fbpx
×

Log into your account

We have changed software providers for our subscription database. Old login credentials will no longer work. Please click the "Register" link below to create a new account. If you do not know your new account number you can contact [email protected]
Embrace prophetic role, Mohler exhorts SBTS grads
Andrew J.W. Smith, SBTS
December 07, 2016
4 MIN READ TIME

Embrace prophetic role, Mohler exhorts SBTS grads

Embrace prophetic role, Mohler exhorts SBTS grads
Andrew J.W. Smith, SBTS
December 07, 2016

Christian ministers should not settle for the comfortable career of secular professionals but courageously embrace their prophetic role, R. Albert Mohler Jr. said in his Dec. 2 winter commencement address at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

SBTS photo

R. Albert Mohler Jr. presents a posthumous M.A. to Tara Lawhorn Wood, widow of late Tennessee pastor Edward Todd Wood of Brainerd Baptist Church.

The seminary conferred 180 master’s and doctoral degrees during commencement exercises in Alumni Memorial Chapel.

“The Christian ministry is a terrible profession, but it is the greatest calling on earth,” Mohler said. “Professions are decent, respectable, recognized, esteemed, regulated and rationalized. … The greater scandal by far are the churches, denominations and church members who cheerfully domesticate the preacher and the preachers who are so willingly domesticated.”

Using Matthew 3:1-12 as his text, Mohler said contemporary Christianity can learn much from a passage not typically viewed as a Christmas story. While John the Baptist was a popular preacher, his message centered around unconditional repentance, Mohler noted.

“The judgment is so clear, as is the grace,” the seminary president said. “The Messiah will judge the nations and every single soul. He will separate the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff. The coming judgment is horrifying. There is no allowance for annihilation here. We are warned of an unquenchable fire.”

The preacher’s ministry is infinitely greater than John’s ministry, Mohler said, since the Christian proclaims in light of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection and the fullness of biblical revelation. Although John the Baptist’s role as Christ’s forerunner has passed, his message about the imminence of the Kingdom of heaven and the necessity of repentance continues in the preaching of the Word.

SBTS photo

A line of graduates process into Alumni Memorial Chapel for commencement exercises.

“The faithful preacher is like the winnowing fork in the Lord’s harvest,” Mohler said. “True gospel preaching leads to wheat collected into the barn but also leads to chaff collected for the burning. This does not fit the expectation of a religious professional but it is the glory of the true minister’s calling.”

The message of repentance both saves and condemns, Mohler said. With the surrounding culture increasingly hostile to the church of Jesus Christ and numerous adversaries arrayed against its message of repentance, Christian ministers must continue to preach faithfully.

“We are facing difficult days with unprecedented challenges. There will be no place to hide. This graduating class of Christ’s ministers will take the gospel to the ends of the earth and will likely serve long after so many of us are gone from the earth,” Mohler said.

“There are few sights so glorious as this – a congregation of ministers at the very brink of deployment or rightly deployed in gospel service. This defies the wisdom of the world and reveals God’s good pleasure.”

Among the graduates was Edward Todd Wood, who died suddenly of a heart attack in August at age 45 while serving as pastor of administration at Brainerd Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tenn. His wife Tara was present to receive his M.A. in leadership posthumously.

Mohler presented the Josephine S. and James L. Baggott Outstanding Graduate Award to Tyler D. Clark, a master of divinity graduate from Fort Smith, Ark. The award was established in 1980 to recognize the outstanding graduate of each graduating class. Also graduating was Bryan E. Baise, assistant professor of worldview and apologetics at Boyce College, who earned his Ph.D. in the school of theology.

Mohler’s address will be available in audio and video at sbts.edu/resources. A manuscript of the address, “His Winnowing Fork Is in His Hand,” is available at albertmohler.com.

(EDITOR’S NOTE – Andrew J.W. Smith is a writer for The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.)