Beeson Podcast, Episode #588 Dr. Charlie Dates Feb. 15, 2022 >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I’m your host, Doug Sweeney. We at Beeson are in the middle of our third annual African American Ministry Emphasis Month. We were looking forward to interviewing Beeson alumnus, Darrell Hall, on the show today. But Reverend Hall has experienced a death in the family. We’re praying for him and he is unable to be with us. So, instead, we want to play a sermon that the Reverend Dr. Charlie Dates preached in Hodges Chapel on February 25th, 2020. And if you’re thinking about your calendars you will know that was shortly before the world shut down due to COVID-19. Dr. Dates is Senior Pastor of Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago. He’s a dear friend of mine, a former student of mine in fact, whose ministry has blessed me and my family for quite some time. As you’re about to hear, he is a very gifted preacher, faithful to the text and bold in delivery. He preached today’s sermon in a series here at Beeson on the power of the Word of God. His text was 1 Peter 1:22-25, which repeats that famous line from the prophet Isaiah, “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass, the grass withers and the flower falls, but the Word of the Lord remains forever.” So, let’s take you now to our chapel and let you hear this wonderful sermon entitled, “Forever Word in a Fading World.” >>Reader: A reading from the Old Testament. The Book of Isaiah, Chapter 61. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor in the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes; the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness. The planting of the Lord that he may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins. They shall raise up the former devastations. They shall repair ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. Strangers shall stand and tend your flocks, foreigners shall be your plowmen and vine dressers, but you shall be called the priests of the Lord; that they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God. You shall eat the wealth of the nations and in their glory you shall boast. Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion. Instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot. Therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion. They shall have everlasting joy. For I the Lord love justice. I hate robbery and wrong. I will faithfully give them their recompense. I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their offspring shall be known among the nations. And their descendants in the midst of the peoples. All who see them shall acknowledge them. That they are an offspring the Lord has blessed. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exalt in my God. For he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness. As a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with beautiful headdress, as a bride adorns herself with jewels. For as the earth brings forth its sprouts and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. >>Reader: A reading from 1 Peter 1:22-25. “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth. For a sincere brotherly love, love one another, earnestly. From a pure heart. Since you have been born again. Not of perishable seed but of imperishable. Through the living and abiding Word of God. For all flesh is like grass. And all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower fails. But the Word of the Lord remains forever. And this Word is the good news that was preached to you. The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. >>Dates: Gracious God Our Father, we do thank and praise your name for Jesus Christ our Prophet Priest King and Savior. We echo the sentiments of those who led us in beautiful worship that you and you alone deserve our highest praise, our unceasing worship. I beg of you now for clarity of mind, for concision of speech, and conviction of heart. That I may tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And pray that you will grant us listening ears to hear what your Spirit is saying and the feet to follow and obey. I honor you for the privilege to stand in this sacred space. I pray that you would be glorified in this moment. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. We just had church, for those of you who didn’t know. (laughter) There are a community of your brothers and sisters who don’t go to church – we have church – and we just had church. I want to thank God for those who led us in worship today. Let me rush to express my sincere and profound appreciation to Dr. Douglas Sweeney and Wilma Sweeney on a human earthly level there would be no Dr. Charlie Dates without Dr. Douglas Sweeney, who put his foot down and insisted that I get that dissertation proposal in and who rode with me till I got it done. And so I literally owe much to him and am grateful for his ministry to me and my family. I must also acknowledge today the inimitable Dr. Robert Smith, who has shaped generations of preachers and now beyond even his life. Not merely through his integrity in living or his exquisite teaching, but by his gentleness and his kindness, and his open-handedness. Dr. Smith, I come from Chicago acknowledging you, man, and am grateful for your ministry to me. Then to all of you, my father’s children. I see also Dr. A B Sutton, pastor of the Living Stones Church. It’s some giants in the building today, and I pray that you all will stand and pray with me as I preach the word of God. Dr. Sweeney gave me a choice of passages and so when that happens you’ve got to pick what the Dean gives you. And so I chose today 1 Peter 1:22-25. I want to read into your hearing these verses. I beg of you that you would pray with me as I preach them. Listen to these words that Peter uses to describe the enduring, ever abiding, and unfading word of God. “Since you have an obedience to the truth, purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren. Fervently love one another from the heart for you have been born again, not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable. That is, through the living and enduring word of God. For all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flower falls off, but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this is the word which was preached to you.” I want to talk for a few moments in the time we have allotted to share together from this thought – the forever word in a fading world. And when we die our plans, our policies, and our panaceas die with us. We humans are beset by a disease, it’s a disease of temporality. We are time bound. Death eligible. Perishable beings. And yet people everywhere in every language and of every ethnicity and in all cultures are groping and grasping in the darkness for something that last forever. But when we die our plans, our policies, and our panaceas die with us. Those words sent my mind swirling until it landed in about 1815 when Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled in his conquest of the then known world. He had spent the better part of his life trying to conquer the world only to come to a screeching halt, to have his subjects divide up his kingdom and a new world order emerge because nothing lasts forever. My mind kept moving until it landed in 1964 when a vacillating Lyndon Baines Johnson, feeling the pressure of a dangerous dramatization by marchers in Selma, took to Congress for an act, a voting rights act, that he would sign to save the soul of the nation. You would think that those words, etched in legislation in 1965 that that decree would hold in perpetuity, but just 13 years ago Congress had to provide extensions because not even the statutes of the world’s largest and strongest representative democracy can fend off the erosion of passing time. No one’s word lasts forever. No one’s work endures for all time. No government’s decrees linger endlessly. It’s a fact. A certainty of our nature. A rhythm we’ve come to accept. And yet, people everywhere, in every language, of every ethnicity, in all cultures are groping and grasping in the dark for something that lasts forever. But we wither, we fade, and we die. And when we die our plans, our polices, and our panaceas die with us. That’s the bad news. But my guess is you didn’t show up at 11 o’clock on Tuesday morning to hear me preach bad news. Peter gives us, in this text, some good news. It is the blessed encouragement that there is something that lasts. No, let me say it better. There’s something that outlasts. Something that hangs on. Something that survives. Something that when time falls exhausted at the feet of eternity will still be standing. Something that survives the greatest empires and outlives the most remarkable civilizations. And that something is the word we preach. This text is tailored to teach you and I that the word we preach will outlast us. And its promises will outlive our ministries. Spurgeon is dead now, but the word he preached is fresher than tomorrow’s newspaper. Gardner Calvin Taylor is gone now, but the promises he proclaimed still apply to us today. Sandy Ray is a blessed memory now, but the gospel he preached still saves souls today. And all of that is because of the testimony of another who did die, but the record reads that he’s alive today and forevermore. This, friends, is the forever word in our fading world. That’s the word about which Peter writes to the saints scattered abroad. Remember Peter, the impetuous disciple from Capernaum, the big fisherman. Peter, the disciple who invented concealed carry. (laughter) Peter, who would cuss and cut you when church was over. Peter writes to this fledgling church of people whose world has been upset by the aggression of a government hell bent against the Christian faith. These are people who Peters, in the introduction of his letter, strangers, sojourners, people who understand temporality with so great familiarity. Their homes are temporal. Their careers are ephemeral. Their relationships are under the gaze of uncertainty. And all that they have is the gospel that has given them a new identity. But not only that. Peter writes to a church that is affected by jealousies and hatreds of their past. People who make up an unlikely fellowship. This is a church of Jews and Gentiles. Men and women of different nationalities and ethnicities. Many of whom have been torn asunder by the mutual rifts of suspicion and conflicting interests. They had no reason to do life together apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in the midst of shifting times and of fading world Peter gives them a strange admonition. It’s strange because when you live with people you come to discover that when life gets topsy-turvy, when things turn upside-down, the human inclination is to care for one’s self to the exclusion of those you would otherwise hate, but in that very context Peter writes to them what I proclaim to you – because of our redemption we are bound to our Lord, but we are also bound to one another. That’s what makes for good church, by the way. I know you want that kind of church like I do. It’s a loving church. A people characterized by a sincere and profound affection for one another. And at the end of this heavy emphasis on doctrine, at the curtain raising of this epistle, Peter squeezes out of that doctrine what is the truest litmus test as to whether or not we have our orthodoxy as strong as we proclaim it has a hold on us. Peter tells the Early Church that the after effect of their salvation must be an ardent, unfeigned love for one another. And he says, then, that genuine salvation must, of necessity, produce fervent love in the church fellowship. That’s what we read in verse 22, “Since you have an obedience of the truth purified you souls for a sincere love for the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart.” Peter argues that there ought to be a result felt in the fellowship when our souls have been purified. It’s about to become a museum. I wouldn’t believe it unless I saw it myself. I was driving by one of our legendary churches in Chicago just the other day. There are new signs on the scaffolding, on the sides of this church. It was a beacon of hope during the great migration of the early 1900s. In fact, it’s the first place that Thomas Dorsey and Amelia Jackson sang, “Precious Lord.” It has come to be known as the birthplace of gospel music. But the signs on the side of the scaffolds of what used to be a growing and vibrant church alert every passersby that it’s about to become a museum. I want to say to you that it can happen to your church, too. What took this church threatens to take every church. What is it that takes our churches down? It isn’t the absence of new intelli-lights and smoke machines and LED walls that attract new generations. No, what threatens to take our church is the same thing that took that church – slander, envy, deceit, malice, hypocrisy – things for which we have no cure other than the gospel and the love that the gospel produces. Every church is museum-ready when it fails to love from the heart. Peter argues that the basis of our congregational care and the motivation of our active affection toward one another is that our souls have been purified. Did you see that in the text? That’s the motivation that we now have clean souls. But I want you to read what Peter says, carefully. He does not say that we love one another for the purification of our souls. No, Peter argues that we love one another because every believer in Jesus Christ has already been purified. Have you been to Jesus for his saving power? Have you washed your robes in the blood of the Lamb? That’s what Peter is granting us in a kind of pre echo chamber for the music we sing. This is not something we earn, friends. It is something that has been done for us. When you read 1 Peter 1:22 I want you to think of John 11:55. Just before the Passover many people took time to purify themselves. It is a marker that says to us that the totality of the believer’s life is purified as a result of faith in Jesus Christ. That there’s nothing you do to earn a purified soul. But it is something that God grants to you. Oh, I know what I’m talking about. I remember when Kirstie and I first got married, almost 14 years ago. We had nothing. We had an apartment with nothing in it. We got home from the honeymoon in Rome, Florence, and Venice, and we got down to a grocery store because we had nothing. We had to buy cleaning supplies. I told Kirstie I was no good in the kitchen and wasn’t really good at cooking, but I could clean. One thing mother Dates taught her boys how to do was to clean a house. So, we got to the cleaning aisle and I told her, “You’ve got nothing to worry about here, I’ll take care of everything.” I looked for it. I walked up and down the aisle until I spotted it. I saw it. A little green tube with white letters, Comet Cleanser. It’s a powdered bleach. I took three or four of those off of the shelf, knocked them into the cart, got some Brillo pads, some 3M scratch pads, and she said, “What are you doing?!” I said, “I’m getting materials to clean the tub. You don’t want to get in that tub. We don’t know who’s had this apartment before us. Let me do the work.” She said, “Oh dear, you don’t need to do that. There’s another product on the other side.” I said, “No, I don’t trust those new products. This is what we used when I was growing up. You sprinkle the bleach down upon the tub. You run the water and you scrub with what my mother called elbow grease. You move into the tub to get it clean.” She said, “Oh dear, things have changed since you were a little boy.” She said, “There’s a new product by SC Johnson Wax. Look at it, it’s called Scrubbing Bubbles.” (laughter) She said, “All you have to do is spray it, watch it bubble up, foam up, pull up the dirt, run the water, rinse it clean.” We got into our first argument there at the Treasure Island grocery store in Hyde Park in Chicago. But I said in that moment, “Fine, we’ll do it your way, first.” I was convinced it would not work. So, we got home and I sprayed it and I stood there. She said, “You can stand here if you want (laughs). I’ll be back in a few moments.” And I watched those white bubbles turn brown, lift the stain, and ran the water, cleaned it – and it was as though the little metallic stopper did a *bling* when it was over. Those bubbles started to talk to me. They said, “I’ll preach it if you let me.” There are a lot of people trying to scrub their own souls clean. A lot of people who go to seminary who look for education, trying to get their minds renewed. But you will never be clean by the exercise of your own human effort. You need something more powerful than your own elbow grease. You need something stronger than the academy and a book. And I’ve got something to recommend to you. It’s not made by SC Johnson Wax, it’s produced by Heaven. It’s called the blood of Jesus Christ. Once his blood taps your soul you are clean. That’s how you get a purified soul. After you have experienced that love, which only Heaven produces, Peter argues that you and I are then to exercise that love in the lives of the local fellowship. See, our obedience to the truth, friends, is not mere intellectual assent. It is not mere acceptance of academic and theological propositions. No, our acceptance of the truth is seen in the sincerity with which we love one another. Do you love the single parents that leave your church every Sunday with not enough money to buy groceries to feed their kids? Do you love the immigrants who populate our nation and our cities regardless of the political rhetoric that has inflamed our consciousnesses? Do you love the people who are far from God and you can tell they’re far from God by how they live? Or do you ride through the hood and lock your doors and keep your gaze straight ahead, making eye contact not with the little brown boys and black girls who are hoping for a way out? Peter argues for a sincere love of the brethren. I wish I could push it, but my time is short. I want to tell you that this is not a kind of fake fanned love. No, this is a kind of love that shows up in the demonstration of our affection for one another. Doc, when is my time done? Don’t give me that. All right. Here we go ... I remember I was trying to catch Kirstie’s attention in undergrad. I was doing everything I could. Spending money I did not have on dinners I could not afford. Trips to the theater. I wanted to show her that I felt for her. But I couldn’t just say to her, “Hey, I feel for you with all my blood pump.” I had to find a way that would grant a window into her appreciation for my affection. So, I took a Shakespeare class. (laughter) I knew she appreciated the theater and I remember when I grabbed that sonnet. I caught it and I laid it on her. I remember the day, it was that almost melancholy time of day. We were walking down Dorner Avenue between Pennsylvania and Nevada Streets, where the darkness has just about taken over the light of day. I grabbed her hand and I said to her, “Love is not that which alters when alteration it finds. Neither does it bend to remove with the remover. But it is an ever fixed mark, which looketh upon tempest and remains unchanged.” It struck me in that moment that Shakespeare is the kind of poverty of speech when it comes to communicating love. Our love is not seen in the superlative of our spoken sentiments. But our love is shown in the action we convey toward one another. This is what Peter is getting at. He says to us that there is something about the after effect of our salvation that ought to show up in how we treat one another. But then he says something else, and I’ll leave you with this. Hey says something not only about what our salvation produces, but Peter says something about what produces our salvation. He says, “For you have been born again not of a seed which is perishable, but that which is imperishable. That is through the living and enduring word of God.” Peter argues something about the reliability of the time-tested source of our redemption. He says that our redemption has been born of an imperishable seed. You know, everything that is born is born of a seed. Trees are born of a seed. Fruit is born of a seed. Human beings are born of a seed. Peter’s argument is that the thing born takes on the nature of the seed from which it was born. If the thing born is born of a seed that dies, the thing born is going to die. Peter lifts the argument, “flesh is like grass, glory like the flower of grass.” Have you ever noticed how beautiful and how glorious flowers are? I have bought many of them. I spent my life savings one year on some flowers in our home. My kids and I went out to get some flowers for Mother’s Day and we picked out burning eye roses, and blue iris, and calla lilies, and birds of paradise, hydrangea ... and we assembled this wonderful floral collection, and we brought them home, and we set them in indirect sunlight. We clipped the stems to give them a new shot of fresh water and fed them. I took pictures of them as I often do. I had to leave a few days later to go preach, and I looked at them every day. I came home, hoping to see these beautiful flowers that we had purchased. My wife has something she likes for me to do when I come home. She says, “Dear, how did it go?” I said, “You’ll never believe it, it went well. The angels danced while we worshipped the Lord.” She said, “Oh dear, that’s great. The trash.” I went to grab the trash and I picked it up. The side of that bag swiped the side of my leg. You’ll never believe what I felt. I said, “Oh no.” I opened it up. There they were. The birds of paradise, the calla lilies, the blue iris, the burning eye roses ... I said, “You didn’t throw them away!?” She said, “Oh dear, they were dying when you brought them home.” (laughter) Aren’t you glad that when God had to pick a seed from which to birth our salvation that he did not pick something that was dying on the way home? Aren’t you glad that when Heaven invested in your salvation and knew that you would act a fool even after you have been saved that Heaven picked something that would not die before you did? What Peter says is that the seed of our salvation is the living and enduring word of God. Scholars are divided. They don’t know if this word, the scripture living and enduring, applies to God or if it applies to his word. I think both. Either/or is just fine. His word is living and enduring. I want to call you to the witness stand as I take my seat. You know that this word is living and enduring, don’t you? I mean, when your back has been up against the wall. When you’ve had to make decisions. When you’ve looked for time-tested wisdom. You didn’t go back to a college psychology book. You didn’t reach for a Farmer’s Almanac. You opened up the word of God, because you know that that word is still alive today in the way it was when he first spoke it. I’m here to tell you that this word is alive. Its predictions are correct. Its judgments are true. Its assertions are reliable. It is more definite than the constitution. It is the foundation of highest philosophy. It is the inspiration of poetry. It is the motivation for our highest music. It will build your faith. It will fight your temptation. It will light your path. It will clarify your decisions. It will feed your soul. It will clean your conscience. Its words are wisdom. Its claims are true. It has never disappointed. Time cannot age this book and ages do not time it. You have read many books, but this is the only book that has ever read you. It is the living and enduring word of God. (cheering) This word is living. But it is also enduring. Listen to the claim that can only be made about the word of God. That can be made about nothing else. It endures. It lives forever. We’re still reading Psalm 23, written in the 10th century, because the shepherd still is alive. He still is our shepherd. And we shall not want. We’re still reading Jeremiah 8:22 because the balm from Gilead still heals wounded souls. We’re still reading Joshua 2 because that red rope that Rahab hung from her apartment on the wall at Jericho still signals to a cross where there is some red blood, shed for humanity. We still read Romans 10 because it’s still true. “Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” We’re still reading John 10 because Jesus still moves stones and though one is dead yet shall he live. But verse 23, friends, isn’t just a promise of what the word is. Verse 23 is a promise of what the word will do for you once it gets in you. The word is living and enduring, but once it gets in you it makes you living and enduring, too. The word not only births life, but it sustains life. The word not only gives you life, but it keeps you living. This is Peter now quoting Isaiah, saying, “The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God lasts forever.” I wish I could do it, but let me leave you with this. This text makes a claim about the power of the word of God. You know that God’s word has power, right? You’ve read the creation account. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, ‘Let there be light.’” One of the best lines in all of the Bible follows right after that, “And there was light.” It’s what scholars call ex nihilo power. That God has the power to make something out of nothing. That his word has power. What did God have to work with when he created the world? You know, everything we make takes something that’s already made to make it. I hear people left the church on Sunday saying, “What are you having for dinner?” “Oh, I’m making some chicken.” They’re not making no chicken. They’re taking chicken that’s already been made. Washing it, flouring it, seasoning, frying it, and eating chicken. The question becomes what did God have to work with when he made the world? God stepped out on nothing. The only pulpit he had was the power of his own personality. He looked at nothing. He spoke to nothing. But when he got done speaking things appeared everywhere. I like the way Gardner Taylor says it. He says, “When God said ‘let there be ...’ when he got to “let” all that was not started straining to become.” God didn’t need anything to work with, because he’s got power in and of himself. And we see that power of his word show up in scripture, don’t we? You remember when Abram and Sarah were told they were going to have a baby? This was before Cialis and Viagra. When Abraham had no hope, he hoped against hope. And Sarah laughed, like many of you laugh, but God’s word has power, and though Abraham had snow on the roof God put a fire in the fireplace and in came Isaac. Because God’s word has power. Ask Joshua how did they get those walls of Jericho to fall down flat. Nobody at the Pentagon is studying circling a city, marching around like a marching band. But when God gives you a word, you can march on that word and what he says will come about. Ask a virgin in Bethlehem how she’s going to have a baby and give birth to the King of the world who will save all of humanity. It’s because the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of God- (cheering) >>Kristen Padilla: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.