E. Kelsey Regen - "Through Obedience to Faith" (August 12, 1962)

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-	I shall assume that you will understand and forgive me	0:28
	if I interrupt this inspiring service of corporate worship,	0:35
	just enough to express to the chaplain of the university	0:42
	and to the committee on corporate worship	0:46
	my sincere appreciation and sense of honor	0:50
	in being invited to come here today to share with you	0:55
	in the service of this chapel.	1:00
	As some of you know,	1:04
	the place and the people here in Durham	1:06
	who hold first place in my heart	1:11
	are naturally the first Presbyterian Church	1:15
	and the wonderful people of that congregation.	1:18
	But running a close second is this university	1:23
	and my very warm, personal friends and former colleagues	1:30
	connected with this university.	1:36
	For some 10 years, it was my privilege to	1:40
	have a very minor part	1:43
	on the Faculty of the Divinity School.	1:47
	And those years proved	1:50
	most enriching and rewarding to me personally,	1:53
	and to my family.	1:57
	I've learned that for a minister who has lived in Durham	2:02
	for a long time and loved it,	2:07
	there are not many rewards awaiting him elsewhere,	2:11
	but certainly one of these if he is a minister,	2:16
	is the possibility of being invited back to this chapel.	2:20
	This privilege does not come to him	2:25
	so long as he resides in Durham, I understand,	2:27
	but once he's moved away,	2:30
	then this is certainly one of the honors and rewards	2:32
	which come to him, and for this I am indeed grateful.	2:35
	Concerning this matter of a meaningful	2:44
	and empowering and mature, personal Christian faith,	2:48
	all of us in a gathering of this kind	2:55
	fall into one of three possible categories.	2:58
	Some of us may be trying to find	3:04
	and discover such a faith for the first time.	3:07
	Others of us may be trying desperately	3:12
	to recover such a faith which we once had,	3:16
	but for one reason or another have lost.	3:21
	And still others maybe trying equally hard	3:25
	to hold on to such a faith	3:30
	in the face of forces and circumstances and experiences	3:33
	which threaten to destroy it.	3:39
	It is safe to assume further that all of us face	3:44
	the not easy problem of trying to nurture continuously	3:50
	such a faith to maturity and tough resilience	3:58
	in a situation that sometimes by shallow interpretation	4:05
	make such faith to seem irrelevant if not impossible.	4:12
	Seeing these things are so	4:18
	we are also confronted by certain derivative questions,	4:20
	how do we come to such personal faith in the first place,	4:25
	which is to say,	4:30
	how is faith born?	4:32
	And how can it be informed and nurtured	4:36
	and matured and disciplined, which is to say,	4:38
	how can this faith, which some of us inherit or absorb	4:42
	by contagion and exposure,	4:47
	really become our own?	4:50
	And then the fires of experience become	4:53
	a tested and proven and dependable faith?	4:56
	Most of us here I would suspect	5:04
	came into our faith as Timothy did,	5:07
	that is by inheritance	5:11
	and exposure and contagion and absorption.	5:13
	That is we were born into our faith	5:18
	or into the life of faith	5:22
	quite like we were born into our homes and our families.	5:24
	We learned faith as we learned to walk and to talk.	5:30
	Concerning this kind of faith,	5:36
	Saint Paul wrote to Timothy in this fashion,	5:38
	I am reminded of your sincere faith,	5:42
	a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois	5:46
	and in your mother Eunice,	5:50
	and now I am sure dwells in you,	5:52
	hence I remind you to rekindle the gift of God	5:55
	that is within you,	6:02
	which is to say, though your personal faith	6:05
	had its origin in your forebears	6:09
	and came to you as part of your cultural	6:11
	and spiritual heritage,	6:13
	yet you must constant rekindle it.	6:15
	You must constantly nourish it to maturity	6:19
	what you have received from others.	6:23
	And yet it is possible that for some of us,	6:28
	our faith may have been born and come to us	6:31
	as it came to Saint Paul in his Damascus road experience,	6:34
	that is,	6:40
	in a sudden	6:42
	crisis-bringing,	6:45
	soul-shaking,	6:47
	pattern-shattering experience.	6:50
	When the easy assumptions	6:53
	of our self sufficiency are swept out from under us.	6:56
	When the reft of presumed security.	7:01
	Our helpless frailty is revealed in its utter nakedness.	7:05
	And we are driven to seek the meaning of our existence	7:12
	and the ground of our hope and our security in resources	7:17
	beyond our making and beyond our manipulating.	7:22
	But however our personal faith comes to us,	7:29
	this is not the end of the matter.	7:33
	We still face the problem	7:36
	of nurturing it to maturity and making it our own.	7:39
	Therefore, there are some things we have to do.	7:44
	There is a response which we have to make.	7:48
	There is a mood of receptivity	7:51
	which we have to create and maintain.	7:53
	And there is a venture we have to take	7:56
	and a condition we have to fulfill.	7:59
	And it is about one of this prior conditions.	8:03
	One of these prerequisites, if you please,	8:08
	that I want to talk with you for a while this morning	8:12
	under the title, Through Obedience to Faith.	8:15
	Even Timothy had to rekindle the gift of faith,	8:23
	even Saint Paul had to ask,	8:28
	Lord, what will thou have me to do and then to do it?	8:30
	And the proposition or contention of this sermon is	8:38
	that obedience,	8:43
	or better still a disciplined	8:46
	and resolute and obedient will	8:49
	is the essential ingredient and the necessary response	8:53
	in the achievement or the recovery of mature personal faith.	8:58
	Let's go back to the scripture for a moment.	9:07
	In that scene from Saint John's gospel read this morning,	9:11
	Jesus was standing in the temple area teaching.	9:15
	He was teaching about God	9:19
	and man's response to God and man's relationship to God	9:21
	which is to say he was speaking about faith.	9:25
	His opponents and detractors ridiculing	9:31
	his lack of learning compared to theirs,	9:35
	scorned and heckled him.	9:39
	How is it that this man has learning	9:42
	when he has never studied?	9:45
	Meaning I suspect, how can anybody in his right mind	9:49
	believe in this man who has no learning	9:56
	instead of in us who are very learned?	10:00
	And quietly and simply,	10:05
	and with unruffled composure, Jesus answered,	10:07
	my teaching is not mine, but he's who sent me,	10:12
	if any man wills to do his will, that is God's will,	10:18
	he shall know whether the teaching is from God	10:24
	or whether I'm speaking on my own authority.	10:29
	I want you to get that.	10:33
	If any man wills to do God's will, he shall know,	10:37
	or as Mr. JB Phillips puts it in his excellent translation,	10:44
	if any man wants to do the will of God, he shall know.	10:48
	Evidently Saint James understood what Jesus meant	10:58
	and he never forgot it,	11:01
	for some years later	11:03
	when he was trying to keep the early church	11:04
	on the road of authentic faith,	11:08
	when he was trying to bring the members of that church,	11:12
	to bring the manner of their daily living	11:16
	into line with their professed faith,	11:19
	and when he was trying to make them see	11:22
	that authentic faith involves	11:24
	far more than simply saying I believe,	11:26
	he brought them back to this insight, listen,	11:31
	be ye doers of the word and not hearers only.	11:37
	He who looks into the perfect law,	11:42
	the law of liberty and perseveres therein,	11:45
	being no hearer that forgets, but a doer that acts,	11:49
	he shall be blessed.	11:55
	If any man's will is to do God's will,	12:00
	if any man wants to obey the will of God,	12:05
	he shall know.	12:10
	Now, if there is any place in the world	12:14
	by proposition like this rings the bell, as we say,	12:16
	it ought to be on the campus of a university like this,	12:22
	for here you are accustomed to operate	12:26
	on that proposition.	12:29
	In your curriculum,	12:32
	you have certain courses called prerequisites,	12:34
	the assumption being,	12:39
	that you cannot comprehend and master advanced mathematics	12:41
	until you have learned to obey	12:46
	the principles of law mathematics.	12:49
	In your laboratories you honor that proposition.	12:53
	It is by disciplined obedience and fidelity	12:56
	to the formula for a simple experiment in chemistry	13:00
	that you are enabled to move on	13:04
	to more difficult and complex experiments.	13:06
	And I imagine that your deans will testify	13:11
	that adequate motivation,	13:15
	really wanting to learn,	13:19
	really wanting to take advantage	13:22
	of what this university offers you,	13:25
	that this will go very far toward compensating	13:28
	for an inferior native intellect.	13:32
	And I know also that your coaches sometimes explain	13:38
	an unexpected victory	13:42
	over a team that was supposed to be better than yours	13:44
	by what they call desire and the will to win	13:48
	or really wanting this one.	13:56
	Whatever the area of your academic experience,	13:59
	you accept and on operate on this proposition	14:03
	that he that wills to do,	14:06
	he that wants to do,	14:08
	he that has the necessary motivation and desire,	14:10
	he shall achieve and accomplish,	14:14
	whether it be more knowledge	14:17
	or whether it be more of something else.	14:19
	But the point of this sermon is,	14:23
	are we willing to accept and honor and operate	14:27
	on the same proposition in the area of religious faith?	14:32
	Do we see and understand what Jesus was saying	14:38
	about will and desire in this area?	14:41
	Do we catch the relevance of his message to our knee?	14:45
	And are we prepared to follow it?	14:51
	Let me now try to show you	14:55
	something of what this means for us and why and how.	14:56
	First, Jesus assumed, and he accepted	15:02
	the sovereign will of God over all of life.	15:05
	He assumed that all truth,	15:09
	including truth revealed by faith	15:10
	has its origin and its validity in the nature of God.	15:13
	His detractors accepted the same thing,	15:17
	therefore he did not need to argue the matter,	15:19
	he simply let it stand.	15:22
	God is sovereign over the world he has created	15:25
	and the life he has given.	15:28
	This is objectively and eternally true	15:30
	whether a man knows it or does not know it,	15:34
	whether he acknowledges or denies it,	15:37
	whether he honors or ignores it,	15:40
	and soon or late, every man runs head on into this truth,	15:43
	to his redemption or to his ruin.	15:48
	Then he said in effect, the way to personal faith in God,	15:52
	the road to knowledge of God and to his truth,	15:58
	the test of the validity of truth and faith, and therefore,	16:03
	the ultimate ground of faith as commitment to God	16:09
	is obedience to the sovereign will of God.	16:15
	Yet, that is not quite what he said, was it?	16:23
	Not obedience in the sense that parents sometimes	16:26
	think of obedience in relationship to their children.	16:30
	Not a coerced or compelled obedience.	16:34
	Not an achieved or accomplished or a complete obedience.	16:38
	None of us is capable of this in our relationship to God.	16:43
	What he said specifically was,	16:47
	if any man's will is to do God's will he shall know,	16:50
	which is to say,	16:55
	that what counts finally in the life of faith	16:57
	is the set of a man's will,	17:02
	his settled disposition,	17:06
	the reasoned and disciplined resolution of his life,	17:10
	his dominant desire and sincere intention,	17:14
	his fixed and firm purpose	17:17
	to follow and obey the will of God	17:21
	so far as it has given him to understand it.	17:24
	And if this be true of a man, says Jesus,	17:29
	he shall know the truth of faith	17:33
	and move forward in the maturing of a life of faith,	17:37
	for just as firsthand knowledge must come by experience,	17:42
	firsthand faith must come by obedience.	17:46
	The will to do what faith calls for and requires.	17:50
	And without this faith remains a hypothetical theory	17:55
	instead of a way of life.	18:01
	Now, what does this mean for us practically?	18:05
	It certainly means that in the life of faith,	18:09
	we have to reverse our habitual, customary,	18:12
	and prideful procedures.	18:14
	All of us to some extent,	18:16
	and especially in an academic environment like this,	18:19
	are inclined to say,	18:22
	first teach me and then maybe I will understand,	18:25
	first let me see and understand	18:30
	and maybe I can believe,	18:32
	first prove it to me and then I may accept it.	18:35
	Now this kind of caution and skepticism	18:41
	has a necessary and worded place in all of life	18:44
	including the life of faith and religion.	18:47
	Therefore do not ever spite	18:51
	the questions prompted by honest and humble doubt.	18:55
	And don't let anybody else stifle them in you	19:00
	for such doubts and their questions	19:04
	are the essential ingredients	19:06
	in the journey to a mature faith.	19:09
	And yet, in the life of faith there comes a time	19:13
	when what we need	19:19
	is not more instruction or evidence or proof,	19:21
	but resolute action and obedience.	19:25
	And this is precisely what Jesus was saying here,	19:28
	in the adventure of faith	19:31
	and the achievement of spiritual insight and knowledge,	19:33
	these are accustomed procedures have to be reversed.	19:37
	He that wills to do shall know, which is to say,	19:43
	in the life of faith, volition comes before knowing,	19:49
	understanding is the consequence of undertaking,	19:57
	proof comes from trying and doing,	20:02
	willingness and desire and action must precede certainty,	20:05
	evidence is validated by experience,	20:10
	conviction follows commitment,	20:13
	faith is the fruit of obedience,	20:15
	discovery lies beyond the adventure,	20:18
	and faith in God must be an experiment	20:22
	before it can be an experience.	20:26
	Therefore, the way to meaningful and mature faith in God	20:29
	has to be the committed and disciplined and obedient will.	20:35
	But is this a valid proposition?	20:45
	Ultimately, you have to discover the answer to that	20:48
	and decide that question for yourself.	20:51
	Nobody else can do it.	20:53
	But there is supporting evidence, for instance,	20:56
	the Bible says that perfect love casts out fear	21:01
	or conquers fear.	21:05
	Now this is a proposition of faith	21:09
	which you can memorize and repeat a dozen times a day.	21:10
	Yet this proposition of faith will never come alive for you,	21:15
	can never be part of your firsthand faith	21:23
	until somewhere or sometime,	21:27
	in impetuous and utter abandon of personal safety,	21:32
	you risk your life for something or someone you care about	21:37
	more than you care for your personal security.	21:43
	And in that experience only	21:48
	will you discover the truth of that faith,	21:52
	that that kind of love can conquer fear.	21:57
	Obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge	22:04
	was the title of as sermon by a British preacher	22:07
	of several generations ago,	22:10
	the will to believe is the title of an essay	22:13
	on the psychological dynamics of faith	22:17
	and doing the truth is the title of a contemporary,	22:21
	a very helpful book	22:24
	concerning the Christian faith and the Christian ethic.	22:26
	And all of these in their respective ways	22:30
	are saying exactly what Jesus was saying here,	22:33
	faith is found, faith is recovered, faith is matured	22:36
	only when we have obeyed and found it validated	22:40
	in the fires of firsthand experience.	22:43
	There are some other supporting echoes too, for instance,	22:48
	this word from a former president	22:54
	of your neighboring university,	22:57
	in his farewell message to a graduating class,	23:00
	follow and live by the light you already have	23:04
	and more light will come.	23:08
	Or this from collage,	23:11
	don't wait forever for more evidence of the Christian faith,	23:14
	try it, try it,	23:17
	or this from Pascal,	23:22
	when a friend said to him,	23:24
	I wish I could believe your faith,	23:25
	then I could live your life,	23:28
	and Pascal answered,	23:30
	live my life and then you will be able to believe my faith,	23:32
	or this from the writings of Horace Bushnell	23:39
	while he was an instructor at Yale	23:42
	and going through the spiritual torment	23:45
	and agony of loss of faith,	23:48
	what is the use of my seeking further spiritual knowledge	23:52
	so long as I will not obey what I already have?	23:56
	That was an honest man's honest question to himself.	24:00
	And eventually that question drove him to write this prayer,	24:05
	oh, God, there is not much that I can say I believe,	24:10
	but I do believe this much,	24:16
	I believe there is a difference between right and wrong,	24:18
	and I here and now give myself to do the right,	24:22
	and to reframe from doing the wrong.	24:26
	I believe that thou just exist	24:29
	even though I cannot find thee clearly,	24:31
	but if thou can hear my prayer,	24:35
	and will show me thy will,	24:39
	I pledge myself to try to do thy will	24:43
	and I make this pledge freely, fully, and forever, amen.	24:47
	The sequel to that question and that prayer was	24:55
	that Horace Bushnell came through the agony of no faith	24:59
	into the life of a mature faith	25:03
	and became one of the most creative	25:05
	and helpful spiritual forces of that generation.	25:08
	F.W.H. Myers in one of his books	25:15
	tells of a conversation with George Elliot.	25:17
	There are three words he said	25:21
	so often used by religious people,	25:23
	God, immortality, and duty.	25:25
	The first I find unbelievable.	25:29
	The second I find inconceivable.	25:32
	But the third I find imperious, absolute, and inescapable.	25:36
	I do not know how far George Elliott ever got	25:43
	down the road to personal faith,	25:46
	but if she ever did find or recover such a faith,	25:49
	I venture that it was largely because	25:54
	she found duty and obedience to it,	25:56
	imperious, absolute, and inescapable.	26:01
	Maybe that is where we have to start	26:10
	in our journey to mature personal faith.	26:14
	And perhaps this is the discipline	26:19
	under which we must continuously live	26:22
	if we are ever to arrive at the destination of that journey	26:25
	with duty and obedience to it,	26:30
	by resolutely following and obeying	26:35
	those insights and the faith and truth we already have,	26:37
	by substituting action for debate and argument,	26:41
	by learning faith as we learn a skill	26:46
	by practicing and trying it,	26:49
	by willing to do the truth we already have,	26:52
	then more faith will follow little faith.	26:57
	This is the evidence of experience,	27:03
	this is the testimony of others	27:06
	who have journeyed before us,	27:07
	and this is the sacred promise of Christ our Lord,	27:10
	he that wills to do God's will shall know.	27:14
	By a disciplined and obedient will,	27:19
	the desires to do and tries to do the will of God,	27:23
	so far as it is given us to see this will,	27:28
	by this, we move to meaningful and mature faith.	27:32
	So if there is someone here this morning	27:40
	seeking to find such a faith for the first time,	27:43
	or trying desperately to recover it,	27:47
	or trying to hold onto it	27:50
	in the face of a faith destroying environment,	27:53
	this word is for you.	27:57
	He that wills to do God's will shall know.	28:01
	Through obedience we come to faith.	28:07
	And the gospel promises further	28:14
	that in this journey you are never alone,	28:16
	that the sovereign God by his indwelling spirit	28:21
	awaits to meet you on that journey	28:26
	and to guide you and sustain you to the end.	28:29
	And it further reassures us	28:34
	that in the life of faith the important thing	28:37
	is never the distance we have traveled	28:41
	but the direction in which we are going,	28:45
	whether away from God or toward God.	28:50
	We are to stand for prayer of benediction.	28:59
	Blessed and gracious God	29:09
	who in by mercy has called us to the life of faith with thee	29:11
	do thou also equip us for this life of faith.	29:16
	Grant us humility before the mystery of life,	29:21
	let the shadow of our own pride hide thee from us.	29:24
	Awaken in us serious concern for moral and spiritual values,	29:30
	less complacency in our comforts,	29:35
	drain us of compassion and courage,	29:39
	and release in us the will to obey the truth we know	29:43
	and to follow the faith we have,	29:48
	lest we miss forever that fullness of life with thee	29:52
	which is the fruit of fidelity and obedience.	29:56
	Through Jesus Christ our Lord.	30:01
	Now may the God of peace and power	30:05
	indwell your minds and hearts and wills	30:09
	and make you perfect in every good work to do his will,	30:12
	working in you and through you	30:17
	that's what is well pleasing in his sight	30:19
	through Jesus Christ our Lord.	30:22

Item Info

Title:

E. Kelsey Regen - "Through Obedience to Faith" (August 12, 1962)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4xd0w01t

Date:

August 12, 1962

Speaker:

Regen, E. Kelsey

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0196
ref5596_mmr
uachapelsermaud
duke:628606
dcrau002207
ark:/87924/r4xd0w01t
fd9c4a29-bb1f-4089-8e0c-0d7306dc6bb1

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E. Kelsey Regen - "Through Obedience to Faith" (August 12, 1962)

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1. E. Kelsey Regen - "Through Obedience to Faith" (August 12, 1962)

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E. Kelsey Regen - "Through Obedience to Faith" (August 12, 1962)

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