Howard C. Wilkinson - "Discipline and Freedom" (September 12, 1965)
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| (clapping) | 0:04 | |
| (microphone sound) | 0:06 | |
| (microphone sound) | 0:33 | |
| (instrumental music) | 0:39 | |
| (indistinct coughing) | 0:47 | |
| (instrumental music) | 0:55 | |
| (people moving around) | 1:53 | |
| (instrumental music continues) | 2:04 | |
| (dramatic music) | 2:57 | |
| (music stops) | 3:24 | |
| (next song starts to play) | 3:32 | |
| (music becomes louder) | 4:29 | |
| ♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪ | 4:52 | |
| ♪ Praise Him all creatures here below ♪ | 4:58 | |
| ♪ Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts ♪ | 5:04 | |
| ♪ Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost ♪ | 5:10 | |
| ♪ Amen. ♪ | 5:18 | |
| Announcer | Eternal God our heavenly Father, | 5:25 |
| we offer unto thee, these our gifts | 5:27 | |
| with humble and thankful hearts. | 5:30 | |
| And in presenting them, | 5:33 | |
| we present ourselves, | 5:35 | |
| with the prayer that both may be used to the glory | 5:39 | |
| of thy kingdom, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 5:41 | |
| Amen. | 5:47 | |
| (moving around) | 5:51 | |
| Preacher | Next Sunday we return to our regular series | 6:05 |
| of university services of worship | 6:09 | |
| with the return of freshmen Sunday, | 6:12 | |
| which will be observed at 11 o'clock here in this chapel, | 6:16 | |
| next Sunday. | 6:20 | |
| Preacher will be the Reverend Professor James T Cleland, | 6:22 | |
| who is Dean of the chapel, | 6:25 | |
| who will be preaching the freshmen sermon this year. | 6:26 | |
| We are stealing a little bit of a March | 6:30 | |
| on freshmen Sunday here today | 6:33 | |
| by welcoming the freshmen members of the | 6:35 | |
| Duke football squad who are present | 6:39 | |
| and worshiping with us today for the first time. | 6:42 | |
| They haven't come in during the past week. | 6:45 | |
| Next Sunday we will welcome all of the freshmen. | 6:48 | |
| These two Sundays, last Sunday and today, | 6:52 | |
| our special football squad services | 6:57 | |
| in two ways. | 7:00 | |
| First, they are designed mainly | 7:01 | |
| for the benefit of the football squad. | 7:04 | |
| They being the only students | 7:06 | |
| who are regularly on campus at this time. | 7:08 | |
| And secondly, by the participation | 7:12 | |
| of members of the squad in the conducting of the service. | 7:15 | |
| We look forward to these two Sundays of services each year. | 7:20 | |
| And I might say without meaning to insult | 7:24 | |
| the other members of the congregation who are present here, | 7:28 | |
| and those who are listening in by radio, | 7:32 | |
| we do not have you folk mainly in mind as we | 7:34 | |
| design and plan these services. | 7:38 | |
| I want you to know that I feel a good deal | 7:42 | |
| more comfortable in the service today | 7:44 | |
| than I did last Sunday. | 7:46 | |
| In fact, I felt last Sunday, definitely in the minority, | 7:48 | |
| as I took some part in the service. | 7:51 | |
| There was John Simpson, | 7:55 | |
| the pianist, | 7:57 | |
| and reading the scripture was John Gudikunst, | 8:01 | |
| the captain of the team, | 8:03 | |
| and leading prayers in the service was John McNab, | 8:05 | |
| the president of the fellowship of Christian athletes. | 8:09 | |
| And then when we came to the sermon, | 8:12 | |
| we had the gospel according to John Wilson. | 8:14 | |
| I was the only non-Joe Hannah, an element in the service. | 8:17 | |
| Today with Bob and Mike, along with two Johns, | 8:22 | |
| which we still have today, | 8:26 | |
| one Howard, is a little bit more comfortable. | 8:28 | |
| I would like now for you to do some supposing with me, | 8:34 | |
| I would like for you to suppose that next Saturday afternoon | 8:41 | |
| in Charlottesville, Virginia, | 8:46 | |
| the members of the two opposing football squads | 8:50 | |
| have put on their shoulder pads, their game jerseys, | 8:54 | |
| their shoes and all the other football gear. | 9:00 | |
| They have taken to the field and they are lined up | 9:04 | |
| in opposition to each other | 9:08 | |
| all the way across the field is the line | 9:11 | |
| of the blue and white | 9:14 | |
| and facing them all the way across the field, | 9:15 | |
| a line of the Virginia players. | 9:18 | |
| The referees in their white and black stripes | 9:21 | |
| are on the field. | 9:24 | |
| The national Anthem has been played | 9:27 | |
| and the referee in charge has the whistle in his mouth | 9:29 | |
| and he holds up his hand | 9:33 | |
| and he is ready to commence the game. | 9:35 | |
| He blows the whistle | 9:40 | |
| and instead of the player | 9:43 | |
| who has been elected to make the kickoff, | 9:46 | |
| going forward and engaging the ball with his foot, | 9:49 | |
| everyone on | 9:54 | |
| both teams | 9:56 | |
| begins to do knee bends, | 9:58 | |
| and the fans up in the stands on both sides of the stadium | 10:04 | |
| look in amazement at this spectacle | 10:09 | |
| that is unfolding before their very eyes. | 10:12 | |
| Here are all these football players down on the field, | 10:16 | |
| going up and down, up and down, up and down. | 10:20 | |
| And after a little bit, the referee blows the whistle again. | 10:26 | |
| And the people in the stands think | 10:30 | |
| that he is blowing the whistle to find out what is going on. | 10:32 | |
| But instead of that, when he blows the whistle | 10:37 | |
| the second time, they quit doing knee bends | 10:39 | |
| and began to do pushups. | 10:43 | |
| And after a while of doing pushups, | 10:46 | |
| the referee blows the whistle | 10:49 | |
| and coach Murray sends in a few substitutes | 10:52 | |
| who take the place of some of the people | 10:55 | |
| who are out there on the field. | 10:57 | |
| And the managers of both teams rush on the field | 11:02 | |
| with carts that have weights in them, | 11:05 | |
| and they distribute weights to all the players | 11:07 | |
| on both teams, and they begin then to lift weights. | 11:10 | |
| And after this has gone on for a while, | 11:14 | |
| the referee blows the whistle and they have time out, | 11:16 | |
| a quarter, presently a half, | 11:19 | |
| and they have done isometrics | 11:23 | |
| before all the people in the stands. | 11:25 | |
| And at last, when he blows the whistle again, | 11:29 | |
| everyone gets out on the track and starts doing laps. | 11:32 | |
| And finally they do wind sprints. | 11:36 | |
| And then the referee blows the final whistle, | 11:41 | |
| gets the attention of the crowd and said | 11:44 | |
| now on the basis of my observation | 11:47 | |
| of the pushups and the knee bends, | 11:50 | |
| the weightlifting, the isometrics, | 11:53 | |
| the laps around the track and the wind sprints, | 11:55 | |
| I have declared, and of course it would be this way | 11:58 | |
| that Duke University has won this football game. | 12:02 | |
| Well the referee would think that everyone would go home. | 12:08 | |
| Not so, people in the stands who have been stunned | 12:13 | |
| beyond belief, by what they have seen, | 12:17 | |
| begin to discuss what they have been seeing with each other. | 12:21 | |
| And one man says, look here, | 12:27 | |
| I protest this spectacle in the strongest terms possible, | 12:30 | |
| my ticket, which I paid money to get, | 12:36 | |
| says that I was entitled to see a football game. | 12:39 | |
| And look what I saw when I came out here | 12:43 | |
| to Charlottesville today. | 12:46 | |
| Another one said, well perhaps there has simply been | 12:49 | |
| a mistake made that this was a track meet | 12:52 | |
| instead of a football game, | 12:55 | |
| and we have witnessed a track meet. | 12:57 | |
| And another one, quite confused, | 13:00 | |
| and yet unwilling to be totally confused said, no, | 13:03 | |
| I think we've seen a football game, | 13:07 | |
| because I was doing some special work | 13:10 | |
| down on the campus of Duke University this summer, | 13:12 | |
| and some of the football players were in summer school. | 13:14 | |
| And I saw them at different times during the summer | 13:19 | |
| doing knee bends, pushups, isometrics, weightlifting, | 13:23 | |
| doing laps around the track and wind sprints, | 13:28 | |
| and I asked them what they were doing, | 13:31 | |
| and they said they were getting in practice for football. | 13:32 | |
| And so they said, | 13:37 | |
| they were practicing to do just exactly | 13:39 | |
| what we have seen them do here today. | 13:42 | |
| So I think that this is football, | 13:44 | |
| this is football according to the latest revision | 13:48 | |
| of the rules. | 13:51 | |
| And another one would say, now let's go get the rules | 13:53 | |
| and see what this is that we have seen. | 13:55 | |
| Well now I think before we continue this conversation | 13:59 | |
| any further, we'll put out a period on this | 14:01 | |
| make believe game of football, this fantasy football, | 14:05 | |
| this supposing that we have been doing. | 14:09 | |
| And let me try to explain to you why | 14:12 | |
| I have asked you to suppose that this will take place | 14:16 | |
| next Saturday afternoon. | 14:20 | |
| It is not as fantastic as it seems on the surface, | 14:24 | |
| not by a long shot. | 14:30 | |
| This is not altogether a fantastic picture. | 14:32 | |
| And the reason is that the exercises | 14:37 | |
| and the disciplines of the summer, | 14:41 | |
| which are as described, will have a great deal to do | 14:44 | |
| with what really will take place | 14:50 | |
| in Charlottesville next Saturday. | 14:52 | |
| And when the final score is up on the scoreboard, | 14:56 | |
| it will be determined in some measure | 15:00 | |
| by how well the athletes of both squads this summer | 15:03 | |
| have done all of these things, which when I described them, | 15:07 | |
| did not sound like football to some of you | 15:11 | |
| who are here today and are not on the football squad, | 15:14 | |
| but the members of the squad will know very well | 15:17 | |
| what I'm talking about when I say that these things | 15:20 | |
| will have a lot to do with the outcome | 15:25 | |
| of the actual football game. | 15:27 | |
| Secondly, | 15:30 | |
| the spectacular football which you will really see, | 15:32 | |
| those of you who go, | 15:35 | |
| will be made possible | 15:38 | |
| in large measure | 15:42 | |
| by the drudgery of this non-football kind of practice | 15:45 | |
| and discipline and training. | 15:49 | |
| And so when the quarterback takes the ball and | 15:53 | |
| appearing to be as free as a breeze | 15:56 | |
| and as unfettered as an antelope and begins to run around | 15:58 | |
| and scramble the game and go around the end | 16:02 | |
| or whatever he does, | 16:04 | |
| this freedom which he has achieved and which he will display | 16:07 | |
| has been made possible by something that is not at all free, | 16:12 | |
| not at all unstructured, | 16:16 | |
| something that has been for him, | 16:19 | |
| hard discipline, drudgery, training, | 16:24 | |
| practice, repetition, | 16:28 | |
| self-denial, | 16:31 | |
| getting himself in shape. | 16:34 | |
| And when the fullback with reckless abandon | 16:39 | |
| plunges into the line and seems to be completely on his own, | 16:42 | |
| he will be able to do this | 16:48 | |
| also because of this kind of | 16:50 | |
| unfree, | 16:53 | |
| fettered, | 16:55 | |
| discipline | 16:57 | |
| for months and months ahead. | 16:58 | |
| And so it is with the halfbacks, the lonesome ends | 17:00 | |
| and all the others, | 17:03 | |
| who performed their tasks | 17:05 | |
| and who seemed to be just having a great time out there | 17:07 | |
| doing what they want to do. | 17:10 | |
| Now I would like for you to | 17:14 | |
| move to another point in your thinking here | 17:17 | |
| for a little bit, | 17:20 | |
| perhaps what I ought to say is now the sermon will escalate. | 17:22 | |
| You know, nothing develops anymore. | 17:25 | |
| Nothing progresses, everything these days escalates. | 17:27 | |
| And so now this sermon has escalated to a second point | 17:31 | |
| and that is that the Christian life is the same | 17:34 | |
| as what I have been describing about football up to now. | 17:36 | |
| The Christian life is the same, | 17:41 | |
| the apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, | 17:44 | |
| according to the divisions we have made, chapter 9:25-27, | 17:47 | |
| says every athlete exercises self-control | 17:53 | |
| in all things, | 17:57 | |
| they do it to receive a perishable reef, | 17:59 | |
| but we do it for an imperishable. | 18:03 | |
| I pummel my body | 18:07 | |
| and subdue it, | 18:08 | |
| lest after preaching to others, | 18:11 | |
| I myself should be disqualified | 18:13 | |
| more than that, | 18:18 | |
| actually when you read all of the letters | 18:20 | |
| of the apostle Paul, you find him using | 18:22 | |
| much stronger terminology than simply pummeling his body, | 18:24 | |
| disciplining and regimenting himself. | 18:29 | |
| He uses the term death. | 18:32 | |
| He said, | 18:36 | |
| I die daily | 18:38 | |
| to sin | 18:39 | |
| in order that I might live for Jesus Christ. | 18:41 | |
| The term death, actual death to sin. | 18:47 | |
| Can you imagine anything anymore total, | 18:51 | |
| anymore serious than that. | 18:55 | |
| And yet this is the term that the apostle Paul uses | 18:58 | |
| with reference to the life of sin, | 19:00 | |
| in order that he might live for Christ. | 19:04 | |
| I think it is very interesting for us and worthwhile to note | 19:08 | |
| that this kind of discipline of the spiritual life, | 19:11 | |
| as well as of athletic life, | 19:15 | |
| is something which leads to freedom | 19:19 | |
| and without which freedom is impossible. | 19:22 | |
| This discipline. | 19:26 | |
| This way of voluntary slavery | 19:30 | |
| to the preparation for an ideal, | 19:36 | |
| this voluntary taking of the yoke of discipline | 19:39 | |
| and of obedience is the only way | 19:42 | |
| to achieve true freedom, | 19:47 | |
| either as an athlete playing football | 19:50 | |
| or as a Christian engaged in the various serious business | 19:53 | |
| of witnessing to the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. | 19:57 | |
| Now since we've been talking about Paul here | 20:03 | |
| and his understanding of it, | 20:05 | |
| I'd like for us to take a few minutes now, | 20:06 | |
| just to look at what Paul's explanation is. | 20:09 | |
| So to speak his theory of how this works. | 20:12 | |
| The first point in Paul's theory is | 20:15 | |
| that every person in the world, | 20:18 | |
| without any exceptions, | 20:20 | |
| recognizes or should recognize himself as being created | 20:24 | |
| in the image of God and called to live a righteous life. | 20:29 | |
| And that God has given us the moral or righteous law | 20:35 | |
| and holds every person in the world responsible | 20:40 | |
| for obedience to it. | 20:43 | |
| And yet, | 20:45 | |
| every person the world is under judgment, | 20:46 | |
| because of this, | 20:50 | |
| because of the fact that all of us have empirically found | 20:52 | |
| that we have broken the law. | 20:57 | |
| We have not always told the truth. | 21:00 | |
| We have not always been faithful to honesty. | 21:03 | |
| We have not always lived according to | 21:08 | |
| the principle of purity. | 21:10 | |
| We have not always been unselfish. | 21:12 | |
| We have all, everyone, broken this law | 21:14 | |
| and therefore every person stands under judgment | 21:17 | |
| because of his failure at some point, indeed at many points, | 21:21 | |
| to measure up to that which he could have done | 21:27 | |
| and which under God he was called to do and to be. | 21:31 | |
| But God is a God of love, | 21:36 | |
| who is not primarily interested in | 21:39 | |
| punishing or condemning us | 21:42 | |
| because of our violation of the moral law, | 21:44 | |
| but who is primarily interested in redeeming us | 21:46 | |
| and then restoring us to fellowship with Him | 21:49 | |
| and to the kind of character and being | 21:52 | |
| which He created us for. | 21:56 | |
| And so He has made possible a righteousness by faith, | 21:58 | |
| F A I T H, | 22:03 | |
| a righteousness which comes by faith in Jesus Christ | 22:06 | |
| and identification with Him at two points. | 22:12 | |
| The first is identifying ourselves with Christ in His death. | 22:18 | |
| And secondly, identifying ourselves with Him | 22:24 | |
| in His resurrection. | 22:27 | |
| And it was this section of Paul's explanation of his theory, | 22:29 | |
| which Mike Shasby read a while ago. | 22:33 | |
| We identify ourselves with Christ's death | 22:37 | |
| by dying to sin, | 22:42 | |
| not by our physical death. | 22:44 | |
| People are dying physically every day. | 22:48 | |
| This does not identify themselves, | 22:51 | |
| it does not identify them with the death of Christ, | 22:54 | |
| whether they are Christians or not. | 22:57 | |
| The death which we can die | 22:59 | |
| to identify ourselves with the death of Christ | 23:02 | |
| is dying the death to sin, | 23:05 | |
| being dead to sin. | 23:08 | |
| And the only way we can ever identify ourselves | 23:10 | |
| with the resurrection of Christ | 23:13 | |
| is to be raised by the power of the Holy Spirit, | 23:15 | |
| to a new life in Christ. | 23:18 | |
| And that new life begins in the flesh | 23:21 | |
| in this life while we live. | 23:24 | |
| So that the death which we die willingly | 23:27 | |
| and with the aid of the Holy Spirit to sin, | 23:30 | |
| enables us then to rise in newness of life | 23:33 | |
| and be identified with the risen Christ. | 23:37 | |
| That is the theory which the apostle Paul | 23:41 | |
| had for explaining, | 23:44 | |
| the freedom which is possible for the Christian | 23:47 | |
| in the Christian life. | 23:50 | |
| Now, | 23:54 | |
| at this point it would be well for us all to admit | 23:55 | |
| that there are tendencies within us, | 23:59 | |
| which go against this fine theory that the apostle Paul had. | 24:02 | |
| We want a shortcut don't we? | 24:08 | |
| Let me be very personal and say, I want a shortcut. | 24:11 | |
| You do your own confessing and I'll confess for me. | 24:14 | |
| I want to have my cake and eat it too. | 24:18 | |
| This idea of freedom sounds great, I want it, | 24:21 | |
| but I'm not sure that I want the discipline. | 24:25 | |
| I want to be a great athletic star, | 24:30 | |
| but I don't want to lift weights all summer. | 24:32 | |
| I want to shine as a halfback, | 24:36 | |
| but I don't like all this business of knee bends and pushups | 24:39 | |
| and going to bed at a proper time and eating | 24:43 | |
| the right kind of food. | 24:45 | |
| I want to have my cake and eat it too. | 24:49 | |
| I want to get an early start on the day, | 24:51 | |
| but I want to sleep late. | 24:53 | |
| I want to build up a big | 24:56 | |
| savings account down at the bank, | 24:59 | |
| but I want to buy what I want when I want it too. | 25:01 | |
| Within us there's this wistful wish | 25:06 | |
| that we could have this and that, | 25:09 | |
| that we can be both up and down at the same time | 25:11 | |
| and with the same effort. | 25:15 | |
| Now nobody, not even all mighty God can blame us | 25:17 | |
| or will blame us for having the wistful wish. | 25:22 | |
| Perfectly all right to have the wistful wish, | 25:28 | |
| but, | 25:31 | |
| we should be wise enough to know | 25:34 | |
| that it won't work that way, | 25:36 | |
| that we have to make a choice. | 25:39 | |
| Either we're not going to be a good football player, | 25:42 | |
| or we're going to pay the price. | 25:49 | |
| One of the two. | 25:54 | |
| Either we're going to get an early start on the day, | 25:57 | |
| or we're going to sleep late. | 26:00 | |
| We're not going to sleep late, stay in bed till 10 o'clock, | 26:02 | |
| and still be at work at eight. | 26:06 | |
| It won't work. | 26:09 | |
| It just isn't made that way. | 26:10 | |
| We're not. | 26:12 | |
| Now the Christian who wants to consider | 26:14 | |
| that he has freedom from the law | 26:18 | |
| and from the judgment that comes from being under the law | 26:22 | |
| must know | 26:28 | |
| that this is based upon a death | 26:31 | |
| to sin | 26:34 | |
| and to the whole apparatus of sin | 26:35 | |
| and the whole basic motivations of sin. | 26:38 | |
| He must absolutely die to these, | 26:41 | |
| if he is to have the freedom, which is in Christ, | 26:44 | |
| in the way that the apostle Paul has spelled it out. | 26:47 | |
| Now we are generally given some little tidbit | 26:52 | |
| or enticement to think that this is possible | 26:55 | |
| by someone who's more interested in getting a | 26:57 | |
| sensational headline than he is in | 27:00 | |
| maintaining his integrity as a scholar of the Bible | 27:03 | |
| or his faithfulness to the orders of his church. | 27:07 | |
| There is a college chaplain who has recently | 27:11 | |
| been quoted in the press, as having said that we Christians | 27:14 | |
| are free and that therefore this means | 27:17 | |
| that in the area of sex, we can do whatever we want to do | 27:19 | |
| at any time we want to do it. | 27:22 | |
| There is another person who has recently been quoted | 27:26 | |
| as a professor in a college as having said that his son | 27:28 | |
| was getting ready to go to bed and he said, | 27:34 | |
| be sure you brush your teeth before you go to bed. | 27:35 | |
| And his son said that he would be sure to do it | 27:40 | |
| and a little bit later, his father, the professor, | 27:43 | |
| went upstairs to the bathroom and took his toothbrush | 27:46 | |
| and ran his thumb over it and it was dry. | 27:49 | |
| So the next morning he said to his son, | 27:53 | |
| why did you not brush your teeth? | 27:56 | |
| He said, I did. | 27:58 | |
| He said, no you didn't brush your teeth. | 28:00 | |
| He said, yes I did daddy. | 28:02 | |
| Now he said, my son did not tell the truth, | 28:03 | |
| but he didn't mean to lie, | 28:06 | |
| what he meant to do was to say, I was tired, | 28:07 | |
| too tired to brush my teeth before I went to bed. | 28:10 | |
| And he said, this is the way we must interpret | 28:13 | |
| all of the false statements of human beings. | 28:16 | |
| And if when a person tells a falsehood, | 28:21 | |
| we should ask ourselves what it was | 28:23 | |
| he was really trying to say, | 28:26 | |
| and not to consider such statements as this | 28:29 | |
| as lies or falsehood. | 28:31 | |
| In other words, to take the entire moral fiber | 28:34 | |
| out of the dimension of human living. | 28:36 | |
| And I suppose we always will have a few | 28:40 | |
| ministers who will be willing to get the headlines | 28:44 | |
| at the expense of their integrity, | 28:48 | |
| but this has a very damaging effect upon the witness | 28:50 | |
| which the Christian community needs to make in the world, | 28:54 | |
| because it leaves Christians who follow this plan, | 28:56 | |
| looking pretty much like the pagans in the world. | 29:00 | |
| Exactly a year ago, this month, | 29:05 | |
| something happened on the highway between High Point | 29:07 | |
| and Greensboro, which illustrates what I'm trying to say. | 29:10 | |
| There was a young man by the name of Wallen, | 29:14 | |
| who took the family car about midnight and started out | 29:17 | |
| to the home of two friends of his | 29:20 | |
| who lived on the highway between those two cities. | 29:22 | |
| He stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank | 29:26 | |
| just a few minutes after he left home, | 29:29 | |
| and then he did not arrive at the home of his two friends. | 29:32 | |
| About one o'clock they called his home | 29:37 | |
| and the boy's mother answered | 29:39 | |
| and told them that her son had left to go to their home. | 29:45 | |
| And when they compared the time, | 29:50 | |
| they learned that he had had ample time to reach | 29:52 | |
| the home of these two boys who were calling. | 29:54 | |
| So they got in their car and went out on the highway | 29:58 | |
| to find him, thought perhaps he'd had a wreck. | 30:00 | |
| They drove up and down the highway | 30:04 | |
| and they did not find him. | 30:05 | |
| He had completely disappeared it seemed. | 30:06 | |
| All night they looked for him. | 30:09 | |
| They had the highway patrol out searching, | 30:10 | |
| the Sheriff's department, | 30:12 | |
| they looked on all of the highways. | 30:13 | |
| They could not find him, | 30:16 | |
| could not find his car. | 30:17 | |
| No one had heard from him. | 30:19 | |
| The next morning when daylight came, | 30:22 | |
| again the search was renewed, | 30:24 | |
| and they looked up and down the highways, | 30:28 | |
| he had simply disappeared. | 30:29 | |
| They found that he had stopped at this filling station | 30:31 | |
| to get gas, so that they knew he had headed out that way. | 30:33 | |
| All day long they looked, | 30:39 | |
| and finally late in the evening, | 30:42 | |
| someone thought to look among the cars in a junkyard | 30:46 | |
| at a bend in the road, | 30:51 | |
| the car was found there. | 30:55 | |
| He had gone around this curve too fast, | 30:59 | |
| his car had jumped the ditch and gone through the fence | 31:01 | |
| into the junkyard, had rolled over | 31:04 | |
| by the junked cars. | 31:08 | |
| And because it looked like all the other wrecked cars there, | 31:11 | |
| no one noticed the car. | 31:16 | |
| And they found the body of the young Mr. Wallen, | 31:21 | |
| in a bush, some 10 yards away from his car, | 31:25 | |
| and the medical authorities examining him said | 31:30 | |
| that if his body had been found, | 31:33 | |
| even as early as nine or 10 o'clock in the morning, | 31:35 | |
| his life probably could have been saved, | 31:38 | |
| because of the nature of his injuries. | 31:40 | |
| But having been there all day, he had died. | 31:43 | |
| His car looked so much like all the other wrecks | 31:48 | |
| that no one noticed it or could see any difference, | 31:53 | |
| or look for the young man there. | 31:57 | |
| I think that the Christian | 32:01 | |
| whose moral and spiritual behavior looks like the pagans, | 32:02 | |
| does a disservice to the Christian community, | 32:07 | |
| by attempting to get freedom without discipline. | 32:10 | |
| And that means that freedom without discipline | 32:16 | |
| is license and license is the enemy of the Christian faith. | 32:18 | |
| This brings us to ask a very crucial question, which is, | 32:26 | |
| how far does freedom go? | 32:30 | |
| If freedom without discipline is license, | 32:34 | |
| then just how far does freedom go? | 32:39 | |
| Where does it extend? | 32:41 | |
| What are its dimensions? | 32:42 | |
| Whatever else we might see | 32:45 | |
| in answering a question like that, | 32:47 | |
| I think we have to say this, | 32:48 | |
| that freedom is limited to our choice. | 32:51 | |
| Wherever there is an alternative which we may elect, | 32:55 | |
| freedom extends as far as the electing of that choice, | 33:00 | |
| but there it stops. | 33:05 | |
| We are not free, both to choose what we will do, | 33:09 | |
| and choose the consequences of that choice. | 33:13 | |
| It is not a double choice that we have. | 33:18 | |
| We have only a single choice. | 33:21 | |
| When I have chosen which of two alternatives I will take, | 33:24 | |
| then the way the world is built, | 33:30 | |
| the whole moral structure of the universe takes over. | 33:33 | |
| And I am not free to say | 33:38 | |
| what will grow once I plant the seed. | 33:41 | |
| If I plant corn, I cannot then decide | 33:45 | |
| that I want to reap rice. | 33:47 | |
| If I buy a ticket and get on a plane | 33:51 | |
| that is headed for New York, | 33:54 | |
| I cannot then decide that I will land in Miami | 33:55 | |
| on that flight. | 33:59 | |
| So it is in our athletic life and in our Christian life, | 34:02 | |
| we can choose discipline or we can choose license. | 34:06 | |
| But if we choose license, we cannot have freedom. | 34:11 | |
| If we choose freedom, | 34:16 | |
| then we must also choose as a requisite, | 34:17 | |
| a rigid kind of discipline. | 34:21 | |
| I call to your attention again, | 34:26 | |
| the portion of the scripture passage, | 34:28 | |
| which Mike Shasby read, where Paul says, | 34:31 | |
| for if we have grown into Christ by a death like His, | 34:36 | |
| we shall grow into Him by a resurrection like His, | 34:40 | |
| knowing as we do that our old self | 34:44 | |
| has been crucified with Him in order | 34:47 | |
| to crush the sinful body | 34:49 | |
| and free us from any further slavery to sin. | 34:51 | |
| In London, many years ago, | 34:57 | |
| there were two students who were studying at the same time. | 34:59 | |
| They both attended St. Paul's Cathedral regularly, | 35:05 | |
| every Sunday, during the days they were students there. | 35:10 | |
| One of these students was more impressed | 35:14 | |
| with the content | 35:19 | |
| of the order of worship, | 35:23 | |
| was more impressed with the theology | 35:26 | |
| that was being propounded there. | 35:28 | |
| And he committed himself to that theory, | 35:32 | |
| that theology, to the faith that was verbally expressed | 35:35 | |
| in the service. | 35:40 | |
| He became | 35:43 | |
| a great Biblical Scholar, | 35:45 | |
| Dr. Robinson. | 35:49 | |
| The other one equally as brilliant | 35:51 | |
| was more impressed by the great gap, | 35:58 | |
| which existed between the theology | 36:01 | |
| which was expressed verbally in St. Paul's Cathedral | 36:04 | |
| and the actual practice, | 36:09 | |
| the lives of the people who sat in the pews. | 36:11 | |
| He knew some of them, | 36:16 | |
| and he saw that their lives did not conform | 36:18 | |
| to the theology which was expressed | 36:24 | |
| and which they said they believed. | 36:26 | |
| He was specifically very disappointed in the interest | 36:29 | |
| which these people had in the poor of London. | 36:33 | |
| They talked about giving to the poor. | 36:38 | |
| They talked about being interested in the poor, | 36:41 | |
| but they were not interested in the poor. | 36:44 | |
| And this man | 36:50 | |
| became the founder | 36:52 | |
| of the World Communist Movement. | 36:55 | |
| And many years later, | 37:00 | |
| when Dr. Robinson went back and interviewed Mr. Lennon, | 37:02 | |
| his fellow student, and his fellow occupant of a pew | 37:07 | |
| in St. Paul's Cathedral, | 37:12 | |
| he said, why did you not read the New Testament? | 37:14 | |
| He said, I read the new Testament through seven times. | 37:19 | |
| And if people would only have lived | 37:24 | |
| the way the New Testament said, | 37:29 | |
| I would have been a believer, | 37:32 | |
| but I did not see them living that way. | 37:34 | |
| I saw them self-centered and callous and crude and lustful. | 37:38 | |
| They did not live this way. | 37:45 | |
| And so he said, I did not believe it. | 37:48 | |
| I do not know what serious effect | 37:51 | |
| will be caused if I am unfaithful to the Christian witness, | 37:56 | |
| but I know it will hurt someone. | 38:02 | |
| I do know, according to the testimony | 38:06 | |
| of Mr. Lennon himself, | 38:08 | |
| that the World Communist Movement | 38:10 | |
| and all of the evil that has come as a result of it, | 38:13 | |
| came about because a particular congregation of people | 38:17 | |
| did not take seriously the discipline of the Christian life. | 38:20 | |
| And one young inquiring mind turned away from it | 38:25 | |
| because it was undisciplined. | 38:30 | |
| They wanted the freedom of the faith | 38:33 | |
| without the discipline. | 38:36 | |
| May it be true of this congregation | 38:39 | |
| that we will seek the freedom that is in Christ | 38:42 | |
| by disciplined dedication to His Spirit. | 38:46 | |
| Let us stand. | 38:51 | |
| (Congregation stands) | 38:53 | |
| Oh God our heavenly Father | 38:56 | |
| who has called us to faith and life in Christ. | 38:58 | |
| Give us thy Spirit, | 39:03 | |
| that we may be faithful to the heavenly vision | 39:05 | |
| through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 39:09 | |
| Amen. | 39:11 | |
| Now let us sing hymn Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise. | 39:12 | |
| (music starts to play) | 39:18 | |
| (music continues to play) | 39:30 | |
| ♪ Immortal, invisible, God only wise, ♪ | 39:44 | |
| ♪ In light inaccessible hid from our eyes, ♪ | 39:51 | |
| ♪ Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days, ♪ | 39:58 | |
| ♪ Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise. ♪ | 40:04 | |
| ♪ Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light, ♪ | 40:12 | |
| ♪ Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might: ♪ | 40:19 | |
| ♪ Thy justice, like mountains high soaring above, ♪ | 40:26 | |
| ♪ Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love. ♪ | 40:33 |