McMurry S. Richey - "Grace and Discipline" (July 16, 1961)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(soft rumbling sound) | 0:04 | |
- | Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great, | 0:18 |
a cloud of witnesses, | 0:21 | |
let us also lay aside every weight | 0:23 | |
and sin which clings so closely. | 0:27 | |
And let us run with perseverance the race | 0:30 | |
that is set before us. | 0:33 | |
Looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, | 0:35 | |
who for the joy that was set before him endured | 0:40 | |
the cross, despising the shame | 0:44 | |
and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. | 0:47 | |
Consider him who endured from sinners | 0:51 | |
such hostility against himself | 0:53 | |
so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. | 0:56 | |
Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom | 1:02 | |
that cannot be shaken | 1:05 | |
and let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence | 1:07 | |
and all for our God is a consuming fire. | 1:12 | |
One comes to this place in this service of worship, | 1:21 | |
mindful of already having been confronted | 1:27 | |
and searched and tried | 1:31 | |
and of having opportunity for joining | 1:35 | |
in the praise and prayer of choir and leaders of worship. | 1:37 | |
And wonders what else there may be to say, | 1:44 | |
except these words of scripture. | 1:48 | |
What does one do or say when such a pointed | 1:53 | |
and all demanding claim is laid upon him | 2:02 | |
as in these words of scripture. | 2:08 | |
In these academic quarters, | 2:12 | |
we have all ways of lessening claims like this. | 2:16 | |
This is not peculiar to the academic mind | 2:22 | |
in all realms of life. | 2:25 | |
We find ways of dodging what God expects of us, | 2:27 | |
but there are some interesting species | 2:32 | |
of academic dodge as well. | 2:34 | |
A quarter of a century ago, it was the fashion | 2:38 | |
in some quarters of New Testament interpretation | 2:42 | |
to look at a passage like this great, powerful message | 2:46 | |
from Hebrews read this morning. | 2:51 | |
And to find here an example of an effort at social control. | 2:55 | |
Said one prominent New Testament writer, a scholar, | 3:00 | |
the early church was engaged in the desperate effort | 3:06 | |
to consolidate and extend its hold | 3:12 | |
and over against it was the threatened Roman empire | 3:16 | |
and Rome sought social control by persecution | 3:21 | |
to break down the loyalty | 3:25 | |
of this nascent Christian movement. | 3:26 | |
The church on the other hand sought | 3:31 | |
to control to bolster and steady | 3:34 | |
and strengthen its members by pointing | 3:38 | |
to the example of Jesus crucified up on the cross, | 3:43 | |
who never said a mumbling word | 3:47 | |
of other great confessors of faith before | 3:51 | |
and after Christ who stood steady | 3:57 | |
in time of persecution, who openly express their faith, | 4:00 | |
thereby secured their continuing unity with | 4:07 | |
the threatened movement and gave encouragement | 4:11 | |
and strength to some of the others. | 4:14 | |
So all they wrote marker stories. | 4:17 | |
They echoed confessions. | 4:21 | |
They sought in one way or another to control | 4:24 | |
the threatened group of Christians | 4:28 | |
who might otherwise defect and take on again, | 4:30 | |
the coloration of the Roman empire around | 4:33 | |
be lost from the church into the world. | 4:36 | |
I submit this is a very significant interpretation | 4:42 | |
of the epistles of the Hebrews, | 4:47 | |
For we do see here a church, | 4:50 | |
which at least in times past has undergone persecution | 4:52 | |
and has a great role of heroes | 4:59 | |
and witnesses of the faith to call. | 5:01 | |
And wants to steady those who might defect. | 5:05 | |
This interpretation went on to suggest that most | 5:13 | |
of the New Testament could be seen from this perspective. | 5:16 | |
It was an instrument of social control | 5:21 | |
to keep Christians faithful when the power | 5:26 | |
and might of Rome were threatening. | 5:30 | |
It's interesting to note however, | 5:34 | |
that other scholars look at some of the same data, | 5:36 | |
particularly the epistle to the Hebrews | 5:39 | |
and find here not so much a church now under persecution. | 5:42 | |
This is in the past, | 5:47 | |
but rather a church of Christians | 5:50 | |
who are becoming lethargic. | 5:53 | |
Who are losing the discipline and control of their lives, | 5:56 | |
who are adapting to the world around, | 6:01 | |
who are forgetting that in Jesus Christ, | 6:04 | |
God has made himself so savingly manifest | 6:07 | |
that he is the last word about how we find access to God | 6:11 | |
or God's heart is open to us. | 6:18 | |
In danger forgetting this, | 6:21 | |
and so Hebrews is written not primarily | 6:24 | |
to steady them in persecution, | 6:28 | |
but to nerve them in time of indifference | 6:31 | |
and lethargy and spiritual slothfulness. | 6:35 | |
You and I are not prepared this morning | 6:40 | |
to choose between the scholars here, | 6:42 | |
but do we not see interesting parallels | 6:46 | |
to situations in all day? | 6:48 | |
There are Christians in the world today | 6:52 | |
whose faithfulness to Jesus Christ, | 6:55 | |
whose belonging to one another in the fellowship | 6:58 | |
is threatened by devices more demonic | 7:03 | |
than ever envisaged by the Roman empire. | 7:09 | |
Ways of breaking down their faithfulness, | 7:12 | |
of brainwashing them. | 7:16 | |
Of forcing them to conform to an un-Christian order. | 7:19 | |
We think not only of those who today behind iron curtains | 7:24 | |
find it hard to be Christian. | 7:31 | |
But of those in the not too distant past | 7:34 | |
threatened by the Nazi regime, | 7:38 | |
who also had to come through persecution | 7:42 | |
with great suffering. | 7:46 | |
So we find Christians threatened | 7:49 | |
and it would be in order to nerve | 7:52 | |
and strengthen them with a word | 7:54 | |
about how Jesus Christ himself endured | 7:57 | |
the cross despising the shame. | 8:00 | |
And he sat down at the right hand of God, | 8:03 | |
but there may be more serious threats | 8:08 | |
to authentic Christianity today than such overt opposition. | 8:12 | |
Perhaps the kind of threat, | 8:18 | |
also visible in the New Testament, | 8:21 | |
the threat of indifference of relaxation of zeal, | 8:25 | |
of lethargy and lack of discipline. | 8:31 | |
Perhaps this threat is even more dangerous | 8:36 | |
for all day perhaps. | 8:42 | |
I said there are academic ways | 8:48 | |
of dealing with the challenge of the epistle to the Hebrews. | 8:50 | |
There are other ways of responding to ways | 8:56 | |
of those a bit more zealous. | 9:00 | |
Those who want to do | 9:04 | |
and be what is called for in the gospel. | 9:06 | |
Sometime ago, there came to my hand, | 9:12 | |
a beautifully tooled leather volume, | 9:15 | |
just over a century old. | 9:19 | |
Fine artwork in the leather, | 9:22 | |
gorgeously marbled end papers, | 9:27 | |
superb paper and printing masterpiece | 9:30 | |
of the printers and binders art. | 9:36 | |
A book by Jeremy Taylor of three centuries ago, | 9:40 | |
entitled "Rules and Exercises For Holy Living". | 9:45 | |
Interestingly enough, in the flyleaf, | 9:54 | |
to this gorgeously bound book, | 9:57 | |
there was this almost anomalous notation | 10:00 | |
to so-and-so obviously the name of a student, | 10:06 | |
Magdalen College, Oxford. | 10:11 | |
March, 1961, prize for athletic sports. | 10:14 | |
I confess I was taken aback a bit | 10:22 | |
for this is not quite the way | 10:26 | |
we generally reward our athletes or do | 10:27 | |
with a book on rules or exercises of holy living | 10:31 | |
and volume two is fully dying, | 10:36 | |
but there was a certain congruence. | 10:41 | |
This athleticism of the spirit expressed by Jeremy Taylor, | 10:45 | |
after all had a certain kinship with the discipline | 10:53 | |
of athletics in which some of our numbers | 10:56 | |
are involved while the rest of us sit in the stand. | 11:01 | |
And there have been some who've been caught hold off | 11:07 | |
by a book like Jeremy Taylor's | 11:10 | |
and caught up into this strenuous discipline of the spirit. | 11:13 | |
John Wesley writes in his play | 11:20 | |
in account of Christian perfection. | 11:22 | |
"In the year 1725 being in the 23rd year of my age. | 11:25 | |
I met with Bishop Taylor's | 11:30 | |
"Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying" | 11:32 | |
In reading several parts of this book, | 11:35 | |
I was exceedingly affected. | 11:37 | |
That part in particular, | 11:41 | |
which relates to purity of intention. | 11:42 | |
Instantly, I resolved to dedicate all my life to God. | 11:45 | |
All my thoughts and words and actions. | 11:49 | |
Being thoroughly convinced that there was no medium, | 11:53 | |
but that every part of my life | 11:57 | |
and not some only must either | 11:58 | |
be a sacrifice to God or to myself. | 12:01 | |
That is in effect to the devil. | 12:04 | |
Can any serious person dial to this" Wesley goes on. | 12:07 | |
"Or find a medium between serving God | 12:12 | |
and serving the devil." | 12:15 | |
So he entered into an athleticism of the spirit. | 12:17 | |
This book was to him not a prize for athletic sports, | 12:23 | |
but a goal and a direction for a spiritual athleticism. | 12:29 | |
Yet when one reads Taylor, he wonders whether | 12:36 | |
this legalistic kind of quietism is quite | 12:40 | |
the expression of the gospel ethic. | 12:44 | |
Here are 23 rules for employing all time | 12:48 | |
and Wesley adopted and tried to abide by most of these. | 12:52 | |
Five benefits of this exercise. | 12:57 | |
10 rules for purity of intention, eight signs of it. | 13:00 | |
Six several manners of the divine presence, | 13:05 | |
10 rules of exercising this consideration. | 13:08 | |
Five benefits of this exercise. | 13:11 | |
And one could go on page after page | 13:14 | |
of a table of contents, | 13:17 | |
missing to be sure the vibrant and genuine piety | 13:20 | |
of the prayers and the strenuous athleticism, | 13:24 | |
of the directions for spiritual growth inside. | 13:29 | |
Yet, one has the feeling that Jeremy Taylor | 13:33 | |
is calling us to invest our prayer and piety | 13:37 | |
and discipline in order that we may gain | 13:43 | |
for ourselves some heavenly treasure. | 13:46 | |
There is about this book, | 13:50 | |
an aura of deserving by our strenuous effort, | 13:52 | |
the approval of God. | 14:00 | |
And this suggests that we look at a third way | 14:04 | |
of responding to the challenge of Hebrews. | 14:07 | |
This putting of Jesus Christ before us, | 14:12 | |
this calling to his discipleship. | 14:16 | |
One wonders if Jeremy Taylor's disciplined life | 14:20 | |
in order to deserve grace, | 14:26 | |
isn't somehow putting the cart before the horse. | 14:29 | |
In essential Protestantism, | 14:34 | |
the word has been the other way around. | 14:37 | |
It's not the good news of what we have to do | 14:41 | |
to deserve salvation. | 14:46 | |
This is bad news, but rather the good news, | 14:48 | |
the gospel of what God has done | 14:53 | |
and what God is to make us what he would have us be. | 14:56 | |
This is good news and we rejoice in it. | 15:01 | |
In the Christian church, we have tried | 15:06 | |
to take very seriously this message of grace, | 15:08 | |
of a God who is forgiving, who accepts us, | 15:12 | |
not because we are good but because he is, | 15:16 | |
accepts us as we are. | 15:19 | |
And yet one wonders if this too cannot be made | 15:23 | |
a dangerous dodge for real Christian living. | 15:30 | |
Just as the scholar may find his way | 15:35 | |
of evading the claim of God, | 15:38 | |
just as the disciplined Pietist | 15:42 | |
may find ways of boiling down to some rules | 15:45 | |
to keep this utter claim of God upon his life. | 15:48 | |
So we may very adroitly preach the gospel in such a way | 15:54 | |
that it leaves us rather comfortable and undisturbed. | 16:01 | |
I would submit today that there's this paradox of grace | 16:08 | |
and discipline in which we stand. | 16:14 | |
Calls not for an abandonment of discipleship, | 16:18 | |
but for an equally athletic Christianity. | 16:24 | |
In this epistle to the Hebrews one gets on every page, | 16:30 | |
not only the call to steadiness in persecution, | 16:38 | |
but the call to zeal out of lethargy, out of indifference. | 16:43 | |
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope | 16:51 | |
without wavering for he who promised is faithful, | 16:54 | |
read Hebrews, and let us consider how to stirrup | 16:58 | |
one another to love and good works, | 17:02 | |
not neglecting to meet together as is a habit of some, | 17:05 | |
but encouraging one another. | 17:09 | |
And so let us put ourselves in the position | 17:15 | |
suggested by Kierkegaard once more, | 17:22 | |
who raises serious question about our being | 17:27 | |
the spectators and God being the performer | 17:29 | |
when we come to worship. | 17:33 | |
And who suggests instead that you and I | 17:35 | |
are the actors on the stage | 17:39 | |
with a preacher as the prompter | 17:42 | |
and the scripture as the script, and God is the audience. | 17:45 | |
The congregation, the spectator who watches what we do, | 17:54 | |
who sees what we really are and what we are not. | 18:01 | |
Suppose that we could enter into something | 18:07 | |
of this small group life of mutual encouragement | 18:13 | |
and reception of divine confrontation. | 18:19 | |
And suppose this morning that we were to hear | 18:23 | |
the words of the epistle to the Hebrews, | 18:27 | |
as the prompting to what we ought to be. | 18:31 | |
Suppose that we were to take this as | 18:36 | |
the beginning of a Bible study for ourselves | 18:38 | |
in little groups of four or five, what could we make of it? | 18:43 | |
Or what would God be saying to us through it, | 18:48 | |
how much he would say, | 18:53 | |
and here's where we want to leave a sort | 18:56 | |
of open-ended sermon, one in which we review | 18:58 | |
just for a moment the thrust of this passage of scripture. | 19:03 | |
Here is the reminder which you | 19:09 | |
and I would be speaking to one another in a group. | 19:12 | |
The reminder that what really counts in the world. | 19:16 | |
What is most real is God. | 19:21 | |
And that God has manifest himself decisively, | 19:26 | |
openly in Jesus Christ. | 19:32 | |
And we could not argue about this. | 19:36 | |
We could not persuade one another into such a faith. | 19:39 | |
We would simply testify and open the way | 19:43 | |
for another reading the scripture, | 19:46 | |
hearing the word, sharing in worship. | 19:49 | |
Being part of a fellowship. | 19:53 | |
To be convinced of this for himself. | 19:56 | |
And we might cite the great witnesses of the past. | 19:59 | |
Those heroes of the faith whose rule | 20:04 | |
was called in Hebrews 11, but more great lists, | 20:07 | |
throngs of witnesses, even to all day. | 20:14 | |
People around us, great names, people unknown, | 20:20 | |
those who in love and self discipline | 20:26 | |
and devotion daily manifest | 20:30 | |
the reality of Jesus Christ in our community. | 20:33 | |
Perhaps we could be encouraged by hearing | 20:38 | |
of other little groups that are part of a great renewal | 20:41 | |
of the church in prospect. | 20:45 | |
Groups of Christians here and there. | 20:47 | |
Student movements, prayer cells, Bible study units | 20:50 | |
who are seriously asking what God has to say to us | 20:59 | |
in these words of scripture | 21:03 | |
and what we therefore are meant to be and do as a church. | 21:05 | |
We could fight as did Hebrews. | 21:12 | |
This role of the heroes of the faith, | 21:16 | |
these witnesses, who stand by while we run | 21:18 | |
the race of life. | 21:22 | |
Beyond this, we could be telling each other | 21:26 | |
about this Christian race in which we are entered. | 21:28 | |
About Jesus, who has run it in such a way | 21:34 | |
that when we attend to what he was and said, | 21:38 | |
and did he begins to excite in us an inner drive | 21:44 | |
to be like that. | 21:52 | |
Jesus who for the joy who was set before him | 21:57 | |
endured the cross, despising the shame | 22:00 | |
and is sat down at the right hand of God. | 22:04 | |
Perhaps we could be telling each other | 22:08 | |
also about this athleticism of the spirit, | 22:09 | |
which with the old grads of the faith, | 22:13 | |
standing by strips away all the clinging garments, | 22:18 | |
all the sins which hold us back | 22:25 | |
and drives forward with speed and with power. | 22:30 | |
Here is a different kind of motivation | 22:34 | |
to spiritual excellence. | 22:38 | |
Not the Pietist persuasion that if we do well enough, | 22:40 | |
God will somehow reward us for our piety, | 22:47 | |
but rather that inward drive, | 22:52 | |
because we've been laid hold up by the Almighty | 22:57 | |
that inward drive to strip away all that pulls us back | 23:01 | |
in order that we may be what he would have us be. | 23:07 | |
Perhaps we could tell each other about how easy it is | 23:12 | |
for us to slip into lethargy and indifference, | 23:17 | |
remind ourselves how little we have suffered, | 23:22 | |
what an easy going and undisciplined Christianity | 23:25 | |
we're in danger of. How those who really take on the way | 23:29 | |
of Christ not only endure suffering like good soldiers, | 23:35 | |
but also enter into the suffering of the world. | 23:41 | |
Perhaps we could take some heart | 23:46 | |
from the burgeoning idealism of the youth of today. | 23:48 | |
We who are a bit flabby and soft in our faith | 23:54 | |
have been rebuked and inspired | 24:01 | |
as the appeal for the Peace Corps | 24:04 | |
has made us aware of once more, | 24:06 | |
that there is in human nature, | 24:10 | |
a genuine concern to count for something in serving | 24:13 | |
the world's ill and helping the world's needy. | 24:17 | |
Perhaps we could testify to one another in such a group | 24:24 | |
about the reality coming through to us | 24:29 | |
in our times of worship. | 24:33 | |
A God who is not just the God of Moses on the Mount, | 24:36 | |
frightening and awesome as his presence seemed, | 24:43 | |
but a God who shakes the heavens and the earth | 24:48 | |
and who in all day reminds us, | 24:52 | |
how much did we count on, how much of this world | 24:55 | |
in which we trust is really passing ephemeral. | 24:59 | |
Our culture, our civilization, our comforts, our customs, | 25:05 | |
what are these before the eternal God | 25:12 | |
who is a consuming fire. | 25:15 | |
And so we would testify to one another in such a group | 25:18 | |
that we worship God with gratitude with all and reverence, | 25:22 | |
For He is a final test of all reality. | 25:28 | |
Perhaps if you and I were to enter | 25:34 | |
into this kind of discipleship today, | 25:37 | |
joined with others in small groups, | 25:41 | |
reading the scripture, offering prayer, | 25:45 | |
sharing our goods, taking upon ourselves other burdens, | 25:50 | |
spending our lives for those around. | 25:57 | |
Perhaps we would discover again, | 26:01 | |
the reality of the faith that emboldened | 26:05 | |
these New Testament saints to call | 26:08 | |
the role of the heroes of faith, | 26:12 | |
and to look in our generation for some fulfillment | 26:15 | |
of their meaning. | 26:18 | |
Here history is laid upon our hearts. | 26:20 | |
We recognize that we've become a sought a funnel | 26:23 | |
for the past into the future. | 26:26 | |
And we too may be disciples of Jesus Christ. | 26:29 | |
Now unto him who is able to keep us from falling | 26:46 | |
and to present us faultless | 26:49 | |
before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, | 26:51 | |
to the only wise God, our savior be glory | 26:54 | |
and majesty, dominion and power now and evermore. | 26:58 | |
Amen. | 27:03 | |
(choir singing) | 27:11 | |
(church bell chiming) | 27:54 | |
(church organ playing) | 28:06 | |
(man whistling) | 28:55 | |
(church organ playing) | 28:59 | |
(loud footsteps) | 29:08 | |
(man whistling) | 29:22 | |
(loud footsteps) | 29:28 | |
(congregation talking at a distance) | 29:36 | |
(church organ playing) | 29:50 | |
(congregation talking at a distance) | 29:53 | |
(church organ playing) | 30:17 | |
(congregation talking at a distance) | 30:27 | |
(man whistling) | 30:47 | |
(congregation talking at a distance) | 30:53 | |
(church organ playing) | 31:06 | |
(congregation talking at a distance) | 31:25 | |
(church organ playing) | 31:35 | |
(congregation talking at a distance) | 32:30 | |
(church organ playing) | 32:38 |