Boyce College Commissioning Service

Transcript

Dr. Albert Mohler: 

Well, good evening. Let me first greet you with a personal word of greeting. I am incredibly thrilled and thankful to look out and see you tonight. Mary and I have been looking forward to this night. We have had the opportunity to meet some of you at preview conferences and at other events, but this night is really special. 02-20250814-boyce-commissioning…

It is special in so many different ways. There is something profoundly right about tonight, and there is something profoundly rare about tonight. The rare part is that there are not that many institutions I would feel really wonderful about young people going for the college experience. I will just be honest.

That is the rare part. Most colleges and universities would not sing what we just sang. They would not declare what we just declared. They would not exalt what we just had the opportunity to sing and declare. It makes me feel Lutheran. Do not worry. But it does make me feel Lutheran.

I love Luther as an example in so many ways. I love Luther when he said that Christians are not singing as Christians until we sing to the glory of God and the infuriation of the devil, in absolute proportion. I think the devil is extremely irritated tonight, and I think it is all right, like Luther, to exult in that just a little bit too.

This is a really special night for families, for parents, and for young people. The obvious thing is transition, a turning of a page. Here we are. Many of those pages have been turned, and many of those moments have been experienced before, but this one is special.

This one is happy. It is just incredibly happy. It is right. I think everyone in this room, regardless of everything else you feel, understands that this is right. There is something just fundamentally right about this night.

That is one of the reasons why we can sing as we just sang. We need the Word of God, and especially on a night like this.

A church that meant a great deal to me as I was growing up had a lot to do with my formation. I was not even a member of that church, but there were affirmations in that church that had an impact on my life. One of them was engraved in stone on a giant exterior wall of the church, and it was this phrase: excellence in all things and all things for God’s glory.

I will be honest. I was a teenager when I saw that. The fact that I can tell you about it right now has to do with the fact that, for the first time as a young person, the question that came to me was: how in the world do you do all things to the glory of God? How is that possible? How does that happen?

Even the world will use the word excellence, and frankly, there are a lot of Christians who forget that that is a good, important biblical word too. No apology for being committed to excellence. But excellence means nothing in the great scheme of things if it is not to the glory of God. All things are to the glory of God, and so tonight is about the glory of God. The glory of God in what we witness tonight, the glory of God in what we get to sing and say, the glory of God in what we feel tonight.

There is something unbelievably precious, just infinitely wonderful, about parents and their sons and daughters in a room like this on a night like this. There is something incredibly special about siblings being here as well, about everyone recognizing that something is about to change. It is good.

But one of the things Scripture is very honest about is that not every good thing is an easy thing, and it is precisely the good things that are not easy that we better think about most faithfully.

I want us to turn, or I will turn and read, from Luke chapter 2. It strikes me that there is something here we need to see, and I think most of you are immediately going to the wrong part in your mind of Luke chapter 2. No Christmas card here tonight. Instead, I am going to begin reading at verse 39.

For a reason very important to me, I am going to read from the King James Version. This is the Word of the Lord through Luke:

“And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own city Nazareth. And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him. Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”

Wow.

I do not think we can read this without what folks in the field of hermeneutics, the interpretation of texts, would call the location of the reader. I know that is what you came for tonight. This is what we do here.

One of the things about a text, not just a biblical text, but any text, the U.S. Constitution, today’s newspaper, whatever, is that the reader reading a text is not removed from the context of reading. Another way to put it is this: I read some books I have read many times differently in my sixties than I did in my twenties.

There are biblical texts in particular, because now we turn to the Word of God, inerrant, infallible, verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit. There are verses in Scripture that we feel differently at different stages in life. One of the obvious things is that it is one thing in the parent-child family context to read it as a child. It is another thing to read it as a father. It is the same text. It is the same God. It is the same truth. But we do read it somewhat differently.

At this point in my life, I am struck by two verses in this passage in the second half of Luke chapter 2. I am struck by the fact that I think for many years of my Christian life, I noticed one of them and not the other.

I think the one most of us know, almost fast at hand, is verse 52, the last verse of Luke chapter 2: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”

But I began intentionally earlier in the text. In verse 40, we read: “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.” I think it is a little less familiar to us, but I want us to notice the chronology. Verse 40 is about Jesus when he was younger than the incident in the temple.

Luke chapter 2 helps us to understand that if we read the entire chapter. We have the entire nativity story of Jesus, and the whole point is that he is a baby. He is an infant. At one point, he is a newborn. By the time you get midway through the chapter, he is about twelve years old.

Even before Jesus went with Mary and Joseph to Jerusalem for the Passover in this year, he had already grown. The child grew, the first words in verse 40. I do love the King James because it still comes to my mind. Jesus, as a boy, waxed strong in spirit. I do not know how much waxing you have done lately. Jesus grew. He waxed strong in spirit. He was filled with wisdom. He grew intellectually, and the grace of God was upon him.

Then, of course, we fast forward to what happens with Jesus staying behind on the trip he had taken with his mother and his father to Jerusalem. Between that and when he was a fully grown man beginning his public ministry, that is where the next of these two verses applies, verse 52: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”

We need to watch something here very carefully. This text is first of all not about how we are like Jesus. That is not the main point. The main point is that Jesus became like us. The point here is that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, who assumed human flesh and was born as a baby, entered into the world that he had made. The world was made through him, and he comes into the world in human flesh as a baby.

Again, I will quote Luther because he comes to mind here. The one who had made all things, all things, came as a baby to be placed in a manger of wood he had made, on an earth he had made, in the midst of the cosmos he had made, as the agent through whom the Father created all things.

As a part of this, we get immediately Jesus becoming as we are, entering into our experience. For one thing, this is profoundly not pagan. I guess that is a relief. This is explicitly Christological. It is explicitly Christian. It is incarnation. It is God in human flesh. You will notice the point that Scripture is absolutely determined to make very clear that he is true God and true man. Being true man, he became like us in every way, even tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.

He was an infant, and then he grew into a boy, and then he grew into a youth, and then he grew into manhood, and then he began his earthly ministry.

I do not think you have any trouble connecting the dots here. There is something profoundly right about this pattern of growth and this pattern of transition. There is something utterly right about a baby not staying a baby. We are clear on that.

I want to tell you, I do not think there is anything more glorious than a baby. There is nothing more ridiculous than a thirty-year-old baby, or for that matter a ten-year-old baby. That is a disaster. An absolute disaster.

There is something absolutely right about a baby becoming a toddler. That is why we want to see every first, every first.

By the way, the Wall Street Journal this week had an article about the fact that many Make America Healthy Again moms in a certain cultural segment are now feeding their babies only protein, which means meat. I guess it is ground up pretty well, but it turns out that babies are not quite ready for that yet. The baby is not ready for the filet mignon yet. Thank you.

You look at that and you think, well, okay, that is just a certain kind of weird thing going on that made the front page of the Wall Street Journal. But it is another reminder of the fact that we were actually meant, and this is biblical too, and it shows up even in spiritual exhortation, to grow into maturity.

What does maturity mean? It means meat. We are no longer to be satisfied with milk. That is a part of the glory of what is going on here.

It is Christian, young people, and parents. Parents, you have been working for years, laboring and loving for years, to move from milk to meat. It is absolutely right.

That does not mean it is absolutely easy.

John in his Gospel says, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” In the incarnation, he came to be like us in order to save us from our sins.

One of the most remarkable things is that he came as a baby and had to grow up just as we grow up. His progression was sinless and perfect. At least a part of what is going on here in Luke chapter 2 is his parents being perplexed by this. That would be perplexing, a perfect child. Both ends of the equation. You get that one.

That is not what we are talking about here. Again, this is not about how we are just like Jesus. This is about how Jesus is like us, but perfect.

These transitions are just so sweet, and they are really important.

All things to God’s glory. The all things have to mean even a moment like this. It is to God’s glory. Our task is to see God’s glory in it. Our task is to see that this is exactly what God intended. Our task is to see there is nothing more ridiculous than a child who does not grow up.

But there is also something fundamentally wrong about just saying, “Thank God that is over.” We are human, and that is a part of this.

There is not a young person here who has not been pulled along, pushed along, driven along, nurtured by Christian parents. Those who have raised these young people in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Again, that is what makes this unique. That is not what is on the mind of most college administrators.

They are not on most campuses looking at young people and saying, “These are wonderful gifts to us, having been raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” They are thinking, “Here comes a tuition check.” We are here for a very different purpose.

It is not entirely different in the sense that there is a task and a pattern to education that can be, or really should be, common in all places. But when we think about our commitments, our convictions, and what pulls us here tonight, it is something far greater than that.

God has placed in the young people here tonight a sense of mission and purpose that propels them forward and propels them outward. That is a hard thing. It is a necessary thing. It is a wonderful thing. But like so many wonderful things, it is still a hard thing.

All of a sudden now, propelled outward in a way that was not true before. Parents who have loved, no way even to describe that, sacrificed, taught, disciplined, nurtured, fed, changed.

I will say out loud what is true tonight. This is the beginning of a process, not the end. It is kind of the end of another process, but it is the beginning of another. We do not want these precious young people four years from now to cross this stage knowing exactly what they know now. We want them to know a whole lot more.

We want them to show what it means to grow even further in the knowledge of God, the knowledge of God’s Word, the knowledge of all things. We hope they will wax in wisdom, and also in favor with God and man.

I will just tell you, I know this is a strange thing to say on a night like this, but on the other end of this, the goal is functional, faithful adulthood. I know this is a long way from here tonight, but I will just tell you: without a night like this, you do not get grandchildren.

Let me put it this way. Because of a night like this, a certain sequence is not rushed. Not rushed. But it is glorious. It is glorious.

It is hard to put a lot of this into words. There are words of gratitude, and I want to articulate these words of gratitude on behalf of the school of Boyce College. The gratitude is that you would come and trust us the way you trust us.

It is also a word of encouragement. That word of encouragement is: we intend to be absolutely faithful in the stewardship entrusted to us.

Another word is encouragement in terms of joy. I want to tell you that what marks this campus, by the grace of God and the glory of Christ, is joy. Seriousness in the task assigned to us, yes, but joy in the opportunity.

I cannot tell you what a joy it is at this stage in my life when I look out, and most of you, as new students, were not born when I had been president here ten years. Antiques Roadshow.

What an encouragement is this joy. I want you to know how serious we are about this.

I want to speak particularly to parents. You are not feeling the wrong thing. You are feeling the right things. This is you. In fact, you are feeling the way that, if you were thinking about this eighteen or seventeen years ago, I think you would have prayed to feel now the way you do feel.

You do not want to be happy you are leaving them at the curb. But you do realize there is something right. I will also tell you, again, they are not gone, but they are doing what God would have them to do in order to fulfill why God brought them into existence and gave them to you, and now calls them forward.

I am preaching from a text. Something came to my mind that I just want to share with you. This is when you put the slide up. Thank you.

To be clear, 1954, Norman Rockwell, illustrator, well-known artist. His last of three boys went off to college. He was the most famous magazine illustrator of the time, and he painted this. It was on the front of Look magazine.

Forgive the father’s cigarette and the boy’s tie. I just want to say, I think there is something encouraging and sweet in that. I think both of those faces are about right. There is so much revealed in one artist’s perspective, and everyone understands something big is happening here. Even the dog. Thank you for putting that up.

Excellence in all things, and all things to God’s glory. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, in favor with God and man.

We are not here because that is a finished process, and frankly it is not finished until the Lord takes us home. But there are particular phases of life in which there are particular duties and particular opportunities, and there is a particular stewardship. This is one of those.

I hope you will understand how privileged we are to share this with you as Christian families tonight.

You know how thrilled we are that these wonderful young men and young women have come to be a part of Boyce College. I want to tell you how serious we are about the task, and I want to tell you how we see ourselves as partners with the parents in this room, hoping and helping to propel your young people forward to the glory of God.

So we are going to spend some time in prayer together. You know, at a moment like this, you kind of need some structure to know what to do next. I wanted us to be confronted by the Word of God, and I hope and pray encouraged by the Word of God. Then we are going to turn to a time of prayer together.

I want to tell you once again: it is absolutely good and absolutely right. It is absolutely good and absolutely right that you are here tonight. It is absolutely right that we be determined to be absolutely faithful in this next phase of life. It is absolutely right to trust all of this to God, and God alone.

Let’s pray together.

Father, we are so thankful that you give us moments like this. Thank you for giving us your Word to guide us, even in thinking how we should think about this. I pray for the parents and the young people in this room, confident that even now what we are seeing is you sovereignly working out your purposes in every life here. We pray to be agents of grace for your glory in this. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.