues of Christian service. So what happens? They feather their nests. They are tempted to live for the world and for careers and homes, for better this and better that, and for comfort. The temple foundation was laid, the building erected, the wall just about begun, and everything stops and things immediately decay and start to go wrong. They pursue what are seen to be the benefits and the blessings of the nations around. That is today's compromise! What a dilution of Christian living, we have seen!
Another reason for decay and decline is the lack of exhortation or application of the Scripture. There are conferences in the United States to which thousands gather, and they gather in the comfort that all they will hear is doctrine. If you drove to one of these splendid conferences in your top-of-the-line Cadillac, there wouldn't be a word of reproof for you. If you owned half a dozen homes or ranches and swimming pools, and lived for riches and self-aggrandisement, no one would ever lay a finger on you at such a conference. It is all doctrine, doctrine, doctrine. There is a huge area of ministry excised out, entirely omitted. There is nothing practical. So is it surprising that thousands of Christians get more and more worldly, more and more committed to expensive and luxurious things, and appearances and entertainment and recreation? You can see it here in the book of Ezra: feathering your nest was everything. Haggai and Zechariah – they were the contemporary prophets trying to wake them up – said the same. We have seen it in our day: less ministry, people attend fewer services, so-called Christian. Even where the word of God is truly taught, there is no application, no standard, no Christian service, no Christian life. Many churches these days only have one service on the Lord's Day. The Prayer Meeting and the Bible Study will be combined, so there is not much time either for prayer or for Bible study. Everything is reduced, diluted, cut down. Very often, the preachers, even if they are sound, are not preaching the gospel. They are not preaching soul winning evangelistic sermons, and the churches are not seeing conversions. As a result everybody gets desperate: ‘Oh dear. We had better make a concession, and adopt all the contemporary Christian worship movement.’ There is something in human nature that likes new things, like the Athenians. Even the educated set, the philosophers, who the apostle Paul found spent all their time seeking out some new thing to teach or to learn about. That has happened in the churches. New things! So that we must do something different. So they introduced choirs and anthems. Then that all gets a bit boring, so next it is solos and instrumental pieces. And even that isn't enough so we’ll get the children in to perform little items. We will have drama, and will have something new going on all the time. There is a church that has a circus performance combined in the service. But there is something in human beings that will fall for novelty. After eighty years, Ezra comes in, and the most diabolical point has been reached that will bring judgement upon them. Our business is to avoid this.
I remember as a youngster, the first church I had membership in when I was saved, and I was told by somebody how they called their pastor. A lot of the people in the church were good sound people, and the officers of the church who taught the baptismal classes and all that sort of thing; were Calvinists and well taught and passed this on. But something had gone wrong. They had called a minister who was evangelical, yes, but fearfully weak and gave way to all kinds of things, and the church started going downhill quickly. I was told as a youngster, Well, we were warned. We had one member, one elderly man who, when this minister was called, stood up and said, ‘We cannot have this man for this reason and for that reason’, and he laid down all the points where the prospective new minister was completely unclear on biblical doctrine and on the way of conducting church life. But the trouble was the people got very restless and angry with this man, and some would even hiss at him: ‘Sit down, sit down’; he is a nuisance, he is just an antibody. In the end, of course, they called the new man and he was there for years. He was a disaster, really, for what had been such a promising place. How things can fall, and good people can be carried away, and deterioration can set in! One of the things we learn from Ezra is to be on our guard, to be for the old ways, to be for the doctrines of the Bible, yes, but to be not only for doctrine, but also for application, gospel preaching. We believe in the working church principle. The voluntary principle is important, yes, but as many as possible to be engaged for Christ in some way. Decline comes partly due to the failure of the preachers, the failure the seminaries, letting in all sorts of people who they shouldn't have let in, so that they end up in pulpits: people who are not soul winners, people who have not left the world themselves.
Spurgeon's first question to people who wished to join the Pastor’s College in his day was, ‘Have you won souls?’ The second question was, ‘What was your experience of leaving the world when you were converted?’ Those questions were top of the list. But those questions wouldn't feature today.