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Holt Seventh-day Adventist Church

Daniel Towar

The Journey of President Lincoln’s Lectern

The topic today is entitled the journey of President Lincoln's lectern.

We call this a pulpit, but a lectern is a stand.

And I've said to some people, That sounds pretty boring to me.

We won't really be talking about a lectern, but the journey of that lectern and what does it mean?

Our Father in heaven, this morning, this early afternoon hour, we pray for your Holy Spirit to open our hearts, to guide us, to bless this presentation.

When Jesus came to give His sermon on the Mount of...

I think of various mountains in His and presentations that he made, but the Sermon on the Mount.

It's the most well-known sermon in all of history.

It contains chapters 5, 6, and 7 of the book of Matthew, I'm going to read the first few words from Matthew 5, beginning with verse 3 and following on through verse 12.

The world today needs those words of Jesus.

Just a mile or so away from here, a couple, 3 days ago, there was a firefighter who was run over purposefully.

A young man who'd just been married a couple months, he and his wife, his new wife, expecting a little child.

This community in South Lansing is hurting today.

That occurred at the corner of Jolly Road and Cedar Street.

And the Beatitudes is what our nation needs.

The sermon that Jesus gave from that mount is what we need.

But let's read these words before we go into the rest of the story today.

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they shall revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.

Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." This was like the reinstatement of those 10 Commandments from another mount, Mount Sinai.

President Lincoln gave a message to his nation back in 1863 on November the 19th, just 4 months following the most epic battlefield experience of the Civil War.

Gettysburg was the farthest advancement of Confederacy.

In fact, their only time that they made it that far.

Pennsylvania, they were into Northern Territory instead of Virginia or somewhere in the South.

And Lee, General Lee, the great commander of the Confederacy, he was taking advantage of moving forward.

And I believe God's people need to take advantage of moving forward with the opportunities that we have, like this afternoon, and giving the great controversy in the Mason area.

We need to take the advantage that God gives us.

Well, General Lee thought he had an advantage.

Chancellorsville was the most recent battle that he had fought, And he had won.

It was an outstanding Confederate victory near the Rappahannock River in the wilderness area of Virginia.

And he thought, I need to press forward into the north.

I have everything to gain." And so the Battle of Gettysburg was joined on July the 1st of 1863, and within 3 days over 51, 000 had died on that battlefield.

During the 13 years of the Vietnam War, 58, 000 dead.

You can only imagine what it would have been like to have lost 51, 000 in Vietnam within 3 days.

3 days, Gettysburg, that's how many were lost, nearly as many as in the 13 years of the Vietnam conflict.

So President Lincoln was a very unpopular president.

He was not a man that was well thought of, generally speaking.

No 1 would be predicting, they didn't have polls in those days, every day were inundated with the latest poll of what will happen and what will be voted nearly a year from now, you know, or more.

They just all knew that Lincoln didn't have a chance.

In the polling of the day, I mean, no one's going to vote for a president like him.

And Lee was going to do whatever he could for that to be the case, of course.

And I believe, as I said, that as Christians, as Seventh-day Adventists, we need to press the advantage.

That's 1 thing we can learn from General Lee.

After that battle was won by the North, fortunately, and by the way, they had about 31 million Americans at that time, less than 10% of what we have today.

So Gettysburg today, think of a battle that would have cost about 600, 000 lives in 3 days, proportionally speaking to the population.

Lincoln was invited to give a few appropriate remarks.

Like I said, he was president, but he wasn't all that popular.

So they had an orator who was ready and he spoke 2 hours.

Afterward, after Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Address were over, and after Lincoln had spoke his 2 minutes compared to Everett's 2 hours.

President, I wish that I could have gotten to the core of the message in my 2 hours anywhere near as close as you got in 2 minutes.

We know the Gettysburg Address better yet to this day than any other single address in American history.

It's probably the most famous, the best of the best.

Lincoln wrote, and you can see his handwriting here, 4 score and 7 years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

After the 2 minutes, the president ended with this appeal.

Today I'm going to invite you to make some decisions for Jesus.

Like I said, I had no idea where I'd be today.

I didn't have a speaking appointment, that was on purpose.

Very rarely do I ever choose to speak the week before we begin an evangelistic series.

It's just something I've chosen to just relax the week before because I know what's coming next.

It's sort of like if you're running a race, running a marathon or something, you want to relax a little bit before you start because once you start, there's no ending until 26.2 or whatever it is.

And so I had no intent, but I kept being persuaded, the Spirit of God moving upon my heart that I needed to preach this somewhere today, and I had no idea where.

You led me first to speak with your pastor and something I've never done.

In fact, it makes me uncomfortable to do such a thing as that and I'm nearly embarrassed to be here to take your pastor's place.

That was not my intent, but when he said, and I certainly would not ever compare myself to him, but when he said that William Miller stepped aside once for S.S.

Snow to come and bring the message about October 22, 1844.

I thought, wow, maybe the Lord does want me to speak there.

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The Journey of President Lincoln’s Lectern

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