The House Upon the Rock: So What Can Change? What Can’t Change? Where Do We Stand?

It’s good to be together. It’s good to gather together. It is an ancient practice going all the way back to the medieval university, when scholars would gather together at the beginning of a term, reminding ourselves—by the way—of the inherent, undeniable Christian roots of the university. For a college and a seminary—all the more so committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ—we gather together to remind ourselves of who we are, but even more importantly of whom we serve. This is the service of Christian worship. This is not just a gathering of people dressed in academic garb. There are continuities in this educational culture that we want to celebrate. There’s something here to be recognized, something here to be continued. For us to continue to even wear the academic garb that symbolizes learning and consecrated study, that’s an important thing. To gather together in a formal service and to remind ourselves of the glory of learning and the glory of teaching, that’s a very important thing. To remind ourselves under the authority of scripture, that we do all things under the lordship of Christ, that’s an even more important thing.

We really are responsible to bring every thought captive to the word of God. Just think about that. Every thought captive to the word of God. That’s not most thoughts, the vast majority of thoughts, more thoughts than not, but every thought captive to the word of God. That’s an enormous responsibility: to bring all things captive to Christ. And on the other hand, what a glorious calling. It’s interesting to consider the people who are in this room: a large number of students—and that means college students—and we welcome you back to this term, and it should be a marvelous, marvelous semester for Boyce College. It’s a poignant semester. It’s a very poignant semester. The fall semester—everything is on the upswing. The spring semester—well at least for some students headed for graduation, it’s like a major transition of life is coming. There are some college students for whom this is the last opening convocation, and my heart goes out to you.

We love you. We’re thankful you’re here, and you are about to get about the great things God has called you to do. That’s wonderful. There are new students here—the second term of the first year—we’re so thankful you’re here. By now you’ve pretty much figured out what’s going on, and you can find your way around the campus, and hopefully you have some very good friends.

And there are seminary students who are here and in all kinds of different degree programs but the central calling to preach and teach the word of God and to see those whom God has called and are now gaining the learning requisite for the preaching task, and to see what God is doing in your lives is simply marvelous to sense the conviction on your hearts and the excitement that drives you through this course of study and the joy you have in learning how to study, to read, to teach, and to preach the word of God, how to be an under shepherd of the flock and shepherd the flock of God, how you are enjoying the time you spend with fellow students. That’s a wonderful thing. And there are some seminary students here too nearing the end of their academic program, and the church beckons, the mission fields beckon.

It’s a sweet thing to gather together in a day like this. And then there is this faculty, and I can simply tell you—and I notice about every theological faculty on planet earth, either in person or by reputation—this is the faculty with whom I would study. The Lord’s done the most amazing thing in calling these consecrated scholars together in this place. And you know, they’re not just scholars. If they were just scholars, they could be somewhere else. They’re teacher-scholars. That’s a rare distinction. I think one of the things I love about this faculty is that they love to teach, and they love students, and they love what they teach and it all comes together in that incredible chemistry that only the providence of God can bring about.

And there are others behind us. It’s not just faculty and students, although that’s where the commitment of the institution is made tangible—in what takes place in the classroom and in the hallway. But of course there’s an army of those who are here but not here. And you could say, “Well, he’s talking about those students who are in modular and online programs.” Well, of course I am, but I mean behind them there’s an army of Southern Baptists who faithfully give and faithfully serve and faithfully pray so that we can do what we do every hour of every day of every week on this campus for them. In other words, we don’t ask Southern Baptists to support The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Boyce College because we’re worthy of support. It is because we only exist in order to serve those churches, and that’s a good thing to remind ourselves of.

And so our hearts on an opening day like this should be filled with gratitude to people who aren’t here but are—their hopes and their convictions, their passions, their expectations, their stewardship is channeled here. I believe in the sovereignty of God such that I believe there are some Southern Baptists in places right now who don’t know why their hearts are drawn to Southern Seminary and Boyce College, but they are. I pray they pray for us this morning and that they will keep supporting the great causes of this Convention and doing so generously and joyously. There are other people who are behind us and are here but not here. There are parents of students, there are families of students, and—to God be the glory—to walk around this campus is to know there are children of students—being some of them pushed around in strollers—and they don’t yet know they’re glad they’re here, but they’re glad they’re here, and we are incredibly glad they are here. A sign of God’s pleasure, a sign of God’s blessing.

Also here but not here—and this morning in both senses is a Board of Trustees elected by the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention who hold this institution in trust. And since 1859, the continuity—a very important continuity—of this institution is an unbroken line of trustees elected by the churches who show up as the governing board for this institution. And the word “trustee” just reminds us, they hold in trust for the churches this institution and all that is invested in it. Pastor Josh Powell of Taylor’s First Baptist Church in South Carolina is the current chairman of the Board, and Pastor Powell, I’m going to ask that you would stand that we might recognize you’re here. It’s very, very important that we recognize that as well. There are friends of the seminary who are here, and others and there are those who generously support this school and care deeply and are committed sincerely to this school who aren’t here but are here, but those of us who are physically here, our task is now to turn to the word of God. And I want to direct your attention to Matthew 7:24-27.

There’s a sense in which we just sang this, but we will now read the text of the word of God together here. Hear then God’s word:

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

In the 20th century, a New Testament scholar by the name of Rudolf Bultmann came along—in many ways the most important father of liberal New Testament scholarship as it’s styled—and the central word that explains Bultmann’s methodology was “demythologization.” It was the suggestion that the New Testament is infused with mythological language and concepts, and in the modern age it is the task of the scholar to demythologize the text. That is to say, “Okay, that’s ancient mythology, we can do without that. What existential lesson might we nonetheless learn understanding this is mytho-poetic language and all the rest.”

Well, all I can tell you is, I was raised by Christian parents, but I was a born demythologizer, not of the Bible but of fairytales. For one thing, I did not believe that a wolf could huff and puff and blow your (9:53) house down. I didn’t believe that. I was a demythologizer of that story when I heard it, and I wasn’t sure about the three little pigs involved in real estate, but I did not believe that the wolf could huff and puff and blow their house down. I was not a demythologizer when it came to the scriptures. I was a demythologizer when it came to fairytales.

But nonetheless, that just tells us something, doesn’t it? The “huff and puff and blow your house down.” I mean, you look at this central teaching of Jesus, which is so short and so easily encapsulated in our minds here from Matthew 7, and it’s the dichotomy between a house that’s built on a rock and a house that’s built on the sand, and the house that is built on the sand, well, you can see this coming. “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” This is catastrophe. And even right now, I mean, on the headlines this morning, video coming from California, as we’re praying for brothers and sisters there: mudslides—they’re sweeping houses away. There’s a sense in which you look at this and you say, “Well, they never should have built a house there.” Well, you don’t hear that from me. I mean, I’m sure there are occasions which that’s true. I can simply tell you, I grew up in Florida where sink holes are a problem.

I can still remember being taken as a child to see a hole devouring a house, and it didn’t look like dangerous land. And quite frankly, I’m not sure given the engineering of the time whether they were able even to predict where this might happen. But it’s a horrifying thing for a child to see a house being devoured by a hole. And here’s the other thing. The reason spectators are drawn is not just because it happened but because it is happening. That’s the thing about a sinkhole. You don’t know when it stops. I mean, I kind of thought of that when I was there with my grandfather, and I wanted to say, well, we could be in that hole real quick.

The ground can look very solid under our feet and turn out not to be solid at all. And as a matter of fact, one of the most ancient and, frankly, rational fears of human beings is shaking earth, and earthquakes are among the most terrifying of all natural phenomena, because the one thing we at least like to think we can take for granted is that when we are on solid ground, we’re on solid ground. But as we know—and I’m not talking about modern geophysics, I’m just talking about even our experiential knowledge—as we know, that ground is not so firm as we would like to think it is.

The house to fell is contrasted with the house that stood, “And the rains fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” Now, in the course of the gospel of Matthew, all the parables, all the pictures, the great sermons of Jesus, the occasions in which multiple parables are told, multiple pictures are given, I don’t know that I can say that the disciples there with Jesus understood how central this particular passage—just a few verses—was going to be for the Christian Church or how this particular passage was going to be sung by Christians in Louisville, Kentucky, in the year 2023. 2000 years later, we’re singing this, and not only that, we’re singing it, many if not most of us having known this hymn, all of our lives. “On Christ, the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.”

Ultimately this passage is about Christ. This is the Christ who is speaking this passage, and we’ll look at the context, and it’s not just proverbial wisdom, it’s not just, “Choose your real estate carefully.” This is clearly intended for spiritual and theological application. This is about the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is one thing for other houses to fall. They do regularly. Corporations go bankrupt. Organizations disband. Institutions decline. But it must not be so of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Upon this rock,” Christ said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Even as a child, I heard these words and learned to sing them, and it became such a powerful picture of the Christian faith and of my Christian life and of the centrality of Christ and the essential foundation of truth.

Now you can understand why my attention is drawn to this text at the beginning of an academic term, because this is exactly what academics need to be reminded of. All of us—those who are teaching and those who are learning—there is nothing more ephemeral than what is going on in much of higher education. There is nothing more nonsensical and non-lasting than much of what’s going on in the larger world of higher education. And yet here’s the amazing thing. We actually want to learn what the disciples learned from Christ and what the early church learned from the apostles. We actually want to be saying the same thing and learning the same truths in the year 2024. That’s pretty astounding, at least I think it’s astounding. I don’t want a dentist whose dentistry is well grounded in the early first century. I don’t want a heart surgeon who has first century medical knowledge. However—by the way, I will say I do want a heart surgeon who has first century Hippocratic medical ethics. But you look at this and you recognize engineering is a good thing. I mean, I have been to the ancient world, and I have seen ancient ruins, and I’m glad I wasn’t in that thing when it fell.

I think structural steel is a very good thing. Frankly, I’m very thankful for it. We’re standing in a testimony to structural steel—this building, this particular building—because this building was intended to be built a bit earlier, but because of World War II and the necessity of the Navy needing steel, the steel delivery here was delayed by about two years. And so the steel, well, the school had to wait on the steel to get here in order to build this. And I’m glad they did. I’m glad they didn’t say, “Let’s go cheap and use wood.”

I think the fact that it’s standing so gloriously around us is testimony to the fact that this was a solid construction. By the way, I enjoy telling this story because it’s just a part of the history of Southern Seminary. This chapel, some of you may not know, is basically an exact replica of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta in downtown Atlanta. Now that sanctuary no longer exists there. First Baptist moved, the property was sold to a bank. It’s a bank. It doesn’t look like this. This is gone. Dr. Ellis Fuller had been the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta. He was elected president here. He said, “Let’s do it again.” He wanted this school to have a great chapel. And so, if you see historic pictures in the First Baptist Church of Atlanta, you’re looking basically at this building almost down to the details, including some of the details in the molding.

But Dr. Fuller was very determined that the building be built the scale, and that’s a part of the discipline of this campus is we follow a plan going all the way back to Frederick Hall Olmstead to protect the dignity of the campus. And Dr. Fuller was afraid that if the money got tight, the school would go cheap on the steeple. And he was particularly troubled when he would pass a church and they clearly ran out of money before they put on the steeple, because you have this grand church with this little dinky steeple completely out of scale, and he didn’t want any dinky steeple. And so, he very carefully superintended the entire process so that the great tower out front with that steeple—that would, the chapel itself would not be built until the money was in hand to do everything to scale. So, there it is. But you know what, the hardest thing for the school was getting the property on which this chapel was located. That was the hardest thing.

It was owned by a family, and they had their family home here, and they were not anxious to sell to the seminary. So, the seminary was kind of conscribed by the fact that there was a farmhouse right here. And, well, anyway, it’s a long story, but through much prayer and, at one point, seminary students being organized, coincidentally, to a walk around the property in prayer, in a prayer walk. At some point, the sweet family was persuaded to sell the property to the seminary, and we moved the house. That’s that house. The guest house here was the house that was here and got moved there.

Once I start down this, it’s very hard to stop. Mary and I were in a situation in which we had a couple staying in the guest house, which was what that was for a long time. And it was explained to the people that the house was once here, and it got moved there. And the lady simply asked, “How did they move the basement?” And that’s one of those moments where a president is in a very difficult position, because basically all I could say was they dug another hole, but they did not move the basement. But nonetheless, nonetheless, they did move the house. But you know this building is here not just because of the structural steel and because of the architectural integrity and the 20th century engineering. It’s here because the ground underneath this chapel is solid. And by now, if it were not, we would know. That metaphor is easy for us to understand. It’s easy for us to understand as much as it would be beautiful, you don’t build a house on the precipice of a river bank, not unless you want to be in some sense at one with the river. You don’t build on a fault line. You don’t build on sinking sand. You build on the rock.

So, one of the questions for the Christian Church is, what can change? What can’t change? Where do we stand? Because change is taking place all around us. To say that we’re actually intentionally standing where believers stood 2000 years ago—it’s a perplexity to the world. So, maybe we should start with what can’t change. Maybe that’s prior to what can change, because I think we have to think first of all in the lines of the solid rock, the house built on the rock, what establishes that rock? It’s continuity. It’s the faith once for all delivered to the saints. It’s the pattern of sound words. It’s the faith that was delivered by Christ to the apostles and by the apostles to the Church. It’s the faith articulated, for example, in the Apostles Creed and the Nicene creed and the tradition of confessional Christianity that was often fought in the midst of theological conflict in which the question was, what is the truth, and what is the gospel, and who is Christ? And how do we define what we come to know as the doctrine of the Trinity? How is this done so that the church rightly confesses the faith? What doesn’t change is truth. Sometimes a book title just helps us. That was true when I was a teenager. I didn’t understand everything I was reading in some books, but I just lived on the titles. He Is There, and He Is Not Silent. Martin Lloyd Jones wrote a little book entitled Truth Unchanged and Unchanging. I just, I’m glad he wrote the title. We can live on that for a while. What is truth is that which is unchanged and unchanging. If it’s true, you can bank your life on it. If it’s true, it was true yesterday, it’s true today, and it will be true tomorrow.

It doesn’t change. We seek conscious, intentional continuity of the Apostles’ teaching. You know, back in the 19th century in the United States, multiple denominations claimed to be the most continuous, and not more than the Baptists, any of them. The Baptist were at the forefront of saying, “This is continuity.” Now, sometimes that argument came out a bit stupidly like, “Of course I’m a Baptist, so was John the Baptist.” It also came out intelligently, as in, “This is primitive Christianity, This is New Testament Christianity.” That’s when that phrase became so urgent in American denominational life. What is New Testament Christianity? Where is the New Testament church? And Baptists said, “Well, it’s here.” One of the most interesting books that came out of the Southern Baptist Convention’s official press early in the 20th century, based on 19th century presses, was a book entitled Baptist Why and Why Not?

And it wasn’t like Why to be a Baptist and Why Not to be a Baptist? It was Baptist and why not Presbyterian Baptist and Baptist and why not Methodist? So, it was basically answering the claims made by other denominations. And the issue was, which was more continuous? That was the argument. And the Methodists said, “Well, we’re very continuous, because we’re continuous with the Church of England, which is grounded in Protestant Reformation, which is grounded…” You know, go go go go go go.” The Presbyterians made their claim. The Baptist made their claim, and the Baptist published the book. So, there you go. But the point is that primitive instinct isn’t wrong. It can be ungainly, and it can be wrongly construed, but it’s not wrong. We really do want to preach what Peter preached. We really do want to confess what Paul taught. We really do want to be New Testament Christians. So, what can’t change includes truth, scripture, faithful doctrine, biblical morality. What can’t change is the deposit of faith, which is the truth of the Christian faith. Now this also leads to some other questions. What about worship?

Even in preparing to preach on this text this morning, just in recent days, I’ve been pondering. You know, I think people would say that what’s changed visibly is the form of Christian worship. But I just want to say, not if you look closely. I mean, what is the form of Christian worship? It’s preaching and prayer and scripture reading and hymns—psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Now, I’m not blessing everything that takes place in what is claimed to be Christian worship, but I’m simply saying that we still are reading the scripture. We still are preaching the Word. We still are praying together, and we still are singing Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. And we can argue as to which form is most biblical and most God honoring. But the point is we are pretty much still doing what the ancient Christians did. What doesn’t change is the great commission. That doesn’t change—Christ sending his disciples into the world to preach the gospel to all the nations. That just doesn’t change. That’s absolutely continuous. The Church has been more and less faithful in different times, but the commission has never been more and less in place. You know something else—and Christians have not always had to say this out loud, but now we have to say this out loud—something else that’s absolutely continuous is the structures of creation. The structures of creation are absolutely continuous. Male and female created he them—the institution of the family and marriage—the structures of creation—are unchanged and unchanging. The world may confuse them and is currently confusing them horribly. But for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, the structures of creation are not up for renegotiation. They are not ours to renegotiate. They are the very structures of creation given to us by the creator for his own glory and for our good. So then what can change? It’s not much, frankly. I mean, just to be honest, as we’re beginning this academic term, one of the things to recognize is there just isn’t much that can change. Tunes? Yes, tunes change. Christianity Today back in the 1960s—then very much the voice of kind of institutional evangelical Christianity back then. I read it as a college student, and I also liked the cartoons, and I cut some of them out and put it on my dorm room door, and my door became popular for the cartoons. And I think the favorite of all was an old man standing up in church who said, “I’ve just received a word from the Lord and he don’t like rock music.

And so, yeah, we know that guy. I am now that guy. But anyway, when you look at this, I mean you look at this and go, tunes do change, and we may like the tune, or we may dislike the tune, and that’s not beyond theological scrutiny, but that’s not what’s unchanged and unchanging. Styles change. Dress changes. Language changes. Conceptual context changes. Technology changes. That’s all easy for us to recognize, but that then presses back again. Well then again, what’s not changing? Well, the hardest question for Christians—and this is a good time just in summary to remind ourselves of this—the hardest thing for Christians has been doctrinal change. It’s the hardest thing now. So, we’re saying right up front, the truth doesn’t change. God’s Word doesn’t change. But over time, the Christian Church has developed a more extensive way of articulating, affirming, and confessing biblical truth. And by the time you get to the 16th century and beyond, you’ve got an enormous argument going on. And it’s good that we sometimes just say this out loud. So evangelical protestants do not say that doctrine does not change. Be careful, I’m speaking with specificity. The truth does not change. God’s Word does not change. But the Nicaean Creed that we just recited emerges from a specific fourth century context of theological debate in which the Christian Church said, as we are confessing the Christ who is revealed in scripture, we must learn how to use words to make very clear what the scripture teaches and what the scripture does not teach. What is true and what is not true.

The Protestant position, as taken by the magisterial reformers and their heirs is that , yes, doctrine develops, but not on the basis of new revelation but only as a better articulation of that faith once for all delivered to the saints. So that Protestant position is, we may learn to say this better, but the doctrine is not changing. That is to say, the truth is not changing. Requirements to us, new heresies, new challenges, new conceptual context may require us to say more explicitly what didn’t have to be said before. But this is simply to expound faithfully and confess faithfully what has always been true and will ever be true. That’s contrasted with the Catholic position, which is that the Church is the steward for the development of doctrine in light that is given subsequently to scripture under the magisterial authority of the Church. That’s a radical argument, I mean, because we actually believe that there is no one who is the steward of doctrine on earth to receive new illumination and wisdom for the further elaboration of doctrine. You know, by the time you have the articulation of the doctrine of say, the assumption of Mary, we’re clearly way outside of the scripture.

It’s important for us to think about this because, I mean, quite frankly, the debate between Protestants and Roman Catholics on what can change and what can’t change continues, but honestly in our midst in this day, there are those who are unconstrained by even the Catholic methodology and, quite frankly, just blatantly seek to redefine what they know as the Christian faith, calling for, you know, a new Christianity. Well, we know exactly what that is. Whatever it is, if it’s new, it’s not Christianity. And that’s the point.

So, in honesty, when we gather together, it’s good. It’s a constraining fact for Christians to gather together and say, well, we know we’re going to remind ourselves that our academic task is not primarily to give attention to what changes, but to what doesn’t. And that puts us in a very odd neighborhood in terms of higher education in the United States. So just think about what’s going on in that world. Just think about all the sudden, by the way, in the last, say, six months—maybe a little more—but particularly in the last six months—and particularly after the attack of Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group, on Israel on October 7—especially in the time since then. So that’s just a few weeks still. Just think of how Americans are all of a sudden talking about American higher education in a way they hadn’t been in a long time. And a lot of it came down to just a few university presidents in a Congressional hearing room who couldn’t say that calling for the annihilation of the Jews on their campuses would be an actionable offense. And you know what? A lot of Americans were awakened, but anyone who’d been watching what goes on in higher education shouldn’t be surprised by that at all. I mean, in all honesty, much of what’s called higher education is neither education nor higher. It’s just a political game being played out.

And so, we look at that and we say, you know, if that’s the point of reference, we’re not even a part of that world. And long before you get to that congressional hearing, just everything that is lost. And you think of one institution, just think of Harvard University, because we can’t help getting past this. And sometimes that means physically getting past this, because you walk in the gates, the main gates at Harvard, and up is the charter statement indicating how this institution—as Harvard College then—was established primarily for the training of godly ministry. It’s a long way from that. And this is what sets us apart. We actually want to be ancient in our teaching even as we’re called to teach the faith unchanged and unchanging in radically changing times. The older I get, the more I believe—and this could start a debate, and that’s kind of what I want at some point, not so much in this room, but with those outside this room—I’m more and more convinced that what we face is just a resurgent Hegelianism all around us. And there’s a sense in which it’s been kind of built into the modern age because of Hegel’s idea of history unfolding with an inevitable progress. And without going into the detail, it’s that inevitable unfolding of spirit toward the future, new forms, new morphologies, new energies, this inevitability that something new is going to replace that in the old, and the new is by definition better than that in the old. The Hegelian spirit infuses so much of our society, but I think it’s closer to us as a virus than we might like to think. It’s the kind of thing we need to think about in the beginning of a new semester.

Well, our responsibility is to hold to the faith once we’re all delivered to the saints, not just because that’s a task assigned to us, but because that’s what’s true. Let’s just look each other in the eye and say, “Here’s the most important thing about it. It’s true. You know, Jesus saves. Jesus saves sinners. It’s real.” That’s the thing about the sinking sand. It looks real, but then it turns out not to be real except as a real danger. It looks like solid ground, but it’s not. It’s fault advertising. As soon as the winds come, the rain falls, the floods come, it fell, and great is the fall of it. So, it’s just sobering and humbling but also energizing for us to think about these things and just commit ourselves to the task that is invested here, the task that is reflected in our own confession of faith, that is confessed when we stood together and recited the Nicene creed together. I know it may not have seemed like an act of rebellion, but in the modern age, wow, is that an act of rebellion. And I am proud to be rebels with you against the age for the truth. So, what do we do now? We go to class, teach class. We’re happy and joyful in this because we are those who get to be a part of the transmission of the faith, once for all delivered to the saints, from one generation to the next.

Gladly do we receive it as we come. Gladly do we take it as we go. And in all of this, I hope that all of us are unspeakably happy in this and—even more than happy—joyful and thankful. Because when you think about why we are here and what the Lord is doing here, who wouldn’t be happy and joyful to be a part of this? May God consecrate this term, this semester, this school to his glory, for his purposes, for the sake of his church. That’s what we’re here for. That’s what we pray for. Amen.