Communion- God Remembers and Not

Today in the sermon, you have been called to both remember and forget. God remembers His covenant and He chooses to not remember our sins against us.  These promises are held out to you here at the Lord’s Table.  God looks at the bread and wine as a memorial, like the rainbow, only better.  In it, He sees the fulfillment of all of His covenant promises. He has provided the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world. God looks upon the sacrifice, remembering His promise and then choosing to not remember your sins against you, since they have been cast upon Jesus. 

           

Do likewise with your neighbor, your spouse, your children, your parents, your friends, your boss, your employees.  Look upon the bread and the wine and remember what Jesus has done for you, how He chooses not to remember what evil you have done towards Him. Then, do that same thing with those who have sinned against you. Remember that Jesus has forgiven you and that you have promised to forgive others and then choose to not remember their sins against you.

          

 In this way, we are all drawn closer to God and closer to one another, reflecting the Triune nature of God in our midst, many persons but one mind and one body.

Exhortation- God is a Father with a Son and a Spirit

EXHORTATION

This month, we have been confessing the sin of serving the god of Americanism. I should give some explanation of that. We are not confessing a sin of being Americans.  We have every right to be proud to be Americans.  We live in a truly great country abounding with blessings far beyond the wild imaginations of the rest of the world.  We are not ashamed of that, at all. On the contrary, these blessings are a testimony to the greatness of our God, who has granted them to us.  But our nation is due a warning from the Scriptures and it is time that God’s people woke up and realized that we are in the process of forsaking the very God who has blessed us, the Triune God of the Bible.

The God of the United States is not Allah, not Buddha, not some Hindu idol.  Our God is none other than Yahweh, from the burning bush, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and the Holy Spirit who lit the Apostles on the day of Pentecost.  It is He and NO OTHER.  There is but one God only, the living and true God. All other gods are dead and false gods.

Americanism is a false religion, one that professes belief in god but not the God of the Bible. We Christians reject all such claims as false and deserving the chastisement of the one true and living God.

           

Hear the Scriptures. 

Deut 8:10-19 10 When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. 11 Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: 12 Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; 

13 And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; 14 Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; 15 Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint;16 Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end; 

17 And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.

 18 But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.

19 And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.

Courtship

I am pleased to announce that my eldest daughter, Rebecca, is engaged to be married. The lucky gent is Simon Esmond.  The title of this post is 'courtship'.  I don't really have a lot to say about that here but want to make a couple of observations.

First, the basic idea of courtship is that the parents of the bride are involved in the process of her choosing a mate.   That's the main principle. The methods in different homes and churches will be various.  The parents actually have veto power over her decision in the area of choosing a husband. That may strike some as arcane in our day of ultimate personal freedom.  But it is also an accurate and clear biblical principle.

Second, in order for the father of the bride to cash the check of close and even controlling involvement in his daughter's courtship leading up to marriage, he has to have a big savings account.  If he does not have enough put away in that account, when it comes time to cash the check on some difficult decisions, say, turning down a suitor, he may find that he has to quickly and radically alter his view of 'where we go from here.'

Third, the outcome is wholly reliant upon the good grace and mercy of our Lord.  It is true that both the daughter and the father have free will and at the point of decision or conflict, they will do whatever seems best to them at that point. However, God gives us promises with our children, not just children. If we raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, we should have every confidence that at the point of decision, they will choose to follow God and do what is right, even to the point of trusting their father who has, Lord willing, a large of enough checking account to be trusted.

I am pleased to say that the Lord has brought together two such young people, Simon and Rebecca, who were raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and have proved that in the way that they have loved God and their parents and have submitted to and honored both.

I trust the Lord will give them many wonderful and fruitful years together.

Communion Meditation- A Good Name

The most significant thing that occurred at our Council meeting last week is that the name of the CREC was changed to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.  The impetus behind this change was that our brothers in the Southern churches were dealing with some misconceptions about the name Confederation, some folks wondering if we had views holding to the old Southern Confederacy.

This was making things difficult for our churches in the South who are doing urban ministries.  In addition to this, many felt that the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches is a better fit for who we are as a confederation. We are not 'merely' a group of sovereign churches gathered together under one Covenant. We are one portion of the gathered church, a particular Communion of the broader Communion of the Saints.

No doubt, we will still have some confusion about our new name. For instance, what does it have to do with the Eucharist?  Well, not a lot and a whole lot at the same time. In our name, when we say Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches we are not referring to the Lord’s Supper. However, we are referring to the fact that we are a gathered and unified people, the communion of the saints which we say in the Apostle’s Creed, which is part of what the Lord’s Supper represents.  The name change is good because it enables us to explain our name in the context of Church history and practice as opposed to trying to explain the name in the context of a form of civil government. 

So, here we are at Communion, the Lord’s Supper, as the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, gathered with all of our brothers in the CREC around the world and with all of God’s people around the world, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all.

Exhortation-Listen

At our Presbytery and Council meetings there were various disagreements at various levels of importance. For the most part the issues at stake were wisdom issues and not issues of right and wrong, correct or incorrect theology. Some things were easily worked through and compromises agreed upon. In other areas, differences ran deep and strong and compromises were not reached so easily. This took more patience, more listening.  When seeking wisdom, it is good for us to listen to one another and make adjustments in our own ways of doing things.

I am pleased to report to you that our CREC men did this very well. They are good men committed to listening to one another and honoring one another. And then after the compromises, not smugly thinking or acting as if their view won, or in the cases where they lost the argument, not feeling bitter or envious towards others. 

Let us also think this way. And where we have failed to listen to our brothers, or if we have grown bitter or envious of our brothers, let us confess our sins and seek to be in a right relationship with God and with our brothers.

Communion- God remembers

God is gracious to us.  He is a covenant making and covenant keeping God. He does not forget His promises to us. We can take great comfort in this truth.  When it rains, we see God’s great commitment to us in the cloud. We should encourage ourselves that God, Himself, is looking at His token in the sky, the glorious rainbow, and He is remembering to keep His promises to His people.  He extends grace and He reminds Himself to extend grace.  He knows we need it.

           

This meal is another, if not the main token of God’s graciousness towards us.  We show these tokens, the body and blood of Jesus. We show them to one another so we remember what God has done for us. We also show them to the Father, so that He remembers what Jesus has done for us and that He is our God and that we are His people. Thus, we can know that God remembers and keeps His promises to save us through the body and blood of Jesus.

Exhortation- Confessing Sins

     It is our duty to confess our sins. We do this formally every week here in our worship service. That is good and we should use this time as another gracious opportunity from our Lord to come before Him and be honest with Him expecting Him to be the gracious Father that He is. When we do this, honestly, we are never disappointed.

          However, this time of confession and forgiveness can be merely an external form of worship that is participated in without honesty and faith, if we are not paying attention. We should be practiced at asking forgiveness of God and others so that when we come to this time in the worship service, it is easier for us to humble ourselves before the Lord.

          When was the last time you honestly and sincerely confessed particular sins to God? I hope the answer is not more than a few days. When was the last time you asked your wife, husband, children, parents or a friend to forgive you for a real particular sin that you committed against them.  I hope you have recently been so humble.

          So, let us come to Jesus and be honest that we need His forgiveness for real sins, some we have committed this very week, last night, or even this morning.

The Tragedy of American Compassion****

The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky is a must read book by everyone that seeks to do any sort of mercy ministry. This book chronicles the early growth of American mercy ministry as New York and other major U.S. cities were rapidly growing at the end of the 19th Century. Mercy ministries were also rapidly growing in order to address the degradation and want that was expanding in those same cities. However, they had a vastly different approach than the modern entitlement mentality.

A universal principle of mercy ministry was 'that if a man shall not work, neither shall he eat." So strong was this principle that most ministries had work tests. They required men and women to work for any aid that they were given. This was seen as necessary in order to preserve the dignity of the recipient and prevent him from devolving into pauperism. In cases, where the recipient really was not able to work, these same ministries offered direct care of the truly poor through placing orphans for adoption, taking pregnant mothers into homes, or creating places of asylum (safety) for the mentally disturbed and in helping able bodied men and women find work. How far we have fallen!

Another universal principle was that of refusing to give money to those who were on the street because of alcohol or drug use. There were ministries that reached out to such men but they required the men to change and stop abusing alcohol and drugs or they through them out on the street. Today, we find such a willingness to allow men to receive the consequences of their sin, wholly without compassion. But true compassion of the biblical sort has accountability and accountability requires consequences.

Contrast this with our modern welfare system that has virtually no accountability structure. The able bodied poor have been sold a bill of goods. They have been taught to believe that they are worthy recipients of aid, various forms of welfare, and thus have become enslaved by the very system that purports to help them. This so-called 'help' is not help at all. It has harmed multiple generations of Americans that now see their only hope in the help of a government that only manages to keep them at subsistence levels. There is no hope of advancement or escape from these clutches. Quite the reverse, the hope is to be more thoroughly enslaved.

Having said this, let me also say that we are not in need of 'reform' of the welfare system.We need pastors, laymen and politicians who are bold enough to call to completely 'dismantle' the system. And the reason is not the typical conservative reason that it simply costs too much. It is true that America can no longer afford the entitlements. But the real reason they should end is that they are immoral. They completely demoralize the very people they purport to help. It is not a help to a man to give him a dollar to go by another pint of cheap wine. It is not a help to give families benefits with no real accountability to and from their own immediate and extended family, to their church or to their local community. All such help distances individuals from the real help they need, work, moral exhortation and freedom from entitlement and dependency.

We have hurt the poor. We have also absolved the family of taking on their true responsibility for their loved ones. We have absolved the church from fulfilling its very personal role in meeting the needs of the poor while holding them to Biblical standards of work and character. It is time we fully ended the governmental entitlement systems and got back to living like families, churches and communities.

Communion Meditation-One Mind

As God remakes the world through Jesus Christ, one of the results that we should be aware of is the unification of His people. It seems that we have only got along a short distance on this great requirement.

But we should not despair. In Christ and in Christ’s Church, we see the unification of every tribe and tongue and language.

The world continues to vainly attempt to bring together various peoples from multiple cultures. Their vain attempts always blow up in their faces. Without Christ it is impossible to unify divided man.

But in Christ, mankind is made one body. We are brought together as one. We ARE unified in Jesus. Now, it is true that it does not always look like that. There are factions, members of Christ causing discord and disunity. But Jesus does not leave us alone. He continues to wash us in His Word, teach us His ways and lead us to the place where we lay down our way and take up His. And once we have all taken up the way of Christ, doing, saying and living as Jesus requires of us, then the reality of our unity in Him will be manifest to the world.

This meal is part of what makes us one. Believe Jesus. Learn His ways. Eat and drink of Him and thus be of one mind.

Disunity

At the very center of the result of the fall of mankind is discord, distrust and disunity, all of which flow directly from the actions of Adam and Eve, heeding the serpents treacherous words, to become like gods.

Discord results when one seeks to be in the middle of the attention or perhaps even muscling out whomever is currently in the center of attention because there really is nobody more important than you.

Distrust always casts a sidelong glance wondering if the actions and motives of others are honest and heartfelt or if they are simply that other person’s means of getting ahead of me.

Disunity is always friends of discord and distrust. The only way to unity is to defy discord, seeking peace in the midst of chaos, even if it means that you go unnoticed in the process.

Unity gives a deaf ear to distrust, seeking rather to believe the best about others, even if it means making a costly mistake now and again. Because love suffers all things.

Do you cause disunity through discord or distrust? Stop now. Confess your sins. Repent and be forgiven.

Communion Meditation- Tree of Life

This morning we have looked into the Fall of mankind. Man, who was in communion with God, fell out of favor with Him and were driven out of His paradise. But God did not leave man in a state of misery. Even in the beginning, God was gracious and merciful. He received the sacrifice of Abel but his brother’s deeds were evil.

And so God gives us promises, even in the midst of miseries, lost hopes, lost kinship, lost close fellowship. He holds out hope to us that He will hear us, receive us, bless us and dwell with us forever.

Of course, we realize all of this in the person of Jesus Christ. God came down to us and restored mankind to His favor forever. All those who cling to Jesus have returned to God’s garden and are encouraged to close communion and now to eat of the tree of life and live forever.

Our tree of life is Jesus, Himself, and His Spirit that dwells with us always.

By faith, take and eat and drink of Him and live.

Exhortation- Put Aside Strife

In the Fall of man, both man and earth became subject to futility. The Earth began to produce thorns and thistles, man was divided against man and murder entered into the heart of Cain. While the glory of God on the Earth remains, the first glory of true unity in the midst of God’s vast creation, was shattered. And so we live in a divided world where there is trouble from every side. We have trouble with the environment, trouble with our neighbors, trouble within our families and trouble in our own hearts. But Christ came to save us from all of this and to save us in the midst of all of this.

That peace must first begin in your own heart and flow out from there. If God has called you His own, and He has, then He has called you to peace and to a ministry of peace. Where there is strife and division, there you will find the devil. But we who belong to Christ do not have to obey the devil, the world or the flesh. We are Christ’s workmanship created for good works in Christ.

So, where is your strife? Is it with spouse? Boss? Neighbor? Friend? Foe? But where does this strife come from? Does it not come from your own heart that is not at peace with God and with what God is doing in the world and in your own life?

Put aside the strife. Confess your sins. Repent of your divisions. Be reconciled to God and man. And receive the peace of Christ.

Communion- Table Fellowship and Love

As we eat the Lord’s Supper together each week, we should be mindful of what is going on. We remember the Lord’s death and we show the power of His death in gathering us as the people of God. We are a gathered body of forgiven sinners.

But this meal does even more than that. For some, what I just said would be controversial, that the meal actually ‘does’ anything. But it does. We are not merely remembering or showing, we are also becoming. Eating together is a formative action. When families eat together, they grow up together, knowing one another, loving and serving one another, partaking of one another.

Those same things are going on here as we eat the Lord’s Supper. The breaking of the bread and the sharing of the wine gathers us together, unifies us, strengthens us and binds us together.

Close table fellowship is at the center of what it means to love one another.

Exhortation- Love is the Thing

We are learning about God’s Covenant with His people. The main thing we should remember is that at the center of the Covenant is a love relationship. This is true of the persons in the Godhead. The Father, Son and Spirit love one another and are completely unified. Even when the Son is required to submit to the Father, the love relationship remains intact. The Son loves to submit to the Father and the Father’s commands are giving in love to the Son.

So, we must learn to rule in love as well as submit in love. This sort of understanding leaves no room for tyranny and it leaves no room for a grudging submission. Parents, husbands, employers use real authority but it is an authority that is wielded in love. Children, wives, and employees submit but their submission, as long as it can be fully given without sin, is given wholeheartedly and without envy or any root of bitterness.

To the extent that our ruling is done in a heavy handed and tyrannical way,we must confess our sin. To the extent that our submission is done grudgingly, we must confess our sins. We must learn to both rule and submit in love.

Exhortation- Umbrella Man

I was recently told a good analogy by my sister-in –law about different kinds of people. Some are like umbrellas and everything runs off of them. Others, though, are like inverted umbrellas and everything runs into them and builds up over time.

We confess sins regularly and that is so that we have a clear conscience before God and men. For some of you, this is relatively easy, as your sins as well as other’s sins against you tend to run off as you move forward. But for some, it is difficult for you to rid yourselves of sins, grievances, bitternesses, or envy because you are that inverted umbrella.

I’d like to tell you to simply turn your umbrella over but it may not be possible. Maybe God gave you that sort of demeanor or maybe it is just too full to flip over. But at the least, you have got to get rid of some of those grievances before they sink you completely.

If you have a good memory about wrongs that others have committed against you, you are probably that inverted umbrella. You have two options. The first, do not be offended. That is, do not let stuff get in your umbrella. But if you are a sensitive person and just cannot seem to keep stuff out of your umbrella, then you have to deal your other option and deal with the sins against you. You can only do this by going to the brother or sister and confronting the sin, so that the relationship can be restored.

Confess your grievances now to God, whether bitterness for a wrong against you, or envy, or even a real and deep wound that should be confronted and has not been confessed to you. Afterwards, you will know if you can let love cover that sin or if you must go and confront that sin to your brother or sister. When you deal with these sins maybe you can get your umbrella light enough so that you might even be able to flip it over.

Ordinary Time

This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday. In the Church calendar this marks the beginning of ordinary time. The ordinary here is not in the sense of mundane or simple but rather, in the sense of ordinal numbers, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. and is the time counted after Pentecost and up to Advent when we start the Liturgical year again.

The naming of the time as ordinary time is a fitting misunderstanding of that word. It is the time in which we count until we start over again but we should rethink this. We are not caught in a perpetual cycle of a Church Year in which we relive the same events, same liturgy and same sermons over and over. In our tradition, we appreciate the Church Year, and expressly celebrate the High Church days of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost, but we would be mistaken to think that our year or our lives revolve around simply looking to these high days as our high moments.

The truly great thing about ordinary time is that it is so ordinary, lasts so long and takes up most of the church year. And it is all kicked off on this day we call Trinity Sunday. You see, normal life in Christ is walking before the Father, in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. We do this day after day, week after week, year after year, and in the age to come, for millennia without end.

It is good for us to celebrate the Church Year as a constant reminder of what the Lord has done for us in coming to Earth, in redeeming us through the cross, in rising from dead, and in ascending up to heaven to rule Heaven and Earth and finally, in sending us His Holy Spirit. We need constant reminders of these things, just like we need the reminder of weekly covenant renewal worship, hearing God’s promises to us and renewing our promises to Him.

But all of those reminders are so that we can move forward from grace to grace and from glory to glory as Jesus fills the Earth with His Spirit. This is extraordinary but should be the constant every day experience of God’s people. It just goes on day after day and year after year. God is filling up time with His Holy presence. This is a great reminder to us as we start Trinity Sunday and Ordinary Time.

Commencement Address at Oak Hill Christian School

Oak Hill Christian School
Commencement Ceremony
June 10, 2011
By Virgil Hurt

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, greetings graduates, parents, family, faculty and staff. This is a good and joyous day and I am blessed to be a part of your celebration.

Commencement is a beginning and so I shall begin. But too often we tend to think of the commencement ceremony as an ending and thus in an anticipation to geth the party started, we eagerly await the end of the commencement speaker’s rapidly forgettable speech. Not so fast. I’ve got a thing or two to say first.

You may not remember what I am going to say today. Chances are that in the days, and weeks and months and certainly years ahead, you won’t remember much, if any, of this speech. But that does not unduly distress me. At least, as long as what I say becomes a part of the fabric of who you are. If that happens, and it really must, then it won’t matter if you remember what I say, you will have come to know it with certainty, which is better by far.

What are my qualifications to be here before you today? Well, they are most august, indeed. I have been a much sought after commencement speaker for several years now. Well, at least to those near and dear to me. My first speech, three years ago, was to a class of one, my daughter Rebecca, graduating from our home school. My most recent, second, and last speech was to a graduating class of two, my daughter Elizabeth and her brother, Zachary. And now, I am brought to this place, with your graduating class of 7 and I am hopeful that you are glad to be in such august company.

What do my qualifications have to do with your graduation? Well, only everything. Let me explain. The only reason that I am here today is because your Headmaster, Mr. Thoburn, asked me to come and speak to you. He has heard me speak on a few occasions, perhaps heard a sermon or two, and apparently, maybe even obviously, could not get anybody else to come. So he asked me. Was I qualified for such a privilege? No. Was I the best choice? No. Did he really have no other options? No, with some tremendous effort, he likely could have got somebody to come and talk to you. Knowing that he was making a mistake, did I refuse? Again, and somewhat emphatically now, No!

And why not? Why not just tell Mr. Thoburn that it would likely be a disappointment to the students to invite me? Why not say to him that I’ve been around the Classical Christian education circles for a while now and I know of many much more qualified men for you to choose?

That would have been the smart thing and the safe thing to say but in my case, just not the obedient thing to say. And furthermore, I could have refused without doing much disrespect to Mr. Thoburn and without making room for damage to my own fragile reputation. I could have said no, but to do so would have been a slap in the face of my Lord who had brought me to just such a place and had prepared me for just such a question.

I may not have thought so but apparently God did and who am I to argue with Him? He is even more important and more authoritative than Mr. Thoburn! And this is why I do not want you to remember what I say today, but why you must, in fact, grasp, believe, know and live, what I say today.

Dear Graduates and dear friends, Do what God calls you to do. Do so with all the vigor you can muster. Do so with all the motivation of the call of duty. But do so resting in God’s goodness, wisdom and Providence.

I am not one prone to volunteer. Many years ago, I was a branch manager in several Kinko’s Copy Center stores. A regional manager once told me that the quickest way to the top was “don’t say much, just keep your head down and don’t volunteer.” It struck me as a bit odd at the time but the wisdom of his statement has grown on me.

Many years ago I made a deal with God. No, He didn’t talk to me but I talked to Him and made a personal commitment. The commitment was this. I felt that the Lord was calling me into ministry. Thus, I determined that whenever I was asked to do something related to my duties as a minister that was clearly a good thing to do, that I would not refuse to do so. That’s it, plain and simple. Do whatever is asked of you that is commensurate with your duties. You don’t have to volunteer but when asked, don’t refuse.

I pass it on to you here, as long as you do not tell anyone that is making big plans who might take advantage of me. But I put to you that if you leave your honors and advancement in the Lord’s hands, having taken your responsibilities seriously and having not taken yourself seriously, then the Lord will give you honor, honor greater than you deserve and honor that befits a true child of the Father. And there is more than enough honor to go around.

And since I had made the commitment to do whatever good thing was asked of me, I figured I would take my manager’s advice and not say much, keep my head down and not volunteer. My guess was that taking such a posture would enable me to lay low and be safe. But I am not writing my story. And what is pertinent to you is that you are not writing your story either. God is writing both of our stories and tonight, in the height of our mutual comedy, our paths meet.

You see, not volunteering did not keep me from being asked. And people do ask. And Mr. Thoburn asked. And God bestows honor as He sees fit. And dear graduates, it is most certainly an honor for me to be here tonight.

Am I qualified? No, not really. Did I deserve to be honored so? No, not at all. Earlier, I joked about my high qualifications, as if I was so great. But is it true? No, just a little lie to get the speech rolling along.

And the fact that I can laugh at myself with the joke that God is playing on everyone else is, by God’s standard, one of my greatest qualifications. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not offering a false humility, nor am I claiming to be somebody that I am not. I am a small time pastor in a small time denomination. But even in that, God has raised me far above my station and to God be the glory for it. But you have invited me here, to give me a name, to put another honor on my resume. Who cares if it is all a cosmic joke? God is the author of all such jokes and I tend to find Him consistently hilarious.

And while the honor is a gift, in God’s Providence he has sent me here to say something to you that will change your lives. You may not remember what I have to say but do not refuse to hear His voice. How can I say such things without extreme hubris? Well, because it is simply God’s way of doing things. He prefers to use the base things to oppose the proud. And if we are up to speed on the inside joke, God can use us for His glory even more.

And it is a privilege and an honor and a duty to be here tonight. And this is where I hope you can remember a little of what I am saying and how you can make what I am saying here become an integral part of your life.

As I said earlier, I am not so great. I have come to realize that this is true and it no longer bursts my bubble. But I am afraid that I must try to burst yours. You have already accomplished much. You have made your way through a challenging high school career. You have earned honors and scholarships, have earned some degree of academic respectability.

You have accomplished much and no doubt, in a group like this, from the background like yours, the list of your accomplishments will be long and your honors will be many.

But you have grown up in a world where your own self-esteem and your own sense of self-worth have become part of the air of the culture that we breathe. And this is most certainly a handicap on the road to godliness.

And while all the accomplishment are true and even wonderful, I ask you, “Are you really so great?” No, not really.

But, you say, “What about this great education you just mentioned? What about my great family? My great school? My great church? What about what my parents told me? What about what my teachers said about me?”

Well, the cold hard facts answer is that you really are not that great. It is not greatness that makes you, but rather, grace. You are not great but you are all evidence of great grace.

If you can grasp this truth of God’s grace, embrace it, relish in it, marinate the bones of your soul in its truth, live it and breathe it, then the Lord will raise you up and highly exalt you. But if you cannot grasp this one great truth, though you be high and lifted up in the eyes of men, the Lord’s favor will not shine upon you. And in light of all of the gifts and the honors, and the accomplishments of this day the one needful thing that you, as Christians, must possess, is the favor of the Lord.

Grace is gift. You have been given much and I hope you have all received it well, giving the glory and the credit where they are due. God has been exceedingly kind to you.

What will you do with His kindness? Will you reject it? I hope not. Will you plagiarize and try to put it off as your own? I hope not. Will you reflect His kindness, referring the glory to Him who has blessed you bringing you here to this day? I hope so.

But I am not calling you to a groveling worm theology, “I’m unworthy, I’m unworthy, I’m unworthy.” That will not do, either. Besides, most of the folks who say this don’t believe it anyway. They are just searching for somebody to say, “Oh, yes you are worthy!”

But what if the truth is, that you really are not worthy of all of this honor and trust and reward and glory and yet all of this has come to you anyway? What if you are actually painfully honest and know how much you really do not deserve all the accolades, responsibility and authority that have come your way? What if that were all true and yet you simply receive them all gladly as a faithful response to an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-wise, all-hilarious God?

I need to make one side comment about that last statement. I called God the all-hilarious God. I mean no disrespect to Him and am not being flippant. God is holy and we should worship and serve Him in reverence. But God most certainly loves a divine joke and has built a great deal of irony into His Word. If we do not understand this we cannot even understand our Bibles. Our very lives are an ironic assault on the powers of darkness. In this reverent sense, God is hilarious.

This is the trick, dear graduates, to understand the bit of sleight of hand from the Almighty as He says to you, “You know that you don’t deserve all this goodness and favor.” “No, I mean it,” He says, “You know it, don’t you? You have come to know that you really do not deserve this. Right?” And having been caught by Him, you might droop your head a little bit and say, “Yes, I know Lord. I admit it. I don’t deserve it at all.” But surprise and here is the sleight of hand! He says, “And so, based upon that knowledge, and based upon My Goodness, I am going to give it to you anyway!”

This is the joy of gift. Graduates you have been given much; fine families, excellent education, Classical Christian Curriculum, honor from on high and all because God is good. You really don’t deserve any of it which makes it all twice as good and double the laughter.

James 1:16-18 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

We need to get this down in our bones as we are blessed. The goodness of God needs to be the foundation of how we understand and receive the honors of men. God is the bestower of gifts, the great ring-giver. He dispenses them at His will. We also know that whatsoever comes to pass is a gift from His hand because all things work together for our good.

In that sense, even sorrow and suffering are gifts, perhaps the greatest gifts of all. All of you gathered here have received or will receive such gifts and one day will come to know that such hard providences are great gifts, indeed. But today we focus on the gifts of joy, of honor, of reward.

Let’s look briefly at things that I mentioned that you have been given. We start with your

Fine Family- What did you have to do with that? Did you choose your parents? You might be proud of them but you had absolutely nothing to do with choosing them or with their choice of you. It was given to you.

Your Excellent Education- I suppose you could argue that you made a go of it and produced all the brain cells that are now bulging from your information filled heads by your own vigorous studies. But the reality is, you could have just as easily received a second rate education or no education as the one that you have been given. It was given to you. It was a gift. Are you thankful?

The Classical Christian Curriculum- How did that happen? Well, it was as much a fluke as anything. You could have been educated in any number of ways. But, by God’s chance, that we call Providence, you were blessed with an education that is full of the Western tradition, the Classics but is thoroughly critiqued and understood with a Biblical World view. Only few Americans these days are educated in this way. You probably do not even comprehend the power in all of this. But the fact is that you did not choose it. It was a gift to you. Are you thankful?

Honor from on High- The truth is that all honor is from on High, from the God of honor. But only those who recognize this fact and give the honor back to God are truly blessed with His favor. This is another one of those seeming Christian paradoxes. We do not shrink away from God’s honor. We recognize that He actually gives it to us. Once He gives it to us, it is ours and recognized by everyone. The Valedictorian will receive just such an honor tonight and no doubt other honors will be bestowed. We do not diminish the true worth of the honor or of the relative merit of the one who receives it. But to be favored of the Lord and not merely honored by men, the receiver of the honor must know that it is his only because God is good and kind. To say this is one thing but to know it to be true is double honor and joy unspeakable.

How can you rejoice in God’s good gifts to you? First of all, you need to know God. And knowing Him you come to know yourself. And this leads us to a deeper understanding of God. It cycles on itself. God knows you, so you know Him, then you come to know yourself and this enables you to know Him ever deeper.

I have often said that to know yourself is to be comfortable in your own skin. That is, you understand who you are and you are okay with it. I am not talking about everyone having to accept you just the way you are, no matter what you do. The Bible has clear standards of behavior and they ought to be enforced in His Church. But what are you like? Who are your parents? What is your fundamental identity?

If you own who you are, then there is little that can said about you or done to you that will harm you. As you go away from here into the world as adults, many of you to various colleges, your values and identity are going to be challenged. What will you do with that challenge? Well, much of what you do with it depends on whether or not you can own up to who you are.

Well then, who are you? Let us answer that question in the most fundamental way. You are a Christian. No amount of sarcasm, including much guilt by association, should harm you. Do you own being a Christian? Do you own your own heritage in the Bible and throughout the course of history? Are you glad to be in the stream of the historic Christian faith and own it without wincing? We do not have to claim we have done all things well but we should be willing to claim our brothers and sisters through the ages as our very own kin. And we should be able to do so without caring what the establishment thinks or says.

Being a Christian, you are a Bible person. The Bible is your only ultimate and infallible authority. Do you believe that? Really? Even when some professor, colleague or coworker is chiding you about the age of the Earth, the genocides of the Old Testament and all those messy miracles of Jesus? Even when your so-called academic integrity is at stake? You mean that you even believe that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish?

Are you going to try to reason all of that out, get on the defensive, make compromises, refuse to answer, or are you simply going to stand on the authority of Scripture? If you know who you are and you remember who you are before the questions come, it will be easy to answer. Many a Christian has jettisoned the faith because he did not want to look silly in his freshman biology class.

But if we understand who we are, we can laugh at ourselves just as much as they do and in the end we will be laughing with God when their laughter has ended.

If you are comfortable in your own skin, and the truth about you is made know you would not be hurt by the revelation and the undeserved honors you have received would simply redound doubly to the glory of God.

And this brings us full circle. If God is the giver of gifts and the One who bestows honor, then we can receive them and confidently embrace whatever He has in store for us.

I said earlier that you should know yourself and be comfortable in your own skin but even that statement has a sardonic twist. I tell you to know yourself knowing that you cannot really do so. It is so like a father or a teacher or a commencement speaker to speak in riddles. Why can’t they just speak plain English? Well, I suppose the answer to that question would be that the simplicity of the world is so amazingly complex.

You cannot really know yourself or know whether you can even do that thing the Lord has called you to do. If you are like me, I am sure you often simply walk forward somewhat blindly, truly simply hoping for the best. You may have a smashing success at your endeavors, or you may fail miserably in the trying.

The point is not to know yourself, whether or not you are able to succeed. The point is to know yourself in relation to this great and terrible God. Do you belong to Him? Has He given you a name? Has He brought you to this point or that honor or such a calling or a seemingly impossible task? If so, then your only way is forward in Him. And in such knowing, you are called to place explicit trust in the only One who really does know you, in the hands of the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. At that point, it doesn’t matter what the world says. It doesn’t matter even what you think. The only thing that matters is to be the subject of a great High King. If you know that you are such a loyal subject, then you have come to know who you are.

And one final twist. You cannot even really know if you are such a loyal subject. As soon as you find yourself convinced of this, your loyalty will be immediately challenged and you may wonder if you will be able to stand. And by God’s grace, your only option at that point is to fall at His feet in divine worship and call upon Him to keep you in His grace.

And God is ever full of grace and is quick to dispense it. He will raise you up with the words of the Apostle, 1 Cor 16:13 Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. And your strength will be renewed. And He will lift up the hands that hang down and strengthen your feeble knees. And knowing His grace, you will have come to know that even if you are not as loyal as you thought, He always is.

So, what will you do with all of this? You who are highly honored and highly favored. This is no doubt a good and glorious thing.

Will you own up to the truth that God is the one who bestows gifts at His pleasure? Will you receive all such gifts as from His hand? Will you go out from here, this commencement, this beginning, and engage the world, with whatever it brings your way because God is the one who is sending it to you?

Will you receive the duties that are set before you because they are set there by the hand of Almighty God? And when they are presented to you, along with all the honor, prestige, and earthly reward that come with such gifts, will you laugh with God?