Exhortation, December 14

I want particularly to address our out-of-town college students this morning, though what I have to say has some application to everyone. So, don’t tune out. This coming week, most of you students will be returning home for the holidays, and as you return home you will be faced with a number of temptations. I want to identify several of those and I exhort you in Christ’s name to resist them.

First: For the past several months, you have been living apart from your families and parents. Some of you have been living independently for the first time in your lives. You have been making your own schedules, coming and going according to your pleasure, taking care of yourself. Some of you do this quite well and with much maturity, others do not. But in either case, you’re not going to be in the same position when you return home for the holidays. You will be returning to your parents’ home, but you will be tempted to continue acting as independently as you do here in Moscow. Remember to honor your father and mother, to submit to their rules and demands and oversight. Don’t resist them: that will only cause strife in your parents’ homes and damage the reputation of Christ Church, Trinity Church, NSA, UI, and everyone else in Moscow. Don’t resent your parents if they restrict the freedom you’ve enjoyed for the past months. If you resent it, it’s a sure sign that you were not really ready for freedom in the first place.

Second, some of you are reading books that your parents, siblings, and friends have never read, and thinking about issues that your parents have never thought of. Perhaps even your pastor has not read some of the books you have read. But resist all attitudes of contempt or scorn toward your parents, siblings, friends, pastors. If your knowledge has puffed you up and made you proud of your accomplishments, you simply do not know as you ought to know. If you haven’t been struck by your IGNORANCE in the past few months, then you haven’t been studying or listening very carefully. Don’t flaunt your knowledge: You don’t know that much, and, more importantly, knowledge without humility and love is worse than useless. Don’t be a sophomore, even if you are a sophomore.

Third, many of you will be returning to home churches that do not function in the way we do at Christ Church and Trinity. Some of you are returning to churches that are not Reformed, or to churches that do not put their convictions into practice as consistently as they should, to churches that are fluffly and light or to churches that are bleak and cheerless. There are two things to remember here: First, that the churches in Moscow are hardly flawless. Scripture, not Christ Church, is the standard of measurement for every church, and we fall short of that standard. Second, don’t go back to your home church pretending to be Martin Luther, cleaning up what you see as the corruptions of your home church. Go back to your home churches looking for opportunities to service. Shut your mouths, and do good works.