Howard C. Wilkinson - "Discipline and Freedom" (September 12, 1965)

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	(clapping)	0:04
	(microphone sound)	0:06
	(microphone sound)	0:33
	(instrumental music)	0:39
	(indistinct coughing)	0:47
	(instrumental music)	0:55
	(people moving around)	1:53
	(instrumental music continues)	2:04
	(dramatic music)	2:57
	(music stops)	3:24
	(next song starts to play)	3:32
	(music becomes louder)	4:29
	♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪	4:52
	♪ Praise Him all creatures here below ♪	4:58
	♪ Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts ♪	5:04
	♪ Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost ♪	5:10
	♪ Amen. ♪	5:18
Announcer	Eternal God our heavenly Father,	5:25
	we offer unto thee, these our gifts	5:27
	with humble and thankful hearts.	5:30
	And in presenting them,	5:33
	we present ourselves,	5:35
	with the prayer that both may be used to the glory	5:39
	of thy kingdom, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	5:41
	Amen.	5:47
	(moving around)	5:51
Preacher	Next Sunday we return to our regular series	6:05
	of university services of worship	6:09
	with the return of freshmen Sunday,	6:12
	which will be observed at 11 o'clock here in this chapel,	6:16
	next Sunday.	6:20
	Preacher will be the Reverend Professor James T Cleland,	6:22
	who is Dean of the chapel,	6:25
	who will be preaching the freshmen sermon this year.	6:26
	We are stealing a little bit of a March	6:30
	on freshmen Sunday here today	6:33
	by welcoming the freshmen members of the	6:35
	Duke football squad who are present	6:39
	and worshiping with us today for the first time.	6:42
	They haven't come in during the past week.	6:45
	Next Sunday we will welcome all of the freshmen.	6:48
	These two Sundays, last Sunday and today,	6:52
	our special football squad services	6:57
	in two ways.	7:00
	First, they are designed mainly	7:01
	for the benefit of the football squad.	7:04
	They being the only students	7:06
	who are regularly on campus at this time.	7:08
	And secondly, by the participation	7:12
	of members of the squad in the conducting of the service.	7:15
	We look forward to these two Sundays of services each year.	7:20
	And I might say without meaning to insult	7:24
	the other members of the congregation who are present here,	7:28
	and those who are listening in by radio,	7:32
	we do not have you folk mainly in mind as we	7:34
	design and plan these services.	7:38
	I want you to know that I feel a good deal	7:42
	more comfortable in the service today	7:44
	than I did last Sunday.	7:46
	In fact, I felt last Sunday, definitely in the minority,	7:48
	as I took some part in the service.	7:51
	There was John Simpson,	7:55
	the pianist,	7:57
	and reading the scripture was John Gudikunst,	8:01
	the captain of the team,	8:03
	and leading prayers in the service was John McNab,	8:05
	the president of the fellowship of Christian athletes.	8:09
	And then when we came to the sermon,	8:12
	we had the gospel according to John Wilson.	8:14
	I was the only non-Joe Hannah, an element in the service.	8:17
	Today with Bob and Mike, along with two Johns,	8:22
	which we still have today,	8:26
	one Howard, is a little bit more comfortable.	8:28
	I would like now for you to do some supposing with me,	8:34
	I would like for you to suppose that next Saturday afternoon	8:41
	in Charlottesville, Virginia,	8:46
	the members of the two opposing football squads	8:50
	have put on their shoulder pads, their game jerseys,	8:54
	their shoes and all the other football gear.	9:00
	They have taken to the field and they are lined up	9:04
	in opposition to each other	9:08
	all the way across the field is the line	9:11
	of the blue and white	9:14
	and facing them all the way across the field,	9:15
	a line of the Virginia players.	9:18
	The referees in their white and black stripes	9:21
	are on the field.	9:24
	The national Anthem has been played	9:27
	and the referee in charge has the whistle in his mouth	9:29
	and he holds up his hand	9:33
	and he is ready to commence the game.	9:35
	He blows the whistle	9:40
	and instead of the player	9:43
	who has been elected to make the kickoff,	9:46
	going forward and engaging the ball with his foot,	9:49
	everyone on	9:54
	both teams	9:56
	begins to do knee bends,	9:58
	and the fans up in the stands on both sides of the stadium	10:04
	look in amazement at this spectacle	10:09
	that is unfolding before their very eyes.	10:12
	Here are all these football players down on the field,	10:16
	going up and down, up and down, up and down.	10:20
	And after a little bit, the referee blows the whistle again.	10:26
	And the people in the stands think	10:30
	that he is blowing the whistle to find out what is going on.	10:32
	But instead of that, when he blows the whistle	10:37
	the second time, they quit doing knee bends	10:39
	and began to do pushups.	10:43
	And after a while of doing pushups,	10:46
	the referee blows the whistle	10:49
	and coach Murray sends in a few substitutes	10:52
	who take the place of some of the people	10:55
	who are out there on the field.	10:57
	And the managers of both teams rush on the field	11:02
	with carts that have weights in them,	11:05
	and they distribute weights to all the players	11:07
	on both teams, and they begin then to lift weights.	11:10
	And after this has gone on for a while,	11:14
	the referee blows the whistle and they have time out,	11:16
	a quarter, presently a half,	11:19
	and they have done isometrics	11:23
	before all the people in the stands.	11:25
	And at last, when he blows the whistle again,	11:29
	everyone gets out on the track and starts doing laps.	11:32
	And finally they do wind sprints.	11:36
	And then the referee blows the final whistle,	11:41
	gets the attention of the crowd and said	11:44
	now on the basis of my observation	11:47
	of the pushups and the knee bends,	11:50
	the weightlifting, the isometrics,	11:53
	the laps around the track and the wind sprints,	11:55
	I have declared, and of course it would be this way	11:58
	that Duke University has won this football game.	12:02
	Well the referee would think that everyone would go home.	12:08
	Not so, people in the stands who have been stunned	12:13
	beyond belief, by what they have seen,	12:17
	begin to discuss what they have been seeing with each other.	12:21
	And one man says, look here,	12:27
	I protest this spectacle in the strongest terms possible,	12:30
	my ticket, which I paid money to get,	12:36
	says that I was entitled to see a football game.	12:39
	And look what I saw when I came out here	12:43
	to Charlottesville today.	12:46
	Another one said, well perhaps there has simply been	12:49
	a mistake made that this was a track meet	12:52
	instead of a football game,	12:55
	and we have witnessed a track meet.	12:57
	And another one, quite confused,	13:00
	and yet unwilling to be totally confused said, no,	13:03
	I think we've seen a football game,	13:07
	because I was doing some special work	13:10
	down on the campus of Duke University this summer,	13:12
	and some of the football players were in summer school.	13:14
	And I saw them at different times during the summer	13:19
	doing knee bends, pushups, isometrics, weightlifting,	13:23
	doing laps around the track and wind sprints,	13:28
	and I asked them what they were doing,	13:31
	and they said they were getting in practice for football.	13:32
	And so they said,	13:37
	they were practicing to do just exactly	13:39
	what we have seen them do here today.	13:42
	So I think that this is football,	13:44
	this is football according to the latest revision	13:48
	of the rules.	13:51
	And another one would say, now let's go get the rules	13:53
	and see what this is that we have seen.	13:55
	Well now I think before we continue this conversation	13:59
	any further, we'll put out a period on this	14:01
	make believe game of football, this fantasy football,	14:05
	this supposing that we have been doing.	14:09
	And let me try to explain to you why	14:12
	I have asked you to suppose that this will take place	14:16
	next Saturday afternoon.	14:20
	It is not as fantastic as it seems on the surface,	14:24
	not by a long shot.	14:30
	This is not altogether a fantastic picture.	14:32
	And the reason is that the exercises	14:37
	and the disciplines of the summer,	14:41
	which are as described, will have a great deal to do	14:44
	with what really will take place	14:50
	in Charlottesville next Saturday.	14:52
	And when the final score is up on the scoreboard,	14:56
	it will be determined in some measure	15:00
	by how well the athletes of both squads this summer	15:03
	have done all of these things, which when I described them,	15:07
	did not sound like football to some of you	15:11
	who are here today and are not on the football squad,	15:14
	but the members of the squad will know very well	15:17
	what I'm talking about when I say that these things	15:20
	will have a lot to do with the outcome	15:25
	of the actual football game.	15:27
	Secondly,	15:30
	the spectacular football which you will really see,	15:32
	those of you who go,	15:35
	will be made possible	15:38
	in large measure	15:42
	by the drudgery of this non-football kind of practice	15:45
	and discipline and training.	15:49
	And so when the quarterback takes the ball and	15:53
	appearing to be as free as a breeze	15:56
	and as unfettered as an antelope and begins to run around	15:58
	and scramble the game and go around the end	16:02
	or whatever he does,	16:04
	this freedom which he has achieved and which he will display	16:07
	has been made possible by something that is not at all free,	16:12
	not at all unstructured,	16:16
	something that has been for him,	16:19
	hard discipline, drudgery, training,	16:24
	practice, repetition,	16:28
	self-denial,	16:31
	getting himself in shape.	16:34
	And when the fullback with reckless abandon	16:39
	plunges into the line and seems to be completely on his own,	16:42
	he will be able to do this	16:48
	also because of this kind of	16:50
	unfree,	16:53
	fettered,	16:55
	discipline	16:57
	for months and months ahead.	16:58
	And so it is with the halfbacks, the lonesome ends	17:00
	and all the others,	17:03
	who performed their tasks	17:05
	and who seemed to be just having a great time out there	17:07
	doing what they want to do.	17:10
	Now I would like for you to	17:14
	move to another point in your thinking here	17:17
	for a little bit,	17:20
	perhaps what I ought to say is now the sermon will escalate.	17:22
	You know, nothing develops anymore.	17:25
	Nothing progresses, everything these days escalates.	17:27
	And so now this sermon has escalated to a second point	17:31
	and that is that the Christian life is the same	17:34
	as what I have been describing about football up to now.	17:36
	The Christian life is the same,	17:41
	the apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians,	17:44
	according to the divisions we have made, chapter 9:25-27,	17:47
	says every athlete exercises self-control	17:53
	in all things,	17:57
	they do it to receive a perishable reef,	17:59
	but we do it for an imperishable.	18:03
	I pummel my body	18:07
	and subdue it,	18:08
	lest after preaching to others,	18:11
	I myself should be disqualified	18:13
	more than that,	18:18
	actually when you read all of the letters	18:20
	of the apostle Paul, you find him using	18:22
	much stronger terminology than simply pummeling his body,	18:24
	disciplining and regimenting himself.	18:29
	He uses the term death.	18:32
	He said,	18:36
	I die daily	18:38
	to sin	18:39
	in order that I might live for Jesus Christ.	18:41
	The term death, actual death to sin.	18:47
	Can you imagine anything anymore total,	18:51
	anymore serious than that.	18:55
	And yet this is the term that the apostle Paul uses	18:58
	with reference to the life of sin,	19:00
	in order that he might live for Christ.	19:04
	I think it is very interesting for us and worthwhile to note	19:08
	that this kind of discipline of the spiritual life,	19:11
	as well as of athletic life,	19:15
	is something which leads to freedom	19:19
	and without which freedom is impossible.	19:22
	This discipline.	19:26
	This way of voluntary slavery	19:30
	to the preparation for an ideal,	19:36
	this voluntary taking of the yoke of discipline	19:39
	and of obedience is the only way	19:42
	to achieve true freedom,	19:47
	either as an athlete playing football	19:50
	or as a Christian engaged in the various serious business	19:53
	of witnessing to the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ.	19:57
	Now since we've been talking about Paul here	20:03
	and his understanding of it,	20:05
	I'd like for us to take a few minutes now,	20:06
	just to look at what Paul's explanation is.	20:09
	So to speak his theory of how this works.	20:12
	The first point in Paul's theory is	20:15
	that every person in the world,	20:18
	without any exceptions,	20:20
	recognizes or should recognize himself as being created	20:24
	in the image of God and called to live a righteous life.	20:29
	And that God has given us the moral or righteous law	20:35
	and holds every person in the world responsible	20:40
	for obedience to it.	20:43
	And yet,	20:45
	every person the world is under judgment,	20:46
	because of this,	20:50
	because of the fact that all of us have empirically found	20:52
	that we have broken the law.	20:57
	We have not always told the truth.	21:00
	We have not always been faithful to honesty.	21:03
	We have not always lived according to	21:08
	the principle of purity.	21:10
	We have not always been unselfish.	21:12
	We have all, everyone, broken this law	21:14
	and therefore every person stands under judgment	21:17
	because of his failure at some point, indeed at many points,	21:21
	to measure up to that which he could have done	21:27
	and which under God he was called to do and to be.	21:31
	But God is a God of love,	21:36
	who is not primarily interested in	21:39
	punishing or condemning us	21:42
	because of our violation of the moral law,	21:44
	but who is primarily interested in redeeming us	21:46
	and then restoring us to fellowship with Him	21:49
	and to the kind of character and being	21:52
	which He created us for.	21:56
	And so He has made possible a righteousness by faith,	21:58
	F A I T H,	22:03
	a righteousness which comes by faith in Jesus Christ	22:06
	and identification with Him at two points.	22:12
	The first is identifying ourselves with Christ in His death.	22:18
	And secondly, identifying ourselves with Him	22:24
	in His resurrection.	22:27
	And it was this section of Paul's explanation of his theory,	22:29
	which Mike Shasby read a while ago.	22:33
	We identify ourselves with Christ's death	22:37
	by dying to sin,	22:42
	not by our physical death.	22:44
	People are dying physically every day.	22:48
	This does not identify themselves,	22:51
	it does not identify them with the death of Christ,	22:54
	whether they are Christians or not.	22:57
	The death which we can die	22:59
	to identify ourselves with the death of Christ	23:02
	is dying the death to sin,	23:05
	being dead to sin.	23:08
	And the only way we can ever identify ourselves	23:10
	with the resurrection of Christ	23:13
	is to be raised by the power of the Holy Spirit,	23:15
	to a new life in Christ.	23:18
	And that new life begins in the flesh	23:21
	in this life while we live.	23:24
	So that the death which we die willingly	23:27
	and with the aid of the Holy Spirit to sin,	23:30
	enables us then to rise in newness of life	23:33
	and be identified with the risen Christ.	23:37
	That is the theory which the apostle Paul	23:41
	had for explaining,	23:44
	the freedom which is possible for the Christian	23:47
	in the Christian life.	23:50
	Now,	23:54
	at this point it would be well for us all to admit	23:55
	that there are tendencies within us,	23:59
	which go against this fine theory that the apostle Paul had.	24:02
	We want a shortcut don't we?	24:08
	Let me be very personal and say, I want a shortcut.	24:11
	You do your own confessing and I'll confess for me.	24:14
	I want to have my cake and eat it too.	24:18
	This idea of freedom sounds great, I want it,	24:21
	but I'm not sure that I want the discipline.	24:25
	I want to be a great athletic star,	24:30
	but I don't want to lift weights all summer.	24:32
	I want to shine as a halfback,	24:36
	but I don't like all this business of knee bends and pushups	24:39
	and going to bed at a proper time and eating	24:43
	the right kind of food.	24:45
	I want to have my cake and eat it too.	24:49
	I want to get an early start on the day,	24:51
	but I want to sleep late.	24:53
	I want to build up a big	24:56
	savings account down at the bank,	24:59
	but I want to buy what I want when I want it too.	25:01
	Within us there's this wistful wish	25:06
	that we could have this and that,	25:09
	that we can be both up and down at the same time	25:11
	and with the same effort.	25:15
	Now nobody, not even all mighty God can blame us	25:17
	or will blame us for having the wistful wish.	25:22
	Perfectly all right to have the wistful wish,	25:28
	but,	25:31
	we should be wise enough to know	25:34
	that it won't work that way,	25:36
	that we have to make a choice.	25:39
	Either we're not going to be a good football player,	25:42
	or we're going to pay the price.	25:49
	One of the two.	25:54
	Either we're going to get an early start on the day,	25:57
	or we're going to sleep late.	26:00
	We're not going to sleep late, stay in bed till 10 o'clock,	26:02
	and still be at work at eight.	26:06
	It won't work.	26:09
	It just isn't made that way.	26:10
	We're not.	26:12
	Now the Christian who wants to consider	26:14
	that he has freedom from the law	26:18
	and from the judgment that comes from being under the law	26:22
	must know	26:28
	that this is based upon a death	26:31
	to sin	26:34
	and to the whole apparatus of sin	26:35
	and the whole basic motivations of sin.	26:38
	He must absolutely die to these,	26:41
	if he is to have the freedom, which is in Christ,	26:44
	in the way that the apostle Paul has spelled it out.	26:47
	Now we are generally given some little tidbit	26:52
	or enticement to think that this is possible	26:55
	by someone who's more interested in getting a	26:57
	sensational headline than he is in	27:00
	maintaining his integrity as a scholar of the Bible	27:03
	or his faithfulness to the orders of his church.	27:07
	There is a college chaplain who has recently	27:11
	been quoted in the press, as having said that we Christians	27:14
	are free and that therefore this means	27:17
	that in the area of sex, we can do whatever we want to do	27:19
	at any time we want to do it.	27:22
	There is another person who has recently been quoted	27:26
	as a professor in a college as having said that his son	27:28
	was getting ready to go to bed and he said,	27:34
	be sure you brush your teeth before you go to bed.	27:35
	And his son said that he would be sure to do it	27:40
	and a little bit later, his father, the professor,	27:43
	went upstairs to the bathroom and took his toothbrush	27:46
	and ran his thumb over it and it was dry.	27:49
	So the next morning he said to his son,	27:53
	why did you not brush your teeth?	27:56
	He said, I did.	27:58
	He said, no you didn't brush your teeth.	28:00
	He said, yes I did daddy.	28:02
	Now he said, my son did not tell the truth,	28:03
	but he didn't mean to lie,	28:06
	what he meant to do was to say, I was tired,	28:07
	too tired to brush my teeth before I went to bed.	28:10
	And he said, this is the way we must interpret	28:13
	all of the false statements of human beings.	28:16
	And if when a person tells a falsehood,	28:21
	we should ask ourselves what it was	28:23
	he was really trying to say,	28:26
	and not to consider such statements as this	28:29
	as lies or falsehood.	28:31
	In other words, to take the entire moral fiber	28:34
	out of the dimension of human living.	28:36
	And I suppose we always will have a few	28:40
	ministers who will be willing to get the headlines	28:44
	at the expense of their integrity,	28:48
	but this has a very damaging effect upon the witness	28:50
	which the Christian community needs to make in the world,	28:54
	because it leaves Christians who follow this plan,	28:56
	looking pretty much like the pagans in the world.	29:00
	Exactly a year ago, this month,	29:05
	something happened on the highway between High Point	29:07
	and Greensboro, which illustrates what I'm trying to say.	29:10
	There was a young man by the name of Wallen,	29:14
	who took the family car about midnight and started out	29:17
	to the home of two friends of his	29:20
	who lived on the highway between those two cities.	29:22
	He stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank	29:26
	just a few minutes after he left home,	29:29
	and then he did not arrive at the home of his two friends.	29:32
	About one o'clock they called his home	29:37
	and the boy's mother answered	29:39
	and told them that her son had left to go to their home.	29:45
	And when they compared the time,	29:50
	they learned that he had had ample time to reach	29:52
	the home of these two boys who were calling.	29:54
	So they got in their car and went out on the highway	29:58
	to find him, thought perhaps he'd had a wreck.	30:00
	They drove up and down the highway	30:04
	and they did not find him.	30:05
	He had completely disappeared it seemed.	30:06
	All night they looked for him.	30:09
	They had the highway patrol out searching,	30:10
	the Sheriff's department,	30:12
	they looked on all of the highways.	30:13
	They could not find him,	30:16
	could not find his car.	30:17
	No one had heard from him.	30:19
	The next morning when daylight came,	30:22
	again the search was renewed,	30:24
	and they looked up and down the highways,	30:28
	he had simply disappeared.	30:29
	They found that he had stopped at this filling station	30:31
	to get gas, so that they knew he had headed out that way.	30:33
	All day long they looked,	30:39
	and finally late in the evening,	30:42
	someone thought to look among the cars in a junkyard	30:46
	at a bend in the road,	30:51
	the car was found there.	30:55
	He had gone around this curve too fast,	30:59
	his car had jumped the ditch and gone through the fence	31:01
	into the junkyard, had rolled over	31:04
	by the junked cars.	31:08
	And because it looked like all the other wrecked cars there,	31:11
	no one noticed the car.	31:16
	And they found the body of the young Mr. Wallen,	31:21
	in a bush, some 10 yards away from his car,	31:25
	and the medical authorities examining him said	31:30
	that if his body had been found,	31:33
	even as early as nine or 10 o'clock in the morning,	31:35
	his life probably could have been saved,	31:38
	because of the nature of his injuries.	31:40
	But having been there all day, he had died.	31:43
	His car looked so much like all the other wrecks	31:48
	that no one noticed it or could see any difference,	31:53
	or look for the young man there.	31:57
	I think that the Christian	32:01
	whose moral and spiritual behavior looks like the pagans,	32:02
	does a disservice to the Christian community,	32:07
	by attempting to get freedom without discipline.	32:10
	And that means that freedom without discipline	32:16
	is license and license is the enemy of the Christian faith.	32:18
	This brings us to ask a very crucial question, which is,	32:26
	how far does freedom go?	32:30
	If freedom without discipline is license,	32:34
	then just how far does freedom go?	32:39
	Where does it extend?	32:41
	What are its dimensions?	32:42
	Whatever else we might see	32:45
	in answering a question like that,	32:47
	I think we have to say this,	32:48
	that freedom is limited to our choice.	32:51
	Wherever there is an alternative which we may elect,	32:55
	freedom extends as far as the electing of that choice,	33:00
	but there it stops.	33:05
	We are not free, both to choose what we will do,	33:09
	and choose the consequences of that choice.	33:13
	It is not a double choice that we have.	33:18
	We have only a single choice.	33:21
	When I have chosen which of two alternatives I will take,	33:24
	then the way the world is built,	33:30
	the whole moral structure of the universe takes over.	33:33
	And I am not free to say	33:38
	what will grow once I plant the seed.	33:41
	If I plant corn, I cannot then decide	33:45
	that I want to reap rice.	33:47
	If I buy a ticket and get on a plane	33:51
	that is headed for New York,	33:54
	I cannot then decide that I will land in Miami	33:55
	on that flight.	33:59
	So it is in our athletic life and in our Christian life,	34:02
	we can choose discipline or we can choose license.	34:06
	But if we choose license, we cannot have freedom.	34:11
	If we choose freedom,	34:16
	then we must also choose as a requisite,	34:17
	a rigid kind of discipline.	34:21
	I call to your attention again,	34:26
	the portion of the scripture passage,	34:28
	which Mike Shasby read, where Paul says,	34:31
	for if we have grown into Christ by a death like His,	34:36
	we shall grow into Him by a resurrection like His,	34:40
	knowing as we do that our old self	34:44
	has been crucified with Him in order	34:47
	to crush the sinful body	34:49
	and free us from any further slavery to sin.	34:51
	In London, many years ago,	34:57
	there were two students who were studying at the same time.	34:59
	They both attended St. Paul's Cathedral regularly,	35:05
	every Sunday, during the days they were students there.	35:10
	One of these students was more impressed	35:14
	with the content	35:19
	of the order of worship,	35:23
	was more impressed with the theology	35:26
	that was being propounded there.	35:28
	And he committed himself to that theory,	35:32
	that theology, to the faith that was verbally expressed	35:35
	in the service.	35:40
	He became	35:43
	a great Biblical Scholar,	35:45
	Dr. Robinson.	35:49
	The other one equally as brilliant	35:51
	was more impressed by the great gap,	35:58
	which existed between the theology	36:01
	which was expressed verbally in St. Paul's Cathedral	36:04
	and the actual practice,	36:09
	the lives of the people who sat in the pews.	36:11
	He knew some of them,	36:16
	and he saw that their lives did not conform	36:18
	to the theology which was expressed	36:24
	and which they said they believed.	36:26
	He was specifically very disappointed in the interest	36:29
	which these people had in the poor of London.	36:33
	They talked about giving to the poor.	36:38
	They talked about being interested in the poor,	36:41
	but they were not interested in the poor.	36:44
	And this man	36:50
	became the founder	36:52
	of the World Communist Movement.	36:55
	And many years later,	37:00
	when Dr. Robinson went back and interviewed Mr. Lennon,	37:02
	his fellow student, and his fellow occupant of a pew	37:07
	in St. Paul's Cathedral,	37:12
	he said, why did you not read the New Testament?	37:14
	He said, I read the new Testament through seven times.	37:19
	And if people would only have lived	37:24
	the way the New Testament said,	37:29
	I would have been a believer,	37:32
	but I did not see them living that way.	37:34
	I saw them self-centered and callous and crude and lustful.	37:38
	They did not live this way.	37:45
	And so he said, I did not believe it.	37:48
	I do not know what serious effect	37:51
	will be caused if I am unfaithful to the Christian witness,	37:56
	but I know it will hurt someone.	38:02
	I do know, according to the testimony	38:06
	of Mr. Lennon himself,	38:08
	that the World Communist Movement	38:10
	and all of the evil that has come as a result of it,	38:13
	came about because a particular congregation of people	38:17
	did not take seriously the discipline of the Christian life.	38:20
	And one young inquiring mind turned away from it	38:25
	because it was undisciplined.	38:30
	They wanted the freedom of the faith	38:33
	without the discipline.	38:36
	May it be true of this congregation	38:39
	that we will seek the freedom that is in Christ	38:42
	by disciplined dedication to His Spirit.	38:46
	Let us stand.	38:51
	(Congregation stands)	38:53
	Oh God our heavenly Father	38:56
	who has called us to faith and life in Christ.	38:58
	Give us thy Spirit,	39:03
	that we may be faithful to the heavenly vision	39:05
	through Jesus Christ our Lord.	39:09
	Amen.	39:11
	Now let us sing hymn Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.	39:12
	(music starts to play)	39:18
	(music continues to play)	39:30
	♪ Immortal, invisible, God only wise, ♪	39:44
	♪ In light inaccessible hid from our eyes, ♪	39:51
	♪ Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days, ♪	39:58
	♪ Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise. ♪	40:04
	♪ Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light, ♪	40:12
	♪ Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might: ♪	40:19
	♪ Thy justice, like mountains high soaring above, ♪	40:26
	♪ Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love. ♪	40:33

Item Info

Title:

Howard C. Wilkinson - "Discipline and Freedom" (September 12, 1965)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4959h907

Date:

September 12, 1965

Speaker:

Wilkinson, Howard C.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0304
ref5813_1hl
uachapelsermaud
duke:628651
dcrau002302
ark:/87924/r4959h907
99651011-2639-4943-b2c6-358db3d8b891

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Language:

English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "Discipline and Freedom" (September 12, 1965)

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Duke University Archives

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