Paul Hardin, Jr. - "Let the Redeemed Say So!" (November 15, 1959)
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Transcript
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- | It is always a pleasure to come back to North Carolina. | 0:12 |
One does not quickly forget 22 wonderful years spent | 0:17 | |
in this fine state. | 0:23 | |
It is pleasant too to come back to this pulpit, | 0:27 | |
especially on the Dads' Day Sunday. | 0:32 | |
I wonder if I am not the only father | 0:37 | |
who has two sons at Duke, | 0:40 | |
One teaching, the other in the Law school. | 0:43 | |
I've had several happy visits to this pulpit. | 0:51 | |
It was Dads' Day in 1948, | 0:56 | |
Mothers' Day a little later, | 1:01 | |
and now Dads' Day again. | 1:05 | |
I would like to announce that I am rapidly qualifying | 1:10 | |
for Grandfathers' day, if and when that day is celebrated. | 1:14 | |
However, my visit here to preach | 1:24 | |
the Commencement Sermon in 1952 stands out in my memory | 1:26 | |
because of the unique intellectual appraisal | 1:34 | |
of the graduating class, given by one of its members. | 1:38 | |
Just prior to marching into this beautiful | 1:44 | |
and magnificent chapel, | 1:49 | |
I was talking to one of the seniors of the class of '52, | 1:51 | |
and I said, "Jim, Tell me about your class. | 1:57 | |
Are they smart?" | 2:02 | |
"Well," he said, | 2:06 | |
"they're just like the average senior class, I guess. | 2:07 | |
Some of them are graduating magna cum laude | 2:11 | |
and others 'Lawdy how cum'" | 2:14 | |
(congregation laughs) | 2:16 | |
I'm quite sure that the intellectual level | 2:23 | |
of the seniors has risen since 1952. | 2:25 | |
The 107th Psalm | 2:32 | |
is a summons to thanksgiving, | 2:36 | |
which makes it, I think a good psalm | 2:40 | |
to consider in the month of November. | 2:44 | |
The writer is reminding his readers of their debt to God. | 2:49 | |
God has redeemed them from trouble. | 2:56 | |
God has redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. | 3:01 | |
God has brought them in from the east | 3:07 | |
and from the west and from the north and from the south. | 3:09 | |
"Let men," says the writer, | 3:14 | |
"thank God for his goodness." | 3:18 | |
Now to that, I would like to add a hearty and sincere | 3:23 | |
Amen. | 3:30 | |
You will remember that these psalms are really songs, | 3:33 | |
songs that were sung in the temple. | 3:39 | |
And I like the way the psalter ends. | 3:43 | |
For the last four psalms or songs are songs of praise. | 3:46 | |
The 107th and the 147th songs are alike, | 3:55 | |
in that they very realistically list a number of reasons | 4:00 | |
why the people of God should be thankful and happy. | 4:05 | |
Indeed, why they should be enthusiastic. | 4:13 | |
But a contrast that is, | 4:20 | |
with much of the cold, formal, | 4:24 | |
washed-out and faded and timid thing | 4:29 | |
that we called religion today. | 4:33 | |
Henry Sloane Coffin was right | 4:38 | |
when he said that ours is an age that is wistful | 4:41 | |
in matters of religion. | 4:46 | |
We want something that we don't have. | 4:51 | |
We feel the need of something | 4:58 | |
that is left out of our personalities, | 5:02 | |
our make-up, | 5:06 | |
our lives. | 5:10 | |
Christ never intended that a Christian should be wistful, | 5:13 | |
He meant for us to be enthusiastic. | 5:21 | |
In all honesty, I cannot blame a non-Christian | 5:26 | |
for not being attracted to Christianity today. | 5:32 | |
There are a number of valid reasons | 5:38 | |
why he shouldn't be. | 5:42 | |
For one thing, we are so very uncertain | 5:46 | |
about what we believe. | 5:49 | |
Especially is that true among protestants. | 5:53 | |
The young woman who sat in my study not long ago | 5:58 | |
and sought counsel, as she considered | 6:03 | |
marrying a man who was of another faith | 6:06 | |
was not unusual in her condition | 6:12 | |
of not understanding or knowing | 6:19 | |
what she was really supposed to believe as a protestant. | 6:22 | |
Too many of our so-called Christian people today | 6:30 | |
have no sincere, basic fundamental Christian belief. | 6:36 | |
They are behaviorists. | 6:44 | |
They are ethical, many of them. | 6:48 | |
But they have had no deep religious experience. | 6:53 | |
And they do not know Jesus Christ as a personal Savior. | 7:00 | |
When Michael Faraday was facing death, | 7:08 | |
Friends asked him, "what are your speculations?" | 7:11 | |
"Speculations?" He said, "I have none, only certainties. | 7:17 | |
I know whom I have believed | 7:23 | |
and am persuaded that He is able to keep that | 7:27 | |
which I have committed unto Him until that day." | 7:30 | |
I can't blame an non-Christian | 7:36 | |
for not being drawn to the Christian faith | 7:40 | |
on the basis of the certainty | 7:45 | |
of the average protestant church member. | 7:51 | |
For the average protestant church member | 7:55 | |
doesn't know what he or she believes. | 7:59 | |
I cannot blame the non-Christian for being unattracted | 8:06 | |
by the Christian faith today, when we consider | 8:11 | |
that it seems to make so little different in our lives. | 8:14 | |
The Christian businessman conducts his business, | 8:20 | |
not according to the code of the Christian faith | 8:27 | |
and religion, | 8:31 | |
but according to the code that is existent | 8:33 | |
in business circles in this day and age. | 8:36 | |
The behavior of the average church member | 8:42 | |
is no different on a weekday | 8:46 | |
than the behavior of a respectable non-church member. | 8:49 | |
Some several years ago, | 8:57 | |
I was changing my shoes in the clubhouse | 8:58 | |
at a golf course in Birmingham. | 9:01 | |
While I was sitting there | 9:06 | |
I listened to a foursome | 9:07 | |
that had just come in off the 18th hole by way of the 19th, | 9:09 | |
and one of them was doing most of the talking | 9:17 | |
and every breath he drew, | 9:21 | |
he profane the name of God and of Christ. | 9:24 | |
Finally, I could stand it no longer. | 9:30 | |
I just walked over to where he was | 9:34 | |
and I tapped him on the shoulder. | 9:36 | |
And I said, "I want to invite you to church." | 9:37 | |
He looked up at me in a rather startle way. | 9:42 | |
He said, "What are you, a preacher?" | 9:45 | |
I said, "Yes, I'm a preacher." | 9:47 | |
"Where do you preach?" | 9:50 | |
I said, "I'm pastor of the First Methodist church, | 9:52 | |
here in the city." | 9:54 | |
"Why," He says "I'm a Methodist!" | 9:55 | |
And I hope God will forgive me | 10:05 | |
when I said under my breath, | 10:07 | |
"Thank God you don't belong to me personally." | 10:09 | |
A seeker once said to Pascal, | 10:18 | |
"If I had your creed, I could live your life." | 10:21 | |
And Pascal said in reply, | 10:26 | |
"If you would live my life, you would have my creed." | 10:29 | |
Non-Christians will never be drawn | 10:36 | |
into the Christian faith | 10:38 | |
on the basis of the living | 10:41 | |
of the average church member today. | 10:44 | |
Furthermore, we seem to care so little | 10:50 | |
about giving it to others. | 10:52 | |
The early Christians were enthusiastic | 10:58 | |
in their desire to share their faith with non-believers. | 11:02 | |
They went out and testified | 11:10 | |
to the saving grace of Jesus Christ, | 11:14 | |
and to the fact that faith in Christ | 11:18 | |
and forgiveness of sin through that faith | 11:22 | |
changed the man and made him a different, | 11:25 | |
a new creature in Christ Jesus. | 11:28 | |
When life and faith are blended, | 11:35 | |
we speak for God. | 11:41 | |
Then too, we are so lacking in enthusiasm | 11:45 | |
when we do speak of religion or discussing. | 11:49 | |
I am indebted to Dr. Harold Bosley, | 11:54 | |
one-time Dean of this Divinity school | 11:56 | |
for reminding me that the word enthusiasm | 12:00 | |
has a religious origin. | 12:03 | |
It was actually born of religious ceremony | 12:06 | |
and fervor in ancient Greece. | 12:09 | |
The Greeks had a name for it. | 12:12 | |
After days of celebration, festival, drama and sacrifices | 12:17 | |
the Greeks felt tremendous joy | 12:21 | |
and they actually gave us two words, | 12:25 | |
Enthusiasm, meaning God within | 12:29 | |
and inspiration, meaning spirit within. | 12:34 | |
We would certainly coin no such words | 12:41 | |
from the average spiritual experience of today. | 12:45 | |
The tragedy of that thing is | 12:51 | |
that we do cherish and covet | 12:55 | |
what we so vaguely call the American way of life, | 12:58 | |
not knowing that the roots of that American way of life | 13:03 | |
sink deeply into the soil of religious faith and conviction. | 13:12 | |
Dr. Roy L. Smith was right when he said that | 13:21 | |
four things that the Jews believed are believed | 13:24 | |
by the true Christian, | 13:28 | |
and out of those four things come our democracy | 13:30 | |
and our so-called American way of life. | 13:35 | |
First, that this is a theocentric world | 13:40 | |
that God is in the center of it. | 13:43 | |
Next, that humanity is divine. | 13:46 | |
Next, that the individual is sacred. | 13:49 | |
And finally, the consent of the governed, | 13:52 | |
that you cannot have good government | 13:57 | |
unless those who seek to govern have the consent | 14:00 | |
to those who are to be governed. | 14:05 | |
The tragic thing when the American people | 14:09 | |
ignore and neglect | 14:15 | |
the soil from which their democracy, | 14:19 | |
their concept of the rights of people | 14:24 | |
and individuals, rose. | 14:27 | |
Actually our situation reminds me of a very sad experience, | 14:33 | |
an incident of olden times. | 14:40 | |
You find it in 137th Psalm. | 14:43 | |
When the writer of the song cries out plaintively, | 14:46 | |
"How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" | 14:51 | |
He will remember of course, that the children of Israel, | 14:58 | |
many of them, are in bondage in Babylon. | 15:02 | |
And they find it very hard | 15:07 | |
to keep up their religious practices | 15:09 | |
and their religious faith in a foreign country. | 15:11 | |
They're ready to hang their harps on the willow trees. | 15:17 | |
They find it hard to sing the Lord's song in a strange land. | 15:22 | |
It is most fitting, I think, | 15:30 | |
that many people should ask that question today. | 15:32 | |
How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? | 15:39 | |
How can we sing the Lord's song | 15:46 | |
in the strange land of science? | 15:48 | |
This is a world today, | 15:54 | |
and ours is a nation today, | 15:56 | |
in which science is pre-eminent. | 15:59 | |
Ever since Sputnik flared into the sky | 16:04 | |
there has been a mad race, | 16:09 | |
in the realm and world of science. | 16:13 | |
We have the Redstone Arsenal in a Alabama. | 16:18 | |
The most important man perhaps in Alabama today | 16:24 | |
is Dr. Wernher von Braun. | 16:26 | |
Incidentally He is a very charming | 16:30 | |
and a very gracious man of Christian faith. | 16:32 | |
But science is our God. | 16:36 | |
John Sutherland Bonnell | 16:40 | |
tells us that a young student was so scientifically minded | 16:43 | |
that as he whispered his endearments in his girl's ear, | 16:47 | |
he kept his finger on her pulse to test her reactions. | 16:52 | |
That may be the scientific method, but believe me, | 17:01 | |
it leaves much to be desired. | 17:05 | |
(congregation laughs) | 17:08 | |
(clears throat) | 17:09 | |
How can we sing the Lord's song | 17:13 | |
in the strange land of statism and totalitarianism? | 17:17 | |
Where you have a direct contrast | 17:24 | |
between Christianity and Communism. | 17:27 | |
Christianity. | 17:31 | |
In Christianity, we live for God and for our fellow man, | 17:34 | |
Man is born for the glory of God | 17:41 | |
and for the service of mankind. | 17:44 | |
Nearly every Sunday morning, | 17:48 | |
from one to two or three little babies | 17:51 | |
are presented to me for dedication | 17:53 | |
and Christian baptism before the alter of the church. | 17:56 | |
My congregation loves to see that service | 18:01 | |
and frequently some of our young babies | 18:05 | |
broadcast over radio at a very tender age. | 18:10 | |
I understand that the Communists now have worked out | 18:16 | |
some sort of a dedicatory service for babies. | 18:20 | |
That they are now having a dedicatory service | 18:26 | |
as they dedicate their babies to the state. | 18:29 | |
How can we sing the Lord's song | 18:37 | |
in the strange land of statism? | 18:40 | |
How can we sing the Lord's song in the strange land | 18:47 | |
of alien customs and crass materialism? | 18:50 | |
That isn't easy. | 18:55 | |
Some of you have read a book which has recently come out, | 18:58 | |
written by Vance Packard called "The Status Seekers". | 19:03 | |
Coming up here, Mrs. Hardin and I | 19:09 | |
were alternating in the driving, | 19:11 | |
and the person who wasn't driving | 19:15 | |
would read loud from that book. | 19:17 | |
It's a frightening thing. | 19:21 | |
It's a disturbing thing. | 19:24 | |
The whole thesis of the book is that all over our land | 19:28 | |
people are status conscious. | 19:32 | |
Here is a calling, a profession, a vocation, | 19:36 | |
which ranks higher than another, | 19:41 | |
and people seek to increase or elevate their status | 19:43 | |
or standing in the community. | 19:48 | |
He points out that in great companies | 19:53 | |
you can tell the status or position of various men | 19:56 | |
who work for that company | 20:00 | |
by the automobile which they drive. | 20:02 | |
Men on the lowest levels drive Chevrolets and Fords | 20:06 | |
and Plymouths, with nothing but a heater. | 20:11 | |
A little higher in the status scale, | 20:16 | |
they have the better make or model of cars, | 20:19 | |
with radios and power steering. | 20:23 | |
And then you move on up, | 20:27 | |
through the various fields or grades of automobiles, | 20:28 | |
and top executives can drive Cadillacs, | 20:33 | |
within the 51 to $5,200 scale or range. | 20:37 | |
And the top executive can drive the best. | 20:42 | |
He's at the top. | 20:47 | |
I'm thinking seriously of suing that fellow. | 20:51 | |
Until she read it in that book, | 20:56 | |
my wife did not know that the only minister | 20:58 | |
who had status in the community was the Episcopal rector. | 21:02 | |
(congregation laughs) | 21:06 | |
How can we sing the Lord's song in the strange land | 21:15 | |
of crass materialism? | 21:20 | |
How can we sing the Lord's song | 21:23 | |
in the strange land of alien customs? | 21:25 | |
Customs that is, that are alien | 21:29 | |
to our Christian faith and practice. | 21:32 | |
Just about the time that | 21:38 | |
The Duke of Windsor was about to become the Duke of Windsor | 21:42 | |
and no longer the King of England. | 21:45 | |
The Archbishop of Canterbury said something | 21:49 | |
about the International Set, | 21:52 | |
with which the Duke and the Duchess | 21:55 | |
were running at that time. | 21:58 | |
Some of you will recall that he said, | 22:01 | |
"Their ways are not our ways." | 22:04 | |
That can also be said of many of the social practices | 22:11 | |
and customs of the day, | 22:15 | |
and we stopped to think that they are not the ways | 22:18 | |
of devout Christian believers. | 22:21 | |
It used to be, when I was a boy, | 22:26 | |
That non-church members dared do nothing | 22:29 | |
that would offend the church members. | 22:33 | |
Nowadays, I'm sorry to say that all too often | 22:38 | |
it seems to me that church members dare do nothing | 22:42 | |
that would offend the social practices and customs | 22:47 | |
of their communities, regardless of what their | 22:50 | |
Christian faith has say to them about those practices. | 22:53 | |
How can we sing the Lord's song | 23:02 | |
in the strange land of alien customs? | 23:06 | |
Christians can say that or ask that today. | 23:14 | |
The tragedy is that we have left | 23:21 | |
our familiar land of religion | 23:23 | |
and are not satisfied | 23:27 | |
with the strange lands into which we have moved. | 23:31 | |
I think one of the most tragic things | 23:37 | |
that I have seen in the newspapers recently | 23:38 | |
was this story of the man from America, | 23:42 | |
who not long ago, openly and publicly disavowed | 23:44 | |
his American citizenship, renounced it | 23:48 | |
and wanted to be a citizen of Russia. | 23:51 | |
And within 24 hours | 23:55 | |
after he had made that drastic decision | 23:58 | |
and taken that fearful step, he wanted backed into America. | 24:02 | |
What a tragic thing when so-called religious people | 24:12 | |
grow ashamed of their religious convictions | 24:16 | |
and their religious faith. | 24:19 | |
Give them up, to take up the customs | 24:22 | |
and traditions of these strange new modern lands | 24:25 | |
into which so many of us have moved. | 24:29 | |
And then having moved into those lands, | 24:32 | |
and missing the homeland of Christian faith, | 24:36 | |
they grow wistful and long to be at home again. | 24:40 | |
If we don't sing a song of Christian faith | 24:52 | |
with great enthusiasm, it's because we have no song to sing. | 24:54 | |
The song, if we had it, | 25:01 | |
is in here inside us. | 25:04 | |
But we restrain ourselves from enjoyment and enthusiasm. | 25:08 | |
Somebody might think that we are really religious | 25:15 | |
and that would be tragic. | 25:20 | |
In America, the Methodist Church | 25:24 | |
to which I belong grew leaps and bounds as it rode the crest | 25:27 | |
of a self-created wave of religious enthusiasm. | 25:33 | |
What has happened to many Methodists today? | 25:41 | |
You can answer that as well as I. | 25:46 | |
Many of you are familiar, | 25:48 | |
I'm sure with Bishop Roy's short story of The church | 25:49 | |
that had become very formal and ritualistic | 25:54 | |
and somewhat cold in the process. | 25:57 | |
And they were attracting the right kind of members, | 26:01 | |
you know now, in the right section of the city, | 26:03 | |
with the right status. | 26:08 | |
But they had one fellow in the church | 26:12 | |
that just about the time this beautiful service | 26:14 | |
was reaching its climax of magnificence, beauty, and appeal, | 26:18 | |
this old boy would shout. | 26:24 | |
Well, they did what every church does in an emergency. | 26:29 | |
They appointed a committee to go talk to him about it. | 26:32 | |
Committee went down to where the old man lived | 26:38 | |
and they found him down in the cornfield | 26:41 | |
back of the house, plowing corn. | 26:44 | |
So they waited till he got to the end of a row, | 26:47 | |
and they said, "Now, Mr. So and so, | 26:50 | |
we'd like to talk to you just a minute." | 26:52 | |
He said, "Gentlemen, I'm delighted to see you." | 26:54 | |
And they said, "You know, our church | 26:57 | |
has gone through some changes recently. | 27:00 | |
We have a far more beautiful service now | 27:05 | |
and we are attracting the kind of members we want | 27:08 | |
in our church and everything is going beautifully. | 27:10 | |
We have a very wonderful minister, gifted and eloquent | 27:15 | |
and things are just going along fine. | 27:19 | |
But every once in a while, you break into a shout | 27:21 | |
and that disturbs people. | 27:23 | |
And we've been a part of the committee to come down | 27:27 | |
and ask you if you will stop it." | 27:29 | |
Old man said, "Yes, gentlemen, I'll try to stop." | 27:33 | |
He said, "I know I shouldn't do it. | 27:36 | |
I'm sure it disturbs people." | 27:38 | |
But he said, "When I look at these old dusty shoes of mine | 27:41 | |
and know that someday I'm going to wear gold slipper, | 27:44 | |
I look at these old worn-out clothes of mine | 27:49 | |
and know that someday I'm going to wear a long white robe. | 27:52 | |
And I look at this old battered and beaten hat of mine | 27:57 | |
and know that someday I'm going to wear a starry crown, | 28:00 | |
here one of you fellows hold this mule, | 28:04 | |
I'm gonna shout right now!" | 28:06 | |
What has come over us? | 28:15 | |
I'm not pleading for shouting. | 28:17 | |
But I am pleading for enthusiasm in our faith. | 28:21 | |
Are there not thousands of us who have been redeemed | 28:29 | |
through faith in Christ? | 28:32 | |
Then let the redeemed of the Lord say so. | 28:37 | |
Let the redeem say so by word of mouth. | 28:44 | |
Speak up for God. | 28:49 | |
Don't be ashamed of your religious faith | 28:52 | |
and of your religious convictions. | 28:55 | |
Your country was built upon that foundation. | 28:57 | |
Let the redeem say so by the way we live | 29:03 | |
honestly, soberly, | 29:06 | |
constructively, ethically, if you please, | 29:08 | |
but always in a way that is compatible | 29:11 | |
with Christian preaching and Christian teaching. | 29:15 | |
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so by the way we love, | 29:20 | |
unselfishly, purely. | 29:25 | |
Let the redeem the Lord say so | 29:31 | |
by the way we serve and give, | 29:33 | |
because we enthusiastically believe | 29:37 | |
that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. | 29:41 | |
Of course things aren't rosy. | 29:47 | |
But that doesn't discourage the true Christian. | 29:52 | |
William L. Sullivan says | 29:58 | |
that the Christian religion has deposited | 29:59 | |
upon the alter of wisdom. | 30:02 | |
The most profound and most beautiful | 30:05 | |
set of paradoxes ever laid there. | 30:10 | |
Defeat with lips to the bugle of victory. | 30:16 | |
Hopelessness, burning with expectation. | 30:23 | |
Sadness, radiant with love. | 30:30 | |
Darkness, dazzled with mourning. | 30:35 | |
Death, shaken with the song of immortality. | 30:42 | |
Let redeemed the Lord say so. | 30:50 | |
O Lord our heavenly Father, | 31:06 | |
Thou who hast redeemed us | 31:10 | |
through the death of Thy Son, | 31:13 | |
have mercy upon us, we pray thee. | 31:17 | |
That we have grown so cold and so indifferent. | 31:21 | |
Renew right spirits within us. | 31:26 | |
And help us, we prey thee to reflect | 31:30 | |
in our speech, in our living, | 31:33 | |
in our loving, in our giving, | 31:36 | |
and in our serving, | 31:38 | |
the gratitude, which we feel toward thee. | 31:41 | |
The Lord bless you and keep you. | 31:51 | |
The Lord make His face to shine upon you. | 31:55 | |
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, | 32:01 | |
and give you peace now and forevermore. | 32:04 |