Howard C. Wilkinson - "Discipline and Freedom" (May 28, 1967)
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| - | Surprises never end. | 0:19 |
| A few minutes before the service began this morning, | 0:23 | |
| I descended the steps into the room | 0:26 | |
| where the choir assembles to robe and the line up, | 0:28 | |
| to thank the remaining eight or nine choir members | 0:33 | |
| that I expected to find | 0:36 | |
| after so many of their fellow students had finished exams | 0:40 | |
| and gone home and others of their fellow students | 0:44 | |
| who had finished exams and gone to the beach | 0:47 | |
| and others of their fellow students | 0:51 | |
| who had not finished exams and had gone to the beach. | 0:53 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 0:57 | |
| I was quite surprised to find a large choir, | 0:59 | |
| getting ready to give leadership | 1:02 | |
| in our service of worship this morning. | 1:04 | |
| And I cannot resist making this personal testimony | 1:07 | |
| in addition to the prayers | 1:11 | |
| which Dean Cleland offered to God | 1:13 | |
| and the printed words of thanks in the bulletin | 1:15 | |
| for the great faithfulness and the excellence of service, | 1:17 | |
| which our choir has given each Sunday and on other occasions | 1:21 | |
| during this academic year. | 1:26 | |
| We owe them an unpayable indebtedness. | 1:30 | |
| In the summer of 1878, | 1:34 | |
| Johannes Brahms was in Southern Austria, | 1:39 | |
| where he was composing his violin concerto in D major, | 1:43 | |
| which has brought so much pleasure to so many. | 1:49 | |
| And in the notes which he wrote on this occasion, | 1:53 | |
| he called attention to the fact that, | 1:57 | |
| there were so many melodies in the air | 2:00 | |
| that he could feel them intensely as from day to day, | 2:04 | |
| he lived in Southern Austria. | 2:10 | |
| And he said, "They were so numerous, | 2:11 | |
| I almost felt that I should walk carefully | 2:15 | |
| lest I step upon these melodies." | 2:18 | |
| As I was thinking about the topic | 2:23 | |
| on which I am preaching this morning, | 2:25 | |
| discipline and freedom, | 2:27 | |
| it occurred to me that the expressions | 2:31 | |
| of the desire for freedom are in the air today | 2:32 | |
| very much as the melodies | 2:36 | |
| were in the air in Southern Austria in the summer of 1878. | 2:38 | |
| We almost have to walk carefully lest we tread upon | 2:44 | |
| the feelings, the expressions, the aspirations for liberty, | 2:48 | |
| for freedom, which are being abroad in the land today. | 2:53 | |
| Everyone wishes to be free. | 3:00 | |
| Freedom is the hallmark of the 20th century. | 3:02 | |
| There are a great many in new nations | 3:09 | |
| in the continent of Africa today | 3:10 | |
| who are gaining their independence from colonial powers. | 3:12 | |
| And for the first time are standing on their own feet, | 3:16 | |
| not only in the atmosphere of freedom, | 3:20 | |
| but with the stark political reality of liberty, | 3:21 | |
| independence, freedom. | 3:26 | |
| And even the nations of the earth, | 3:29 | |
| which have not gained their freedom | 3:31 | |
| from the colonial powers today are itching for it, | 3:33 | |
| are crying out for it, are demanding it. | 3:37 | |
| In our own United States, | 3:43 | |
| we are spending billions of dollars | 3:44 | |
| in the program known as OEO to gain freedom from poverty | 3:47 | |
| for a third of our citizens in the United States. | 3:54 | |
| Poverty has correctly been called a form of slavery, | 3:57 | |
| and we are spending billions of the taxpayer's money | 4:02 | |
| in an attempt to free these citizens | 4:05 | |
| from the bondage of poverty. | 4:09 | |
| Not only are the people who are in this calling for it, | 4:13 | |
| but the other two thirds | 4:17 | |
| who are relatively free from this bondage are saying | 4:19 | |
| that their brothers need to be liberated from it. | 4:23 | |
| Well, on college campuses all across America, | 4:29 | |
| co-eds here and there | 4:33 | |
| are demanding that they be set free from parietal hours | 4:34 | |
| so that they can go into their dormitories | 4:39 | |
| at any hour of the night they wish to enter | 4:41 | |
| or to leave the dormitories. | 4:44 | |
| And thousands, | 4:47 | |
| we might even say tens of thousands of students | 4:48 | |
| on American campuses today are demanding freedom | 4:52 | |
| from each and every rule, regulation, law, or what have you | 4:54 | |
| that has ever been devised by the mind of an adult | 5:01 | |
| in the history of the world. | 5:06 | |
| And they are saying, we want to be able to do | 5:08 | |
| what we want to do at any time we want to do it | 5:10 | |
| and in whatsoever fashion we want to do it. | 5:14 | |
| And if that includes running the university, | 5:18 | |
| we want to be absolutely free to run the university. | 5:21 | |
| To evaluate our professors, to set our courses, | 5:25 | |
| to fix our curricula, to establish our living conditions. | 5:28 | |
| And we want to be free to do whatsoever we want to do | 5:32 | |
| whenever we want to do it. | 5:36 | |
| Now make no mistake about it, | 5:38 | |
| these voices of freedom are being heard throughout the earth | 5:40 | |
| and throughout our country. | 5:43 | |
| There is a great cry for liberty from every form | 5:45 | |
| of regulation or rule. | 5:49 | |
| So that we are indeed reminded | 5:53 | |
| of what Brahms said about the melodies of Southern Austria | 5:54 | |
| as we see the cries for freedom on every side. | 5:58 | |
| Now there's something very interesting to know right here. | 6:05 | |
| And that is that when we call for freedom, | 6:09 | |
| we are calling for something which almighty God | 6:12 | |
| wants us to have. | 6:15 | |
| We are not asking for something as is often the case | 6:22 | |
| that God says would be bad for us | 6:26 | |
| and we ought not to have it. | 6:27 | |
| We are asking for a commodity when we ask for freedom, | 6:30 | |
| which God says he is the author of. | 6:34 | |
| And which he has gone to considerable trouble | 6:38 | |
| to help us to have. | 6:40 | |
| Make no mistake about that. | 6:44 | |
| God wants all of us to be free. | 6:47 | |
| There isn't any point in laboring that | 6:52 | |
| because it is so crystal clear that | 6:53 | |
| God is the author of liberty. | 6:57 | |
| And it is his desire | 6:59 | |
| that every person be freed from every form of slavery. | 7:01 | |
| Now the only question | 7:07 | |
| that we have before us therefore as Christian people, | 7:09 | |
| is the question of how we get it. | 7:12 | |
| Now, that is a big question, | 7:15 | |
| because not all of the roads that have signs on them, | 7:17 | |
| pointing down the road saying to freedom, go to freedom. | 7:22 | |
| Not nearly all of the roads that have freedom signs on them, | 7:29 | |
| lead to freedom. | 7:32 | |
| And unless we were going to be stupid | 7:34 | |
| and simply go down every road | 7:36 | |
| that we see that has a freedom sign on it, | 7:38 | |
| we need to study the map | 7:41 | |
| and see which roads do in fact lead to freedom. | 7:42 | |
| If you decided this afternoon, that it being such a nice day | 7:46 | |
| temperature in the neighborhood of 85 or 90, | 7:51 | |
| you'd like to drive to Raleigh. | 7:53 | |
| And you go out here on the bypass | 7:56 | |
| on the north side of Durham, | 7:58 | |
| and you're looking for the road to Raleigh. | 8:00 | |
| And you have two or three riders with you in your car | 8:02 | |
| and you see a sign on highway 501 North, | 8:06 | |
| which says to Raleigh. | 8:11 | |
| That's exactly what you're looking for, | 8:15 | |
| a road that goes to Raleigh. | 8:18 | |
| And so you turn off the bypass on the highway US 501 North, | 8:19 | |
| and you start up north on 501, | 8:24 | |
| because the sign says to Raleigh. | 8:29 | |
| And your backseat driver said, now look, don't be stupid. | 8:32 | |
| This road goes somewhere else. | 8:36 | |
| You ought not to go on US 501 North | 8:41 | |
| because you're not old enough to drive on US 501 North. | 8:45 | |
| Now your backseat driver would be clearly off base | 8:53 | |
| because whether you're old enough to go on 501 North | 8:55 | |
| has nothing whatever to do | 9:00 | |
| with whether it is wise for you to travel 501. | 9:02 | |
| And then your backseat driver says, look, here, | 9:07 | |
| it goes against all your upbringing | 9:10 | |
| for you to go on this road. | 9:12 | |
| That too would be beside the point. | 9:14 | |
| And then your backseat driver getting more nervous says, | 9:17 | |
| look here, your great grandmother | 9:19 | |
| will turn over in her grave if you go on 501 North. | 9:21 | |
| I doubt that she will scientifically speaking. | 9:26 | |
| What is the trouble if you take US 501 North? | 9:33 | |
| Only one thing. | 9:38 | |
| None of these scare talk kind of admonitions | 9:40 | |
| have any relevance at all. | 9:45 | |
| The only thing that has relevance is, | 9:47 | |
| that as a matter of fact, | 9:50 | |
| if what you want to do is go to Raleigh, | 9:52 | |
| US 501 North, won't take you there. | 9:56 | |
| So it's wrong. | 9:59 | |
| It simply doesn't go to Raleigh. | 10:01 | |
| And so if what you want to do is go to Raleigh, | 10:05 | |
| then you need to get on another road. | 10:07 | |
| Now that is the situation | 10:13 | |
| which often happens with people who want freedom. | 10:14 | |
| Is that they get on a road that has a sign | 10:17 | |
| saying to freedom, but the road doesn't go to freedom. | 10:19 | |
| Let's take a look at two or three roads | 10:24 | |
| that have freedom signs on them here this morning | 10:25 | |
| and see what we can learn by looking at these roads. | 10:28 | |
| The first road, the one that has I suppose the most signs | 10:32 | |
| saying to freedom on it is the road of license. | 10:35 | |
| Now it's a sort of sensible, reasonable sounding thing | 10:40 | |
| because the road to license says, | 10:44 | |
| if you get on this road, you can do what you want to do, | 10:45 | |
| whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. | 10:48 | |
| That sounds a great deal like freedom. | 10:52 | |
| And so a great many people get on the road to license | 10:55 | |
| and think that they're going to arrive at freedom | 10:57 | |
| by means of doing whatsoever they want to do | 10:59 | |
| whenever they want to do it. | 11:02 | |
| Let's take a look at that for a minute. | 11:05 | |
| Suppose that we were to think of ourselves individually, | 11:06 | |
| not as just persons in a fleshly body | 11:10 | |
| as we so obviously are, some of us more obvious than others. | 11:13 | |
| We were to think of ourselves as a congress. | 11:18 | |
| You are a congress now for a moment | 11:25 | |
| and your stomach introduces a bill saying I want to eat. | 11:28 | |
| And so you're on the road to license, the license road | 11:34 | |
| and you say, well, now I do whatever my whim wants me to do | 11:37 | |
| whenever the whim says to do it so I passed that resolution. | 11:41 | |
| As soon as the resolution is introduced, | 11:48 | |
| I pass it and make it into law. | 11:50 | |
| So we got something to eat right now. | 11:51 | |
| And then I feel a wee bit tired. | 11:56 | |
| That is to say my muscles introduce a bill, | 11:58 | |
| let's go to sleep. | 12:00 | |
| This bill seems to be introduced quite often in church | 12:03 | |
| and gets passed quite often, | 12:07 | |
| even over the veto of the preacher. | 12:11 | |
| And you pass that bill. | 12:14 | |
| Then you introduce into this congress, | 12:18 | |
| a bill to increase expenditures | 12:19 | |
| and you pass that immediately. | 12:21 | |
| And then you introduce a bill to lower taxes | 12:23 | |
| and you pass that | 12:29 | |
| because that seems like a good thing to do too. | 12:29 | |
| Now this was attempted in the legislature | 12:33 | |
| of the state of Texas, when W. Lee O'Daniel, | 12:35 | |
| was first elected governor of Texas. | 12:38 | |
| He ran on a platform that had two planks, | 12:40 | |
| one of which was to increase expenditures | 12:43 | |
| and the second one was to lower taxes. | 12:46 | |
| So to carry out his campaign promises when he was elected, | 12:49 | |
| he had his friends introduce both bills | 12:53 | |
| into the legislature. | 12:55 | |
| And there they lay before the legislature at the same time. | 12:56 | |
| Increase expenditures and lower taxes. | 13:00 | |
| Well obviously this could not be done. | 13:03 | |
| Not both of them. | 13:05 | |
| You could do one, but you couldn't do both. | 13:06 | |
| So that in a congress or a legislative body of some kind | 13:09 | |
| or within a person, it soon is found to be impossible | 13:14 | |
| to pass all of the bills that are introduced. | 13:19 | |
| And something more than license | 13:23 | |
| has to be adopted as the modus operandi | 13:26 | |
| if there is to be freedom. | 13:30 | |
| Because this results only in the kind of chaos that results | 13:32 | |
| at a traffic intercession, | 13:36 | |
| when you simply let everybody go through the intersection, | 13:37 | |
| when he wants to go through the intersection. | 13:40 | |
| This results not in freedom, but in a pile up. | 13:44 | |
| The chief of police in Boston, | 13:51 | |
| made a very interesting observation, | 13:53 | |
| something which illuminates this problem | 13:55 | |
| I think rather considerably. | 13:57 | |
| Some years ago there was a very disastrous fire | 14:00 | |
| in one of the nightclubs in Boston. | 14:03 | |
| There were a large number of patrons in the nightclub | 14:06 | |
| at the time it caught on fire | 14:09 | |
| and the fire raced quickly through the nightclub. | 14:12 | |
| And the patrons tried to get out the one door. | 14:16 | |
| Only two or three managed to get out. | 14:21 | |
| The fire chief later examining this great holocaust, | 14:24 | |
| made the observation that if they had organized, | 14:31 | |
| everyone would have had time to get free | 14:35 | |
| from the burning building. | 14:37 | |
| But as it was almost no one escaped to freedom. | 14:39 | |
| And he said as he looked and saw how the bodies were packed | 14:44 | |
| right around this one exit, | 14:48 | |
| the reason almost nobody got his freedom | 14:51 | |
| was that everybody was interested in freeing only himself. | 14:55 | |
| That's the picture of license. | 15:02 | |
| I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it | 15:06 | |
| does not result in freedom. | 15:10 | |
| At the most it results in the freedom | 15:14 | |
| for that one individual, | 15:16 | |
| but in something approximating slavery | 15:18 | |
| or injustice at least for everyone else. | 15:21 | |
| So that the unbridled license | 15:26 | |
| is not the road that leads to freedom. | 15:30 | |
| We do not always play the same themes every day, | 15:34 | |
| individually, ourselves personally. | 15:40 | |
| Within my earthly temple, there's a crowd. | 15:43 | |
| There's one of us that's humble and one that's proud. | 15:46 | |
| There's one who is repentant for his sin. | 15:49 | |
| And one who unrepentant sits in grants. | 15:53 | |
| There's one who loves his neighbor as himself | 15:58 | |
| and one who cares for not but fame and pelf. | 15:59 | |
| For a much corroding care I would be free | 16:02 | |
| if once I could determine, which is me said the poet. | 16:08 | |
| That's a picture of me | 16:14 | |
| and I have an idea it's a picture of you. | 16:15 | |
| So simply to give unbridled liberty to all these selves | 16:17 | |
| within me without an organizing principle | 16:23 | |
| is not to achieve freedom. | 16:26 | |
| All right then we seem to be saying that we need to move | 16:29 | |
| in the direction of some sort of regulation of this license | 16:33 | |
| and to go down the road then what, the road of law? | 16:38 | |
| Well, I will risk a bit of unpopularity here | 16:45 | |
| by saying that the road of law, | 16:48 | |
| does not lead to freedom either. | 16:52 | |
| Now a certain amount of law in certain very restricted areas | 16:56 | |
| and in a temporary sense is a necessary detour to take | 17:00 | |
| to get to the true road to freedom. | 17:07 | |
| Laws are necessary for the very young. | 17:12 | |
| Rules and regulations are necessary as Saint Paul said | 17:15 | |
| to serve as a school master, to lead us to Christ. | 17:19 | |
| But the trouble with law as a road to freedom is | 17:25 | |
| that if we depend upon law to guarantee our freedom, | 17:30 | |
| there is every day a new situation | 17:34 | |
| that is not covered by the laws which we passed yesterday | 17:36 | |
| and we have to pass other laws to cover those situations. | 17:39 | |
| And finally we find ourselves | 17:43 | |
| whether we are considering civil law or religious law | 17:45 | |
| in the situation of the Pharisees who had so many laws, | 17:48 | |
| they didn't even know how many laws they had. | 17:52 | |
| And one law conflicted with another. | 17:55 | |
| And instead of these laws producing people who were free, | 17:56 | |
| they produced people who are in shackles. | 18:00 | |
| And though as I say for the young and in certain civil areas | 18:06 | |
| where we must crystallize our agreements into law, | 18:11 | |
| in the sense of procedure, law is necessary. | 18:15 | |
| Actually the finest use of law is to make itself unnecessary | 18:20 | |
| because if we were to rest upon law | 18:27 | |
| as our chief guarantee for freedom, | 18:29 | |
| we would then all have to be policed | 18:32 | |
| to see that the law was carried out. | 18:35 | |
| And then who would police the police? | 18:37 | |
| Because they too being human would have to be under | 18:40 | |
| some sort of law that would have to be policed. | 18:43 | |
| And then the police who police the police | 18:45 | |
| would have to be policed. | 18:46 | |
| And there is no end to that. | 18:48 | |
| We cannot depend upon law. | 18:50 | |
| If there is not something better than the exterior | 18:52 | |
| constraints and restraints of law upon us, | 18:55 | |
| we are not a people headed toward freedom. | 18:59 | |
| That leaves then one road. | 19:03 | |
| And this road I believe does lead to freedom. | 19:07 | |
| And it is a road toward which all of us should travel. | 19:11 | |
| If we cannot get on that road immediately, | 19:13 | |
| we should get on the shortest detour possible | 19:15 | |
| that really leads to it. | 19:18 | |
| And that is the road of absolute slavery | 19:20 | |
| to inner discipline. | 19:25 | |
| Absolute slavery to inner discipline. | 19:30 | |
| Because make no mistake about it there is no freedom. | 19:34 | |
| There is no freedom anywhere in the world | 19:38 | |
| without discipline. | 19:41 | |
| Harry Emerson Fosdick said something years ago | 19:44 | |
| that the entire surface of the earth is divided. | 19:46 | |
| Each square foot of it is divided | 19:50 | |
| between the sea and the land. | 19:54 | |
| And wherever there is less of the one, | 19:59 | |
| there is more of the other | 20:01 | |
| and wherever there is more of the one, | 20:04 | |
| there is less of the other. | 20:05 | |
| As the land comes up to sea recedes. | 20:08 | |
| And as the land goes down to sea comes in. | 20:10 | |
| And said he, "The whole of human life is divided | 20:14 | |
| between inner compulsion and outer compulsion." | 20:17 | |
| And if we will not provide the inner compulsion, | 20:21 | |
| outer compulsion will come sweeping in | 20:25 | |
| like an inexorable tidal wave. | 20:27 | |
| And if we do not like outer compulsion, | 20:31 | |
| then we must build up the land of inner discipline | 20:34 | |
| and let the sea recede. | 20:38 | |
| Because there has to be order in the world | 20:43 | |
| for there to be any kind of meaningful freedom. | 20:47 | |
| And there has to be some discipline | 20:50 | |
| for there to be this order and this freedom. | 20:52 | |
| And if you and I do not provide the inner discipline, | 20:56 | |
| which is necessary, the inner control, | 20:58 | |
| the slavery to discipline, | 21:00 | |
| then it will be provided from without. | 21:03 | |
| All right, this means then, | 21:08 | |
| that discipline is to freedom what a string is to a kite. | 21:11 | |
| Now it is absolutely impossible for a kite | 21:16 | |
| to stay afloat in the wind, | 21:20 | |
| unless it has a string holding it to something. | 21:22 | |
| And if the kite should say, | 21:27 | |
| I am tired of being held down by the string, | 21:28 | |
| and I'm going to cut the string, | 21:32 | |
| you know what would immediately happen? | 21:33 | |
| It would go into a tailspin | 21:35 | |
| and finally crash into a tree top or to the ground. | 21:37 | |
| And yet, if this kite is going to rise higher and higher | 21:41 | |
| and higher into greater freedom of the skies, | 21:46 | |
| it must keep tugging at that string. | 21:48 | |
| And the string must yield. | 21:51 | |
| And it seems to me that this is the picture of the maturity | 21:54 | |
| the whole process of maturation of the individual. | 21:57 | |
| That he begins with these trial and error attempts | 22:00 | |
| to get off the ground and finally past the tree tops | 22:04 | |
| and out into the wild blue yonder. | 22:07 | |
| And he keeps tugging at this string. | 22:08 | |
| And all the while the process | 22:11 | |
| and the analogy is not very perfect here. | 22:13 | |
| The process is one of changing over | 22:15 | |
| as to who is holding the string. | 22:17 | |
| But the time never comes when the kite can stay | 22:21 | |
| in the wild blue yonder without the string. | 22:25 | |
| It never comes. | 22:29 | |
| The only question is who is going to hold the string. | 22:31 | |
| It is not that someday freedom will exist in my life | 22:36 | |
| or yours or society or the world without discipline. | 22:39 | |
| It cannot exist without discipline. | 22:44 | |
| The only question is, will the discipline be inner or outer? | 22:47 | |
| Will we have less of the land and more of the sea | 22:52 | |
| or more of the land and less of the sea. | 22:55 | |
| Now, we return to our original point | 23:00 | |
| that when we cry for freedom, | 23:07 | |
| we are not asking for something that is immoral or unjust. | 23:09 | |
| We are asking for that which all mighty God | 23:13 | |
| wants us to have. | 23:15 | |
| Indeed all mighty God has gone to considerable trouble | 23:18 | |
| to stir up the fires of freedom in the earth. | 23:22 | |
| And wherever his gospel has been preached, | 23:26 | |
| the fires of liberty have been lighted. | 23:28 | |
| I recall reading some time ago | 23:31 | |
| about what happened when the board of directors | 23:33 | |
| of the British East India Company met | 23:35 | |
| when the independence movement began in India. | 23:38 | |
| And they said, our trouble is | 23:42 | |
| that the missionaries have come in to India | 23:45 | |
| and have stirred up the people to want independence. | 23:47 | |
| And they said, that when Carey was sent to India | 23:51 | |
| as the first Christian missionary, | 23:55 | |
| it was the wildest and maddest scheme | 23:57 | |
| that a moonstruck fanatic ever invented. | 24:00 | |
| Why? | 24:03 | |
| They said because it brings | 24:03 | |
| the safety of our possessions into peril. | 24:05 | |
| And they were right, it did. | 24:08 | |
| These people in India who had been willing to be subject | 24:11 | |
| and to be in slavery to the British for all those years, | 24:15 | |
| heard the gospel, the preaching of the fatherhood of God | 24:19 | |
| and the brotherhood of man and they said we want to be free. | 24:22 | |
| God wants us to be free. | 24:26 | |
| And then in the 1920s, when Japan was ruling Korea, | 24:30 | |
| the Korean independence movement came | 24:34 | |
| and caused great trouble to the Japanese army of occupation. | 24:36 | |
| And the Japanese army officer who was in charge | 24:40 | |
| of the occupation reported that the curse of Korea | 24:43 | |
| was the Christian population. | 24:47 | |
| And if it were not for the Christian population, | 24:48 | |
| there would be no independence movement. | 24:50 | |
| And then in case that makes us feel very self-righteous, | 24:55 | |
| I can cite you the report | 24:58 | |
| of the United States army officer who was in charge | 24:59 | |
| of the occupation of the Philippine Islands | 25:02 | |
| before they got their independence from us. | 25:06 | |
| And he said words that are almost exactly | 25:09 | |
| like the words of the Japanese army officer | 25:12 | |
| who occupied Korea. | 25:15 | |
| He said the curse of the Philippine Islands | 25:18 | |
| is the Christian population, | 25:21 | |
| because if it were not for them, | 25:22 | |
| there would be no Philippine independence movement. | 25:25 | |
| Bishop Richard Raines, | 25:29 | |
| about three years ago was asked what he thought | 25:30 | |
| about the reports that were coming out of Angola | 25:34 | |
| about the Portuguese government, | 25:36 | |
| sending the Christian missionaries out of Angola. | 25:38 | |
| And he said, it made perfect sense. | 25:42 | |
| He said, "Anybody who honestly preaches | 25:46 | |
| the doctrine of the fatherhood of God | 25:48 | |
| and the brotherhood of man in Angola | 25:50 | |
| is going to be considered subversive | 25:52 | |
| by the Portuguese government." | 25:54 | |
| You have to make up your mind. | 25:58 | |
| If you're going to preach the gospel, | 26:00 | |
| you will be subversive in that situation. | 26:02 | |
| Yes God wants us to be free. | 26:07 | |
| Individually he wants us to be free, | 26:10 | |
| but he has made it perfectly clear | 26:13 | |
| that there is a kind of discipline which goes with it. | 26:14 | |
| What is that discipline? | 26:18 | |
| Jesus said, if, and what a big if that is, | 26:20 | |
| if you abide in me and my words abide in you. | 26:28 | |
| Now don't rush on to the next phrase. | 26:34 | |
| Let's taste these first two ifs. | 26:39 | |
| If you abide in me, if my words abide in you, | 26:44 | |
| then ye shall know the truth | 26:50 | |
| and the truth shall make you free. | 26:55 | |
| You know, I have been impressed with the fact | 26:59 | |
| that these words have been over the doors | 27:02 | |
| of many an academic institution of higher learning | 27:04 | |
| in the United States, | 27:06 | |
| but they always omit the first two ifs. | 27:07 | |
| Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. | 27:11 | |
| That isn't what Jesus said. | 27:14 | |
| There is a kind of discipline that precedes this. | 27:18 | |
| It is a kind of discipline that makes sense | 27:23 | |
| to the chemistry professor. | 27:25 | |
| Who comes from his meeting where he says, | 27:28 | |
| we want academic freedom and goes to his laboratory | 27:30 | |
| and shows you what he considers academic freedom to mean. | 27:37 | |
| What does he do with academic freedom? | 27:41 | |
| Say, well, I'll take this test tube and pour it into that | 27:43 | |
| and just see what happens. | 27:45 | |
| What he does in his laboratory | 27:50 | |
| he calls by the word discipline. | 27:52 | |
| This is my discipline. | 27:56 | |
| And he is a slave to the knowledge and the procedures | 28:00 | |
| of his laboratory. | 28:06 | |
| And this is a somehow for him, | 28:10 | |
| a very important part of what he calls academic freedom. | 28:12 | |
| The apostle Paul said stand fast therefore in the liberty | 28:17 | |
| where with Christ has made you free. | 28:21 | |
| And if we do that we will not need to trample on any | 28:26 | |
| of the expressions of a desire for liberty and freedom | 28:30 | |
| that are abroad in the earth. | 28:35 | |
| We will achieve that freedom by the grace of God, | 28:37 | |
| through inner discipline. | 28:41 | |
| Our heavenly father we thank thee that thou has shown us | 28:45 | |
| thy way through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 28:48 | |
| We thank thee that thou has called us out of our bondage | 28:51 | |
| into perfect freedom in Christ. | 28:56 | |
| Granted we may have the grace to persevere until we win it | 28:59 | |
| in his name. | 29:04 | |
| Amen. | 29:05 | |
| (piano music playing) | 29:10 | |
| (organs drowns choir) | 29:47 |
