Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
You remember that guy. You know, the one in the class that everyone laughed at behind his back. The one you could safely be rude to and retain your popularity with the rest of the class. Well, in my third year Greek class at the left-wing seminary I attended, I was that guy. I was the joke of the class because I believed that if the Bible said that Jesus or someone else performed a miracle, then he really performed that miracle. I believed that if, according to the Bible, Jesus said something, then he really said it.
One of the major assignments our Greek class was given by Dr. Cook was to present to the class what might be called a lecture or a sermon based upon certain texts. My text was from 2 Peter 1:21, in which Peter says that the ancient prophecies of Israel's prophets were inspired by God and were not the result of the will of man. Of a class of twenty or so, I was the only student whose lecture was ever interrupted. What I was saying just became too much for several of my fellow seminarians to bear. And what was I saying that was so preposterous? I was saying that the ancient prophecies of Israel's prophets were inspired by God and were not the result of the will of man. I was simply repeating what Peter had plainly stated.
Sounds fairly safe, doesn't it, just to say that what Peter wrote was really true? I mean, Peter himself said that in proclaiming his message, he was not "following cunningly devised fables" (2Pet. 1:16). But in the arrogant world of scholarship, confession of faith in God's healing power, or faith in such things as a prophet of God "foretelling" events, is absolutely forbidden. Even so, as I stood before the class, I was somewhat surprised when one man in the class interrupted me in mid-sentence with a loud, sarcastic demand: "Are you saying that you think some men foretold the future?" You would have thought that I had just announced that I sincerely believed that the world is flat and that the moon is made out of cheese.
Having been laughed at in class once too often, I was feeling very frustrated and bitter one particular afternoon as I drove home. I remember telling my brother, who also was attending the seminary at that time, that our father could not help us in the situation we were in because we could not get him to understand what the situation was. This was in the spring of 1977, and he was about 76 years old. In the mid-1920's, when he studied at the Free Will Baptist seminary in Ayden, NC, his professors were so sincere in their faith and so humble before the Lord that they would sometimes break down and weep as they read the Bible in class. To them, it was a holy book, and they were privileged to read it.
So, my father could not comprehend that I was attending a seminary where one professor cursed at one student for holding a conservative view of the Scriptures, or where one of my New Testament professors, Raymond Brown, ridiculed before the entire class those who looked for Jesus to come again, where another New Testament professor, Archie Nations, proclaimed emphatically, "We KNOW that Jesus did not walk on water! Science excludes that!" My father just couldn't seem to understand, even though I tried to tell him, that my professors were not like his professors, that Mr. Nations, for one example, demanded that to believe that people would ever be resurrected from the dead was next to idiocy, that my Old Testament professor, John Durham, dismissed Pentecostal religion as "adolescent" and insisted that God spoke to man through Mozart, Beethoven, and artists of the renaissance and other times. How could I explain to my father, an aging holiness preacher, that anyone on my seminary campus who simply trusted what the Bible said was ostracized and often ridiculed for a lack of intelligence and sophistication. No, I thought aloud as we rode along the highway, our father, wise in the Lord and experienced as he was, could not help us. He just didn't understand.
Actually, though, I was the one who did not understand either God's power or His wisdom. I was driving that day away from the seminary of men toward my father's house, where I would be taught a lesson in the seminary of God.
As I parked my car in front of my father's apartment, Mr. Nethery's little black poodle darted across the sidewalk, into the road, and jumped around barking at me, as it had harmlessly done many times before. Today, however, I was filled with frustration, and I did one of the stupidest things ever. I barked back at the dog. Try to imagine a 25-year-old seminarian standing in the middle of a neighborhood street barking back at a little black dog! I was so full of bitterness that I was becoming irrational. I didn't know what to do with the feelings I had.
The visit with my father went as usual. No matter what I said, he simply could not be riled up by my complaints, nor did he even seem to comprehend my predicament. Finally, I gave up and walked to the door, my head hung down. As I opened the door, I muttered aloud, "They make you feel like a fool." To this comment, after a short pause, my father very quietly and meekly responded, "I'd rather feel like a fool than be one."
Solomon taught us that "words fitly spoken are like apples of gold in pictures of silver." The immediate effect of those few simple words from my father can hardly be described. It was as if I had been carrying an expanding balloon of bitterness in my breast, and when he made that simple comment, all the pressure was released from it, and I felt nothing at all except a deep thankfulness that I was not a fool. I could feel sincere compassion, not anger, toward those professors who did not know God and yet had the impossible (for them) task of teaching others about His righteousness. I could feel gentleness and patience toward my fellow students who did not have the spiritual help I had but could only look to those ignorant professors to guide them toward eternal life (even though some of them did not even believe in life after death!) Oh, how blessed I suddenly felt to be the one laughed at instead of the ones laughing! I had every reason to rejoice and no reason whatsoever to feel insulted or angry. Why, it almost made me want to walk across the street and apologize to Mr. Nethery's little loud-mouthed dog. But I figured a confession to Jesus would suffice.
My father never did really comprehend how godless were the spirits that controlled the course of things at my seminary. But what God taught me that day was that His anointed servants do not have to know the details. It is the anointing of Almighty God that "destroys the yoke", and when God anoints a man, as He had anointed my father long ago, what that man knows or doesn't know is irrelevant. He can still destroy any yoke that shackles one of God's little ones with "the wisdom that the holy Ghost teacheth". I am so glad that my father listened to God's Spirit that afternoon instead of listening to my whining about being persecuted. If he had listened to me, I might have worked up his spirit to anger as well as myself! What good then could he have done for me?
Many years later, the Lord showed me something else about that life-changing event in my father's living room that made the deliverance from my bitterness possible. What he showed me was that no matter how wise the counsel was that my father gave me, if in my heart, I respected the seminary professors more than I respected him and his judgment, then his words, regardless of the godly wisdom they contained, would have meant little to me. But in my heart, my father's judgment, as well as the judgment of the congregation of saints with him, was more valuable than the judgment of the professors at the seminary. And that saved me.
It is like the saving grace of God. Paul said that "we are saved by grace through faith." Grace is what God does; faith is our part. "Grace" is God freely offering us liberty and life; "faith" is us reaching out to Him for it. Grace alone saves nobody. Faith alone is equally worthless (Jas. 2:24). But when we place our faith in God's grace, salvation will be the result-every time.
God's grace to me that day was His offer of my father's anointed, comforting wisdom, and my faith in the words of God's servant opened the door for that healing grace of God to enter into my life and set me free. By grace I was delivered through faith, and that not of myself; it was the gift of God.