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The seminary community was saddened last week by the death of one of its professors emeriti, Dr. Seward Hiltner. Dr. Hiltner not only had a distinguished academic career at the University of Chicago and then here at Princeton Theological Seminary, but was indeed one of those seminal thinkers which shaped the course of his discipline. He was Professor of Theology and Personality here at the Seminary, and there will be a memorial service here in Miller Chapel on Wednesday afternoon at 3 o'clock to which the entire seminary community is invited. Because of this memorial service, Dr. Craig Dykstra's inaugural address has been rescheduled, and we call this to your attention. Let us continue
this morning reading from 2 Corinthians, the 8th chapter, beginning at the 16th verse. Hear the word of God. But thanks be to God, who puts the same earnest care for you into the heart of Titus. For he not only accepted our appeal, but being himself very earnest, he is going to you of his own accord. With him we are sending the brother who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the gospel. And not
only that, but he has been appointed by the churches to travel with us in this gracious work which we are carrying on for the glory of the Lord and to show our good will. We intend that no one should blame us about this liberal gift which we are administering. For we aim at what is honorable, not only in the Lord's sight, but also in the sight of people. And with them we are sending our brother whom
we have often tested and found earnest in many matters, but who is now more earnest than ever because of his great confidence in you. As for Titus, he is my partner and fellow worker in your service. And as for our brethren, they are apostles of the churches, the glory of Christ. So give proof before the churches of your love and of our boasting about you to these men. Now it is superfluous for me to write to
you about the offering for the saints, for I know your readiness of which I boast about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia has been ready since last year and your zeal has stirred up most of them. But I am sending the brethren so that our boasting about you may not prove vain in this case, so that you may be ready as I said you would be. Lest if some Macedonians come with me and
find that you are not ready, we be humiliated to say nothing of you for being so confident. So I thought it necessary to urge the brethren to go on to you before me and arrange in advance for this gift you have promised, so that it may be ready not as an exaction, but as a willing gift. The word of the Lord. Let us pray. Let the good news come now our Father not only in word but
in power, in the Holy Spirit, and with full assurance through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. We Presbyterians receive a lot of good natured abuse from our fellow Christians from other traditions. Most of it characterizes our preoccupation with order in the church. Take our style of worship as an example. We think of it as well ordered and stately. Others see it as well oiled but stodgy. Like the story of the Pentecostal Christian who was a traveling salesman.
One Sunday he found himself in a strange town and looked frantically for a Pentecostal church in which to worship. Unsuccessful he found himself in front of a local Presbyterian church at exactly 11 o'clock. So it was the Presbyterian service or nothing and he chose the lesser of two evils. But to his great surprise the congregation sang the hymns with enormous enthusiasm and the choir was absolutely magnificent. And even the pastor's sermon was warm and moving.
So much so that this fellow forgot where he was and let loose with a loud amen in response to a particular point. Well everyone turned and stared at him with sullen disapproval. And embarrassed he slumped down into his pew and tried to disappear. But the sermon continued to enthrall him and he was moved to shout hallelujah. This outburst caused the people in his pew to move away from him. Leaving him isolated and clearly identifiable as the
culprit. Still the minister's message touched his soul and he exclaimed praise the Lord. At this point an usher came down the side aisle, tapped him on the shoulder and said sternly friend this is a Presbyterian church. You can't praise the Lord in here. Truly a caricature and yet one that makes a point. In the minds of many there is an incompatibility between order and order. They argue that you must choose either the one or the other.
You can have order with its organization and its institutionalism or you can have order with its spontaneity and its freedom but you cannot have both together. I think the Apostle Paul refused to make that choice. He was deeply convinced that the Holy Spirit is the creator of both order and order in the church. The Spirit of God is the source of both planning and passion in the life of the church. In his first letter to the
Corinthians in a passage devoted to the dynamic ministry of the Spirit, Paul lays down this theological axiom. God is not a God of confusion but of peace. And because God is a God of order rather than of chaos he goes on to formulate the principle which Presbyterians have taken very seriously that all things should be done decently and in order. Order and ardor are not enemies. They are in Jesus Christ the best of friends. While in
college I heard Dr. Louis H. Evans Sr. explain it this way. He said the church is like a train. The Holy Spirit lays the tracks for the train to run on and the same Spirit puts power in the engine to make the train run. Both are needed. Without the tracks, without order, the train would simply run wild. But without power, without ardor, it wouldn't run at all. What the Holy Spirit creates in the church in other
words is an ordered ardor. That's how grace works. God's grace in Christ experienced by the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts is the source of an organized zeal. This is the conviction that guided Paul in all his ministry and it is not surprising that he applied it to his effort to raise funds for the poor Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. We saw last week how God's grace was at work in the churches of Paul's mission.
We met grace as a motive power that effects the grace of giving. Today I want you to see that this ardor is disciplined by the order of the Spirit. Let me explain the ways in which this is so. For one thing the offering for the saints is ordered by the legitimacy of the need. Paul tells the Corinthians that it is purposeful for him to write to them about this gift for Jerusalem. He says that not because
they are unentitled to an explanation. Paul does not expect them to give simply on the basis of his authority with no questions asked. Even apostleship is not a license to steal. Paul says that because he has already explained this ministry to them and justified the need before them. What was clear to the Corinthians however may not be so clear to us. Why was Paul collecting an offering from the Gentile churches in behalf of the Mother Church
in Jerusalem? What was it that legitimized this gift? The answer I think takes us deeply into the history of early Christianity. Remember that Paul was a controversial figure in that first century church. As the apostle to the Gentiles he preached the gospel that was free from the law of Moses. Paul believed that a Gentile could become a Christian through faith in Christ alone. Gentiles could become Christians in other words without first becoming Jews. Now that was
a radical idea in the church at Jerusalem. And it met stiff opposition from those who held that being a Christian meant believing in Christ and keeping the law of Moses. The controversy came to a head in a meeting which Paul describes in the second chapter of his letter to the Galatians. He and Barnabas went up to Jerusalem and laid their law free gospel before Peter, James, and John, the so called pillar apostles. And the outcome of
that conference was the full acceptance of Paul's gospel. Peter, John, and James put their imprimatur upon it. They gave to Paul and to Barnabas the right hand of fellowship. And together they determined that Paul and Barnabas should take their gospel to the nations and the pillar apostles would concentrate on the mission to Israel. But that resolution of the controversy meant that there would from that time on be two kinds of Christians in the church. There would
be Jewish Christians who observed the law of Moses and there would be Gentile Christians who did not keep the law. How then could there be unity in the church? How could the oneness of the church be maintained in the midst of this kind of radical diversity? Paul's answer was the active manifestation of love between the Gentile and the Jewish churches. So he was willing to accept the one proviso laid upon him by Peter, John, and James
at the conclusion of his account of the conference at Jerusalem in his Galatian letter he says, only they would have us remember the poor which very thing I was eager to do. That was the origin of the offering for the saints which Paul was raising. It was an offering for the poor. They really were poor which means that it did in fact meet a humanitarian need and yet for Paul the legitimacy of the offering went far
deeper than mere humanitarianism. What justified the offering was the need to demonstrate the unity of the church. And that need remains to this very day. Roy L. Smith illustrates it by an experience he had in mainland China. For many years Dr. Smith was the pastor of the first Methodist church of Los Angeles at a time when it had more than 8,000 members. After the bamboo curtain fell between China and the west he visited a Chinese
city with a group of Americans and one afternoon their guide walked beside him and said, you're a Christian aren't you? Yes he replied, I am a Christian. Looking straight ahead the guide took him by the arm firmly and said quietly, I too am a Christian. There are not many of us living in this city and sometimes I get very lonely. I want to hold your arm while we walk for when I hold it I feel like
I'm holding on to the rest of the church. One way that Presbyterians and Methodists and Episcopalians and others hold on to the rest of the church is through their mission giving. We do things together as a denomination both at home and abroad that no congregation could ever do by itself and no single Christian could ever do by him or herself. In our case through the program agency of our general assembly we reach out to the church
in Africa, we reach out to the church in Asia, we reach out to the church in South America and we hold their arm as partners in a common mission. And like the churches of ancient Galatia and Macedonia and Achaia we too minister to the poor through that kind of giving. We minister to minds through educational mission, we minister to bodies through agricultural and medical mission, we minister to the whole person through the sharing of the good
news of God's redeeming love in Jesus Christ. And it is through our participation in mission that we demonstrate the unity of the church. Another way in which the spirit orders are giving is by the integrity of those who administer it. Throughout this passage Paul underscores the reliable character of those he is sending to Corinth to administer the collection. Titus, the brother famous for his preaching of the gospel, the apostles of the churches are all presented as
people of impeccable integrity. And the reason for this is obvious. There were as many Elmer Gantry types in the time of Paul as there are in our own time. And as you go forth in the ministry out in the churches of your own denomination you will be under tremendous scrutiny by people precisely over this point as to what kind of a person you are of integrity with funds entrusted to your keeping for the sake of Jesus
Christ and his ministry and mission to the world. Paul was super sensitive to this issue and so should we all be. He knew very well that religion has been and probably ever will be used by some for personal gain. But he will have none of it. Only those who are fully trustworthy are commissioned to transmit this offering, all of it, to the poor in Jerusalem. By and large God's people do exercise responsibility and integrity in the
trust that is placed in them by the people of God. I'll tell you a cute story about a Presbyterian elder who advertised his car for sale one day in the local paper. A prospective buyer showed up, looked the car over, asked about the price and said, I'll take it. But first he said, I'd like to take it for a trial drive. You can trust me, he said, I'm a Baptist deacon. The owner turned over the keys
to the man and then went into the house to report the sale to his wife. He said, by the way, dear, what's a Baptist deacon? Oh, she replied, a Baptist deacon is very much like a Presbyterian elder. Good Lord, the man exclaimed, I've just lost our car. If you go forth into ministry you will discover that the leadership of the local congregation, by and large, does not fit that category. They are people of enormous integrity who
care a great deal about the church and who give a great deal of their time and energy, yes, and their money to put that church into ministry and into mission. And I just want to say to you that contrary to a lot of public opinion, the same is true of the Board of Trustees of this seminary. There is a myth abroad here in the student body that the trustees are somehow people who care little about Christian
responsibility, who care little about how they manage the portfolio of this seminary, that they're only interested in making a buck. I tell you that's not true. Those are not the people I have come to know this last year and a half. These are people of enormous personal integrity and deep Christian commitment who seek honestly to be responsible before God for this trust that has been placed in their hands. They seek to do the right thing as
God gives them the light to see what is the right thing and they seek to be responsible so that you and I can live and work here and study here. Integrity is very, very important. One final word. Paul makes it clear in this passage also that the spirit orders are given by the necessity of planning our offering. The apostle will leave nothing to chance and as you go forth into ministry, you had not better leave it
to chance either. He is sending Titus and the others on ahead for the express purpose of arranging for the gift of the Corinthians. Paul is no fool. He knows that the raising of large sums of money takes planning and preparation and my friends, I'm here to tell you that's true. And he is not ashamed of that necessity. He does not view it as something less than spiritual and neither should we. You will find many people in
the church who are adverse to the pledge system. They want to give rather out of faith. But you see pledges are nothing more than advance notices of faith giving. Pledges are not promissory notes. They are simply statements of intention which enables a church or a seminary or any Christian groups to plan and they are made in faith and they are honored in faith. And yet they do bring a discipline to us all in our giving to
Christ and his church. Paul touches upon that discipline in the last chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians. There he writes now concerning the contribution for the saints. As I directed the churches of Galatia so you also are to do. On the first day of every week each of you is to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper so that contributions need not be made when I come. Here we learn that
the order imposed by the spirit is the discipline of regular, systematic and proportionate giving. It is regular because it is to be done on the first day of every week. It is systematic because something quite definite is to be put aside and it is proportionate because it is qualified by as he or she may prosper. I believe that discipline still applies to the people of God and by honoring that discipline we honor our Lord. No my
friends there is no inherent conflict between order and order in the life of the church. The Holy Spirit provides for them both. Like that train Dr. Evans mentioned we are given tracks to run on by the spirit. With regard to giving they are the validity of the need and the integrity of those who administer the gift and the necessity of planning and that same spirit provides the power in the engine, the ardor in our souls, the
love in our hearts. Ardor and order together they give the church both direction and power. Let us pray. Seal to our hearts O Lord the truth of your word that we who seek to honor you through our giving may be faithful. Grant thy blessing upon this community of faith as it seeks to live responsibly in its capacities as trustees and as faculty and as administration and students and staff and all who give their lives to its
mission and ministry. Make us faithful use us to glorify your name through Christ our Lord. Amen.
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