- Of all men. We acknowledge and beware of our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed by thought, word and deed against Thy Divine Majesty. We do earnestly repent and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings, the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us, Most Merciful Father, for Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ's sake, forgive us all that is passed and grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life to the honor and glory of thy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Hear these words of assurance of the forgiveness of sin, the righteous shall live by faith. The tax collector beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me a sinner. And Jesus said, I tell you, this man went down to his house justified. Blessed are thee whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Be of good cheer. (gentle piano music) 

- Dr. and Mrs. Andrea Stack will now present their infant son for the sacrament of baptism. Dr. Stack is a physician in residency at Duke Hospital. He and his wife are from Switzerland and are members of the Reformed Church of Switzerland and want their son to be baptized in the land of his birth. The maternal grandmother, Mrs. Hofstetter, has flown over to represent the family. And they now come to present their son Michael Thomas for the sacrament. Hear the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always to the close of the age. Obeying the Word of our Lord Jesus Christ and assured of his presence with us, we baptize those who he has called to be his own. In Jesus Christ, God has promised to forgive our sins and has joined us together in the family of faith, which is his church. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and death and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son. In Jesus Christ, God has promised to be our father and to keep us in His steadfast love. The promises of God are for you. By baptism God's puts his seal upon you and gives you His Spirit as a guarantee. And now in presenting your son for the sacrament, I ask you to answer the following question. Do you believe in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, do you? 

- I do. 

- I do. 

- Do you wish your child to be baptized in His name? 

- I do. 

- I do. 

- The congregation will please stand. I call upon this congregation now as representatives of the holy universal church to act in the capacity of whatever congregation this child may find himself in the future and ask you to give answer to this question. Our Lord Jesus has commanded us to teach those who are baptized in His name. Do you promise to declare the word of God to this child, to love Him and to pray for him that by God's grace he may be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ our Lord, your answers in the affirmative say we do. 

- I do. 

- Let us pray. Almighty God, we thank thee for thy redeeming love promised in this sacrament and for the hope we have in thee. As we baptize with water, baptize us with thy Holy Spirit that what we do may be thy work and what we say may be thy word, that we may be made one with Christ in faith and live by His grace alone. Oh God who has called us from death to life, we offer ourselves to thee and with thy church through all ages, we thank and praise thee for thy redeeming love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Child's Christian name is Michael Thomas. Michael Thomas, child of a covenant, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. This child is now received into the Holy Catholic Church. See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God. And so we are. And now let us pray. Three prayers, one for the child, one for his parents, and one for us all. Let us pray. Merciful Father, giver of life, who has called us to be thine own, we pray for that child, Michael Thomas. Watch over him and guide him and grant him faith that he may grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and glory, amen. Gracious God, whose will is our peace, we pray for thy servants Barbara and Andreas, to whom thou has given this child. Enable them so to know thee that they may love with thy love and teach thy truth and guide their child in the way of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Holy God, father of us all, remind us of thy promises given on our own baptism and renew our trust in thee. Make us strong to obey thy will and bind us to thy word, that we may faithfully serve thee for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The congregation may be seated. (gentle piano music) (vocal choir music) (vocal choir music continues) (vocal choir music continues) (vocal choir music continues) (vocal choir music) (vocal choir music continues) 

- The Scripture lesson this morning is from the Gospel according to John, chapter eight, verses 25 through 32. "Then they said unto Jesus, who are you? "And Jesus said unto them, "why ask exactly what I have been telling you? "I have still many things to say and many judgments "that I could pass on you, but He who sent me is faithful "and I speak to the world those things "which I have heard of him. "They understood not that he spoke to them of the father. "Then said Jesus unto them, when you have lifted up "the Son of Man, then you will recognize "that it is myself you look for and I do nothing "on my own authority but in all that I say, "I have been taught by my father, "And he that sent me is with me. "The father has not left me alone, because at all times "I do the things which are pleasing to Him. "As he spoke these words, many believed on him. "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, "if you are faithful to what I have said, "you are really disciples of mine "and you will have knowledge of what is true "and that very truth will make you free." (gentle piano music) (vocal choir music) 

- The Lord be with you. 

- And with your spirit. 

- Let us pray. Let us offer first a prayer of thanksgiving for our Christian heritage. Blessed and eternal God, from whom we come, by whom we are sustained and to whom we shall return, we thank thee for the good things bequeathed to us by the journeying generations, others labored and we have entered into the profits of their labors. Churches we did not build are centers for our worship and inspiration. Liberties we did not earn are our birthright, truths we did not discover are a lamp to our feet and a light upon our path. As we have freely received, so may we freely serve. Make us wise in the arts of stewardship and grant that we may so live and work that those who come after us shall rejoice that we passed this way through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And let us offer a prayer of intercession for the servants of the chapel. Almighty God whose house this is, we ask thy special blessing on many people as another academic year draws to its close. On those who have led the ministry of the word and of prayer, at the lectern and in the pulpit, on those who have made up the ministry of music, choir directors, organists, chord linear, choristers, who rising early in the morning, lead our praise, voice out songs, make a joyful and harmonious noise unto thee on our behalf. On those who have often unexpectedly made up the ministry of service, the chapel monitor, with the twinkle in his eye and confidence in his asking, who persuades enough worshipers, young and younger, male and female, to gather our offerings, to bring them to thy son's table, making of it an altar of thanksgiving. And with them, we remember the chapel hostesses, the secretary, the maid, the janitor, the PA electrician and the mechanical wizard who manages somehow to keep the organ alive from Lord's day to Lord's day. We ask thy special blessing on the ministry of the pew, on all who made our worship corporate by their presence and their praying and their praising and their listening. Bless them all, oh Lord. Bless them everyone. And let us offer a prayer of supplication for our students at a time of examinations. Oh God of wisdom and of love, be with those who are now in the midst of examination. Help them to face their tasks with calmness, courage and confidence, with knowledge, faithfulness and honesty, that they may do justice, both to themselves and to their teachers. Through Jesus Christ who was called Rabbi, Teacher, and now as He has taught us, let us pray together, saying, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. 

- There is a paragraph in your bulletin today in which, on behalf of the congregation, I express gratitude to many people who have contributed to the effectiveness of the university service of worship during this year. I hope that you will take this paragraph home and read it very carefully because the service that has been given to God and to this congregation by a large number of people this year, is significant and is important in every way. If there is any way to do so, I would like especially to single out the members of our chapel choir who have disciplined themselves to the point that they have been really free as musicians this year. And speaking personally, this is without a doubt the greatest choir that I have ever been associated with, the one that we have had this year. I can't find words adequately to express my own personal appreciation to them and I am sure that you join me in the sentiments of gratitude. In the summer of 1878, Johannes Brahms was in southern Austria composing his famous violin concerto in D major. Among the notes, which he made on this occasion was the observation that the very air was so alive with melodies and here I use his own words, "One had to be careful not to tread upon them." Well, as I was thinking of the sermon for this morning, it occurred to me that expressions of the desire for freedom are in the air today, very much as the melodies were in the air in southern Austria that summer of 1878. We have to walk very carefully, lest we tread upon the feelings, the expressions, the aspirations for liberty which are abroad in the earth today. Everyone wishes to be free. Freedom is the hallmark of the 20th century. There are a great many new nations in the continent of Africa today which are gaining their independence from colonial powers. And for the first time, they're standing on their own feet, not only in the atmosphere of freedom, but with the political reality of independence. Even the nations of the earth, which have not yet gained their liberty from the colonial powers are itching for it, crying out for it, demanding it. In our own United States, we are spending vast sums of money in programs to gain freedom from poverty for a third of our citizens. Poverty has been correctly called a form of slavery and we are appropriating billions of dollars in an attempt to free these citizens from this bondage. 1000s of people have risked stormy seas or crowded onto over loaded planes to gain their freedom from Castro's Cuba. Other 1000s have risked machine gun fire to escape the freedom through the Berlin Wall. On college campuses in the world today, 1000s of students are demanding freedom from every rule, regulation or law that has been devised by the mind of an adult in the history of the world. Students are saying we want to be able to do what we want to do at any time we want to do it and in whatever fashion we want to do it. We want to be absolutely free to evaluate the worth of professors to set our courses, to fix our curricula, to establish our living conditions or anything else that crosses our minds. Make no mistake about it, these voices are being heard throughout the earth. There is a great cry for liberty from every form of regulation or rule so that we are indeed reminded of what Brahms said about the melodies of southern Austria, when we hear the shouts of freedom that come from every side. Now at this point, there's something that's very interesting for us to note. When you and I call for freedom, we are calling for something which Almighty God wants us to have. We're not asking for something, as is sometimes the case, which God has revealed would be bad for us and which we ought not to have. We are requesting a commodity which God says He is the author of and which He has gone to considerable trouble to help us to have. Indeed, Almighty God has long stirred up freedom in the earth and wherever His gospel has been preached, the fires of liberty have been lighted. For example, the Board of Directors of the British East India Company met in special session when the independence movement first began in India some years ago. They noted that the Christian missionaries had come into India and had stirred up the people to want independence. They declared that when Carey was sent to India as the first Christian missionary, and here I use the words of the Board of Directors inscribed in their minutes, "It was the wildest and maddest scheme "that a moonstruck fanatic ever invented." Why? Well, they went on to explain, "Because it brought "the safety of their possessions in India into peril." They were right, it did. Those people in India who had been willing to be subject, willing to be in slavery to the British for all those years heard the gospel. The preaching of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and they said, we want to be free. God wants us to be free. In the 1920s when Japan was ruling Korea, the Korean independence movement came and caused great trouble to the Japanese army of occupation. And the officer who was in charge of the Japanese occupation reported to his government that the curse of Korea, the curse of Korea was the Christian population. Here are his words, "If it were not "for the Christian population, "there would be no independence movement in Korea." Now in case that makes you and me feel very self-righteous as Americans, I should cite the report of the United States Army officer who was in charge of the occupation of the Philippines islands before they got their full independence from us. He said words that were almost exactly like the words of the Japanese army officer who occupied Korea. Here are his words. "The Curse of the Philippine Islands "is the Christian population, "because if it were not for them, "there would be no Philippine independence." Bishop Richard Raines several years ago was asked what he thought about the reports that were coming out of Angola concerning the Portuguese governments sending the Christian missionaries out of Angola. Bishop Raines replied that it made perfect sense. He said, "Anybody who honestly preaches "the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God "and the brotherhood of man in Angola "is going to be considered subversive "by the Portuguese government." So let there be no doubt, God wants all of us to be free. The only question which we have before us therefore as Christians is the question of how we get it. And that's a big question. Because not all of the roads which have signs on them advertising to freedom go to freedom. So unless we are going to be stupid and simply travel down every road we see that has a freedom sign on it, we shall need to study the map to see which roads do in fact take us to freedom. Let's take a look at three roads which have freedom signs on them, see what we can learn. The one which I suppose has the most signs saying to freedom on it is the road of license. It's a reasonable sounding thing because the road to license promises that if you get on this road, you can do what you want to do whenever you want to do it. And to the untrained ear, the inexperienced life, that sounds a great deal like freedom. Many people get on the road license and they think they're going to arrive at freedom by the route of doing whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it. But let's take a closer look at that. Suppose for a little bit we were to think of ourselves individually, not just as an integrated person in our fleshly body, but as a Congress. And now you're a Congress for a moment and your stomach introduces a bill saying, I want to eat. Now remember, you're on the road to license and you do whatever your whim wants you to do whenever the whim says to do it. So you pass that bill and it becomes a law. So you get something to eat right now. Then you feel a wee bit tired and your muscles introduce a bill, let's go to sleep. Now, it's entirely possible that some student who's been studying late for exams has already made that bill into law here this morning. But let's say that next you introduced into this Congress a bill to increase the expenditure, you pass that immediately. Close on the heels of that, you introduce a bill to lower taxes. You pass that because it seems like a good thing to do too. Now, interestingly enough, this was attempted in the legislature in my home state of Texas when W. Lee O'Daniel was first elected governor of that state. He ran on a platform that had two planks, one of which was to increase expenditures dramatically and the second one was to lower taxes dramatically. Well, obviously, both could not be done. To his surprise, he was elected and then he blamed it on the legislature that he couldn't get either one of these two planks put into effect. Cause you see, you could do one, but you could not do both. So in a congress or a legislative body of any kind or within the person, we're now thinking of ourselves temporarily as a congress, it soon is found to be impossible to pass all the bills that are introduced and something more than unbridled license has to be adopted as the modus operandi if there is to be freedom. Because license leads only to the kind of chaos that results at a traffic intersection when you blindly allow every car to go through the intersection whenever its driver wants to go. This produces no meaningful freedom, it only produces wrecks and pillocks. The chief of police in Boston is reported to have made a very interesting observation which illuminates the matter before us at this moment. Some years ago, there was a very disastrous fire in one of the nightclubs in Boston. There was a large number of patrons in the nightclub at the time it caught on fire. The blaze raced quickly through the nightclub and the patrons tried to escape through the sole exit. Only a few managed to get out. The fire chief later examining, this great holocaust, made the observation that if they had organized, everyone would have had time to get free from the burning building. But as it happened, almost no one escaped to freedom and he said that, as he saw how the bodies were packed right around this one exit, at the reason almost nobody got his freedom was that everybody was interested in freeing only himself. That's the picture of license. I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it does not result in freedom. Let's think of it this way for just a minute. Suppose you decided this afternoon that you would like to drive to Raleigh. You might go out to the bypass on the north side of Durham, looking for the road to Raleigh. And suppose you have two or three riders with you in your car, you see a sign on highway 501 North which points to Raleigh. That would be exactly what you were looking for, that is to say a road that goes to Raleigh. So you might turn off the bypass on the highway 501 North and start to travel that road. Your backseat driver would immediately get nervous and say now, look, don't be stupid. This is the wrong road for you to take. You ought not to go on US 501 North because you're not old enough to drive on US 501 North. Now your backseat driver would be clearly off base if he said that because whether you're old enough to go on 501 North has nothing whatever to do with it. Then your backseat driver, getting more nervous, might say now look here, it goes against all your upbringing for you to go on this road. That too would be beside the point. Then your backseat driver getting more nervous says, your great grandmother will turn over in her grave if you go on US 501 North. Scientifically speaking, I doubt that she would. Well, what is the trouble if you take US 501 North? Just one thing, just one thing: none of that scare talk from your backseat driver has any relevance at all. The only thing that has relevance is that as a matter of fact, if what you want to do is go to Raleigh, US 501 North will not take you there. You will have to get on another road. Now that's the situation which often develops with people who want freedom but who get on a road, the license road, which has freedom signs on it. It just doesn't go to freedom. Now, it may sound as though what we're saying is that we need to move in the direction of some kind of regulation of license. Down what road does that take us? The road of law? Well, I risk some unpopularity here by saying that the road of legalistic law does not lead to freedom anymore than license. A certain amount of law in certain restricted areas and in a temporary sense is a necessary detour to get to the true road of freedom. Rules and regulations are necessary for the very immature. Laws are essential as St. Paul said, to serve as a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. But the trouble with law as a road to freedom is that if we depend upon law to guarantee our freedom, there is every day a new situation which is not covered by the laws that we passed yesterday. We have to enact other laws to cover those situations and finally we find ourselves in the plight of the ancient Pharisees who had so many laws that they didn't even know how many laws they had and couldn't keep up with the application of the ones on the books. One law conflicted with another and instead of this legalism, producing people who were free, it produced people who were in shackles. For the immature and in certain civil areas where we must crystallize our agreements into law, law is essential. But the finest use of law is to make itself unnecessary. If we were to rest upon law as our chief guarantee of freedom, we would then all have to be police to see that the law was carried out and then who would police the police? They too, being human, would have to be under some sort of law that would have to be policed and then the police of police to police would have to be policed, and so on and infinitum. We cannot depend upon law as being the road to freedom. If there is not something better than exterior restraints upon us, then we are not a people headed toward freedom. We may as well face it. At least one road, this highway does lead to freedom and it is the road toward which all of us should travel. If we cannot get on that road immediately, we should choose the shortest detour possible which really leads to it. That is the road of absolute slavery to inner discipline. Do not be deceived, there is no freedom, anywhere at any time in this world without discipline. The late Harry Emerson Fosdick said that human life is divided between inner discipline and outer control, the way the surface of the Earth is divided between the sea and the land. Each square foot is covered by one or the other. Whenever there is the less of the one, there is the more of the other. Wherever there is more of the one, there's the less of the other. As the land comes up, the sea recedes and as the land goes down, the sea comes in. Said Fosdick, the whole of human life is divided between inner compulsion and outer control like that. If we will not provide the inner compulsion, he said, outer control will come sweeping in like an inexorable tidal wave. And if we do not like the sea of outer control, then we must build up the land of inner discipline. There has to be order in the world for any kind of meaningful freedom to exist. There has to be discipline for there to be this order and this freedom. If you and I do not provide the inner discipline which is necessary, then it will be provided from without in ways which may or may not lead to creative freedom, probably will not. This means then that discipline is to freedom what a string is to a kite. Now, the kite analogy, I would like to warn you ahead of time is not perfect but it does offer some insight. It is absolutely impossible for a kite to stay afloat in the wind, unless it has a string holding it to something firm. If the kite should say I'm tired of being held down by this string, I'm going to cut the string, you know, of course, what would immediately happen: it would go into a tailspin and finally crash into a tree top or crash to the ground. And yet, if this kite is going to rise higher and higher into the greater freedom of the skies, it must keep tugging at the string and the string must slowly yield. That seems to me that this is the picture of the process of the maturation of the individual. He begins with trial and error attempts to get off the ground and finally he passes the treetops, and he goes out into the wild blue yonder as he keeps tugging at the string. Now, here's where the analogy does not follow. The process of maturation is one of changing over as regards the person holding the string. The time never comes when the kite can stay in the wild blue yonder without the discipline of a string. The only question is, who finally is going to hold that string? Early in life, our parents, teachers, or whomever hold the string. But every one of us to become mature must achieve the mastery over the string. See, it's not that some day freedom will exist in my life or in yours or in society without discipline, they absolutely cannot exist without discipline. And any adult who thinks it can is an unmitigated fool. The only question is, will the discipline be inner or outer? Will we have less land and more of the sea or more of the land and less of the sea. One of the really sad things in our existence is to see a fine young person who is loaded with talent, whose future appears bright, but who begins to demand that what he mistakenly calls his freedom, but which really is license. He cuts the string of ethical discipline. Soon we see his life going into the giddy spins, so typical of a kite which has broken it's string. And at last we see him not free but in slavery to some kind of addiction, or we see him impaled on a meaningless existence. Long ago Epictetus said, "No man can be free "who is not the master of himself." That being the case, it follows that the person who is demanding that somebody else give him his freedom, but who has not rigidly disciplined himself, is asking for a commodity which cannot be conferred from without. Did you ever go into a store and try to buy a set of well developed muscles? True freedom has to be developed from within, the same way our muscles have to be developed. Who is the free athlete? Who is the free musician? Who is the free artist? Which student this week has been the most free to respond to the challenge of final exams? The one who disciplined himself during the semester or the one who did not? Yes, God wants us to be free. Individually, He wants us to be free. But He has made it perfectly clear that there is a kind of discipline that goes with it. What is that discipline? Jesus said, as Cleave Evans read a while ago, if, my what a big gift that is, "If you abide by what I teach, "you are really disciples of mine." Now, let's not rush on to the rest of it. Stop a moment and taste that if. If you abide, live by, really appropriate what I teach, you are really disciples of mine, same root word as discipline. You are disciples of mine. And, here's the result, you will know the truth and that truth will make you free. You know, I have been impressed with the large number of academic institutions of higher learning and the United States which have had part of those words inscribed over their doors. What they have inscribed is, you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free. But that isn't what Jesus said. There's a kind of discipline that precedes this. It is the variety of discipline that makes sense to the chemistry professor who comes from a meeting in which he has called for academic freedom. He goes to his laboratory and shows, in part, what he considers academic freedom to mean. What does he do with his academic freedom? Take a test tube, pour this into that in haphazard fashion just to see what happens? What he does in his laboratory, he calls by the word discipline. This is my discipline. He's a slave to the knowledge and the procedures of his laboratory. This is to him a representative part of what he calls academic freedom. The apostle Paul wrote, Stand fast therefore in the liberty where with Christ has made us free. And if we do that, we will not need to trample on any of the expressions of the desire for freedom that are abroad in the earth today. We will achieve that freedom by the grace of God through inner discipline, discipleship to the truth of Christ. Almighty God, help us to appropriate the insights of your Word and to gain the freedom which comes from those who are slaves of Christ. In His name, amen. (gentle piano music) (vocal choir music) (vocal choir music continues) (vocal choir music continues) (vocal choir music continues) (gentle piano music) (organ music) (organ music continues) (organ music continues) (vocal choir music) (vocal choir music continues) (vocal choir music continues) (vocal choir music continues) (gentle piano music) (vocal choir music) ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ (vocal choir music) ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ ♪ Alleluia ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ 

- Here we offer and present unto thee, oh Lord, the symbol of ourselves to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice unto thee. May the blessing of God come upon you abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Lord. ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪