Let me read to you a portion of a letter from Tricia White, present student as a junior. She would not mind my mentioning her name because She hoped that this letter would be of encouragement to you. She said, I appreciate what you did for me my freshman year at VJU. I was the girl who lost her hearing in an odd situation. Actually, I was hoping you'd write me back and tell me I should go home. I wanted desperately to quit, Dr. Bob. I mean, really, I had given my life to God, and He rewarded me by taking away my hearing. Then your letter came. You said you'd heard about my situation from Pastor Herbster, and you were praying for me. And there was, to my disappointment, not one word about my going home. By God's grace alone, I held on that semester, and, like I said, I'll be a junior this fall. The doctors have now suggested it was the wrong medicine that caused me to go deaf for almost four months. I can now hear out of one ear. Please encourage the freshmen never to give up. I almost went home under logical circumstances, and yet I know I would have regretted it for the rest of my life. Please tell them that there is no pit so deep that God's grace is not deeper still. They can't overcome anything with God's help, anything that is meant to be overcome. I appreciate that letter and her concern for those of you who are now freshmen. Her condition occurred when she was a freshman. Could have been devastating to her. She just wouldn't quit. She was strong in the Lord. And now she is rejoicing that God gave her the grace to stay settled and keep going even when she couldn't hear. I doubt that any of you will have odds quite that devastating. Maybe you will. I trust not. But even the smallest thing can look big to us when it is in the form of a discouragement. And I pray that you will be strong. You're going to find out this week that college is not all fun and games, that there are discouragements. The devil will see to it every day that you have some discouragement, some note from home, some bad word of some tragedy in a friend's life or something difficult going on in your own family, or maybe a conflict with a roommate, or maybe just trying to balance all of your responsibilities here and get where you're supposed to be on time and on the appointed day. And you're just Finding yourself in the first week dog-tired. Well, I spend my life dog-tired, and most people who are trying to do anything that's worth doing feel the same way. And my grandfather used to say, the test of your character is what it takes to stop you. Some people it doesn't take very much, because they don't have very much character. They're stopped really easily. If the devil can wear you out, wear you down, drive you away here in the training camp. You'll never get in the Lord's army. You'll never amount to anything for the Lord in life. And you're going to have daily tests here to see what you're made out of. What kind of character do you have? What are you made out of? What does it take to stop you? I hope you're unstoppable. We try to be friendly around here. I noticed coming to chapel today I walked by three or four people and spoke to them, and they never even looked up, never spoke, never acknowledged there was anybody else even in the world. Get out of your own world. You're not the only one with problems. Other people have problems. Enter into those problems. Enter into their world. That'll give you some satisfaction. The reason some of you are miserable in life and have been miserable a long time before coming here, You're so self-centered. You think there's nobody in the world but you. The world revolves around you, and you're the center of the universe. Well, I have news for you. You're not the center of the universe. You and I are just little tiny specks in God's great cosmos. The amazing thing to me is that the great God of the universe has time for you and me, but He has time for the sparrows that fall and for the lilies that bloom. Of course, He has time for us. I don't know why, but He does. And I'm greatly encouraged to know from the Bible that it's true. If the God of the universe, with all that He has to do, can take time for you and me, then we can take time out of what we have to do for others. We'll be talking about that in just a minute in relation to the university mission statement. But I want to ask you to be friendly. Go out of your way. Speak to people. Enter into their genuine needs, the needs of your roommates, your society brothers or sisters, those who are closest to you. Enter into people's needs, bear their burdens, enter into prayer burdens with them. Be concerned for others. I had a letter recently from a graduate. I want you to hear what she had to say. It will encourage you, I think, to realize how important these casual, contacts that we have out of concern for one another, what it really means in life. She said that she'd heard me say things similar when she was a freshman that I'm saying to you right now. And so she said, as a freshman, I showed my high school visitor around. Some of you will be having visitors in your rooms throughout the school year. Some of you were visitors when you were in your high school years. She said, I showed my high school visitor around, took her to class, tried to befriend her. Then we agreed to write each other and exchanged addresses. A few years later, that visitor enrolled as a freshman when I was a senior. She had written to the Dean of Women and asked if she could room with me. I graduated that school year and headed out on deputation for the mission field. As I had exhausted my contacts for deputation services in the Detroit area, my visitor's mother wrote and asked me to try their state and their area, southern Indiana. I hesitated because this was an eight-hour drive one way. I had not traveled that far alone before. The mother assured me that I could use their home as a home base. I could speak at their church, and she sent several other church addresses for me to contact. So I went. Today, my husband and I and our two children have three churches and six individuals in that visitor's area of southern Indiana and four other churches out of state that have faithfully supported us as missionaries for 20 years, all because of that high school visitor I befriended. I see now how Providence arranged for my visitor to vastly outpay any kindness on my part. That visitor, whom I met for the first time in the dormitory, has become a lifelong friend. I was in her wedding, have spent Thanksgiving, and parts of three furloughs at her parents' home, have exchanged letters and emails through the years. Her parents treat me as a family and insist that we stay with them whenever we're in the area. So you cast your bread on the waters and it will come back to you. You don't do it because you expect that, but sometimes God in His graciousness allows that to be just a lifelong friend that you will need. So we go out of our way here to befriend each other, to befriend those on campus who visit. They honor us by coming, and we want to go out of our way and show to them our love and our respect for them. Please open your hymn books to the fly leaf. We're going to look at the university mission statement. I would also ask you to open your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 4. Look at the mission statement just a minute, will you? It's printed there and a lot of other places here on the campus because we want you and everybody to know what it is we're trying to do here. It says, within the cultural and academic soil of liberal arts higher education, Bob Jones University exists to grow Christlike character that is scripturally disciplined, others serving, God-loving, Christ-proclaiming, and focused above. Now, if you know that's why we're here and what we're committed to do for you, then you'll understand a lot better why some of the emphases are the way they are. Why we spend so much time on certain things that may not seem so important to you as I came here to be a math major or to be a interior design major or a nursing major or premed or whatever, whatever. I came here for these things. Well, you don't separate what you do from what you are. And what you are as a Christian is never divorced from what you do and what you do in life must come out of the wellspring of your character, what you are. We're here not only to teach you how to do things, to give you some academic tools that you might succeed in a given area of life and pursuit for the rest of your life. It is to make you what you ought to be so you can do what you do in a Christ honoring manner. So we're focused here a great deal upon your character. I want you to understand that or chapel won't make any sense. And the emphasis here in the dormitories upon the building of your character and the other aspects of campus life that have to do with your character, you say, I didn't come here for that. Well, wherever you go in pursuit of higher education, something's going to happen to your character for good or for bad. Some really bad things happen to character in state universities. and in the wrong kind of Christian colleges. We want some really good things to happen to your character here. That's what we're all about. Now, all of this happens in the soil of Christian liberal arts higher education. This is the place. It's an academic institution. And of course, you're going to get the finest academic education you can get anywhere in America. We're pledged to give you that. You have the finest faculty in the world to do that. You won't find a better faculty, better qualified in every way to teach you. That's the soil, that's the setting. What are we trying to do in this setting? We're trying to grow Christ-like character. Everything here is designed for that. That's why we insist that you be on time. That's why we insist on certain interactions. That's part of why we insist that you be friendly and outgoing. That's why we insist that you be nicely groomed. That's why we make a lot of insistences about a lot of things. There's a purpose behind all of this. Just as West Point, the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy, the military academies are trying to grow some military character, we're trying to grow some Christian character. And there are certain requirements that are a part of that, certain insistences that we make. It's for the purpose of drawing some Christ-like character. What is this character supposed to look like? It is to be scripturally disciplined. That is, the hammer and chisel of the Word of God shape our character. The definition of our character, the discipline of our character, is achieved through conformity to the Word of God. And anything that is antithetical to that, contrary to that, out of keeping with the Scripture, is something that has to be knocked off the life. The character has to be reshapen by the Scriptural chisel as it works on the life to shape us in the image of Christ. Look at 1 Peter. Chapter 4, For as much as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind, for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. How do we know the will of God? The Scripture reveals the will of God. We don't know a thing about God. We don't know what God wants, what God decrees, unless He has given it to us, unless He has told us. So we go to the Scriptures and we find out about the will of God, how God wants us to live. He wants us to live the rest of our time, that is, since Calvary. He wants us to live the rest of our time in the flesh, not to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles when we walk in lasciviousness, that's unbridled conduct, lusts, that's lewdness and improper thinking, excessive wine, revelings, banqueting, gluttony, uncontrolled appetite, and abominable idolatries. wherein they think it strange, that is, those who are still on the unsaved side of the cross, they think it strange that you run not with them to the same excess of riot or profligacy. And they speak evil of you because you don't live the way you used to before you got saved. They say, oh, you're just a pious prude, you're just a phony, you're just putting on an act, or you're just too proud. They don't understand why you don't walk the way you used to when you're with them. lived an unbridled life, just doing whatever your flesh wanted to do, providing food for your sinful appetite. You live that way. They live that way. Now you're saved. You don't live that way. They don't understand that. What has happened to you in the meantime? Well, you don't live anymore according to the lusts of men. You don't let your flesh Your fleshly appetites govern you. You're not the slave of your fleshly appetites anymore. You're now the bond slave of Jesus Christ. You found out from the scripture what the will of God is, and you're allowing the scripture to discipline your life to have a Christlike character. That's what chapel is all about. That's what every exposure you have to the Scripture on this campus is all about. That's what your home church that preaches the Bible is all about. It's so that the Scripture can work on our character and change us into the image of Christ. We don't live our life anymore according to the dictates of our flesh. No longer, like other men who are unsaved, are we just following after our lusts. The lusts are there, but we don't yield to them. We don't let our lusts govern us anymore. We're governed by the Scripture. So I hope you young people understand it's not what I think as a preacher. It's not what your pastor thinks as a preacher. It's not what anybody who speaks to you think. It is only as we speak the Scripture to you that what we have to say is of any importance to you. It is only as we speak the Scripture to you that you should be governed thereby. The scriptures, the hammer and chisel that works on your life and my life and shapes us in the image of Christ. And this is a daily process. It's not something that happens once. It is something that happens throughout our life and every contact we get with the scripture. And as we yield to it, we're shaped a little more in our character to be Christlike. We're now pursuing the will of God. The Scripture reveals the will of God. That's how we know it. So we ask you, we beg you, we plead with you, yield to the Scriptures. Yield to God's point of view. Yield to God's perspective. And let your life be governed thereby. You're going to hear things here, you've probably already heard things here, that go contrary to what you've always thought. Maybe you haven't come from a good Bible preaching church or a good scripturally governed youth group. Or maybe you have, but you didn't pay much attention and you just lived your life the way you wanted to live it anyway. So you're hearing things that are going against the grain. It's cutting, it's like a saw cutting across the grain of a piece of wood. You're saying, I'm not sure I like what I'm hearing. Well, if you're hearing anything that is unscriptural, you ought not to like it. But if it's scriptural, you ought not to like the fact that you don't like it. There's something wrong with you if you don't like it. If it's scriptural, and you are resisting it and rebelling against it, the problem is with you. It's not with the preacher. If he's preaching the scripture, it's not his problem. It's your problem. You have no bone to pick with the preacher, but with the Word of God. The Word of God is working like a chisel on your life. And you're saying, this hurts. I don't think I want to be shaped this way. Then you have a real problem. You have a problem with God Himself. We're here to give you an emphasis that will make your character scripturally disciplined. Scripturally disciplined. Before the cross, you had no desire to be that way. You had no ability to be that way, no inclination. Now, we who are saved, it ought to be our highest desire that we should yield to the Scripture that disciplines our life. We are to be others serving. That's the second part of the mission statement. Look at verses 8 through 10. Above all things have fervent charity among yourselves, for charity or love shall cover the multitude of sins. Use hospitality one to another without grudging, as every man hath received the gift, that is, the gifts of the Spirit. Even so, minister the same one to another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. It is the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, that cleanses from all sin. And that which is covered by the blood of Christ ought not to be talked about, ought not to be revealed to others, ought not to be paraded for others. If you're here as a blood-washed child of God, the past is under the blood. Don't talk about it. Don't bring it up. Don't feel guilty about it. It's covered. It's gone. It's forsaken. It's forgotten. And you go forward in life. God's put our sins behind His back to be remembered against Him no more. And we, if we are loving, toward others as brothers and sisters in Christ. We don't bring up to other people any personal offenses that another Christian has committed against us. We don't talk about that to others. We talk to the Lord about it. We'll talk to the individual about it, but we don't talk to each other about it. Love doesn't do that. Love doesn't display wrongs that have been committed against us by somebody. Whatever we've been in the past is covered. And because we are forgiven and a redeemed people, because the love of Christ has shined into our hearts, then we, in love like Christ, shine into the hearts of others for His sake. We're to be God-loving people. Our love of God makes us people who submit to the will of God, who don't walk according to the flesh anymore, but who walk in newness of life. Our love of God makes us want to do that. If you don't have any desire to live your life different than you lived it before you said you went to the cross and got saved, it is obvious that you have no love of God in your heart. The love of God makes us this way. Verse 2 tells us that. We do this according to the will of God. And verse 11 makes it very clear that if any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. If any man minister, let him do it as to the ability which God giveth, that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ. The redeeming work of Christ is to the glory of God. Our love of God is the first and great commandment. The Lord answered that when he was asked one day, what is the first and great commandment? He said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. It is the love of God that keeps us faithful and rejoicing in our sufferings. I don't have time to read it. Verses 12 through 16 speaks of how we as Christians are to live when we are persecuted, when we're in suffering times. And we're headed to those times in America. We've already entered into those times. We're to be God-loving. We're to be Christ-proclaiming. God can only be glorified through Jesus Christ, according to verse 11. Philippians 2.11 says that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. We're to be Christ-proclaiming people for the glory of God the Father, and we're to be focused above. Verse 5 tells us that judgment waits above. Hebrews 9.27 tells us, Disappointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment. Verse 7 says, The end of all things is at hand. Folks, eternity and time are only separated by one heartbeat. Eternity is not far away from any one of us. One heartbeat separates you from heaven or hell right now. That's all. That's the thin thread you hang on. And a fragile one it is. The Bible tells us in verse 19 that our souls are kept by Christ, who is our faithful Creator. Not only now does He keep us, but forever and forever. We're to be focused to forever and forever. The world we live in doesn't give us much promise or much hope. I'm sure you understand that. I can get very depressed very easily as I look in this world. If my focus is on this world, this planet, under my feet, I'd see nothing to give me hope. I see nothing to rejoice in. And you and I are going to spend our lives as depressed Christian people if we're not focused above. The BBC, the British Broadcasting Commission, back in May said that 12 million children in Africa have been orphaned by AIDS. 12 million children orphaned by AIDS on the continent of Africa. 12 million children. That's more than all the children who live today in the British Empire. By 2010, this number of 12 million will have increased to 43 million. AIDS killed more than 2 million people last year in Africa. 25.5 million people are living with HIV or AIDS in Africa. Villages are becoming ghost towns. Local economies are crumbling. Orphaned children. when they become adults, will not be able to drive the economic engine of Africa. An entire generation, the BBC said, is growing up without parents, without teachers, and without a future. That's one continent. That continent is done for. Africa will wipe itself out if this continues. They can't get hold of their immoral inclinations. It's done for. And the rest of the world is following behind, not too far behind. There's no hope if you look at this world. There is no human solution to the problems this world faces. If you and I are not focused above, we're missing the whole point of what it is God has saved us for and equipped us to be one day. And our whole mission in this life will never be understood if our mission in this life is not tied to that which is to come. Paul said, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Young people, Look above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, where He intercedes today for you and me. Our hope is not here in this world. Our hope is above. And live your life in today's world, in the reality that Jesus Christ rules forever, and that in Christ, you and I are joint heirs and inheritors of all that God has prepared for the redeemed. We have a wonderful life. We have a wonderful future. We have a wonderful mission. It is focused above. It is for what is above that we live, not for what is here. Let's stand and be dismissed. Father, it is with thanksgiving we live this day for Your glory. It might be today You would come. Lord, we look above for our hope. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. Amen. The chapel hour has been sponsored by Bob Jones University.