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It is great joy for me to welcome you to this convocation service, this special academic year special because of the particular stewardship called to us in every generation and every year and for this school in every term. Even this morning, I was just because of something else, reminded of how precious the stewardship really is. What a joy it is, what a privilege it is to look around this room and know that here and even beyond this room, there are thousands of students studying here for the preparation for consecrated lives of ministry and service work in the world.

It’s a very special honor and privilege to be in such a place that anytime but by God’s mercy and sovereignty, it is a particular joy to be with you in this sacred place at this particular time, speaking of the times, my text morning is from Matthew chapter 16, just the opening four verses. By the Holy Spirit, Matthew writes,

“And the Pharisees and the Sadducees came and to test him, they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them. When it is evening, you say it will be fair weather for the sky is red and in the morning it will be stormy today for the sky is red and threatening. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times and evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. So he left them and departed.”

It’s a short text in the gospel of Matthew. It’s one of those transitional texts in which it’s very clear that something is about to happen and part of the increased dynamism of what took place in the earthly ministry of Jesus, things are coming to a head. In this text, of course, it’s the Pharisees and the Sadducees who came and to test the Christ, they ask him to show a sign from heaven.

In verse three, Jesus responded to them by very clearly saying, you know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. He gave them a sign, the sign of Jonah, he left them and departed. It’s a very short text. It’s a lot for us to consider. First of all, we have to be clear about what in the world is going on here. I guess the foreground here could be the entirety of the work of God up until Matthew chapter 16 or the entirety of the gospel of Matthew up to chapter 16, but in particular, I want us just to think about chapters 14 and 15. I want us to think about two things, healings and feedings.

Let’s talk about the healings. In chapter 14, as you see at the end of that chapter, Jesus heals the sick in Gennesaret and when they crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and when the men of that place recognized him, they sent around to all that region and brought to him all who were sick and implored him that they might only touch the fringe of his garment and as many as touched it were made well.

Chapter 14, in chapter 15, similarly we come to understand there was a healing. It comes in chapter 29:

“Jesus went on from there and walked beside the sea of Galilee and he went up on the mountain and sat there and great crowds came to him bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled in the mute and many others and they put them at his feet and he healed them so that the crowd wondered and they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking and the blind seeing, and they glorified the God of Israel.”

Just in these two chapters, two different passages of healings and then astoundingly two mass feedings, chapter 14, the feeding of the 5,000. Now when Jesus heard this in chapter 14, verse 13,

“Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself, but when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns and he when ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. Now, when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, this is a desolate place and the day is now over, send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves. But Jesus said, they need not go away. You give them something to eat. They said to him, we have only five loaves here and two fish, and he said, bring them here to me. Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass and taking the five loaves and the two fish. He looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves, gave them to his disciples and the disciples gave them to the crowds and they all ate and were satisfied and they took up the 12 baskets of the broken pieces left over and those who ate were about 5,000 men besides women and children.”

Chapter 15, beginning in verse 32, the feeding of the 4,000. “Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me until now three days and have nothing to eat and I am unwilling to send them away hungry lest they faint on the way. And the disciples said to him, where are we to get enough bread in such a desolate place to feed so greater crowd? He said to them, how many loaves do you have? They said, seven and a few small fish. And directing the crowd to sit down on the ground. He took the seven loaves and the fish and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples and the disciples gave them to the crowds and they all ate and were satisfied and they took up seven baskets full of the broken pieces left over. Those who ate were 4,000 men besides women and children, and after sending away the crowds, he got into a boat and went to the region of Magadan.”

All that’s necessary in order to understand the arrogance of the scribes in this case, the Pharisees and the Sadducees who came to accost Jesus in the beginning of Matthew chapter 16, to test him, to test him, they ask him to show them a sign from heaven. Now obviously at this crucial turning point in the first gospel, we are to see those who go away from Jesus, those who demand signs as those who are rejecting both Christ and the gospel. There’s some patterns we find. One of those patterns is the phrase and the crowds came. And we also see some other interesting patterns. In verse 15, in chapter 15, verse one we hear, and the Pharisees and scribes came in chapter 16 verse one and the Pharisees and the Sadducees came, so the crowds came and the crowds went. The scribes did the Pharisees come. Then the Sadducees with the Pharisees come.

This is a tough crowd. This is a very tough crowd, whether it’s the Pharisees and the Sadducees or the Pharisees and the scribes, it’s double trouble both times. Put them together triple trouble. And so the difference is in these passages when the crowds come, signs are given, healings take place. Thousands are fed just from a few loaves and fishes. We’re talking about two subsequent chapters. It’s hard to imagine you wouldn’t get the point from the first feeding of the thousands. Here in the proximity of two chapters are two and the healings over and over and over again, off course, and in these two chapters, again, healings have just taken place. Astounding feedings have just taken place. Supernatural miracles have just taken place to such an extent that it is unbelievable arrogance. Then for the scribes and the Sadducees here to demand a sign.

This is not a pattern that is passed. This is not just something from ancient biblical history. I think many of us have had conversations that have followed a similar kind of pattern, I would believe, but if I only saw, I would believe if I only observed, I would believe, and of course this pattern is found and is addressed. So honestly in the New Testament itself, Jesus himself would say to Thomas, blessed are those who do not see and believe. We’d like to think that if we saw it, we would recognize it for what it is. If we saw a miracle, we would recognize it for what it is. If the mute could speak and the bind could see, we’d like to think we would see it for what it was. If the lame can walk, we’d like to think, okay, we would see that for exactly what it is. If the dead are raised a life for crying out loud, we get the point. But with biblical humility, we have to wonder, we’d like to think that if Jesus were before us having performed these miracles, we would see him for who he is.

But the Pharisees and the Sadducees in verse one, as we begin this passage we’re told they came to test him. They ask him to show a sign, not just a sign, but a sign from heaven. He said, well, you guys know a lot. You’re asking for a sign from heaven. This may be distinct in some way from a miracle in terms of a heavenly message. When it’s evening, you look at the sky, if you see the sky is red, you say it will be fair weather. And in the morning you look at the sky and you say, it’ll be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening the difference between red, red and threatening, they know the difference. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky.

Now, there was a time when this was more important and it was still pretty much approximate. The Federal Aviation Administration just this week released a report, a post-incident report on a fatal crash of a private jet. The full investigation is not released, but one of the observations made in the FAA investigative report is that the skies were changing so fast that the conditions changed from when the pilots originally made the fight plan to when they were authorized to taxi and when they reached the altitude of only about 1400 feet, the weather had already changed again. That would represent quite a challenge to a pilot and the ancient world, it was often the Mariners who had the most at stake, and that’s one of the reasons why seafaring peoples gave a very different pattern of understanding the skies because there was so much at stake.

Farmers have to have some kind of indication, not that they have any control over what’s going to happen, but at least if there’s a storm coming or there’s bad weather coming, perhaps some preventative measures can be taken. I was a pastor in rural Kentucky, pastor of a farming community, and there were plenty of farmers, and farmers are not the most talkative people sometimes. And after a service they would all be standing out in front of the church and the men would be talking about any number of things, but most of them were closely related to the weather. And if you’re a farmer, you’re very concerned about the weather, particularly whether there will be rain to water the crops.

Now, we’re not confusing the Pharisees and the Sadducees with farmers, nor mariners sailors, they’re scribes as we see in one verse and here in chapter 16 verse one, they’re Pharisees and Sadducees. These aren’t farmers or sailors. These are religious folk, professional religious folk. Honestly, when I read this passage, I’m not sure they had to be too good about the sky. I mean, because after all, if you’re going to Pharisee or you’re going to Sadducee, the weather doesn’t matter all that much. Not exactly like getting on a ship, planting a crop.

Of course the theological context here is all important. Here you have this group of Pharisees and Sadducees and we know what they’re doing because Matthew tells us they came, but they didn’t come to worship him. They did not come to confess him. They did not come to follow him. They came to test him, and their test was this demand for a sign. He says, I’m not going to give you a sign. He does sort of give them a sign. He says, an evil and adulterous generation ask for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah, the sign of himself, the sign of three days if he would rise again.

But the focus of my attention is on the latter part of verse three. “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” I’m not sure how good we are at this either ,honestly. But before we think about this in a more elaborate way, let’s first of all put it in its New Testament kerygmatic context and understand the most important reference point here is the incarnation of the Christ and the assured coming of his kingdom and glory. This is not just about signs of the times as in understanding the politics and the foreign policy and all the rest. This has mostly to do with the fact that they were demanding a sign after all these signs had already been given. The signs were the indication, another demonstration in revelation of the fact this is the promised one, the Messiah, the Christ, and more.

Jesus says, you cannot interpret the signs of the times. This is a rebuke. It’s a severe rebuke. It’s a rebuke. Most importantly about the gospel. It’s a rebuke most importantly about the failure to recognize who he is. And the fact that they had come to test him, it’s another indication that the issue here is not one of ignorance, it is one of arrogance. There’s no reason to believe they don’t know everything that has just happened. There’s no reason to believe they don’t know about the feeding of the 5,000 in the feeding of the 4,000. There’s no reason to believe they don’t know about all the healings. They know about the healings. They know about the feedings, they know about the signs, but they want to test him. Jesus responds with this rebuke, but for the believing church, this rebuke also comes as a warning to us, lest we fail to interpret the signs of the times.

I can remember hearing a reference to this text as a pretext for strategic planning. That is not what we’re talking about, but we are called to understand the signs of the times. Most importantly for us, it is the time right now between the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ and his coming again in glory. It is the time right now when we are awaiting the kingdom in its fullness and the arrival of the king. It’s a time in which the church has been given a responsibility, commission, command. Many of these are direct continuation of commands given to the people of God and the Old Testament.

Now, in a gospel context, given with a new urgency, a new energy, a new gospel, a new eschatology for the people of God. I want to look at a different passage as well. This passage is less well known. It’s in 1 Chronicles chapter 12, and this is in the listing of David’s mighty men who joined him in Ziklag. It’s just one brief expression about one of the tribes Manasses, and then after that Issachar of the half tribe of Manasseh, 18,000 who were expressly named to come and make David King, what a thing to be said. Then in verse 32, “Of Issachar men who had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do, 200 chiefs and all their kinsmen under their command.” You know, there are all kinds of things that could be said about the tribes and you see many things said here, and not only in this passage but in another Old Testament passages, amazing things said about the tribes and not much is actually said about Issachar. Issachar is not a tribe that is famous for us. If it was a jeopardy question, I think even a most Southern Baptists would fail the jeopardy test. Issachar is just not the first tribe that comes to mind, but Issachar is mentioned in such an interesting way here, and this is a description of honor. This is a description of respect. It’s carefully constructed. Men who had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do.

The Pharisees and the Sadducees are criticized for not knowing the times, not even seeing the signs of the times in contrast in a different context. Here, the sons of Issachar are praised for knowing the times, men who had understanding of the times and then the next words. Evidently this is really crucial to know what Israel ought to do. Well, the point of this message this morning is a word of encouragement and to learn from Matthew chapter 16 and also from this reference to 1 Chronicles chapter 12, that evidently we are to pay some attention to the times and to the signs of the times. Don’t worry, there’s no new amazing book of breathtaking prophecy about to come from my pen. I don’t have any marketing advice to offer. This is nothing about a rare opportunity right now because of market conditions to make an investment that will pay off for the rest of your life. I don’t have any such signs of any times.

I can’t tell you if the market’s going to go up or going to go down. I can tell you that I don’t think that’s what either of these texts is about. In Matthew, it’s very clearly kerygmatic related to the gospel here in one Chronicles chapter 12. It’s clearly within the context of the rise of David, the anointed king. But it does tell us something that Jesus pinpointed the fact that these Pharisees and Sadducees could read the skies, but they can’t read the times and they will not see what is right before them, what is obvious before them, and this is a different time now, the Messianic age has come and they don’t see it. They think they can see a thunderstorm coming, but the Messianic age, they miss or even worse, they deny. And evidently the interesting thing about the reference to the sons of Issachar is that this appears to have been a unique contribution from this tribe. So evidently out of all the tribes of Israel, only one of them is actually mentioned with this honorific: “they understood the times and knew what Israel ought to do.”

I just want to suggest to us that we better know the signs of the times, and we better have a pretty good idea of what God’s people ought to do. Well, we’re at the beginning of a term. That’s one time, and we recognize as I think about the times, there’s no bigger distinction in terms of the academic schedule. There’s no bigger distinction than the beginning of a term and the end of a term, and this is just part of the academic life. This is just a part of the way it works. It’s the difference between the books fresh to be read and at the end the tests looming to be taken. And at the beginning of a term, everything is concentrated on what are we going to do this term? The industry already starts to shift as you get down into the term. This is just a part of academic life. It’s just a part of the way schools work and it’s good that we gather together at the beginning of a term to say something important is happening here. And for Christians especially to understand we better know what we’re doing. We better know what we’re teaching. We better know what we’re believing and we better know what we’re doing because the time is short. The semester looks so long the first week of February and so short the last week of April.

So it is. I think we need to know our times and I think about this because I think we need to acknowledge our times are strange.

William Manchester wrote a book entitled The World Lit Only by Fire about the medieval era, and it’s an interesting read. The opening illustration is one that I’ve never been able to forget. When he talks about the dark ages, he explains that in some ways they were for much of Europe dark part of it was because Europe was at the time so forested. He begins with this interesting little anecdote that a squirrel could climb up a tree in Moscow and down a tree in Paris. The canopy of trees was so intact in Europe at the time, but about the passage of time Manchester just cites diaries and historical accounts through much of that long period, let’s just say a millennium. We now know that much did happen. We know that much did happen, but the amazing thing about all that time was that a son could pretty much expect to live the world his father had lived, his father had expected to live the world his father had lived and you could go back for a long way because no one’s expecting radical social change and frankly no one alive had even experienced it.

We understand that our times are very different. Without going into some kind of extended sociological analysis, we understand that we are experiencing what some call hypervelocity in the acceleration of culture now. Now it’s the opposite of Manchester’s depiction of the Middle Ages in Europe. Now, a father looking to his son assumes that son is going to know a very different world than he has known and maybe he himself will live long enough that he will be through two or three worlds of change. Just in the period that I’ve been associated with the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Boyce College, I can tell you the world’s changed two or three times.

Some of it is just dateable by technology. When I became president of this institution, we didn’t have a webpage and we didn’t know we didn’t have one. It would be years before we found out we didn’t have one. According to some internet researchers we’re the first theological seminary to have had one, and it is now found in an internet archive, our first webpage. It’s hilarious. It’s absolutely hilarious. The pixels are so big, it looks like a child did it with some kind of a marker board, but no, that was high technology at the time. And of course other things have happened. I mean when we talk about online offline, none of that existed. But in a far more fundamental sense, the world has changed. The word marriage has changed in terms of the cultural usage. The word marriage in 1993 meant one thing to everybody, and now we’re in a very different era. And you just go down the list. We’re living in very interesting times. The acceleration of the change around us and the fundamental nature of this change. We were living in a giant distortion field. It’s hard for us even to take account of how fast things are changing, and part of this is undoubtedly secularization. Even last night doing some research, I was just looking at some statistics in terms of church going for instance, Protestant church going and metropolitan areas in the United States, and this was just 1994, 1995. And you look at that, I go, that world doesn’t even exist anymore.

But the secularization of the society is not something that’s just sociological. We understand that theologically we’re just in a different place even in terms of people recognizing what we’re talking about. There’s just been this great shift in the way people think and the way people even feel and the way they intuit. And of course this revolution in morality is just reshaping everything. And even as right now we’re witnessing for example some pushback on T as in LGBTQ, the fact is that the LG, the B, in other words, the society believes it has actually just moved on from all that. The T may be a temporary blip. I think often about those who had taught in this institution in decades past and led this institution in decades past, and the people who taught me and the people who taught successive generations, I don’t know that I could explain the current situation to them. I am not sure they would even have the equipment to understand what I’m talking about, but this is the world we live in and frankly one of my concerns, and I think a concern shared very much by this faculty and by those who love this institution and support this institution is will the students here and the graduates of this institution be up to this challenge?

I’ve come to the conclusion that you will not be. You can stop and sing a hymn and go home. Not in yourselves. Not in yourselves. I don’t think even looking at these two biblical texts, I don’t think that any of us in this room, younger or older, has sufficient perception to see it all and know it all and understand it all to be able to be master of it all. There’s too much and it is coming too fast, but of this, I am confident that he who died and was buried and was raised from the dead, He who dwells within you, he is quite capable of seeing you through and me through whatever the age throws at us and we are given the indwelling Christ. We are given the Holy Spirit. We are given the text of scripture which we just read. We in ourselves are dead meat in terms of trying to figure all this out. But by God’s grace, we’re given all that we need through the ordinary means of grace and most importantly through the preaching of the word.

We look at this with a particular conception of history. If we’re trying to think of the signs of the times and trying to understand those times and try to understand what Israel should do or what we should do or the church of the Lord Jesus Christ should do. In those cultures that have a more cyclical view of history, everything has happening has already happened and will happen again and whatever happened before, after will come after the before again.

But the biblical worldview of history is not that at all. Instead, it’s Genesis, in the beginning and it’s eschaton, in the end and it’s a straight line in between. Which is to say you’re going into uncharted territory. I can’t tell you the times ahead, I can’t. It’s outside. My control is outside my analysis. It’s outside my conjecture. I do think I know this. The times ahead are not going to get easier than the times. Now, the challenges are not going to be lesser, almost assuredly, I think I can say the challenges are going to be greater, but Jesus Christ is Lord.

So I have a couple of concrete suggestions about how you and we should think about understanding the times. First, just know your time, where we are in history, and by that I don’t mean just the year you were born. We’re in gospel time. That’s the most important thing. We’re in preaching of the gospel time we’re in taking of the gospel to the nation’s time. We are in faithfulness time for the church in this in-between time, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to redeem sinners, his ascension to heaven and his coming again. And in this in-between time, we are given a lot to do. So that’s a great security to believers. We begin with knowing our times. We are in the gospel time, we’re in the church age. We got a job to do.

Secondly, we must pay heed to the signs of the times because this does have to do with how we are faithful and the degree to which we are faithful. We do have to pay attention to what’s going on around us. It would not be a strength to the church to be ignorant of, for example, the subversion of marriage and the effects of that in the society around us and the confusion just think of that one example. I mean just we have to be attentive to these things when we use the word marriage. Now we have to define what we mean biblical terms because we don’t assume everyone’s going to understand or share a common definition, just one example.

But third, it’s not enough to know the signs of the times, we have to know what Israel ought to do. And this is one of the most crucial issues. What I hope and pray is that especially the students, both the seminary and the college, that you’ll be a gift of Christ church in such a way that you’ll know what Israel ought to do. That you’ll know what the church of the Lord Jesus Christ must do. You’ll know how to lead and how to live in faithfulness so that whatever the world throws at you, whatever redefinition of any term, no matter what great challenge the world throws at you, you will know what the church of the Lord Jesus Christ ought to do. I guess I just want to urge on you and on all of us, the urgency of well, understanding that responsibility in this sense, we all must be the sons and daughters of Issachar to know what Israel ought to do.

Fourth, Okay, the simplest thing I could say is obey Christ. So that’s where we begin. Obey all that he has commanded us even as he is with us always. And fifth then is derivative from that. Preach the gospel, teach the scriptures. Those are commands given to Christ church under all conditions at all times. In that case, we don’t need the sons of Issachar to tell us what to do because Christ himself and the apostles have told us what to do similarly, sixth, love and serve the church.

The confusion is always that we will see the passing thing as permanent and see the permanent thing as passing. The most important thing for us to understand is that the church is eternal. It’s not just permanent, it is eternal. We are to serve the church and love the church.      Seventh, the biblical admonition deeply rooted in the people of God and the Old Testament. And in the new we’re to grow in grace, in knowledge, in wisdom. That’s why you’re here, and unapologetically so, that’s why this faculty’s here unapologetically so. It is so that together we may grow in grace, grow in knowledge, grow in wisdom to serve the church, to be faithful to Christ.

Okay, let me get personal. Eighth, show the glory of God in marriage.

Now, I want to state very clearly that the scripture says that there are those who are to be honored, who are given the gift of celibacy for service to the church and to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we need to call out and celebrate and honor those who are given that gift. At least judged by the history of the Christian Church, very few of you have been given that gift. Alright, so with that in mind, if you have not been given that gift, get busy. Yes, this is about as counter-cultural going to hear. I don’t know of any other president of any similar institution who would say it so strongly. One of the biggest ways you can push back in faithfulness is to be married to the glory of God early if the Lord allows and long, okay, if that one was controversial, the next one’s going to be worse.

Have babies, lots and lots of them through the glory of God. As I often concede when you look at the cultural challenge, we may not be able to outmaneuver them. We may not be able to out strategize them, but we can clearly outbreed them and that is to the glory of God. I want to tell you one of the happiest things when I see a gospel church, is just seeing babies, children, all this to the glory of God. And I just wanted to encourage college students, I know, I know, I know how young you are ,and I know how distant some of this can seem, but you need to grow up fast. And there’s a timeline that the Lord will allow in which all these things can happen. I just want to tell you, seize the good things God has given us and defy the wisdom of the world. Show the glory of God even in the institutions of creation. Order to God be the glory.

Tenth, finally, know that we are called to a long faithfulness, but the time is short. Sounds like a contradiction, perhaps even an oxymoron. We’re called to a long faithfulness, but the time is short. But long faithfulness means that living it, it’s long, but at the end of the day, the time is very short. So somehow we have to put those two things together. The age is short. The faithfulness is to be long. And of course, by God’s grace that faithfulness is not just in this life, but for Christ’s people glorified in the age to come. We’re not there yet, but Jesus is coming. May he when he comes, find his church faithful. And may that faithfulness begin in us renewed even today by the word of Scripture. Let’s pray. Father, we are so thankful for all you’ve given us in your word. We pray that to your glory, we will live that our faithfulness by your grace may be long even as the time is short. Even so, Lord consecrate this term, maximize our faithfulness. And even so, Lord, come quickly. Amen.

The post The Signs of the Times: This Strange Age and Our Christian Responsibility appeared first on AlbertMohler.com.

“Oh, to grace, how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be.” Isn’t it amazing how we sing the faith. Sometimes, especially with a classic hymns, we sing the faith, with a power, with a concision, and with joy. It’s one thing to read it on the page and to know it’s true. It’s another thing to sing it. It’s yet another thing to sing it in the presence of other Christians and to hear Christian voices singing in unison that we are all debts to grace. We’re daily constrained by the fact that we are saved by grace.

I want to extend my personal welcome to those of you who are here. Of course, we welcome all for to this service and are thankful that you are with us. I’m particularly thankful for the Southern Seminary Foundation here. I mentioned on Tuesday, our governing board is the board of trustees elected by the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, and they can serve 10-year terms. You know, that’s a long time for someone to give to a calling, a stewardship like this, 10-year term. That means many, many, many days over a course of years serving on this board of trustees. The sentence for the term for a foundation participant may be decades. My heart is filled, and Mary with me, that with so many of these folks who are here for the Southern Seminary Foundation, they have been instrumental in what the Lord has done here for 30, and 30 plus, years. That’s an amazing thing. I want to urge you in the room who are young – and there are many of you, most of you, it’s impossible by definition for most of you to have had any friend for 30 years, a fraction thereof – I just want to encourage you, pray for friends who will be friends to you in Christ for a lifetime. Pray to have friends that will mean so much to you. You’ll share their joys. You’ll share their sorrows. You’ll learn from each other. You’ll keep each other faithful, encourage one another to faithfulness. You’ll exalt in each other’s children. I just want to encourage that today, and this week, is one constant reminder of that on this campus, and I just want to boldly say, I wish this for all of you. Those who are here for the preview conference for Boice College. I just want to give you, and extend, my personal welcome – just absolutely thrilled that you are here. I pray the Lord will use this time, not just in this service but your time on this campus, to move your heart to know what you should do or your loved one should do as you think about the course of higher education to the glory of God for service to Christ. And we pray, of course we think we know the answer to your prayer, but we want you to find where the Lord would want you to be most faithful and ready for a lifetime of faithful service. So, I look forward to meeting you as well.

Our opportunity right now is to meet God’s word, to be confronted by God’s word, to hear God speak. And I want to direct you to the book of Romans, chapter twelve, and in particular to the most familiar verses in this text in chapter twelve, verses one and two. The Holy Spirit speaks through the Apostle Paul, “I appeal to you, therefore brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” I’m thankful for God’s Word.

For the experience of my Christian life, beginning when I was a teenager, this text has seized me. And when you know that a text has seized you, you come back to it again and again and again to be seized yet again and again and again. I’ve come back to this text today because of a certain current perplexity. One of the realities of God’s Word, living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, is that you never exhaust it. You’re always learning more about it. You learn, first of all, intertextual connections, and all of a sudden you realize this connects to this, connects to this, connects to this. This is very important for the Evangelical Protestant, and, we think, proper Christian understanding of how to read the Bible. We read the Bible in the context of the entirety of the canon of scripture, the books of the Old Testament and the books of the New Testament. We read it in terms of an overarching story of promise and fulfillment, an overarching narrative which gives the structure to Scripture of creation and fall and redemption and new creation. We understand as Christians that every single word of Scripture points to Christ. But it is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, so it will surprise us, and sometimes it takes a certain controversy to awaken us to something we should have seen.

The remarkable first force of Romans chapter 12:1-2 is the language Paul uses, “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers.” That’s one of the strongest exhortations a Greco-Roman speaker could use. He’s making an appeal. This is not something that begins the kind of speech in the Greco-Roman world, and the ancient world, especially influenced by Greece and Rome. When you get to “therefore,” you’ve already said quite a bit, “therefore” is the turning point in the argument. This is when things are getting intense. It’s also when things are going to get concrete and specific. I think the folks who look to this text, and by the time you get to the renewal of the mind and discerning what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect, I think this is what the Puritans try to describe as practical reason. And then in the entire English speaking philosophical tradition, the emphasis upon practical reason, this is it. This isn’t intellectualism, this is practical reason. This is the right operation of reason, which is corrupted, that is reason corrupted by sin, but we are rescued by Scripture and thus our minds are transformed. It’s the transforming of the entire body, the entire self, but it’s specifically here, just unapologetically, specifically referring to the renewal of the mind.

It begins, of course, in chapter twelve, verse one, with Paul’s appeal, “therefore” – on the basis of everything he said. Well, on the basis of how much he said? Well, the entirety of the book of Romans. In one sense, the right way to see Romans is to understand that you have this incredible manifesto of thick doctrine – thick, not thin – very thick presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And of course, we’re taken into some of the mysteries of the Christian life made visible to us. So much is explained, and there are “therefore”‘s before this “therefore” in the book of Romans. But this “therefore” at chapter twelve, when Paul says, “I appeal to you, therefore,” he’s using that rhetorical device to say, “on the basis of everything I’ve said,” how much of it, all of it, “on the basis of what I have said up till now – only now can I say what I need to say at this point.”

And so what does Paul need to say at this point? Well, I spoke of practical reason. It’s a turning point in the book for practical instruction, practical Christianity – “present our bodies as a living sacrifice.” And of course, the sacrificial system very much in mind, that there’s no such thing as a living sacrifice in the animal sacrifice world. You never meet an animal survivor of the altar. It just doesn’t happen. And so a living sacrifice is one of those oxymorons, two words which put together certainly get our attention because this redefines the entire thing. There’s no more sacrifice of death, as the book of Hebrews will tell us, because Christ died once for all for the redeemed, there is no perpetual sacrifice, there is, instead, an eternal gospel. But there’s still a sacrifice of a sort, and of a fundamentally important sort, snd it’s the sacrifice of self, ego, and the false ideas that had held us captive, to present our bodies as the totality of ourselves, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship. It’s our right response. It demonstrates our worship. It’s one thing to say we are worshiping Christ, it’s another thing to live as his, and it is that to which we are called. How’s that going to happen? Verse two, “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” So there’s a very clear dichotomy. We’re going to go one way or the other. We’re going to be marked by one condition or the other. We will either be conformed to the world or we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Those are stark alternatives. And then, and only then, will we discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

When I was a teenager, I was trying to figure out what in the world was going on around me. I was by circumstances of my life, my family moved from one town to another. And it was, at the time, like moving from one world to another. The world I had known up through the seventh grade was a world of basically settled things. The world that I knew in the eighth grade was a profoundly unsettled world. As I sometimes say, I moved from Mayberry to Metropolis – there is a difference. The new world I inhabited in the eighth grade was a world of progressivist educational theory, modern sociology. As I tell people, the school was just remarkably different. You know, in the school I had up through the seventh grade, they had people known as teachers and they were in charge of the classroom and their responsibility was to teach. And we were in a classroom, had walls, had a door. That was your home where you learned. And you sat in rows of desks, calmly, in right order. Disorder was not encouraged, it was punished. I will say that children thrive on order. It was a great experience. I knew teachers, teachers were in authority. I loved teachers. I loved learning. I loved knowing what learning was about. I loved, even as a child, when I didn’t know anything about curriculum, lesson plans, educational philosophies, I loved it when I knew the teacher was mastering the subject and was doing his or her best to help us to learn and to master the subject – and I wanted more. And then there was always a new grade with a new teacher, and new books. In the eighth grade I arrived in chaos, and not only that, these teachers were weird. They didn’t seem to know so much, but they really wanted us to be happy. Big self-esteem stuff going on. “You are so smart.” You haven’t taught us anything, how do you know if we’re smart or not? “I don’t know. We don’t know anything.” Discipline? “Oh, that’s oppressive. We want middle schoolers to express themselves.” And of course, the obvious response to that is, no, you don’t. No, you don’t. Teachers were facilitators, they weren’t really teachers because that’s an authoritative position. And so they didn’t teach, they facilitated. And here’s another lesson I learned, as a 13-year-old, facilitators may do many things, one thing they do not do is facilitate. The motto of the progressive educators in that day was – sounds like hippies from the sixties because they were hippies in the sixties – “No more sage on the stage, man, now just a guide on the side.” It wasn’t much guiding either. I was totally frustrated. And not only that, I had two teachers who were atheists. Now, religious diversity that I’d known before included Presbyterians, and so this is a fundamentally different category. These people are past Episcopalians. The Episcopalians have been trying to catch up with them, but that’s another story. But you know, this is tough stuff here. I got people who don’t believe in God, and then everything else is breaking loose at the same time. Everything’s breaking loose – the sexual revolution, the gay rights movement which started in south Florida in the early 1970s. It was a huge thing. I was in the meeting with my parents at the Miami Beach Convention Center where Anita Bryant, who had been Miss America, and very well known, she had called together – she was kind of a catalyst for pushing back against a gay rights ordinance, and successfully so by the way – and at that event, at the Miami Beach Convention Center – and, you know, my family and folks in my church very concerned about this, wanting to know about this – there was a big bus out front and it had a choir in it that had traveled, and the choir sang, and the preacher of that church – which nobody had ever heard of – named Jerry Falwell, he got up and spoke, and I don’t know who this guy is, never heard his name, but he’s evidently preached before – this is pretty strong – and Anita Bryant sang, and we all affirmed the biblical truth and the necessary actions from biblical truth, and went home. It was very impressive. I can tell you almost where we were sitting and what was happening. I was pretty astounded by the whole thing. But no dots were connected. Nothing. In other words, I didn’t understand. I left there not understanding why there were people who were across some kind of chasm. I mean, their entire view of life is just fundamentally different than ours, but I don’t have any categories for that. I don’t have any way to look at that. And that’s when I was introduced as a teenager to the idea of the Christian worldview, and the necessity of Christians thinking consistently with biblical truth, and that that created and constituted a world and life view that that was very fundamental to everything else. As you think, so you will act. As you think, so you will live. So we’ve got to give attention to how Christians should think Christianly, and you know you only do that – honestly, this is just human nature – Christians only do that when we have to. And we certainly have to when, all of a sudden, we’re surrounded by people who operate from a very different worldview, a comprehensive understanding of life. It helped me enormously. I told the story many times. It was a figure by the name of Francis Schaefer who had this enormous influence because he was writing about just what I was worried about. He was writing about, and speaking about, the crisis I was confronting. You know, you have the collision between two worldviews, and the people who were teaching who were facilitating – whatever they’re doing – they’re operating, the atheist, they’re operating out of a relatively consistent worldview. They, at least in their own minds, have some degree of coherence – things hold together. In other words, they’re not just atheists when it comes to if there is a god, they’re atheist when it comes to if there is a morality.

I was able to start connecting some dots. There was a great chasm between these rival worldviews. Christianity comes with a worldview. And you need to understand that many Christians, I think most Christians, I can say decisively, that most Christians in the United States, up until something like the 1970s never talked about anything like the Christian worldview, because we didn’t have to talk about it when everybody agreed with us. Even people who weren’t Christians were operating out of basically Christian worldview. It took developments to bring an alternative worldview, that was behind the sexual revolution, behind personal autonomy, behind situational ethics, behind abortion, behind the gay rights movement, as it was known then, and it was, all of a sudden, now coherent. You can understand, here’s the Christian worldview based in scripture, and it begins with the pre-existent, self-existent God of glory, and the works of God in creation. It points to creation order as fundamental. This is not just a story for our interests, this is actually the revelation of the very meaning of the cosmos and of human life and of all things visible and invisible in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, right down to “therefore man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Right down to “be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.” Right down to the imago dei. Right down to the distinction between human beings made in God’s image and all the other creatures as part of the glory of God’s creation. The distinctions in creation absolutely as essential as the declarations of creation. I came to understand that, and I lived in it, I seized on it. Over the course of evangelical history since then, just about anywhere you find seriously minded, evangelical Christians, seriously minded believers under these conditions with the challenges around us, Christians have learned to speak of the worldview of the Christian worldview, of a biblical worldview, the comprehensive view of life to which we are committed, and out of which comes all of the basic decisions, we will make judgments. The recovery of worldview understanding was a massive gift to evangelical Christianity. And thus you have institutions and you have churches and pastors and you have professors and you have authors and others, and they’ll say it is the Christian duty, it is the Christian responsibility to develop a truly biblical comprehensive world and life view, summarize this by saying the Christian biblical worldview.

Recently, just in the course of the last few years, there has been a pushback against this. There are authors who are suggesting that it was a detour or at least a false start or something inadequate that Protestant evangelical Christians have become so concerned about worldview. Now, there were pushbacks like this in the 70s. There were pushbacks like this in the 80s and the 90s, and I’ve been able to witness them unfold. And most of it, at least in the beginning, was coming from basically theological liberalism, or an effort to try to define Christianity without doctrine, without specific truth claims. It was at the expense of the authority of scripture, and it basically was at the expense of the entire Christian faith. It got to the point where liberal Christianity during those days had reduced all the Bible to be sweet and vote democratic, basically. But we couldn’t do that. There was this clash of worldviews and there were people who said we don’t have to make the distinction so stark. Because even when you talk about the Christian worldview, and when you talk about the atheistic secular worldview, or when you’re specific about alternative contrasting worldviews to Christianity – if it’s existentialism or situationism or it could even be a variant, a Hindu worldview or an eastern or an Asian worldview based upon very different understandings of history, very different understandings of life – and some were saying we’ve got to respect other worldviews and, almost kind of like a National Geographic, we need to be thankful for other worldviews. Just let me just point out, you can’t be a faithful Christian and be thankful for other worldviews. You can’t be a faithful Christian and be thankful for idols. You can’t be a faithful Christian and say it doesn’t matter. So it was pretty much a liberal/conservative thing. And I’ll be honest, for most of the last several decades, the debate of the Christian worldview has been largely a liberal/conservative thing where the liberals were saying we need to think more like the world, and the conservatives were saying we need to think less like the world. You know, we agree that water’s wet, but we don’t even agree with why there’s water or why it’s wet or what it means.

Alright, over the course of the last several decades, a lot of people developed the understanding of the Christian worldview and really helped Christians to see more clearly and to connect more dots. That’s one of the fun, fulfilling aspects of the Christian life – the older you get, the more you learn, the more you give yourself to learning, the more dots get connected, and that’s very satisfying. They’re those “aha” moments when all the things you say, well, okay, now I understand this. If I truly believe that God’s the author of life, and if I truly believe that God says, “Let there be life,” when human life begins, then I can’t possibly endorse in any way the destruction of unborn human life, and not only that, I have to recognize a human person made in God’s image as deserving the full protection of the entire society because of the sanctity of that life from the moment of fertilization all the way, not only until birth, but all the way until natural death. And Christians, under other intellectual social conditions, didn’t have to think it through all the way to a sentence. You go to a someone in Europe in the 16th century, you don’t even have to have an elaborate argument, everyone agrees with you. It’s when you’re in the presence of those who don’t agree with you, when you see the clash of rival worldviews, that’s when things get hot.

Lately there’s another wave of attack upon a concentration on a biblical worldview or a Christian worldview. It’s pretty assertive. It’s coming in the form of books that are gaining traction and books addressed to Christians saying that the Christian worldview is, some are arguing, kind of a detour from faithful Christianity, and some are saying it’s inadequate, it’s not enough on its own, and there are others who are saying it polarizes because of the fact it shows the polarities, it shows the divisions, it shows the antithesis – that’s a good Christian worldview term – and emphasizes the antithesis rather than indicating what we share in common with people who have other worldviews, instead, Christian worldview thinking tends to accentuate where we have differences, and so missiologically, morally, theologically, spiritually, the Christian worldview as a concern is a diversion and perhaps a waste of time compared to some other approach. Well, I’ve been aggravated by these books. It may show. I have been frustrated with these books, I think some of them, and I’m thinking of one in particular, I don’t think it honestly presents how the concern for Christian worldview among evangelicals emerged and how it functions. I’ll be honest, I don’t know how you can be a faithful Christian in this age and not pretty much every waking hour be committed to believing and living through a Christian worldview in the lens of biblical Christianity, understanding we do live in the midst of a giant antithesis. There’s one part of their critique, though, that I think has traction. And so even though their ambition may be to try to shift evangelical concern to something other than a biblical worldview, that is what I profoundly do not want to do. One critique, one dimension of the critique upon reflection, I think does have some traction.

You look at Romans chapter twelve, look at verse two, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” So you have the rival worldviews. It’s made very clear here. You see the confrontation, you see the thesis and the antithesis. And it’s interesting that Paul begins rhetorically with what we are not to do – very common in the Greco-Roman speaking rhetorical tradition. It’s common also in the Old Testament in passages. Don’t do that. Do this. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. The default is to be conformed. It takes no effort to be conformed to the thinking around us. That just comes naturally. It’s seductive. It’s culturally driven by dynamic of agreement. The easiest thing is just to go along, no doubt about that. The easiest thing is to think like everyone around you thinks, meaning the society. That’s the easiest thing. But Paul says, that’s what you can’t do. And what Paul is talking about here is the entirety of what he said in the book of Romans. And we know that because he said, “therefore,” on the basis of everything that came before. And what came before is this declaration of God’s saving work that was accomplished through the substitutionary atonement accomplished by the Son as part of the Father’s will from before the creation of the world to redeem a people through the blood of the lamb. It is ours by grace. We’re saved by grace alone in, in Christ alone. Therefore, don’t be conformed to the world.

The gospel is effectively betrayed when Christians live like worldlings. It’s a repudiation of the power of the gospel. And Paul is so intent on demonstrating the power of the gospel. It is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe to the Jew first and also to the Greek, to the Gentile. The power of the gospel is betrayed by those who are conformed to the world. So that’s important for us to know. You betray Christ when you’re conformed to the world. You betray Christianity, you betray God, you betray the gospel when you are conformed to the world. And in order not to be conformed to the world – what is Paul’s positive exhortation – be transformed by the renewal of your mind. So the opposite of being conformed to the world is not just being conformed to something else, it’s far more powerful than that. It’s transformation, the transformation of our minds. It’s the transformation of our totality. “But be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Now that renewal of the mind, I think it is just undeniably intellectual, cognitive. It’s based in truth, based in God’s revelation. It’s based on the truths of the gospel that Paul’s been articulating so symphonically in the first eleven chapters of Romans, it ends, by the way, with this phenomenal doxology in verse thirty-three of chapter eleven. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom of God. How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor, or who has first given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” That verse, verse thirty-six, is one of the most comprehensive you can find anywhere in scripture. Paul brings that portion of his argument together with a declaration that everything comes from God, everything is from him, everything holds together through him, all things teleologically, that is in the end of all things, the thing to which they are pointed is God. They came from him through him and all things eternally will glorify him, be accountable to him, to him be glory forever. Amen. Then Paul says, “I appeal to you brothers, by the mercies of God to present your body the totality of who you are as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

So I said I think there’s one issue that has traction. I think there’s one critique that does have traction, and that is the critique that the Christian worldview, if we’re not careful, look each other in the eye, if we don’t remind ourselves that it’s not a mind game, then we can turn it into one. Okay? So what do I mean by that? I mean, it is possible that there are people who operate out of a Christian worldview who aren’t Christians. And actually we know that. And in the society around us, one of the reasons why you didn’t have to talk about so many of these things, and now you have to talk about them in an urgent way, even with your own neighbors, is because even if your neighbors weren’t believing, regenerate Christians, faithful Christians in a local church, they still basically held to so many of the same judgments based upon the revelation of God in scripture. I mean, they may not have known Christ, but they did know male and female. They may not have known Christ, but they had a clear, innate knowledge that was also affirmed by cultural authorities of what marriage was. And so basic morality influenced by Christianity channeled through Western civilization, it led to a situation in which most people basically agreed with us on most things, even without the gospel, and they don’t anymore. Christians are marked by belief in these things, but not just that. I’m saying I believe we need to hear critics and take them seriously. We need to know. If we are at fault, if something’s lacking in our understanding, then let’s fix that. If there’s something lacking in our faithfulness, let’s fix that. And so I want to say, I think one of the critiques of Christian worldview thinking and Christian worldview teaching, that is that now marks our time, it’s people who say it’s not enough merely to believe these things, it’s not enough merely to know these things, it’s not enough merely to give affirmation to these things, if it’s separated from a faithful Christian life. I can’t refute that argument.

For the sake of time, I want you to turn with me to the book of Ephesians, chapter four. Let’s try to connect some dots. Beginning in chapter four, verse seventeen, we read from the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians by the Holy Spirit, through Paul to us, “Now, this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds, they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their blindness, their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learn Christ, assuming that you heard about him, and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirits of your minds and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” We could continue in that passage, but for the sake of time, this is the other place Paul talks about the renewing of the mind. So understanding that we are to interpret scripture by scripture, this is really going to help us. You take Romans 12, and you take Ephesians 4, Paul points us to the renewing of the mind in both of these passages. This is the same apostle speaking of the same Christ, preaching and defending and teaching the same gospel, but it’s a little different here in this context. The passage is a little longer. The context is slightly different. Here in Ephesians 4, Paul writing to the Ephesians in the context he’d been talking about, the body of Christ, he gets very practical, and this has to do with how Christians live. He writes to those Christians in Ephesus and says, “Now, I’m going to tell you this. I’m testifying in the Lord.” Strong words here. He says, “You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. There was a day when you walked just like the world walks. Remember, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Here you have Paul say, “You can’t continue being conformed to the Gentile way of life, which once you knew ,a pagan way of life, which once you knew.” And so there’s an incredible parallelism in this. There’s a symmetry here. Paul’s giving us more. In Ephesians 4, speaking of the Gentiles, he says, “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.” They’re darkened in their understanding. They’re living out their worldview. They are. We all do. They’re living out their most basic beliefs. You may call them unbeliefs, they’re living out their unbeliefs which function as their beliefs. They live out consistently. What are their moral principles? Well, how do they live? What is their understanding of life? How do they think? How do they live? And you notice Paul here speaks to Christians as those who once were similarly alienated and darkened in understanding. He attributes it to human sinfulness, the hardness of their heart. Look at verse 19, “They become callous.” Notice the moral point here, “They have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” Okay? So, so now we understand that the worldview, the secular worldview, the unbelieving worldview, the pagan worldview that once marked, not only the world, but also those who, until the gospel walked in the same way, it’s due to darkness, it’s due to the hardness of heart, and it’s demonstrated in how they live. They give themselves up to every kind of sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

Then Paul says, “But that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you heard about him, and we’re taught in him as the truth is in Jesus.” He speaks of putting on and putting off. It’s not, in this case, just no longer are you conformed to the world, you’re to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, in this graphic language here in Ephesians 4, Paul speaks of the same process of the same requirement for Christians as a putting off of an old self and a putting on of Christ, that the old belongs to your former manner of life and is described as corrupt through deceitful desires, and instead, here’s the renewing, “and be renewed.” That’s the contrast. “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” We’re to put on a new self, created after the likeness of God. And notice what’s said here, “in true righteousness and holiness, as God is righteous and as God is holy, so his people are to be also.” And so you notice here, this is about Christian truth. This is about the necessity of doctrine. This is about how we are to think, but it’s translated into how we live. So much so, that the distinction between the pagan, the former Gentile existence, and the Christian existence is in the fact that the sensuality and the immorality and the going after every immoral thing that marked the past for the believer cannot mark the present. So much so that it’s a putting off of the old self and a putting on of a new self. It’s a transformation. What does Romans 12 look like? Well, Ephesians 4 helps us to see that what it is to fulfill, what it means to prove what is the will of God, that which is good and excellent and perfect, it is so transformative. It is so distinct that it’s like taking off one self and putting on another self. We are dead to self and alive to Christ, transformed by the gospel.

But notice again, verse 23, and to be “renewed in the spirit of your minds,” as in Romans 12, “by the renewal of your minds.” Transformed by the renewal of your minds, here also, renewed in the spirit of your minds. Okay? What I want share with you is the fact that sometimes our critics have a point.

Let me tell you what they’re not right about. They’re not right when they assert that a focus on the Christian worldview is wrong, they’re not right. We can’t be faithful as Christians, we can’t even experience the renewal of our minds unless that means that based upon the truth of God’s word, the power of the gospel, we are holding consistently to God’s truth and learning how not only to think as Christians, but to live as Christians. So that gets to the next point, and that is that there are people who might basically agree with the Christian worldview who are still basically dead in their sins and trespasses. And there are some who would say, “I hold to this entire system of truth,” but in their moral lives, they betray it. Paul here doesn’t just say, “Exchange one ideological understanding for another.” He doesn’t say, “Exchange this set of ideas for that one. All’s done.” He says, “Put off the old self, put on a new gospel self.” I think that’s exactly what he says in Romans 12.

What I want to say is, I am not only as committed to the importance of the Christian worldview and to Christian worldview education and Christian worldview understanding as fundamental to what it means to be a faithful Christian in this age. I not only believe that as emphatically or more emphatically than ever, but I also believe it’s not enough just to say, you have to think differently. It’s good to be reminded if only the claims of Christ change how we live as profoundly as how we think. Put off the old self, put on the new self. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. It is all to the glory of God. And we would be lost to understand any of this if God didn’t love us enough to make it clear. I pray this morning that the truth of God’s word will penetrate the hardness of our own hearts and to the glory of God and for faithfulness in Christ’s church, we will be conformed to His image, not just in how we think, but, yes, in how we think, made evident in how we live to Christ’s glory.

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Good morning. I greet you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a privilege to look out and see you this morning. What a privilege to sing such words together this morning and a personal word of welcome to all of you who may be visiting with us today. We are thrilled you are here. We turn now to the preaching of God’s Word, and I invite you to turn with me to Paul’s first Corinthian letter in the New Testament appropriately identified as, some would say, One Corinthians, the British. We will stick with First Corinthians.

I’m going to begin reading at verse 10. “I appeal to you brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you but that you be united in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, ‘I follow Paul or I follow Apollos’ or ‘I follow Cephas’ or ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I think God that I baptized none of you except Christus and Gaius so that no one may say you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discerning of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where’s the scribe? Where’s the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews  demand signs and Greek seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.

Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not to bring to nothing. Things that are so that no human being may boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:10-31). This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. An incredible passage. It’s one of the key texts in Scripture for me that defines the gospel in my entire understanding of the New Testament and furthermore of biblical theology. It’s one of those texts that caught me early in life, and has captivated me ever since.

I returned to it in my mind over and over and over again. It’s like a touchstone. It’s there when I read another text, I think of First Corinthians chapter one when I hear a conversation, I think of First Corinthians chapter one. As I’m reading the history of the Christian Church over and over again, I will see something and it makes me think of First Corinthians chapter one. More commonly, I read criticisms and denials of Christianity and what I see is First Corinthians chapter one, I hear empty religious chatter that is pseudo Christianity and what echoes in my ear is First Corinthians chapter one. Now there are other key texts, Romans chapter one, John chapter one, passages that just grab a hold of me and ever since I was very young have a firm grip on me. They’re like columns on the portico of my house of theology.

These particular texts, they call me back, time and time again. Of late, I have been thinking about one dimension in this text that due to circumstances has come very much to mind. I wanted to read the entirety of that passage, and of course we could have begun in the very beginning of the letter for the sake of time. I didn’t begin with Paul’s greetings and I didn’t speak of his warmth to the Corinthian congregation. The background of this, however,  is his pastoral concern about the Corinthian congregation because of the divisions in the church, trouble in the church, confusion in the church, you know that we’re skipping over that to get to Paul’s unbelievable apostolic declaration that follows. It’s contextual. All of Paul’s letters are contextual. It’s one of the reasons why we call this the Corinthian correspondence. First and second Corinthians, we know there were other letters because Paul makes reference to them, other letters to Corinth.

This letter is tied to Corinth. It’s a specific community. Yes, more importantly it’s a specific congregation. They’re in the early church, but the Holy Spirit intended for the church throughout the ages to have this text as Holy Scripture. Where we began, Paul’s making an appeal, and there is a shift in the passage. He’s making an appeal for unity in the faith, unity in the gospel of Jesus Christ precisely because there is disunity, and it’s a disunity that threatens the witness of the church and the preaching of the church. There’s a certain kind of disunity that doesn’t pose a horrifying problem.

I mean we can differ on some of our understandings of eschatology. I think in common we must understand an historical, physical, victorious, bodily return of the Lord Jesus Christ in glory to judge the nations and to fulfill all Scripture. But when I was a very young evangelical Christian, I heard people offering different understandings of exactly how might that happen, and I quickly determined that the pre millennialist were right, and I stand on that. But I quickly discovered that I had friends who saw otherwise, friends in the gospel, friends with deep substance, faithful friends.  There could be eschatological positions that would threaten the unity of the church. But there are all kinds of different, we could have an entire seminar in this room with some very fruitful discussion, come in as friends and leave as friends, come in united in the gospel and leave united in the gospel. But there are other doctrines, there are other issues of which that is not true. They’re far closer to the center of the Christian faith. Confusion or division on these things would be fatal. But it’s not just doctrine, it is the entirety of the life of the church.

Churches will find just about anything to argue about. That’s human nature. You drive down streets. I enjoy telling students, I could take you down a street in Louisville and tell you what is memorable about that church, and often it’s not peace. And some fights are worth having, and there’s stories on that too. You can look down and there’s  First church, Second church, Third and a quarter church. We can divide in so many different ways and you just say, okay, there’s a story there. Maybe that was important and necessary, maybe it wasn’t.

One of the things that I find so helpful in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence is that he weighs the heavy things versus the less heavy things. The heaviest thing of all is the most glorious thing of all, which is the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. The most important thing of all, the glorious saving cross of Christ is at the center of what Paul would have us to see here. He directs attention of the church to the cross, unflinchingly to the cross, unfailingly to the cross, consistently to the cross. If there is an issue of division, stop that. Look to the cross. Before you go any further, go to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, be reminded of what God has done for us in Christ. Be reminded of what happened on the cross. Be reminded of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ by which we are saved. He doesn’t say the other things aren’t important. There are many chapters following this in an entire letter following this, but let’s get this straight. If we get the gospel wrong, everything is wrong and nothing else matters.

But as I say, in recent days I’ve been thinking about a particular portion of this text, and that is verses 20 through 25. Paul asked the rhetorical question, “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is he? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Just stop there for a moment. In verse 18, Paul declared, “For the Word of the cross is folly, it’s foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those of us who are being saved, it is the power of God.”

And then in verse 20, he says, If you ever looked around the church, the church is not made up of scoffers of the cross. The church is also not made up of a certain IQ class. There’s some Ivy League alumni in room, but they’re not here because they’re Ivy League alumni. They’re here because they are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not the faculty club at the University of California at Berkeley. Maybe you’ve noticed. Paul’s saying to the Corinthian congregation, okay, look around yourselves. Nobody got here by IQ test. Nobody got here by worldly wisdom. Now Paul, in the totality of the Pauline theological message to the church, the apostle Paul, when he is at Mars Hill, he will cite their philosophers. He’s not unlearned. He’s very learned. He’s not unwise by worldly wisdom. He is wise, but that is not the wisdom of the cross. That is not the wisdom of the gospel. That is not the wisdom of Christianity.

So Paul just reminds him bracingly and perhaps maybe a little offensively, you guys just don’t look like you got here by being valedictorian. You’re not here because of some academic achievement. You’re not here because of worldly wisdom. You’re not here because you’re one of the debaters in terms especially of the Greco-Roman tradition. I don’t see any Epicureans here. I don’t see any Sophists here. So how did you get here? Is it because of your wisdom? Is it because of worldly wisdom? No, it’s all by grace. It is the wisdom of God, in the foolishness of the cross. In verse 21: “For sense and the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. It please God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” Okay? That is one of the most tightly argued sentences and we can skip over the first part to get to the second part.

Let’s not skip over the first part because it’s an incredible sentence structure. For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. Okay? So God always knew that it would be folly to make himself known through worldly wisdom. Now the wise, we have to use that term in two different senses, don’t we? But we’re not there yet. So wise at this point means worldly wise. There is the wisdom of the cross. There is the of Christianity, the wisdom of Christ and that is above all things to be prized. But here it’s a reference to worldly wisdom.

That’s not how God chose to make himself known. You go to Mars Hill and Athens, where the philosophers are holding court. That’s not  the means God would choose to make himself known. That’s not to say they can’t reach insights. It’s not to say they can’t get anything, right? I mean even the most crazy atheist still knows how to do the math when he is in the drugstore. But in the deepest issues of life, in the revealed truths of the gospel, in the saving power of the cross of Christ, none of us gets there by worldly wisdom. And we’re not kept there by worldly wisdom. We know a wisdom, and it’s a wisdom different than and infinitely superior to the worldly wisdom. And this is why those who are committed to, absolutely steeped in, absolutely immersed in worldly wisdom don’t recognize the wisdom of the cross, and also reminds us of sin and its deceitfulness, and it reminds us of grace and the sovereignty of God, to open our eyes that they may see in our ears that they may hear because otherwise we wouldn’t get there either. Two patterns he mentions, of course you know them.

For Jews to demand signs, miracles, think of a passage like John chapter five and six, but we preach Christ crucified. So the Greeks demand signs or miracles and the Greek seek wisdom. That’s very sophisticated, highly structured argument that they recognize coming from one school or another. They recognize this internal coherence. They recognize it’s intellectual, not only brilliance but beauty just in terms of the aesthetic structure of thought. That’s not the cross. We preach Christ crucified and here’s the problem. It’s a stumbling block to just scandal on. They stumble over it. It’s just too crude. This can’t be how God would do this. And Greeks seek wisdom.

Well, there is a wisdom. The cross is infinite wisdom, but it’s not human wisdom. It’s the wisdom of God, to those who are called, effectual calling, both Jews and Greeks. Christ is the power of God and Christ is the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Therefore brothers and sisters, we are saved. If that were not true, we would be forever lost in our sins and transgressions. But it is true that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Alright, I want to look at foolishness a little more closely, and since I am here at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Boyce College, we can dive in a little deeper into foolishness. What happened in chapel this morning? We dove deep into foolishness. I think this text invites us to go on an excursion into foolishness that does take full account of the foolishness of the first century to which Paul makes explicit reference, but it is also a pattern of foolishness that I think we need to detect in the world around us, and in particular in the theological world around us.

We speak because of this text of the foolishness of the gospel, but I think we need to recognize some specific dimensions of that foolishness. People are driving by right now on Lexington Road. There are some people who have enough perception to know maybe just by observation something’s going on in this room, but in their everyday lives they’re not troubled by anything that might go on in this room. We’re living in a time, and you can use different terms for it, but I guess the most available term is secularization. We’re living in a secular age in which most people around us do not have as their constant reference biblical Christianity. And it’s not just that they’re distant from it, they’re alienated from it.

You can’t be just neutral about the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s one of the fundamental errors of human sinful reason is to think that there’s some kind of neutrality when it comes to the cross of Christ. You are either his or you are his enemy. That’s just biblical truth. You either belong to Christ or you are the enemy of Christ. Now it is our task to share the gospel with Christ’s enemies in order that they may believe, and believing, be saved. And we need to remember that the New Testament tells us very clearly that that distinction is clear. We either belong to Christ or we are the enemies of Christ. And that is also humbling to us because that reminds us that until God called us unto Christ and we believed, we were not neutral, we were the enemies of Christ.

I don’t hear people commonly in testimony say, I was Christ’s enemy until I became his. But is that not true? That also means by the way, that in our own pattern we were just as afflicted by the foolishness indicted here as any other. But I want to speak of several patterns of foolishness here in the church, in the pulpit, in contemporary Christian theology, in the Christianity as a thing, a visible, hearable discernible thing. I’m not making an equivalence between that thing and the true church of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a thing the world thinks is Christianity. It includes a lot of things that are fundamentally not Christian. So we know that. But let’s just think in those terms for a moment. There are things said, preached, argued, asserted that we need to observe carefully.

The issue is, how do you get around the foolishness of the cross? It’s tough to get around. You certainly can’t sing what we’ve been singing, that’s out. You probably don’t want to preach or draw attention to a text that’s too messy, as in bloody, so that’s out. You take the hymnal. Now I need to explain to you, for those of you who aren’t acquainted with the term, that’s a Christian term about a book with hymns printed therein, okay? Used to be of regular necessary service to Christians before the advent of the projector. And so in those days, far, far, far in the past, which explained why there is a rack in the back of the pews here and in which you can still find a hymnal stuck in there in case you haven’t seen one. It’s like going to the Smithsonian Institution for some of you I know, but just do it. It’s fun. And here’s the other thing, it has notes in it and music in it, and I say that I don’t mean it cynically.Honestly, I understand, but I think there’s loss. I think there’s loss.

I will tell you that devotionally, a hymnal is number two for me to Scripture, and it’s because I can turn pages and see hymns that I’ve been seeing since I was a little boy and knew hymns too that are wonderful. And those hymns I can hear in my imagination when I just see them on the page. But you’re going to have to rip all kinds of pages out of that hymnal. You’re going to have to reduce the songs you sing. If you’re not going to sing about the cross, what are you going to sing about? Oh, wait just a minute. You go to a lot of evangelical churches or churches that think they’re evangelical and you’re going to hear a lot of music, you’re actually not going to hear the cross. You’re not going to hear atonement. You’re not going to hear about the blood of Christ. You’re not going to hear about the saving work of Christ. You’re going to hear about self-affirmation disguised as some form of music, worship some form of something.

Lord, aren’t you lucky that I’m here? Aren’t I glad to be here with other people like me? I mean honestly or just, be happy. Now, I don’t want to sound too cynical here because I think there are people who, with Christian knowledge actually hear more in those songs than are there. I was in a setting a couple of years ago where there was a very moving song. It was a very moving song; it was very catchy. It was one of those that you could remember and just think about it in your head until I realized there’s no gospel in it. And so I was talking to someone who was with me who was also very much attuned to these things and we both agreed there are people in this room that are reading more into those words than are there in those words. You can be almost slightly dangerously close to the gospel, and if you know the gospel, you fill in the blanks. The problem is, an awful lot of the people in that room singing those songs aren’t filling in the blanks. They don’t have a clue.

Evasion is the first method. There are those who by evasion in this first method of understanding foolishness, the manifestation of foolishness as evasion, you just don’t talk about the cross. You don’t necessarily deny it. That would be messy. You just ignore it. You just evade it. You just find a way to preach a message somehow without ever getting to the cross. And I mean the cross as God’s decisive event, substitutionary atonement, death of Christ, putting here here the entire saving work of Christ in his death, burial and resurrection, the Father raising him from the dead, or you just hear this as victory.

There’s no atonement at all. It’s simply, hey, first chapter was, we’re lost. Hey, second chapter is, we’re found. Aren’t we wonderful? Lucky people, we’ve been found! How? From what? Saved. How? From what? You wouldn’t know. The method of these is not to look too closely. You don’t want to see how the sausage is made. I mean atonement, that’s messy, right? The gospel’s pretty messy, right? Alright, so just avoid it. Just kind of hint at it. Let people fill in the blanks. The Scripture calls us to gaze upon the cross. That reminds us that it’s possible not to.

Second is domestication. You domesticate the message of the cross. In this case you can talk about the cross, but it’s a thing emptied of its power. I think there are many ways to do this, but of course when we say domestication, we really are kind of making an animal reference. You domesticate a horse. You break it so that it can be ridden by a human being on a saddle. You house break a dog, I think you know what that means, alright? In this case, by the way, the domestication of the cross means when someone actually does, maybe by accident, get deeply into the gospel and get to the cross and to the blood of Christ, it’s as if you came home and the dog had messed on the floor, because it’s offensive to those who do not believe.

There are preachers who almost miraculously escape preaching the cross because, of course if you are determined not to preach the cross, you’ve got a lot of problems, not only in the gospels and not only in the epistles, you’ve got a lot of problem in the Old Testament actually, because we’re talking about things that clearly are pointing to the cross. We’re looking at a sacrificial system that’s clearly pointing towards an ultimate sacrifice for sin. And by the way, if First Corinthians chapter one and if the gospels are bloody, let’s just say the Old Testament is bloodier, pointing to something greater. There are preachers who do everything to domesticate the cross. You can’t completely avoid these texts, so you just try to explain it. You pretty up the cross, and in preaching and in the approach, you just try to make it as pretty as possible. And this is unfortunately more possible than you might think.

Have you noticed that the top of this steeple, there’s not a cross? The top of Norton Hall, there’s not a cross. I had someone ask me one time, why is there no cross? It’s because this institution, even in its architecture, heavily influenced by Puritanism. And one of the reasons that Puritanism reformed Christianity, I’ll just say with the volume turned up, doesn’t have a cross on the top of the building is because you’re going to be putting something up there that looks pretty, and the cross is not to be presented as pretty. So, in New England, puritanism, what did you put at the top of the steeple? Well, a weather vein of course, because it’s useful in the good Puritan sense, it’s useful so you can put it up there. Of course, there are times in which you can say, maybe the institution is waiting to see which way the wind is blowing, which leads to the third method or demonstration of manifestation of foolishness.

How do you respond to the foolishness of the cross and try to get around it? You can try to avoid it by evasion. You can try to domesticate it. The other method I want to point to now is accommodation. You can try to accommodate it and I wanted to keep a parallel structure here, but here I’m talking about theological liberalism. This is what it is. This is how liberalism works. This is how you will know it when you see it, smell it when you discern it. This is how you’re going to know it’s there. It’s because the argument is we have to accommodate Christian theology to the intellectual conditions of the time. We have to accommodate Christianity to the cultural conditions of the time. Friedrich Schleiermacher in the 19th century in many ways, the father of liberal theology said in his lectures to the culture despisers of religion, there’s something you will like here. But to the culture despisers of religion, you don’t bring out a bloody cross. You bring out some kind of elevated morality. You bring out some kind of depth of existential meaning. Of course, the problem is, you got this book, and this book is very problematic, so you got to do something with this book, which is why the heart of theological liberalism is the denial of the true nature of God and the denial of God’s Word, Scripture. But you still even if just emotional attachment and just because there’s a section in the liturgy that says Bible reading, so you got to read it. What are you going to do with it?

When I was a theology student, I came to see what was going on in theological liberalism and the effort to turn the cross into a mere picture of God’s love. Christ is victim, but he’s willing to play the part of the victim just to show us how much God loves us. It was not the father’s intention that the Son be crucified, but nonetheless, in a demonstration of divine love, Christ goes to the cross, and this is why you will find some in theological liberalism, particularly in the early 20th century in the British tradition which is wildly influential in the United States, you would have people who would say it’s a sacrifice of sorts, but it is not substitution. It’s a sacrifice and it’s supposed to be a picture, an extremely moving picture of the love of God towards us and how are we defined? We are God’s children, and this picture is to draw us to Christ. There is no sin, which is a barrier. There’s no holy God as judge. There is no predicament of lostness. It is just the acquisition of additional meaning. Prettify it up. C.H. Dodd, I remember reading him when I was a first year seminary student, making a distinction between propitiation and expiation and you know what you, his professor of New Testament, everybody quoted C.H. Dodd.

But then I started looking at it and realized if this is true, the preaching I have known as the preaching of the cross isn’t necessary or was overwrought, especially in pointing to propitiation. Of course, the problem is  that Paul says that’s exactly what it is. The New Testament says that’s exactly what it is. It is propitiation, not mere expiation. It is the propitiation of a holy and righteous God whose righteous wrath is fully satisfied, his justice as fully satisfied in the atonement accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not just a washing, it is payment in full, in the substitutionary death of the very son of God.

A lot of theological liberalism has now found a way just to avoid the cross altogether, and some of this has taken place in my lifetime. I think theological liberalism and I mean here, genuine theological liberalism, the real thing, even when I was young, it still had to make some reference to these things. Now it makes no reference to them at all. The year I became president of Southern Seminary, a woman by the name of Dolores Williams, a professor at Union Theological Seminary, so this is for me, this is history. This is when I first stepped into the pulpit here as the president of this institution. The very year, 30 plus years ago, Dolores Williams got up at a conference called Re-Imagining God. Now you got a problem if your conference is entitled, re-Imagining God. But speaking of the cross, she said, “I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff,” and she’s a professor at a theological seminary. We don’t need people hanging on crosses, okay? We don’t, by the way, have people hanging on crosses for our atonement. We have one man on a cross. We don’t need blood dripping and weird stuff.

Just recently a GoFundMe account was started to raise money for an oil portrait of Dolores Williams on the campus of Union Theological Seminary in New York City for “her trailblazing contribution to theology.” Trailblazing, you know what trail she’s blazing, as far away from the cross as you can get, as fast as you can get there, people hanging on those crosses, blood dripping and weird stuff. I can remember as a theology student reading by Harry Emerson Fosdick, whose church was right next door to Union Theological Seminary, the Riverside Church and Harry Emerson Fosdick. I thought his liberalism was that he would say that the cross says bad things about Christians that we’re making too much of it. I was completely shocked when I actually read Harry Emerson fos and Fosdick said, the problem with the preaching of the cross is that it says bad things about God.

It asserts horrible things about the Father because you can’t read the New Testament without understanding that Christ didn’t jump on the cross. He was crucified by the express will of the Father, crucified by sinful men, but by the Father’s will. Second Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake, he made him. That is the Father made the son, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him might become the righteousness of God.” Romans 3:25. Similarly, we come to see this summary of the gospel speaking of Christ “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.” 

The Father put him forward.It says bad things about the Father. Fosdick said that you would say he would demand blood atonement. No loving father would demand blood atonement, but God Almighty, the eternal Father demanded blood atonement, and he provided blood atonement through the perfect obedience of his son. 

The fourth evasion is psychologization. The therapeutic, and this is again it comes in waves, but even recently we just said the cross will add meaning to your life. You know what? The cross does not add meaning to your life. Sorry. If you say about the cross that it adds meaning to your life, you don’t know the cross. The cross doesn’t add meaning to your life. The cross becomes the meaning of your life in the cross of Christ. I glory at the cross. At the cross we’re drawn back to the cross because the cross is the message of our salvation. It is the saving act of God for our redemption.

The preaching of the cross, and I know this is a little bit dated, but I want to tell you it does come in waves and I sense another wave of this coming. Robert Schuler, now dead, the preacher in Orange County, California in the Crystal Cathedral. I had the opportunity to get to know him. We appeared on some television programs together opposing one another, but he invited me to come to the Crystal Cathedral for a tour and who could turn that down? Robert Schuler, I came to believe, was absolutely sincere. That’s the scary thing I came to believe. He was absolutely sincere and he said “What we need to preach is that the cross simply and exclusively tells you how much God loves you.”

That’s not light years from the preaching of the cross. It’s just sort of the reversal of the preaching of the cross. That’s why it’s so seductive. Yes, it does tell us that God loves us. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. Yes, it is the love of God made manifest, but it’s not because we’re such wonderful people. Shuler actually turned it around so that the cross is supposed to build our self-esteem. If I can read the New Testament, I don’t think the cross is to build our self-esteem. 

The fifth way is demythologization. See, you get some of you know what that is. You’ve heard about it. If not, you got a new word you can use, demythologization.  The argument that the mythological world of the Bible needs to be simplified, we see through the myth and we see the essence of the thing. Rudolph Boltzmann, the German theologian, he said that the world is driven by different mythical world pictures. Christianity, biblical Christianity points to a specific mythological world picture. He said of the cross that it represents a sacrificial and juristic analysis. He said it has existential meaning. In other words, there’s meaning in there that can apply to us in our modern, hyper-modern situation. We need to encounter the cross. We need to understand there’s a certain revelation in the cross, although it’s an indeterminate revelation. What we should see in it, Bookman said, is authenticity. Authenticity. Do you look at the cross? Do you sing about the cross and say, what I find there is authenticity and by the way, the authenticity of what? The authenticity of basically whatever you want to be authentic. You, be you. So much for take up your cross and follow me. 

Finally, I want to say that I think another evasion of the cross we need to recognize as prosperity theology, and again, this doesn’t go away, it’s just in waves. It’s there. Even recently, we see it on television and we see people who are now being promoted as Christian leaders, and I’ll just tell you, I think they’re false prophets and false prophetesses. I think a lot of it, there’s not enough theology there in the case of some of them to indict them for heresy. But you see it and all around, they’re popular so many places. They got the big tabernacles and temples all over America, but what they preach is simply the reversal of First Corinthians chapter one.

Now, a lot of these buildings, these pulpits, these churches, there’s really no danger of outright heresy because that would require some level of theology. It’s just affirmation. The promise of the gospel is that God loves us and wants us rich, healthy, and wealthy. I wanted to speak from this text this morning just to remind us that when we read First Corinthians chapter one and when we read that the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God, we need to remember that this is as relevant as it was in Corinth when Paul, by the Holy Spirit wrote this letter. It is as relevant to Christian ministry to the preaching of the gospel. It’s as relevant to our own theological considerations, our own gospel analysis as it was when Paul wrote this letter by the Holy Spirit.

If God has called you to preach, he’s called you to preach this gospel, not to pretty it up, but to preach it in all of its power, to preach the cross, to preach it in the simplicity of the message of the cross, but in the power of the message of the cross so that sinners may hear that gospel and believe and believing, be saved. It’s important we recognize whether we are preaching or listening, that every single Christian sermon has to come down to the question. Is this the wisdom of the world or the foolishness of the cross? Because brothers and sisters, fellow sinners saved by grace, it’s going to be one or the other. Father, we are thankful for this Word beyond our own words. Thank you for making us face the gospel. Thank you for inspiring the apostle Paul by your Spirit to make us look squarely at this issue and turn neither to the left nor to the right from the glory of the cross. Father, we pray that you will bless your church in the preaching of your Word. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Good morning. I greet you all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s wonderful to be here together with you. And I also want to offer my personal word of welcome to those who’ve gathered here, especially, uh, for the events today and World Watch and all that will take place in the course of this morning and afternoon. Dr. York, I appreciate very much that introduction. Finishing school and all – most people here don’t know what that was – I will simply say it was a staple of southern culture when I was a boy, 12 or 13 years old, I saw absolutely no use for it, then learned uses for it for the rest of my life. But I guess there was one use for it that I didn’t know was coming as a 12 or 13-year-old boy, and that was to answer a question Dr. York basically asked about eating an egg out of an egg cup with one smooth movement. You take the spoon, detach the top of the egg at the narrow end as it should be set, in one movement, and then using the egg spoon, you eat the contents of the egg. Yes, without spilling. There you go. Now you’re finished. It did raise a host of issues for me because that’s when I discovered some people eat soft boiled eggs. So there was a lot of ick among the 12- and 13-year-olds in that room, but we left finished.

I want us to turn to scripture this morning. First Peter, and in in particular First Peter chapter three, beginning in verse eight. We read, “Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling. But on the contrary, bless for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing for whoever desires to love life and see good days. Let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. Now, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good. But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed, have no fear of them nor be troubled, but in your hearts regard, Christ, the Lord, as holy, always prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God’s will than for doing evil.” This is the word of the Lord.

The Lord speaks through the Apostle Peter in his instruction to the church then and the church throughout the ages, the church now in this present age. This word is addressed directly to us and it comes in the context of this magnificent letter from Peter. And before we go further, let’s just exalt for a moment in this letter known to us as First Peter. Let’s remember who Peter was. This is the Peter who was Simon, by Christ’s sovereign act, called to be one of his disciples. This is the Peter who, when the question was asked, “Who do you say the son of man is?”, said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This is the same Peter who would deny Christ three times. This is the same Peter who in the gospels, Matthew, mark, and Luke and John, will show up either in full strength or not. This is Peter who becomes one of the key leaders of the early church as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we shall see, the Peter who writes this letter is a very different man than Simon the fisherman, all by the grace of God.

I’ve been thinking, as you have been thinking in recent days, over the past couple of weeks, about the lessons learned in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I think even at this point, so many days after that evil act, it is very interesting to hear the cultural conversation, a conversation that was invigorated on that day and continues, a conversation that has continued on two sides of a great worldview divide, a conversation that raises a host of issues for believing Christians. And that is why I believe I was led to this particular text for this day. The key verses of our consideration in First Peter chapter three, I would wish us to look most closely at verse 15, especially the words of command from the apostle that we should be always being prepared to make a defense for anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you. The cultural conversation at this point after the assassination of Charlie Kirk is not what I had expected, not in full. There’s something going on here that is far deeper and I think is truly unexpected, but even as it is shocking, it is important that we pay close attention to what is happening. I want to speak specifically of the memorial service that was held this past Sunday, five hours long. And in particular what’s happened in the last few days in response to that service. The shock of the service for most people was how pervasively Jesus Christ was declared. Christianity was embraced. Standing for Christ was honored. Speaking for Christ was underlined, affirmed. The extent to which witness to Jesus Christ became so pervasive that shocking moments took place, truly shocking moments for someone who has been watching national affairs for many decades. To hear the vice President of the United States, JD Vance, say that in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, he had talked more about Jesus Christ and his salvation, his experience with Christ, his words were, “More in the last two weeks than my entire political life.” Something’s happening there. There were people I had never expected to hear a direct word of Christian witness from who got up with scriptural citations and coherent Christian argument. There were those who got up and spoke not only of the fact that Charlie Kirk was a Christian, but that they had come to know the Lord Jesus Christ through Charlie Kirk’s direct influence and witness. One young man who spoke of the fact that he was aimless, he was lost, he was involved in many different patterns of sin, but he came to Christ through the witness of Charlie Kirk. And not only did he come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and not only was he saved, his life was transformed. And he said, “Here at this service is my wife and our infant baby.” That’s just a picture of everything fractured, becoming something whole by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. President Donald Trump said, “Isn’t this like an old-fashioned revival service?” Now with full respect, I don’t know how he would know. I just don’t imagine he’s actually attended many, but nonetheless, he knows what one is. Or you could put it in different words, he certainly knew one when he saw it. He wasn’t wrong. He was right. The secular response, the political response to this, has come in waves. The first response was that this is just too much. And you know, the thought that is expressed there is not the five hours of length, it’s the depth and comprehensiveness of the Christianity that was declared. One of the hosts of a media program reviewing it said it got to where you caught onto a pattern and everyone who got up was going to talk about Charlie and about Jesus. That was a complaint by the way, that was what was identified as the problem. Also, there have been posted many of Charlie Kirk’s testimonies of the gospel, even in the last days of his life, I think far more than most people recognized – a far more Christ-centered message than many had had thought. I mentioned just in my own reflections in print, that when I first met Charlie Kirk, he was not so clearly identified as a Christian. So this came as something of a surprise to me over the years, and a most hopeful surprise. But I think it’s important to recognize that Charlie Kirk had been working very hard to be ready to give an answer. It became the essence of his mission in Turning Point USA. That’s what he was doing there at Utah Valley University when he dared people to come and he invited them graciously. And you’ll remember the theme was, prove me wrong. And those of you who’ve seen the clips, you’ll know that in so many cases, on so many campuses, young people had come and asked questions and he directed them to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And with a skill that many people would not have expected, he connected the dots of Christian truth into a very clear argument for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then for subsequent arguments about the veracity of biblical truth and subsequent arguments about how the Christian faith is integrated, he didn’t get to graduate, get a job, get married, and have lots of children, he didn’t get there from nowhere, he got there from Genesis.

The world’s offense, the secular world’s offense, is offensive to us. It’s also puzzling to us, but it’s a wakeup call. And I want to turn to this text to remind us that each one of us, and I want to speak particularly to the young Christians in this room, particularly, that you bear in your generation a responsibility to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you. This text from the Holy Spirit through the apostle Peter gives us that message clearly. In light of what we have seen and heard and learned in just the last couple of weeks, I want us to think about readiness for Christian witness.

Now we look to this particular text and I take us back to verse 15, “Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you.” Now, I was raised on, did my early Bible memorization in, the King James version rather than the ESV. And I still love the King James cadence and translation of this text – “Be ready always to give an answer for every man who asketh you a reason for the hope that is in you.”

Three basic affirmations I want us to think about this morning. The first is be always ready. The second is to make a defense, or to give an answer. And the third is for the hope that is in you.

Be always ready. You know, that’s a comprehensive command, always means there’s no time when you’re not to be ready, you’re to be ready, and to be ready you have to be pre-ready. To be ready to give an answer, you have to know what the questions are, and you have to know how to answer those questions faithfully, and that’s not going to come to you by some kind of message from the sky when you need it, it’s going to have to be in your mind and in your heart before the occasion comes. Young Christians, I want to tell you, for the entirety of your lifetimes on this earth, faithfulness is going to require you to be ready to have conversations you’re not ready for now. You need quickly to be determined and to work towards being ready for the moment, the moments, the occasions, the opportunities, the urgencies, that will come to you. We’re living in an increasingly secularized society. The questions are coming with increasing power and increasing frequency, and they’re coming at every level. One of the most interesting things that I know these days is how many incredibly powerful questions come to me through The Briefing from very, very young listeners. Now to be honest, sometimes it’s the parents who send the question. And sometimes the questions are entirely predictable, coming from a certain age and a certain curiosity – “Did Adam have a naval?” Okay, the questions though, they get a lot deeper fast. I give priority to the questions from young children that ask the biggest theological issues. And I have listeners continually say, “Who are these children who ask such questions?” Well, I, I think they’re the children largely of Christian parents who’ve been teaching them the Word and ways of God, and the questions come. You shouldn’t be surprised that a young child doesn’t have questions when there are no dots put on the page. Connecting the dots is largely where the questions arise. At a certain age, middle school, upper elementary school, certainly high school, questions come a bit differently, they come sometimes more complex. I think one of the hopeful signs for me is that when you have a 6-year-old asking that kind of question and a 9-year-old asking this kind of question, and a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old asking these kinds of questions, and this is happening in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, this has to be good. This has to be very good. It should come to us as a tremendous encouragement, but it also underlines that these young people are being taught Christian truth, they’re being taught the scriptures, they’re being taught the Christian faith, otherwise they wouldn’t have this kind of question. And you know, that means that parents have to be ready to give an answer. And I love hearing from parents who aren’t ready, and they’ll write and say, “My 8-year-old has asked, ‘What do I do with this?’” And, and I want to say to this parent, to this mother or father who writes, you are the resident theologian at this moment. You are the entire Christian faculty, husband and wife, mother and father together, you are the faculty of this little university called your family. And I’m glad you asked. Let’s connect the dots.

I was just recently with Mary in Europe, and we were retracing the steps of the Reformation, and I was lecturing along the way. We were at Wittenberg and at Leipzig, other places, where in particular Martin Luther was hammering out the reformation. And one of the things you have to come to know about Luther is that Luther didn’t know what he was going to say tomorrow. The Reformation and its doctrine, the Reformation and its clarifications, it’s recovery of the gospel took place argument by argument. You can stand in different places, and different disputations. Leipzig is one of my favorite ones where it becomes very clear as Luther there is debating the Catholic authority. He’s working out justification by faith alone because the logic is taking him to language he didn’t know he was going to use. You can follow Luther and come to know where he came to know that it wasn’t enough to say, “the authority of scripture.” He had to say, “the authority of scripture alone.” Most famously at the Diet of Worms where he was on trial. And I think when we look at historic figures like that, we like to think they’re just ready-made, just add water and stir. All of a sudden, he was Simon over here he’s Peter, he was here unredeemed, un-uneducated, unlettered, unprepared, over here he’s Peter, ready to go. And I am just emphatic about wanting to point out that if you actually read the four gospels, that’s not the way it worked because the four gospels are honest that Simon, having become Peter, did get some things gloriously right more than once. “You are the Christ, the Son of living God.” In John chapter six, when there are so many who leave, who walk away of the false disciples, when Jesus said, “I am the bread of life, he who eats of me will live, he who does not eat this bread will die.” And in John chapter six, Jesus asked the question of his disciples, “Are you also going to go away?” And it is Peter who says, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have come to know that you are the holy one of God.” When Peter said, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God,” Jesus didn’t say, “’A’ on the final exam, Peter,” he didn’t say, “Peter, you know, your theological cogitations have been quite productive,” he said, “Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father, who is in heaven,” I have to admit it’s hard to imagine how Peter became Peter, the Peter we find in First Peter. This is an uneducated fisherman, this is a man from Galilee, now listen to him as the apostle of Jesus Christ, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading kept in heaven for you. Who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for salvation to be revealed in the last time.” Later in that same chapter, “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully inquiring what person or time the spirit in Christ was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories, it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, and the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.” So now this unlettered, untaught, Galilean fisherman is telling the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, that the truths that are coming through his ministry, because they’re coming from the Holy Spirit, are things into which angels long to look. This is Peter who is telling the church of the Lord Jesus Christ how to stand fast in a hostile culture, how to be faithful. Just consider this from chapter two, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but you are now God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evil doers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” And then the text of our greatest concern this morning, “Be ready to give an answer to anyone who asketh of the hope that is in you.” Just look at the book of Acts – just think about the book of Acts with me if you don’t have it right in front of you – when we hear the command here, “Be always ready.” I can’t think of any book that demonstrates the fulfillment of that command like the book of Acts. And just for the sake of time, we’ll have to go fast. But just consider how Acts begins in Acts chapter two with Peter on the day of Pentecost. What do we read in verse 14? “But Peter standing with the eleven lifted up his voice and addressed them, ‘Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you. Give ear to my words for these men are not drunk as you suppose for it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel.’” Peter preaching in Acts two. Acts three beginning in verse eleven at Solomon’s porch or portico, “And when Peter saw it, he addressed the people, ‘Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this? Or why do you stare at us as though by our own power or piety we’ve made him walk. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers glorified His servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to release him. But you denied the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you and you killed the author of life whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses, and his name – by faith in his name – has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given this man perfect health in the presence of you all.’” I don’t think Peter was ready for that, but he was made ready, and when the moment came he, he was ready. The same in Acts chapter four with Peter and John before the Sanhedrin. The same in Acts chapter five with the apostles and their testimony. The same quintessentially in Acts chapter seven. And wasn’t it interesting that in the memorial service last Sunday, just days ago, there was a rather lengthy citation of Acts chapter seven – and this is of course Steven’s testimony. “Brothers and sisters hear me, the God of glory appear to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran and said to him, go out from your land and from your kindred and into the land that I will show you,” and then Stephen goes on and on and on and on, in verse 20, he’s to Moses, “At this time Moses was born and he was beautiful in God’s sight and he was brought up for three months in his father’s house. And when he was exposed, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in all his words and deeds.” And he continues on through, he talks about the tent in the wilderness, and then he ended, or you might say in the context of Acts, his message was ended, when he spoke to the people and said, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one whom you have now betrayed and murdered. You, who received the laws delivered by angels and did not keep it.” And they killed him. Just for the sake of time, I’ll mention Paul at Antioch in Pisidia, Acts 13, Paul at Mars Hill, Acts 17, Apollos at Ephesus, Acts 18, Paul at Ephesus, Acts 19, Paul before the people who are gathered in Acts 21, Paul before the council in Acts 22, Paul before Felix in Acts 24, and Paul before King Agrippa in Acts 26. The Book of Acts is a demonstration of the fulfillment that Peter here issues by the Holy Spirit as a command, “Be always ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you.” They were ready when the moment came. Stephen was ready. Peter was ready, John was ready. Paul, having been Saul, the persecutor of the church, is now ready. Are you ready? My encouragement to you is to get ready. In your generation, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ desperately needs you to be ready to give an answer.

Alright, how are you going to do that? Just recently I was reading of a principle of trial law, the principle of trial law that I thought was brilliantly expressed and it captured my mind and I thought, you know, I’m going to share it with you. You didn’t come here for a principle of trial law, one of the most important principles of a trial lawyer making a closing argument. But to me, it is immediately applicable to preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, especially in the context of preaching. But it’s especially relevant to every single one of us, even when we think about a gospel conversation. The principle of the law for trial lawyers in making a closing argument is that you must know there are three arguments. You must keep in mind three arguments. And as you’re preparing to defend the faith once delivered to the saints, you get the immediate application – there are three arguments you need to keep in mind, okay? Remember, this is coming from the context of the closing argument in a trial with so much at stake. The three arguments are these. Number one, the argument you plan to deliver. The second argument is the one you actually deliver in court. And the third argument is the one days later you wish you had delivered. Now, I think those of you who preach and teach, you get the meaning of that immediately. And we understand that’s exactly the way it works. You plan to say something, that’s the first speech. You say something, that’s the second speech. And then days later you think, “I wish I had said.” Now you get the point in the training of lawyers. You want as much as possible to make certain that the argument you make in court is the one you’re going to be satisfied with days later. Now you say, “Why is the first one different than the second one? Why in the practice of law is the first argument not exactly the second argument?” It is because in the second argument, you’re looking at a jury, you’re in a different context than when you were at your desk preparing this argument. Now you’re before a jury with a judge observing, and you’ve got to make an argument because at that point, your audience is the members of the jury, and you’re going to have to do whatever it takes in making this argument to address it successfully to them. Similarly, in preaching, you have a sermon you plan to deliver. You work hard on the material, the content, the words, the arguments. But in contact with a congregation of living people, I believe it should be a different sermon, not a radically different sermon so there’s no continuity with the first, but when you’re looking at people and when you’re preaching to a congregation as I am right now, I’m looking at real live human beings, and that changes how I will make these expressions. But like a trial lawyer, there is no preacher worth anything who doesn’t a few days later say, “I should have said that. I could have defined that a little better. I could have linked this to that.” You know, that’s just what it is to be human. But I think you get the relevance even in the defense of the faith, you know you’re going to have a conversation, and so you plan what you want to convey in the defense of the Christian faith in that conversation, in that class presentation, in this opportunity, but what you say then is not exactly what you plan because you’re dealing with a real flesh and blood human being. You’re in a conversation or you’re before certain people, and there’s a human dynamic. You can tell, “Okay, I need to lay into this just a little bit further. I need to define this a little more clearly.” You know, you connect the dots and then days later you’re going to think, “Oh, I didn’t connect that quite the way I would connect it now,” That’s how we learn, that’s how we improve. But this particular pattern is not just important to trial lawyers, but you can certainly see why it would be. And you want a trial lawyer who’s thinking these ways because you want that middle one, the argument he actually gives, you want it to be the best one possible. You want it to be better than the one he prepared. Similar for the preacher in the sermon, similar for the Christian in any gospel conversation.

What we have heard is the command to be always ready, but ready to do what? Ready to make a defense, to give an answer for the gospel. An argument is a defense for the faith. This is what we call apologetics. It is the intentional defense of Christian truth. It is to make an apology. And you know, in English that sounds like you’re saying, “I’m sorry, I’m a Christian.” That is profoundly not what it means. It’s from the Greek word apologia, which means a defense of the faith. It is a courageous projection of the reasons you believe what you believe, of the foundational principles behind what you say. It means presenting an argument for the truthfulness of Christ and the truthfulness of Christianity, and it means doing so boldly. Boldness is baked into this text. Be always ready to give a defense. That means reasons. Be always ready to give reasons, to give a reason for the hope that is in you.

I desperately needed Christian apologetics as a teenager, as a high school student in particular. There were huge questions that I was being confronted with in school. There were huge questions that I was being confronted with in the middle of the night, just coming from my own mind and heart. “How in the world do I think this? What am I supposed to think about this?” And I was connected by God’s grace to good, healthy influences of Christian apologetics, and I ate it up. I ate it up. I didn’t know anything about different methodologies of apologetics. I just knew I need smart Christians who are faithful Christians, who know what the gospel is, and how to make arguments, and I need to see how they make arguments because when I go to school tomorrow, I’ve got to know how to make those arguments. And besides that, sometimes the biggest arguments are in my own mind and I need to know how to settle those.

There are different schools of apologetics. One of them is evidential wisdom, and it’s just piling up, evidences, piling up arguments, sometimes little arguments, bigger arguments. You just pile up arguments so you can convince people of the truthfulness of Christianity. That was the first apologetic approach I encountered. And I ate it up. Here’s a question, here’s an answer. Here’s a question, here’s an answer. Here’s a denial, here’s how to confront it. And theologically, I think that can be helpful to people, but ultimately I do not believe that one who is dead, lost in sin and trespasses, is going to become a Christian simply by piling up evidence. I do believe you can knock down and destroy some false claims.

The next school of apologetics I encountered was classical presuppositionalism. In so many ways, the opposite of evidentialism. Presuppositionalism is the mode of apologetics that says you have to get back to the most ultimate presuppositions and then work forward. And the most ultimate presuppositions, according to presuppositionalism, and fully in accordance with Christian theology, is the existence of the triune God and the fact of divine revelation. That is a great theological gain. It is a tremendous theological gain. And it reminds us that the way human beings think is we think from basic presuppositions to different thoughts. And thus a part of what we have to do, and, young people, part of why when you encounter people who have very weird beliefs, those weird beliefs don’t come from nowhere. They come from deeper, deeper presuppositions that are the assumptions they’re making. And the problem is the assumptions are wrong. Just to make the issue transparent for a moment, if your presupposition is, “there is no God,” then guess what, the outworkings of your thought are going to be, “There is no right and wrong. There is no morality. There is no ultimate reality. I can make of life, I can make of truth, I can make of beauty, I can do anything with anything because there is no objective reality.” There is nothing that simply is, if there is no God. There is no objective right or wrong, if there is no God. There’s no objective true or false, if there is no God. And so presuppositionalist apologetics would come back and say, “No, we have to trace it back to those original presuppositions. And if those are wrong, everything else is wrong. There is only one set, only one set of true presuppositions. And that begins with the existence of the triune God and the fact of divine revelation.” You work from that, you’ve got right and wrong. You work from that, you’ve got light and dark. You work from that, you’ve got all that you need. Including, just to point this out, if there is no God, you really don’t even have male or female, thus our modern confusion. But if you start from the Christian presuppositions, you’ve got male and female, you’ve got comprehensive meaning, you’ve got right and wrong, you’ve got truth. I really was a very ardent presuppositionalist. At the theological level, I basically still am. But I’ve also come to see the gains in classical apologetics in terms of building arguments, because I don’t think the arguments themselves save, only Jesus saves, but the arguments can really help and it also helps to form out a more cohesive argument. I think there are so many examples through Christian history in which that kind of classical apologetic approach works. There are other methods of apologetics, cumulative case theory, fideism – I don’t have time for all that today – reformed epistemology, – all that is out there. All I want to tell you is you need to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you, and so every single one of you is called to be an apologist.

And if, as I expect, you don’t know where in the world you fit on a spectrum of apologetics, I want to tell you right now that is unimportant to me. What is urgent in this text is that you commit your life to being prepared to give an answer when the time comes. And to give an answer for what? The hope that is in you. This is the hope of the gospel. This is Christ, the hope of the world. This is the hope that is secure, the hope that is ours, the hope that belongs to us simply because we are Christians. It is the heart of the gospel, Christ in you, the hope of glory, the Christian hope that is sure and firm, our blessed hope. In Colossians 1:5, the hope laid up for you in heaven, Colossians 1:27, the hope of glory.

Be always ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you, and that means a Christian bearing witness. This doesn’t mean the hope that you heard about. It doesn’t mean the hope that someone has told you about. It means your hope because you have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and Christ is in you, the hope of glory.

What’s at stake in all of this? Well, just think of public debates going on right now. So much is at stake. The future of civilization is at stake. The existence of our civilization is at stake. What’s at stake in this? Listen to the public conversation, even in the course of the last several days, you’ll understand what is at stake in this. We’re the ones who know that what’s at stake in this is heaven and hell, salvation or damnation, being lost or being found.

Let’s remind ourselves that these last few days – especially for many young Christians – these last few days are only bearable because Jesus Christ is Lord and Jesus saves and Jesus is in us as believers, the hope of glory.

So be always ready – quite a task, quite a calling. It’s not addressed to some, as believers, it’s addressed to all. To give an answer, to provide reasons – again, our responsibility. We’re not finished with it until Jesus comes or takes us home. We should be getting better at answering these questions and defending the Christian faith and telling about Jesus until Jesus comes or takes us home. And what are we talking about? It’s not just about an argument, it’s not just about principles of right thought, it is about leading people to know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, and for them to also know the hope of glory.

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Third Avenue Baptist Church

Louisville, KY

1 Corinthians 11:1–22

September 21, 2025

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Third Avenue Baptist Church

Louisville, KY

1 Corinthians 11:1–16

September 14, 2025

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Albert Mohler:

These are words we need to hear this morning, even as there is within us a righteous call, demand, hunger for justice and righteousness to prevail. We are here in the light of a tremendous tragedy, which is, for a wife and children, a horrifying loss, a life-changing event. There’s a sobriety to our conversation today, but let’s be very thankful we have this conversation in full confidence in Christ. Jesus saves. So, let’s pray.

Our Father, we come before you in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, to declare the full power of the gospel in Christ’s name. Father, in light of recent events, we are struck again by the fact that if there is no gospel, there is no hope. But in Christ, there is eternal hope, secure hope, and a hope not merely for our eternal life given to us by your grace, full acquittal of sin, but there is also the promise of full justice, perfect righteousness, a day that is coming where your righteousness and judgment will be so perfect that every eye will be dry, and every tear will be wiped away. Father, we ask your blessing on this conversation because we know that day is coming, but we are not there yet. In these days, we want to be faithful. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This has been a remarkable season in American life. As I wrote in the piece at World Opinions this morning, and as I discussed on The Briefing today, generations are shaped by events, tragedies, happenings that simply become a part of our lives in such a way that there’s a before and an after. It takes, in some cases, some time to figure out what all these things mean, but there’s also an immediacy. The immediacy that came after the assassination of Charlie Kirk yesterday is one of those moments where, as the day went on, it seemed to me the right thing to do is to gather together for some conversation. Charlie Kirk was an amazing young man, 31 years old when he was shot yesterday. He had been in public debate, conversation, and political life in the United States for 10 years, co-founding Turning Point USA at age 18.

His life, biography, his mode of operation meant that he was a political activist, a public speaker, a public leader, an organizer. He was a provocateur. It was the very love for that kind of debate that set him in Utah yesterday on a college campus, under a tent, with the charge, Prove me wrong. It was public debate that he was engaged in when his life was taken. There is an inescapable human dimension to this story, and as Christians, that’s what strikes us first. His widow, Erika, two precious, extremely young children, a mother left without a father, a wife without a husband, and now children without a father. So, we as Christians have to think of our concentric circles, getting back to what’s most precious, and that’s where we have to say the greatest loss is found, and it’s an unspeakable tragedy.

But then, working outward from that, there are millions of young people who have been, I think, activated, inspired, educated, mobilized by Charlie Kirk. That was the passion of his heart. There is a sense of a movement, even a fellowship of sorts, that comes in such a movement. Especially given his ability to mobilize and inspire so many young men, there’s kind of a brotherhood that is involved. There is grief all around, and there’s more than that because we’re not just talking about someone who dropped dead of a sudden heart attack. We’re talking about an act of violence that took his life. There’s a lot here for us to consider.

This is an unusual event for us, in that we just said there was a chapel service planned, but we need to use this opportunity to have this kind of heart-to-heart conversation as Christians. I am joined here by Dr. Denny Burk, Dr. Dustin Bruce, and Dr. Andrew Walker. Honestly, we’ve been in conversation, we’re in conversation a lot anyway, but yesterday was an unusual level of conversation, and I want to be honest, an unusual level of immediate concern for those whom we love, care for, and live with joyfully on this campus. To put it bluntly, I think Charlie Kirk had a lot of influence, a continuing influence, an inspiring influence on an awful lot of the students at Boyce College, in particular, and specifically the young men of the college. So, let’s talk this thing through a bit in a way that will honor God, and help us to think this through. Andrew, the news came yesterday, what was your first thought?

Andrew Walker:

William F. Buckley founded National Review Magazine, the founder of the modern conservative movement. He was kind of an elite speaking to elites. What did Charlie Kirk do so effectively? He was able to transmit conservative ideas, and praise the Lord, Christian ideas, into a vernacular for the youth. I was reflecting on this with some friends, we just recorded a podcast a little bit ago, and one of the things we said was, Charlie Kirk made conservatism relatable, palatable, and cool for youth culture. It’s always been the adage that when you’re young, you’re rebellious, you’re progressive, you’re trying to break free from the constraints that have formed you, and you want to pursue rebellion for rebellion’s sake. Conservatives in American history have done a good job of having a populist message in the form of Fox News and talk radio, but conservatism has never broken through to youth culture until Charlie Kirk came along.

Albert Mohler:

Andrew Walker:

Albert Mohler:

Andrew Walker:

Albert Mohler:

Denny Burk:

He would talk to people who did not know Christ, who were leftists, who were there opposing him on all kinds of ideological grounds, and he would just talk to them about Jesus. He would preach the gospel, and if they had a problem with some aspect of the faith, he would talk about that aspect of the faith. He was a popular apologist. So, that’s what stuck out to me, he was very explicit about that, as Andrew said, and so that was profound.

Then, also, as people have testified, you can even see it in some of his videos from over the years, of his humanity. One event, there’s a video out there of a young woman coming up at one of his events, he would just debate anybody who walked up,

Albert Mohler:

Denny Burk:

Albert Mohler:

Denny Burk:

Albert Mohler:

Dustin Bruce:

Albert Mohler:

Dustin Bruce:

Albert Mohler:

Dustin Bruce:

Albert Mohler:

Denny Burk:

Albert Mohler:

Denny Burk:

Albert Mohler:

Denny Burk:

Albert Mohler:

Denny Burk:

Albert Mohler:

Denny Burk:

Albert Mohler:

Andrew Walker:

My concern right now is that if we have a conservatism without Christ, it can descend into kind of red-pilled radicalism, where you embrace a no-holds-barred strategy towards political engagement yourself. I understand that temptation, that’s not the Christian outlook when it comes to our mode of political responsibility. I think if you’re going to channel your anger properly, channel your anger properly by doing the things that reflect what Charlie Kirk would have you do, channel your political agency to vote for the right people who will instill the right values into office. Open your Bible, if you’re married, love your spouse, if you have children, love your children. That is a far more important way, an outlet to channel your anger than just venting online to people. As we learn more about the exact causes of this, there potentially could be some justification for some ideological anger at what’s going on in society around us.

Albert Mohler:

Andrew Walker:

Albert Mohler:

Dustin Bruce:

Andrew Walker:

Albert Mohler:

Andrew Walker:

Albert Mohler:

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Albert Mohler:

So, I think it’s a good word for us all, it’s very tempting in a moment of urgency and anger to even emotionally join a mob, but we’re called to a brotherhood of Christians, to a fellowship of believers accountable to all these things. Our demand for justice is not less than theirs, it’s actually greater than theirs, but we also know that the ultimate satisfaction of full justice can’t be delivered by a mob, it also can’t be delivered by the rule of law. It can be delivered to the fullest sense possible on earth by the rule of law, but the final judgment on these things is going to be made by the one truly perfect judge.

Denny Burk:

Albert Mohler:

Denny Burk:

Albert Mohler:

Andrew Walker:

Dustin Bruce:

Albert Mohler:

But we can’t give ourselves to anger, it’s a tough thing. I want to be honest, without righteous anger, people aren’t going to vote the right way, without righteous anger at the right things, they’re not going to sacrifice in order to try to bring change in society and its policies and laws. So, this is the hard thing for us, isn’t it? We want people to be angry, righteously, and I mean, we are not in the sixties, which was a time of tumult, we’re in a time in which the basic humanity of fellow human beings is at stake here, when good and evil in the political polarization of this country, blue and red, are increasingly living in separate moral worlds. So, I am angry about that, and it needs to be channeled into an appropriate anger that leads to something that has consequences, but we can’t give ourselves to anger as a mode of life.

Andrew Walker:

So, then what do we do with that? It means that we are sober-minded and honest, understanding that ideas are not neutral, and ideas are not equal. I’m not here to baptize conservatism, even though I am a conservative, but I am here to tell you, there are metaphysical principles built into the progressive worldview that are completely at odds with biblical Christianity. That’s not a partisan comment, that’s a biblical statement,

Albert Mohler:

Andrew Walker:

Albert Mohler:

Andrew Walker:

Albert Mohler:

Well, we’re going to have to figure out, we can make some inferences that I think are very likely to be true, but this returns us to the fact we need police, the FBI, and others to do their work. I’m praying, among other things, for an airtight case, for a sense of public recognition that justice has been achieved, and I think those on the left who pray better be praying the same thing, because it would be a tragedy if 10 years from now, we’re still speaking of it at the level of mystery we are right now in terms of who did it, why, where’s the accountability?

Denny Burk:

The thing that concerns me right now is, I don’t know what could produce that kind of response amongst partisans right now, I don’t know that that kind of feeling or sense of common civic purpose is what it used to be. But I think that gives us a particular calling as Christians, we are bearing witness to another kingdom, and that kingdom is invading right here where we’re living. We need to be able to bear witness to that, we love enemies, and the ideologies that we hate, that we know people hold around us, we don’t hate them, we love them, and we love them for the sake of Christ, we want to see them saved, we want to see them converted, we want to see them brought into the kingdom. We can’t live our lives just in this constant outrage of the other, but we have to—

Albert Mohler:

Denny Burk:

Albert Mohler:

Andrew Walker:

Dustin Bruce:

Denny Burk:

Albert Mohler:

But Father, I pray that you, as only you can do, would transform that anger into love, protection, faithfulness, and provision. I pray that you’ll surround the Kirk family with those who can give them that immediate, proximate encouragement, protection, and provision. Father, we do understand the stakes are high, we are reminded of that just in the events yesterday and in the events 24 years ago today. We understand the stakes are really high, Father, we feel the urgency of the hour, and we feel the call to do something. Father, I pray that you will, in the hearts of all of us, but in particular in the students in this room, who, if the Lord tarries, will long outlive those of us on the stage, we pray that you will do a work in their hearts to commit them anew to the truth, to justice, in building this community and this nation, and being agents of gospel and grace in this world. May they know how deep and enduring the battle is, and may they be ever confident in the fact that the day of the Lord is coming. Until then, Father, please make us faithful. We pray all this in the sovereign name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Thanks for coming.

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Third Avenue Baptist Church

Louisville, KY

1 Corinthians 10:1–33

August 31, 2025

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It’s become a thing, it’s an internet thing, an Instagram-post-it-and-show-everyone thing. Elementary school students, middle school students, high school students – but especially elementary school students, kindergarten students – they’re holding up a sign that says, “first day of school.” It’s a snap and the photograph is there. They look as fresh-faced and excited as children on the first day of school. Then you know what’s going to happen, and that is that when the school year is over, there’s going to be another photograph, it’s going to be reconstituted and then it’s going to say, “the end of the school year.” And the amazing thing is that if you see the first and the second, there’s an amazing growth that’s taken place. That’s the way it is with kids that age, they go in as kindergartners and come out as first graders, they undergo transformation. You can see that they’ve got teeth, front teeth, in the first picture, and no front teeth in the next picture – it’s glorious, it’s wonderful, it’s digital. Everybody sees it, everybody knows what the picture pattern is. I don’t think we do that here. I don’t know how many students, incoming students, had a picture out front holding a “first day of school” sign – I’m going to guess fewer, fewer than kindergarten and first grade – and I don’t think going to be any pictures on the other end the same way, because you don’t change all that much anymore. At the beginning of a school year and the end of an academic term, you look pretty much like you did when you came in. Now we know there’s more to the story. We know an awful lot of growth has taken place, but it’s invisible growth, it’s spiritual growth, it’s intellectual growth – not so easily measured in photographs on Instagram, but of even greater importance, and in it is a greater glory.

We begin an academic term committed to learning, labor, reflection, reading, thinking, writing, memorizing, analyzing. These are the tasks of learning, and they have been pretty constant ever since the school was invented and the process of formal learning was begun. There’s a grandeur to such things, that’s why we formalize this day, and there’s a grandeur to the beginning of things, which is why we feel like we feel at the beginning of this term, especially to look around this campus where God’s glory is so evident. College students filling the campus, seminary students, many of them pushing strollers – it’s a glorious thing and I am thankful for it. I never lose the wonder of getting to see it year after year with my own eyes. This tradition, this formality, it takes place in some form even in now secular institutions – I’m not sure to what effect. I think there’s probably just a reflection that some kind of formality is necessary, but what was a service of explicit Christian worship is now kind of an empty thing. Without Christ, this event becomes something close to just an exercise in self-congratulation – this is something we need to think about. This is not an exercise in self-congratulation. This is not an exercise in remembering how important we are and how lucky the world is to have us. It’s an exercise in remembering that this task of learning is for disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, ultimately not only for the good of society but for the faithfulness of Christ’s Church, to be translated into faithfulness from others, particularly through the preaching of God’s word and the service of Christ’s people. Our frame of reference thus is not just time. Time is on our mind – this is an academic term, it’s a length of time, it’s a length of days – but what makes this special for us is that our ultimate concern even today is not temporal but eternal.

That is why we turn to God’s word – a short passage from the gospel of Luke, the final verses of chapter six beginning in verse forty-six. We hear Jesus ask,

Why do you call me “Lord, Lord,” and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.

I think we get it immediately. There’s a sense in which the short parable is so self-explaining, it’s so self-evident that you’re already there. A picture of two houses, one built on the rock with the foundation, the other built on the sand. When the water rises, the one lasts, and the other is swept away.

The context is so important. What is happening here? We see a building intensity in Luke chapter six, especially on this day. Look at the beginning of the chapter, let’s begin in verse 12,

In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

Wow, can’t even mention him in chapter six without making that clear! Yeah, that Judas. So there’s reference here to the calling of the twelve.

Immediately, in verse seventeen, we go to a great multitude. In verse seventeen we read,

And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all.

Often referred to as “the sermon on the plane,” in some circles, “the sermon on the plateau,” it’s a level place. Just in a very short sum of verses, we have the twelve, and now a larger context with many of his disciple – so this is far beyond the twelve – similar to the pattern we see in Matthew, and then there’s a great multitude, and this multitude is described as being very great, coming from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon. We’re also told why the crowd came. They came to hear him – this is important for us to understand – they came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases, and they were told that those who came were healed of their diseases as power came out from Christ and healed them all.

And then the language gets a little tricky – you have to read carefully now. Remember the sermon on the plane included the twelve, to whom we’ve just been introduced formally, and then a good many of his disciples, and then a multitude from Judea and Jerusalem and the region of Tyre and Sidon on the coast – so you have three concentric circles here. And then, in verse 20, where we read the Beatitudes, the introductory language says, “He lifted up his eyes on his disciples.” So this is not said to everyone there it is addressed properly to his disciples, and the disciples are those who are taught of Christ and they are those who also follow him, and he issues the Beatitudes, the blessings:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

Alright, he lifted up his eyes on the disciples and he blessed them. But then he pronounces woes, following the blessings: “But woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry”–notice the parallelism here, those who are hungry now will be filled, those who are greedily filled now will be hungry–“woe to you who laugh now for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” Thereafter, the command to love your enemies, “But I say to you who hear”–okay, again, you know what’s coming, so you know that’s important. “But I say to you who hear”–so in this case, he’s not really speaking to everyone in the same sense because even at this point we understand in those concentric circles there are those who hear and there are those who hear. The distinction is those who hear respond to Christ in faith and follow him and obey him. So, in the introduction here, verse 27,

But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

That’s a lot. That’s a lot. The standard is set incredibly high, and then he immediately says that we’re not to judge,

Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.

And then the parable of the blind leading the blind, and after that, the passage of the tree and its fruit. It is so important to this point – we have those who are blind leading the blind and there’s also the warning about a bad tree, bad fruit:

For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

And then that question, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” It’s an astounding question. It’s a haunting question. It’s a fairly horrifying question. It’s one of those questions that is asked by Jesus in the Gospels, and I’ll be honest, it makes me thankful I wasn’t standing there at the time. I’m not sure how you bear it. If you hear it in full force, it comes with much force. “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?”

In Matthew chapter seven, verse twenty-one, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. In the Gospel of Luke chapter eight, verse twenty-one, Jesus answers, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” Luke chapter eleven verse twenty-eight, Jesus says, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” There’s a repetition here. This is a pattern. There’s a consistency.

It’s reflected also in the apostolic teaching, most famously in James chapter one, verses twenty-two and following,

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

So at least a good deal of Luke chapter six is Jesus speaking to those who are the twelve whom he has chosen ,and then a larger group of disciples who say, and perhaps even intend in some sense to follow Christ, and then there’s a vast multitude from Judea and Jerusalem, Tyre and Sidon, the seacoast. There are different patterns of response here, but the rebuke in chapter six comes very clear when Jesus asked that abrasive question, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?” So in other words, those who truly confess Jesus Christ as Lord are distinguished by the fact that we do what he says. It’s a fairly simple formula. Those who do what Christ said, they are doers of the word, to use the language of James.

We’re called to be doers, and not mere hearers. That in itself is a very cogent warning for us, isn’t it, at the beginning of an academic term? Because we’re going to be confronted with so much. We’re going to be learning so much. We’re going to be teaching so much.

But this isn’t about just some kind of mind game, it’s not just some kind of esoteric truth quest, it is disciples, rightly understood, learning faithfully in order to live more faithfully. This isn’t just a Gnosticism. It’s not just an exercise in mind enrichment. The intention and the mission, the stewardship of this school is not merely to produce people who know, but men and women who do. So that’s good for us to know. It reminds us that everything that we’re about in the course of this academic year really comes down to the heart and the disposition of the heart and whether or not we are faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because if we’re faithful disciples, then every truth that we hear becomes a part of what we do in obedience to Christ and in honor to Christ.

And then there is this short parable – two men, two houses. It’s interesting how quickly Jesus says, “You need a picture, so I’m going to give you a picture. I’m going to show you what he is like.” And notice exactly how that sentence comes, “Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like.” So he is going to give us the positive example – that’s the first part of this very short passage is to give us the positive example, and the positive example is the man who builds his house upon the rock. Specifically, he digs deep, he lays the foundation on the rock, and then, “When a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.” Two men, two houses, one raging stream, the result is that one house stands and the other falls.

It’s not like this isn’t a picture fresh in our minds. It’s fresh in our minds from Kerrville, Texas, tragically, horrifyingly enough. It’s fresh in our minds from western North Carolina. It’s very much fresh in our minds. Now we not only read of such things and hear of such things and hear tales of such things, in times past, we have video that comes immediately to mind. When you see the raging waters where the land had been dry, now there’s a cataract of water and it’s a violent cataract of water, and it carries entire buildings and houses and communities away, and people too. The ruin is great.

The difference is also clear. There’s a difference, even house by house, which one’s taken, which ones not taken. Foundations, as it turns out, mean just about everything. It makes me think of Abraham as described in the book of Hebrews chapter eleven, verses eight through ten,

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

Brothers and sisters, we’re looking for a city that has foundations whose maker and builder is God. The eternal promises of God are summarized as a city that has foundations. The city is on the foundation. That foundation, the New Testament tells us is Christ, and thus it is unshakeable.

This is made abundantly clear in 1 Corinthians chapter three, verse eleven, “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” That’s why we sing that precious hymn, “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord.”

The house that stands is built upon Christ – faith in Christ, obedience to Christ, submission to Christ, life in Christ, obedience to God’s word, hearing and doing. A simple formula, just so crucial for our understanding as we begin this term, or any term. But, of course there’s not just one house in this parable. There are two men in two houses and the first one stands, and you already can figure it out, you understand narrative dualism, you know exactly what’s going to happen, if the one stands built on a foundation, the second one is going to fall. And so you feel it coming, and it comes.

“But the one who hears and does not do them”–that is his words–“is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.” Some of you hear the older translations, “and the ruin of that house was very great.” Easy to understand. Just think of some of the images of what we’ve seen – the house sitting on the ground becomes a boat, and one that sinks. The devastation is horrifying.

I’m sure those who heard Jesus tell this parable could easily just imagine what they were seeing. I can remember the first time seeing the Jordan River. It doesn’t look very threatening, but like other rivers it doesn’t look threatening until it is and arid land that looks so dry can become the most dangerous when water sweeps through. You can think, “There’s no reason we’d have to build a foundation here.” But guess what? The rain comes, the waters rise, the floods move, and they destroy and kill.

“When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell.” So in other words, the parallelism here, the contrast, is absolute. The water’s rage against the house built on the foundation of rock, and the water’s going to rage and rage and rage and rage – the house is going to stand because it is built upon a firm foundation. The second one is not even a matter of eventually falling, it falls immediately, just gone, and the ruin of that house was great.

I just want to quickly consider three ways this fall can easily happen when we hear, and fail to do, the teachings of God.

The first is doctrinal. That’s one of the first things we can think about, and certainly when we begin this term and we can look at the world around us. We can see with our eyes houses carried away, houses that fell immediately and are gone.

When I became president of this institution, I had to go to so many meetings that are required by accreditation and all the rest, and there were many, many, many theological seminaries present, and the evangelical schools were vastly outnumbered by the liberal schools – there were just many of them – and they knew who they were, we knew who we were, in one sense we’re not even about the same thing, but nonetheless, we have to go to meetings. If you go to those meetings today, a lot of those schools are simply gone. They’re just gone. Guess what? Theological liberalism kills education, and in more than one way. The deadliest way is it abandons the gospel, and the next thing you know the institution is teaching some other gospel, and then at some point it’s just an entirely secular, humanistic, therapeutic gospel, there’s nothing left. It’s one of the reasons why we recite together the Nicene creed. It’s one of the reasons why we make very clear that in our covenant with the Southern Baptist Convention and with its churches, we require every faculty member to teach in accordance with and not contrary to the Abstract of Principles and the Baptist Faith and Message. And we’ve added to that, we’ve had to add to that, we also have in addition to that the Danvers Statement, and we have added to that the Nashville Statement.

You know, there’s some conversations I’m glad I’ve never had to have. James Pedigru Boyce, the founder of this institution, I don’t think he could have imagined that the faculty of this institution would ever have to be required to sign a confessional statement that a boy’s a boy and a girl’s a girl and that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. I hope I never have to explain that to him. But that’s the responsibility that falls to us and it is because in an age of rampant, almost automatic, reflexive, theological accommodation, more institutions have been lost than retained. More seminaries have been lost than retained. More Christian colleges have been lost than retained. More denominations have been lost than retained. There used to be people inside, now there’s a rainbow flag outside and no people inside. It is a declension we can easily see, and frankly we can sometimes look at it and say, “Well, that’s not us.” The horrifying thing is at one point they said, “That’s not us,” but now it is.

It’s doctrine, it is the faith once for all delivered to the saints, that we must maintain in obedience to Christ. The teaching that takes place here in this college, the teaching that takes place here in the seminary, has got to be the continuity of the Apostles’ teaching without apology, with all the protections and parameters necessary, principles, to make that happen. That means the great doctrines of the Christian faith, it means the specific doctrines of the Reformation, and in particular, the doctrines of the Baptists. But it also means that included within the doctrine of the church are the moral teachings of Christ. They too are doctrine, and all that is a part of our confessional responsibility.

You look across what is called evangelicalism today, and evidently, to be evangelical is to be one podcast away from heresy. One panel discussion or interview away from apostasy. One bestselling book ,and you trade celebrity for orthodoxy. The fall of that house is very great.

Moral. This is another way that you see the fall. And in considering doctrine, it’s the fact that we believe what we teach, we live what we teach. In this moral collapse, again, horrifying things we never thought we would see, right? Weird things we never thought we would see. Some of them are pretty constant, biblical – the seduction of the flesh, the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches, the seduction of the eyes – but all these old sins come even in new forms – pastors who have been disqualified from ministry because of misbehavior in social media, even with false accounts – and it is weird stuff. Again, I am glad I don’t have to explain that to generations now gone who never even knew there were such avenues of destruction

The old way still horrifyingly leads to the crash of many houses – adultery, sexual immorality – it’s a devastating fall. Not too long ago, major media looked at one city – I’m not going to name the city – looked at one city, major American city – many people would consider it kind of a nexus of American evangelicalism – and just pointed out that there have been like twenty moral failures in major churches just in that community within the last several years. Brothers and sisters, that’s a horrifying betrayal of the gospel. For that to be on the front page of a newspaper is a scandal to the entire Church and a warning to us all.

The third collapse I would mention is spiritual. I have to tell you that the older I get, the larger this one looms. I think it was really early, very early, I came to see the danger of theological collapse and accommodation, and just the force of circumstances, I was forced to see it. In terms of the sins of the flesh, yeah, I don’t think I knew about as many falls in times past as now can be communicated so quickly. That’s a long story throughout Christian history, a long story going back to Genesis three. I think we can understand that, and we understand why the church of the Lord Jesus Christ requires of those who are disciples of Christ that we obey the commands of Christ and the commands that are relayed to us directly by Holy Scripture concerning marriage and sex, intimacy, and all. But I think when I was younger, I did not see so clearly the potential for spiritual fall.

At this point in my life, I am also scandalized, not by people who went out with headline adultery, nor by even bestselling theological liberalism, but they’ve gone out, I think, because of boredom. The house has fallen simply by fatigue, what the French call, “ennui” – boredom, sloth, inattention, distraction. Other things enter into this – envy, anger, resentment, spiritual collapse, loss of heart, discouragement, estrangement. Those don’t make the headlines, but they should break our hearts. The ruin of those houses also very great. Someone who young was filled with vigor to serve Christ and his glory in the pulpit or in the church or as a member of the church in the world, determined to make a difference for Christ, now, just sleeping Sundays off. You say, “How could that happen?” The fall of that house is also very great. It turns out that boredom and sloth and loss of heart can be just as deadly.

I just thought I might think with you about those three different disasters. And at the beginning of this semester, think about doctrinal disaster and moral disaster and spiritual disaster. And just look around this room in order to encourage one another, that we are here to build a house upon a rock. In our individual lives, by God’s grace, by the power of Christ, may we build our house upon a rock. May we never, ever, fail to be fully attentive to what it means to build a house upon a rock.

Brothers and sisters, may we never forget that we are not the rock. May we never forget that Boyce College and Southern Seminary are not the rock. May we never deceive ourselves into thinking our ministry or our work for Christ is the rock. There is only one foundation that is laid, and that is Jesus Christ our Lord. We have no ability to withstand the raging waters of the flood, we are the essence of sink sand, but Christ is able, and Christ is mighty, and Jesus saves.

And it is none other than the Jesus, who is Lord and Savior, who spoke these words, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” Who then tells us that those who come to him not only hear him but do what he says. And he gave us the picture of the two men and the two houses and the two ends.

But here’s the last thing I want us to think about: Jesus himself determines the order of our consideration. He doesn’t say, “I want to tell you about two men and two houses. The first one, the one who built his house on the ground, and it was destroyed, and the second who built his house on the rock, he dug a foundation and built his house on the rock, and the floods came and it stood.” Jesus sovereignly knows how we need to hear this. We need to hear the promise of the first, but perhaps what needs to linger in our hearts is the horror of the second – “And the ruin of that house was very great.”

May it not be brothers and sisters, all praise to God.

Let’s pray together, “Father, we are so thankful for the clarity of your Word. And Father, we are reminded of the deadly danger even in hearing your word – that we will merely hear your word. Father, may we be not merely those who hear, but those who do your word. And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

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Third Avenue Baptist Church

Louisville, KY

1 Corinthians 9:1–27

August 17, 2025

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