A Vision for Shawnee Baptist College

 Address given in Shawnee Baptist College chapel, April 15, 2014

 “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.” Mat 22:37-38

  As I look over our movement, I recall the words of Tolkien:

      Where now the horse and the rider?  Where is the horn that was blowing?

      They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadows.

      The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
 

       There is a terrible cry in our churches for biblically-centered Christians, equally committed to loving God with their heart and mind.  That call could be answered here.  This school will move forward with two great goals in mind: to train students to study the Word of God, and to train them to proclaim it to the world.  We will do this by aggressively engaging the mind, to teach you to understand complex ideas, to evaluate truth claims, to apply the Scriptures to every thought, activity, and tradition.  We will train you for the dark and angry world who seeks to overcome the light, both in themselves and in you.  We will teach you apologetics, so that you’ll have confidence in the Scriptures to quench the attacks of the sceptics.  We will train you to preach and teach, to overcome the darkness with the knowledge of the Gospel.  We will teach you to understand the Scriptures, the anvil upon which the Holy Spirit will break the will of men.  No great work for Christ was ever done apart from the ministry of the Word, so we will strive to give you the tools to dig into the Bible, to understand the deep things of God, to unearth the gold in his revelation.  The world, the flesh, and the devil will employ friends and enemies to undermine you, pastors and family. We will offer you the tools to understand these attacks, to meet them in battle, and to defeat them, with the grace of God and the Bible.  The calling of this school is to equip you for the greatest calling in the world: the ministry of the Word, the proclamation of the Gospel.  We will push back the cloud of anti-intellectualism that has hung over our movement for too long.  There is no virtue in ignorance.  Chesterton warns us

    “Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of
     ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas
     are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no
     ideas.”

       Your calling is a dangerous one.  You are to stand between the church and world, between your students and the false teacher, between truth and error.  To do this you must be equipped.  You must be grounded in the inerrant, inspired Word of God.  No other foundation will suffice.  No other philosophy, education, or authority will be adequate.  We hope to give you both the tools and the training to grasp that foundation.  When secular humanism beats at your door, you must answer with authority of God.  When false teachers speak deceit, you must counter with the voice of truth.  When preachers fail the church in life and leadership, you must offer the Lordship of Christ.  When you are drained by the attack of the devil, you must drink at the pure fountain of Scripture.  And drink deeply.  As Moore urges, Shawnee Baptist College “must ever struggle to retain intellectual rigor. This academic prowess is an act of love, equipping these brilliant students to push back the arguments behind which guilty consciences hide, in order that they may hear the voice that calls “Adam, where are you?”

       We are not perfect, but we are committed.  We are not entirely qualified yet, but we are dedicated.  I can’t promise you that we will give you everything you need, but I can tell you this:  We are serious about preparing students for the ministry.  Some of you may not return, some of you are not sure.  I don’t know entirely what next year holds, but if you join us we can give you something real.  I offer you not tradition, but theology; not rules, but holiness; not information, but Scripture, not control, but Christ.    We have a chance to do something here that no one else is doing: to study C.S. Lewis and John R. Rice.  To read Spurgeon and Augustine.  To study apologetics and evangelism. To love people and teach the whole counsel of God.  Our movement desperately needs young people who are equipped, not afraid to ask questions, to search the Scriptures, to defy tradition, to proclaim Christ in all his glory, both to the heart and the mind.  I believe that we can help you be those leaders.  “…that in all things Christ might have the preeminence”

 

Why Study Church History? A Biblical Answer

Prov. 27:17 - Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

          The experiences of Christians throughout history offer an invaluable resource for how men and women have lived, understood, and experienced Scriptural truths.  Just as we look to pastors, teachers, and friends to encourage and edify us in our Christian walk today, we should also look to the long line of members in the Body of Christ.  The characters in church history offer us insight, inspiration, and warning for our own personal walk with Christ.

2Ti 2:15-17 - Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.  But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.  And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus;

          The study of the Scriptures is a deadly serious task, both because of the necessity of the Word and the danger in distorting it. Church history looks at how people have carried out this task in their own lives.  It is the history of applied hermeneutics.  The above verses use past religious leaders as a warning to remain faithful and avoid the errors of other men.  We study the lives and beliefs of other Christians, ancient and modern, in order to learn from their mistakes, and to inform our own understanding of the Scriptures.  The Bible is eternal and perfect, but man is limited and weak, and we must look at how others have handled the same Word that we have so that we can recognize our own errors, limitation, and successes. 

         Every man is held captive by his own generation.  He is freed from this short-sightedness when he steps outside of his environment and sees how the church has survived for the other 2000 years.  Only then can he appreciate what his own time has to offer, as well as the value of the other members of the Body of Christ, living or dead.

An Exposition of Jeremiah 6:16

Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.

     This passage is a part of the second sermon of Jeremiah to Judah, which begins in chapter 3, verse 6 and ends at chapter 6, verse 30.  The people of Judah had turned from the Lord, so God sent Jeremiah to call them to repentance.  He pointed out their sin, warned them of the judgment, and offered them an opportunity to repent.  These are the three great themes of this sermon.  God’s mercy and grace are contrasted with Judah’s wickedness.

      In 6:13-19, Jeremiah was drawing the sermon to a close, and summarizing the message.  The condemnation was stated clearly in vs. 13-14 where the false prophets and people had rejected God.  Given the divine condemnation, the LORD calls them to return to the old paths, the good way.  However, the people refused.   Though God offered them a chance they would not heed, and judgment was prophesied.

But what were the old paths?  The simplest answer would be the opposite of what they had been condemned for.   Because this was the summary of the sermon, the particular sin was not given here, but it was made clear throughout the message.  There are many descriptions, but only one sin: rejecting Jehovah  to worship pagan gods.  These were not idols of the mind, flesh, or wrong priorities.  Judah had worshipped the graven images of the surrounding nations.  At the beginning of the sermon Jeremiah graphically described Judah’s behavior as whoredom. (3:9)  Leaving the Jehovah, they had “committed adultery with stones and with stocks.”  They had been unfaithful to the true God, and had turned to idols made of rock and wood.  The religious leaders had not left their vocation, but directed it toward pagan gods. In 5:31 the prophets had spoken false words, words that had not come from God.  The priests had ruled by their own means rather than God’s Law, and the people loved it.  There were both pagan leaders and pagan followers.  The sin of Judah was not merely breaking the Law of Moses, or not serving God as well as they should, but a wholesale rejection of Jehovah.  The gravity of the situation was labeled as an “abomination” in 6:15. 

       Despite this polytheistic heathenism, God called them back to the right way.  "The emphasis is on the good way - which was the way of God, not just the way of old." (Dave Delaney)  There were many "old paths", but only one "good way."  The good way was the life the Israelites had walked when they were founded as a nation at Mt. Sinai.  This old way was laid down from the beginning by Moses, summed up in “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.” (Deut. 6:4)  Judah was being called away from paganism, back to the very foundation of their nation, back to the original life, the old, good path, where they had one God - Jehovah, whom they served.  They had left this path for Balaam and would be made desolate as a result.  The only way to divert this was to return to worship and service of the LORD, Jehovah.  To fail to do so was to bring judgment by a foreign nation. 

The sin of Judah was paganism, the remedy was repentance, and obedience would bring mercy; failure would bring captivity.

Stop Talking and Explain Yourself: A Call for Clarity

“To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. 

 A wise man will hear, and will increase learning.” Proverbs 1:4-5

 

“It is necessary to affix right ideas to words.” Thomas Paine

 

One of the difficulties with inheriting a movement such as fundamentalism is the vocabulary that is assumed by its members.  And since the vocabulary was originally meant to define the positions of the movement, the terms became rallying cries for its leaders (e.g. separated, fundamental, etc.) Unfortunately, current leaders are often lax in explaining what they mean by the catchphrases they continue to use.  Whereas the original leaders were creating distinctions between themselves and others with their terminology, subsequent generations often adopt those words as labels, with very little time spent defining them.  To make matters worse, as the controversy or culture that gave context to those terms changes or disappears the words themselves become more and more obscure. 

This lack of precision in language was, ironically enough, the strength of the liberal movement.  By using traditional Christian language, yet attaching different meanings, and carefully avoiding drawing clear lines on what they had changed, they were able to infiltrate the churches and schools of conservative denominations.  Yet fundamentalists, despite their origins as a reaction to these same liberals, have begun to slouch toward this same practice.  Preachers and leaders trumpet this word or that phrase as a cry for biblical faithfulness, yet never stop to carefully explain the content of their message.

While the liberals had a sinister intent, many modern fundamentalists are simply unwilling or unable to avoid their mistakes.  Almost the entire ministry of a Christian leader is to communicate biblical truth to the next generation, yet our leaders have simply latched on to simple slogans that summarize their position or belief.  Whatever happened to edification, teaching, or simply clear communication?  Rather that define their terms or explain the biblical content of their labels, these leaders simply repeat them over and over, assuming all know what they mean, and denouncing all those who would fail to rally around them.  There is a serious lack of awareness of the difference between compromising the truth, and hesitating to adopt a truncated summary of the truth.  We may believe the same, but that does not mean I have to use the same words as you.  And if you refuse to tell me what you mean by the things you say, you have failed to prove yourself trustworthy, either as a leader or as an authentic torchbearer for our tradition.  If the leaders of our movement (or any other movement) wish to see the next generation follow their beliefs, they had better stop talking and explain themselves.