Dr. Joel C. Gregory -- 1988 SBC Annual Sermon

0:05 Thank you so much, Travis Avenue Sanctuary Choir and Orchestra and Bill Pearson. In his 25th year as our Minister of Music at Travis Avenue, you've blessed us and helped me to preach. And thank you for the gracious words of introduction, President Rogers. One of the most beautiful castles in Ireland came to a strange and unusual end It was the castle, Castlereagh which was one of the architectural gems of the Emerald Isle It fell into disrepair and finally was uninhabited As usually happens The peasants from nearby began to savage it and scavenge for stones They were craftily cut and firmly fit They did not have to dig them up and carry them So little by little the castle of Castlereagh was dismantled On a day Lord Londonderry, who was the sole surviving heir Of that Irish castle, visited his family's patrimony And saw that it was being scavenged for its stones So he ordered an agent, build a wall around the castle, build it six feet high, coped with stone, and then he left, feeling that the castle would be safe from trespassers.

1:39 Three or four years later Lord Londonderry came back And he found a six foot wall And no castle The castle had vanished Disappeared Into thin air He asked his agent why he had not obeyed his command And the agent said I did And he said where is the castle And he said ah Is it for me my lord to be going all over Ireland digging up stone when the finest stone in Ireland was right here in the castle? He had torn down the castle in order to build the wall. He could have had both a wall and a castle, but he chose to tear down the castle to build the wall.

2:38 In some ways, this story to me is a parable this noonday of our beloved and historic Southern Baptist Convention meeting in San Antonio. It is a parable in this way at this high noon. There have been for years many of us who felt that a wall of orthodoxy had to be built around the Southern Baptist Convention castle. We grew up in the castle and we watched with concern lest the predatory peasants strip our castle of its stone with a theological liberalism so we built a wall around the castle. We saw other denominational castles up and down the streets of American cities lifeless and empty and ruined because the same predators had attacked them and we said, no, you will not do that to our castle.

3:48 But in building the wall, we are now at a critical moment in the more than 140 years of our denomination's history for we must not both build the wall and tear down the castle or we will be in the ridiculous position of Lord Londonderry who came back and found a wall without a castle. We can survive years of theological debate. We are not good for many more months of the present level of personal animosity in our midst.

4:49 I want to ask a question. Can we build a wall and have a castle? Yes. If we will stop savaging one another with personal animosity, can we build a wall and have a castle? Yes. If we will today decide we are going to cease from the murderous malice that is going to malign our mission as Southern Baptists. We can have the wall and the castle if we turn from personal animosity and imitate the kindness and forgiveness of God. Would you open his word with me to Ephesians chapter 4, verses 29 and following.

5:51 a word written not to the world but to the church. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and malice. Be kind and compassionate one to another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God. We can build a wall and keep the castle if we consecrate our conversation.

6:52 Ephesians 4.29 has a prohibition and an admonition. The prohibition in the authorized version is very clear. Let no, no, no corrupt communication come out of your mouth. The admonition is speak only those things which build up and edify and minister grace. There's an absolute prohibition. Let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth. Now we know that means anything that's vulgar, obscene, or profane, but we Baptists cannot therefore be comfortable because of that, for it means more than that. That word corrupt means anything that is diseased or disgusting, that is worn or worthless, that is rotten or is scurrilous in these kind of days we need to be careful that what is born, conceived in our mind is not given birth on our tongue, that what tries to tackle our tongue to get out of our mouth we do not let out of our mouth, that what cries for release from inside of us we do not speak and what would ram its way through our lips and our teeth we do not say because we believe the word of God when it says let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth.

8:08 I look back over the decade of this controversy and I think of the words and if you hear me speaking unilaterally you're not hearing me because every word I'm saying today is under God a bilateral word to every one of us I think of the words they have become slogans watchwords battle cries flashpoints hot points These words have sometimes erupted like volcanoes. They have taken on a life of their own. These words have sometimes divided us. They have goaded us and galvanized us. They've sometimes chained us and stained us. They've sometimes forged us together or forced us apart. Some have polluted us and some have adulterated us. They've been on platforms. They've been in printed pages. And if we do not say this year in San Antonio, we will begin to let no corrupt communication come out of our mouth.

9:06 We may build a wall, but we will lose the castle. The Australian House of Representatives in that rather frontier country had to finally pass a House Behavior Code eliminating some words as epithets of address for members of the House. Those words included blood drinker, cad, cur, gas bag, ignoramus, lapdog, mendacious mongrel, miserable body snatcher, rat, sewer rat, and slimy reptile. I suppose that if the Australian House of Representatives, a secular assembly said, we will temper and chasten our speech, how much more a sacred assembly such as this of God's holy people. When I look back at the history of denominational debate in the Southern Baptist Convention, I look at the words spoken by that famous pastor who was called the Texas Tornado in his debate with the second president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

10:22 He rose to the rhetoric one day of calling that president a low-down, flop-beard, suck-egg dog. After putting up with years of that The president finally compared him to a bank robber Highwayman, bootlegger or other kind of murderer While all the time the word of God which cannot err Wrote over that Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth I'm not insinuating that everybody in this assembly talks that way But I am saying that we are at such a flashpoint hawk point seething cauldron of malice that we are going to build a wall and ruin the castle unless we will bow before that word and say under God no corrupt communication coming out of my mouth. But along with that negative there's a positive, admonition.

11:15 And that is out of your mouth only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may grace those who listen. Our language spoken to the church is for building up, not tearing down. The very word means that which is useful, serviceable, suitable for building one another up. It implies that my brother has a gap in his life. My sister has a hollow in her heart. There's an empty space. And by my words, solidly, surely, constructively, I build up my brother and sister. Brothers and sisters, what are we going to become when most of our language hounds us and hackles at us and hacks at us. And when instead of dignifying one another, we bedevil one another. Instead of lifting one another up and building one another, we belittle one another. Instead of edifying one another, we crucify one another.

12:08 Our very words are supposed to be vehicles for the grace of Almighty God. They are supposed to be adorned with grace. Our language is supposed to be clinging to our conversation with grace. It is to be clothed with grace. I want to ask you, every one of you from the top gallery of this all around, to ask yourself under the Spirit of God a single, salient, simple question. What is it this day, not in years gone by, but this day, what is it this day that more harms the witness of God's Southern Baptist people than anything else? If you put in one hand the apostasy in our midst, and if you put in that hand the fallen leaders that have slandered evangelical Christianity in one hand, And if you were to put in the other hand all of the scurrilous, retaliatory, virulent words we've spoken, I'd tell you under God, if no one in this hall agrees with me, I know for a certainty in my soul that our witness is impeded, our power is retarded, more by what we are saying than by anything else among us.

13:13 there is a midst of us a sullenness a half concealed resentment and icy frigidity a kind of ominous reticence a smoldering bitterness that i see stalking the hallways even of this gathering you may say as someone told me earlier this week young man you're too idealistic to say that theological controversy can continue without personal animosity. It can if we understand this.

13:50 The end does not justify any means whatsoever. If you are a Southern Baptist institutionalist, that means your protection of your institution from others does not justify any kind of language you wish to use. And it means that if you are a conservative concerned with walling in the castle with orthodoxy, the end does not justify the means of any kind of language you would use. These words are not qualified. This does not say let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth unless you are a combatant in a denominational controversy and then you have a carte blanche to say anything.

14:53 It doesn't say let no word come out of your mouth unless you're stung into fury by your opponent and then you have the right to say anything. It says let no, no, no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. We can build the wall and keep the castle if there is an abstinence from some attitudes. We Baptists are internationally known for our abstinence from certain beverages, but we need to recognize that there are imperatives and mandates and commands that are just as binding in the Word of God that call for an abstinence of certain attitudes.

15:41 And in verse 31, we are told, Get rid, slough off, have done with, once and for all, crucify to the cross with all bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, along with every form of malice. These words begin in the hidden recesses of the temple of your own heart where no one but you and God can see that there is bitterness. But eventually and inevitably they grow through that hiddenness to become outward acclamations and finally outward acts, one against the other. And the mandate of Scripture is categorical, get rid of all of them. The Word of God which cannot err has as an absolute imperative. Be gone with them. not only in your relationship to the world, but your relationship to the church. Not only the relationship to the church, but the relationship to the denomination.

16:36 Not only the relationship to the denomination, but in Baptist debate, be done with these. Would you hear the word of God today? Get rid of bitterness. Get rid of bitterness. Simple, straightforward, naked statement. Get rid of bitterness. That word in the language of the New Testament is a word which speaks of the attitude which cherishes resentful feelings. Aristotle in his book on ethics defining the word said, it is the attitude which refuses to be reconciled. The apostles said abstain from all of it Comprehensively the ocean of bitterness And individually every stream and river and tributary That would flow into that ocean Get rid of bitterness When it's in your mind slay it The great gentleman general of the south General Robert E. Lee Said concerning the north With whom he was in a battle for the life or death of his nation.

17:50 I have never cherished bitter or vindictive feelings toward them, nor have I failed to pray for them every day. Do you suppose that we as Southern Baptists might rise to the ethical level of a Civil War general and say we will not be bitter? There are deadly carnal passions of a grosser sort in the Christian life that kill testimony and influence. When we have still that volcano, we can still be spiritually slain at the point of usefulness by bitterness. I'm told by geologists that after a volcano's fires have died in the cracks and the crevices around that volcano there are still poisonous and noxious gases which are instantly lethal I trust that many of us in our own lives have quenched the flame of other passions but you'd better believe it brother and sister a lifetime of smoldering, burning, incendiary bitterness will put you on the shelf in the power of God coming through your life.

19:12 It's deadly. It erupts into rage and anger. The word rage refers to that earthquake, that eruption, explosion like lightning striking a dam burst. But then that becomes what is called wrath in the authorized version, that smoldering center of life. And that becomes no longer an attitude but an outward acclamation. Here he uses the word brawling and slander It's an interesting word. It's the word that was used in Acts 23 when Paul was in front of the Sanhedrin, caught between the Sadducees and the Pharisees. He said, I'm here because I believe in the resurrection. The Pharisees said, we believe in the resurrection too. The Sadducees, we don't. And immediately there was a brawl in the midst of the Sanhedrin. The word means an attitude which seeks to cover up the lack of substance simply by making more and more and more noise. Listen, there's an old saying among lawyers that when the facts are on your side, argue the facts.

20:13 When the law is on your side, argue the law. But when neither the facts nor the law are on your side, attack the witness. Listen, you mark well who speaks to facts, who speaks to principles, and who attacks the witness for we are to put away bitterness and malice out of our heart. It's a kind of collective craziness. Malice, at the end of this list, devilish list of six things ties them all together. It means active ill will, expressed resentment, the desire to crush, to destroy, if I could. In Titus 3.3, writing of this attitude, the apostle said at one time, We too were foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.

21:14 What if Titus 3.3 were written on the front page of one of the metropolitan dailies of this city? Would people say that's a reference to the Greco-Roman world? Or would they say that's a reference to the convening together of those people who call themselves God's people? It is craziness, brothers and sisters. The French word écrasse gives us our word crazy, and it means to shatter, to burst asunder, to split apart. There was a girl in a sorority, a beautiful, sophisticated, and winsome girl who quit the sorority. I said, why did you quit? And she said, I quit because of the implicit hypocrisy in calling them sorority sisters when I knew all they did was exercise hatred and malice toward one another. Listen, individuals are malicious. Ideologies cannot be malicious Institutions are not malicious Partisan parties are not malicious For that matter, inerrancy or non-inerrancy as concepts are not malicious Individuals are malicious And it is in my heart and your heart that we must deal with the bitterness of malice Edwin Markham lost a fortune At age 60 He was broke and he became a poet And having become a poet He found that he got caught in the trap Of lecturing on his poetry So that he lost his creativity And great resentment began to sweep over him Until he said no No I will not let it into my heart Love will outlast the stars Some of us have things which cherished Would become smoldering bitterness and malice Under God I exhort you I plead with you as brothers and sisters in Christ Stop it, slay it, crucify it It will put film over your spiritual eyes It will put wax in your spiritual ears it will petrify and ossify your heart

23:20 so you no longer see God, hear God, or feel God. Be done with malice. But finally, we will build the wall and keep the castle If we imitate God Paul had earlier said, be imitators of me Then he said, be imitators of me and of the Lord But in this passage, unfortunately broken by chapter division He says, be imitators of God There is a way to build a wall and keep a castle And that is if you and I become imitators of God Imitating divine kindness Where was it? In a beginner or a primary Sunday school class years ago that you memorized it Be kind and tender hearted as it dropped out of the canon of sacred scripture?

24:25 No. To imitate God, we are kind. Our Lord's name in the Greek New Testament is Christos. The word for kindness is Christos. There's only one letter's difference. Those who know Christos are those who must reflect it in the attribute of Christos. Our Lord said in Luke 6, 36, love your enemies, theological or otherwise, in order that you might be sons of the Most High who is what? Kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. If Almighty God can peer over from His holy throne and be kind to those who throw back at His throne in gratitude and wickedness, Don't you think it is possible that we might once again become kind to one another?

25:22 After all, it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance The very language means it is to be more and more so It is not to be regressive, it is to be progressive Every year that a redwood tree grows, it adds another ring Every year that a nautilus grows, it adds another house in its shell We are not to regress in kindness The longer we walk with the Lord and in his service, we are to progress in kindness when pastors are out on the golf course and they top a ball or slice it real bad, about the strongest thing they usually say, I think, is goodness gracious.

25:52 But I want to ask you, is your goodness gracious? Alice Palmer, the president of Wellesley College, spoke of Christians who were kind but cold. There is no intentional freezing, but there is an absence of the sunshine that melts and warms. What a tragedy in the Southern Baptist Convention when in and out of this place we give one another limp handshakes, averted glances look suspiciously to see who's talking to whom about what have half concealed resentment on our faces and our voices when we meet one another can we not remember that everybody involved in this lives in a house with a mother and a father and a wife and boys and girls and be kind to one another once again Thank you.

26:59 There was one pastor who wrote 25 friends, picked at random the same identical note. It said this, I'm praying for you in your difficult situation. More than half of them wrote him back and said, How did you know? You and I know that those of us who lead the church of God and the family of God are under an urgency and a pressure of time and a stretch of person already. We must return to kindness to one another, along with that tenderheartedness, a sweetness that desires not to hurt, the very opposite of bitterness and malice. I read the other day about a hardness scale invented by scientists to measure hardness.

27:54 Number one on the scale was talcum powder, about as soft as you can get. Two and a half was a human fingernail. Five was window glass. Ten was a diamond, the hardest substance occurring naturally, 90 times harder than anything else. And as I read that, I wondered what is this doing to our hearts individually and collectively is there anything left in you that can look at another brother or sister and be tenderized toward them and kind toward them but the bottom line of it all is the last and haunting word for he said imitate one another forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you. This was not a word spoken outside the church.

28:50 It was a word spoken inside the church. This did not say forgive one another unless you are involved in a world-class, ethical, theological controversy, then you're exempted. It said forgive one another. I have sometimes said that among the most neglected words about salvation in the Southern Baptist vocabulary are Matthew 6, 14, and 15, where we are told absolutely, categorically, exclusively, if we forgive our brother his sins, our Heavenly Father forgives us. If we do not forgive our brother his sins, our Heavenly Father does not forgive us. I have been told by a partisan, not on one side, but on both sides of this controversy, the same thing.

29:45 It's interesting how that sometimes happens. And this was the phrase, I have a long memory. Now when I heard that, I filed it away in my heart. For I've heard that bilaterally, I have a long memory. can I suggest this to you pastorally when you stand in the presence of almighty God maker of heaven and earth when you stand before that one to whom every secret is known from whom no heart is closed from whom every man is an open book when you stand in the presence of the holiness and the light of his throne the last thing in eternity you want him to tell you is, I have a long memory.

30:40 you would want to tell him oh lord do you not remember psalm 103 about the east and the west do you not remember micah 7 about burying it in the sea you do not want him to hear him say, I have a long memory. Do you understand this? According to the dominical words of our Lord himself, if you have a long memory, you'd better start suffering from some holy amnesia before you stand in his presence. how unlike most of us, God is. There was an Irish lady named Bridget who was telling a friend that she'd recently gone to confession.

31:36 And her friend said, Surely, Bridget, you didn't have anything to confess. And she said, Oh, yes, I did. I was trying to get an ice cube tray out of the refrigerator, and it stuck, and I said a hard thing. And then I ran my mother-in-law out of the room with a broom. And her friend said, That was a year ago. Surely you've been to confession. And she said, ah, yes, I've been every week, but I confess it because I do so love to remember it. There is something in us that needs to stop loving to remember it. It has been said that if we do not learn history, we're doomed to repeat it. Martin Luther, the great German reformer, had a single disagreement with Ulrich Zwingli, the great Swiss reformer.

32:31 They disagreed over the nature of the Lord's Supper. Martin Luther said, in the Lord's Supper elements there is the corporeal presence of Christ like fire in iron. Zwingli, more like a Baptist, said its symbol, its emblem. They got into a warfare of written words, and it escalated and escalated and escalated until Luther was calling the great Swiss expositor a devil, and he was giving it back to Luther in kind. And finally, the federal government of that day made them meet in Marburg to settle it. Luther came to the table, and Zwingli came to the table, and those 46-year-old men stood face to face. Luther wrote on the table in chalk this is my body in Latin and he wouldn't give an inch because that was his conviction and he would not back down from his semi-Catholic view on the other hand Zwingli pleaded with him from the Baptist type viewpoint please hear me listen and on a Monday those two giants stood before one another for the last time Zwingli held out his hand for Christian brotherhood.

33:49 They agreed on everything essential except that. And Martin Luther froze his hand by his side. And the Wittenbergers told the Swiss, you do not belong to the holy communion of the church. And I still think of Holdrick Zwingli. Philip Chaff says, with tears in his eyes, admiring Luther, holding out his hand, saying, give me the hand of brotherhood. When Zwingli was killed on the field of battle, it is recorded that Luther said he deserved it. I think I'm standing here for many of you holding out my hand today to you, Brother Adrian to Brother Winford to Brother Jerry to Brother Richard and a host of others say We can build a wall and keep the castle Be my brother