2003 Commencement Address: Ravi Zacharias

there are many ways that we could commend our commencement speaker to you this day we could acknowledge dr. Zacharias as wonderful ministry as an internationally known lecturer radial communicator author and akan omission we could also commend him for his weekly radio broadcast what my people think that's broadcast in over 1,000 radio stations across the nation and around the world I could commend him to you as a fellow member of the British Commonwealth with his birth in India and his years spent in Canada we share a common bond there but perhaps the best way I can commend Ravi Zacharias to you is in the words of his son Nathan who is graduating with this year's 2003 class here's what Nathan says about his dad when talking to my dad I've always let him know how proud I am of his accomplishments and the things he does all the way from preaching to arguing about the Braves it wasn't until this year when I realized I have never told him how proud I was of him simply because of who he is and it wasn't until this year that I realized all I was overlooking it's not that I don't know those qualities were there but I took them very much for granted so today I hope to express to my dad through these few words just how special he is thank you Dad for the sacrifices you have made we missed having you at home and we know how much you miss being there but you do it because that is what God has called you to do and that takes real courage thank you Dad for always striving to do what is right and to take the high road no matter how easy and even how acceptable it would be to take a shortcut that's real integrity thank you Dad for living out your faith and never giving up even when your world becomes a storm that's real strength and thank you dad for always standing by me and always letting me know that you're proud of me even when I mess up that takes real love mom and dad I'm proud to be your son to me today doesn't represent my accomplishments in cool it represents all that you have invested in me through your lives and through your love because I would not have made it through the tough times and I would not be standing here today if it weren't for you I love you guys would you welcome to our commencement podium the reverend ravi zacharias speaking to us on the topic interpreting failures conserving victories welcome Nate's dad to this commencement well that's not an easy introduction to follow thank you son and we love you to all our hearts what a joy it is to be here to the members of the Board of Trustees president guards and Chancellor Kessler both of whom are dear friends my dear friend Steve Beatty is a very treasured friend in our family members of the faculty administration staff and most of all to you students graduating in 2003 you know when you get asked to speak at a graduation it's always mixed emotions that respond number one you get to wear an outfit that you don't longed to wear every day number two or no occasion does so much prayer go up for the brevity of your presence and you resoundingly responded to that but more than anything else you respond with the delight that it is a very special occasion for so many and you have been asked to share in it and so that's why I am here you know we live in a very very strange world at this time with very tense moments less than 72 hours ago I was actually having lunch right at the border of Saudi Arabia overlooking a column of cars and convoys that were coming out because of all the fearsome deeds that had just transpired Here I am in the wide open in a beautiful setting so happy to be here free and celebrating moments of great accomplishment and great dreams and hopes what do you say to men and women at a time like this especially to our nation of which you are such a vital and integral part and to people like you and hope that he hopes and dreams of national leadership lie I remember being with the president for a few minutes when he asked me where our son went to university and I told him it was a tailoring he was familiar with it and sent a note wishing him well for success it's wonderful to know that you live in a land like this where those in positions of power recognize where the real power lies so what I'd like to do to your students is share with you for a few minutes this afternoon and that's all it'll be truths that I trust will be engraved upon your consciences and I begin with two stories juxtaposed back to back just a short while apart coming from a very different land the first one comes from Newton Sharansky whose justice and trade minister in Israel who returned to Russia because he wanted to go back into the prison where he had been held in solitary confinement for some time and as Sharansky walked and he took his wife with him now in that tiny little room in darkness he sat on a chair and he wept for the memories of the years he had spent there and he told his wife that that is where he really found himself when he was in solitary confinement and found out what life was all about and he made that pronouncement spent a few minutes later when he went to the grave of the great physicist Andrei Sakharov who had given to the Soviet Union the atomic bomb and when Sharansky stood by the grave here's what he said he said shortly before Sakharov died he uttered these words I always thought said he that the most powerful weapon in the world was the atomic bomb he said I have changed my mind I have come to the conclusion that the most powerful weapon in the world is not the atomic bomb the most powerful weapon in the world is the truth that came from a land whether newspaper Pravda mint truth and means truth but where millions lived under the specter of many a lie I put together this story also from that same part of the world where a man by the name of Andres Thomas was released in the year 2000 when he went into solitary confinement this Hungarian was put there in 1945 and he was released in the year 2000 but here's the interesting story he had gotten into prison when he was 20 released from prison when he was 75 and what had happened was that these former Soviets had brought in a Hungarian psychiatrist to interview him and when they interviewed him he was asked they were he was asked to interview him because they thought he was insane uttering shared gibberish and the man went in spoke to him for several hours and the psychiatrist came out and said he is not insane he is not speaking gibberish in fact he is speaking an old Hungarian dialect and what has happened is that you have been driving him insane I ask you to release him so that he can go back to his land and be made well again they complied and they released him but as Andrus Thomas saw the papers of release he was asked what he wanted to do first what do you think he asked for the first thing he asked for was to see a mirror because he had not seen his face in 55 years from age 20 he had not looked into a mirror they brought him that mirror and as he looked into it he cried and sobbed uncontrollably because the face has had changed in such remarkable ways from being a young man he was now a withered old individual with all the marks of torture and as he wept he realized all that had transpired over more than half a century I say this to you young men and women is there a mirror for your soul today as you graduate is there something you can look into to see what has happened in the last four years and if you can find that mirror and find it to be the truth at the same time you have then procured the most valuable instrument in the world something that reflects who you are what you are intended to be I will not take the time to read for you the words from that mirror but they will are there found in Deuteronomy chapter 8 and when you get a moment some time before this week is gone open that chapter the book of Deuteronomy is called the most favoured book of Jesus because he quoted from that more than from any other Old Testament book and a volume of reference reflects importance in the mind of our Lord then not only is Deuteronomy his favorite book but this particular chapter must have been one of his most favorite chapters because all of the reference that he made - all of the references that he made in the wilderness when he was tested by the devil come from this particular passage of Scripture in Deuteronomy chapter 8 what I want to do is highlight for you that great truths that he underscores were intended to be a mirror for a nation and a mirror for an individual he tells them this remember how the Lord your God led you in the desert these forty years why number one to Humble you and to test you in order that you would know what was in your heart number two to teach you that man does not live on bread alone and number three that your clothes did not wear out I wonder if you've learned that I want to express on behalf of all of the families to the faculty that I trust you have taught them this you have played special roles in the students lives and I want to express our thanks to you and now to you students and to myself as a minister of the gospel as we focus on these three principles I will keep them very short but I want you to make sure they are learned very well because here is a blueprint for life these are the most basic truths that God wants us to learn truth number one humility that your heart will always be humble no matter how great the accomplishment as Andrew reminded us earlier there is a process in learning please remember this that when God moved them from bondage into the promised land he could have taken them in a very short journey five weeks six weeks two months maximum but for 40 years he allowed them to wander he had a reason for that number one so that they would see what was in their own hearts the shortest route is not always the best route because it could easily bypass life's most important lessons he wanted the people to be humbled and take a good look at their own hearts I hope and pray that that is a lesson well learned I have concluded after 30 years in ministry that there are two ways to learn humility one is the right way though it is the more disciplined way and the second is the more dramatic way and the more painful one let me focus on the first one the first one is to keep your lives focused completely on the very person and the work of Jesus Christ who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation and took upon himself the form of a servant being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the cross wherefore God also has exalted him and given to him a name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father being in the form of God he came in the form of man being in the form of man he took upon himself the form of a servant being in the form of a servant he went to thee through the shame and the pain and the outcast reflection of what the cross was all about think with me for a moment the English word excruciating it comes from two Latin words excruciating which literally means as out of the cross when the Romans were looking for the word that most captured pain and agony they went to the cross out of the cross excruciating your life and mine has as that model and that representation the very person of Jesus who took the pain on the cross which symbolized the maximum of pain he went there for you and for me focus your life on him there is no greater example of what glory is and yet what glory was willing to do some time ago when I was doing some research on a book on Buddhism I spent hours and monasteries and Buddhist temples and was repeatedly surprised to find out when I was talking to Buddhist scholars or even Buddhist priests when they chose to reflect a life that best exemplified all that was right on many an occasion they would point not even to Gautama Buddha they would point to Jesus Christ himself Mahatma Gandhi said of all that he had studied in world religions nothing was so enigmatic to him and so unique to him as the cross of Jesus Christ focus on that try to take a good look at what it is he has done for you and for me for I'll tell you what he alone knows how to exalt us or how to humble us without humiliating us and how to lift us up without flattering us he alone knows how to humble us without humiliating us and to lift us up without flattering us there is a second way we can here learn humility and that is the hard way Thomas Aquinas said this in order to overcome their pride God punishes certain men by allowing them to fall into sins of the flesh which though they be less Grievous are actually outwardly more shameful from this indeed the gravity of pride is made manifest for just as a wise physician in order to cure a worse disease allows the patient to contract one that is less dangerous so the sin of pride is shown to be more grievous by the very fact that as a remedy God allows men to fall into other sins if pride is your problem he will find a way of breaking you and bringing you down he says sometimes he allows us to even fall into sins of the flesh though they are actually less Grievous than pride our outwardly more shameful and if you see time and again what God does to the individuals who are proud he is able to bring them to a point of recognizing that the worst of all sins is pride God wants us to look at our hearts the way he sees them that's why he said to Jacob when Jacob asked him for the blessing he said what is your name and Jacob was startled to find out he had to answer such a simple question why did God ask him the question because yours before when he stole the blessing he also pretended to be Esau and lied about his name now the all-seeing God asked him who are you he said I'm Jacob and God says because you have accepted who you are I will make a great nation out of you number one humility lesson number two God says he wants us to learn is that of spirituality to know what the deepest hunger of the human heart really is you know we have gone through times where people will tell us there are all kinds of hungers we have hungers to be entertained hungers for the esthetic hungers for the intellect hungers for learning hungers for all kinds of accomplishment and yet God reminds us time and time again that the greatest hunger of the human heart is that hunger to know God and to have him living within us that hunger for the spiritual we went through a period of discovery in human learning where we were first told that there was no difference between animals and human beings now we are being told there is no difference between computers and human beings isn't that fascinating when Gary Kasparov was going to meet up with the famed a deep blue which was designed by IBM to take on the best chess master in the world Garry Kasparov got nervous he got nervous because he was afraid if he lost humanity would lose its dignity because it was beaten by a computer so he went into hiding to get ready for this match now I want you to know that I lost my dignity after the calculators came out I didn't have to wait for the computer but Kasparov got terrified and he spent weeks beating the best of the world now he's afraid he was gonna get tumbled by a computer David Geller Tanner who is professor of computer science at Yale University responded to Garry Kasparov's fears and it was printed in Time magazine in a brilliant response here's what David giler Tanner said about deep blue the IBM computer the idea that deep blue has a mind is absurd how can an object that wants nothing fears nothing enjoys nothing needs nothing and cares about nothing have a mind it can win a chess but not because it wants to it isn't happy when it wins or sad when it loses what our deep blues after the match plans if it beats Kasparov is it hoping to take deep pink out for a night on the town no it doesn't care about chess or anything else it plays the game for the same reason a calculator ads or a toaster toasts because it is a machine designed for that purpose no matter what feats they perform inside the computer will always be a big fat zero no computer can achieve artificial thought without achieving artificial emotion too in the long run I doubt if there is any kind of human behavior Computers can't fake any kind of performance they cannot put on it is conceivable that one day computers will be better than humans at nearly everything I can imagine that a person might someday have a computer for a best friend but that would be sad like having a dog for your best friend only sadder and the gap between the computer and the surrogate is permanent and will never be closed listen now machines will continue to make life easier healthier richer and more puzzling and human beings will continue to care ultimately about the things they have always have about one another and many of them about God see David Geller Tanner could resist moving right back to God at the end of it because that is the hunger and the longing of the human heart I had an Olympic athlete once phoned me and asked if he could come and spend an hour he travelled over 2,000 miles and sat across the table muscle-bound and strong I didn't know what the reason for his visit was and as he sat across the table he was talking about the work God was doing in his life to move him into a different track now and all of a sudden he broke into a very emotional story he said Ravi I want to tell you something he said when I was in the Olympics I wasn't tipped to win anything even though from the age of 12 I'd bought myself a video camera and tracked the champion of the event in the world and I broke it down frame by frame and I wanted to see how he took the turns how he took the bends and I kept chipping away chipping away till I was within reach of the world record and as I went for the Olympics he said I was beating everybody out I was down to my last run the world was watching billions of them and everyone was on edge and my country was rooting for me I knew this was an unexpected moment in my life he said but I want to tell you something happened at that moment that I never ever in a flash of a fraction of a second ever dreamed would take place he said the gate was about to be open the gun was about to be sounded I was about to take my final run I was now ready to win a medal and the gold was being favored for me as the gun was a fraction of a second away from being sounded out of nowhere as if in a complete vacuum a thought came over me and swarmed over my mind and the thought was I wonder if my father's watching he said I want to tell you something my dad and I haven't been close my dad never encouraged me my dad never thought I would make it to this point in fact my dad and I have never had an embrace never had a hug he never came to the Olympics because he never expected me to be here and right out of the blue as the world was watching the one question on my mind was was my father watching as well powerfully built strong he said I lost a stride and ended up with the bronze medal I'm here to talk to you because of the pain of that moment and the pain that continues to linger in my heart and so when a daddy hears his son saying what he did this morning it is overflowing in the heart because you know in a microcosmic way it reflects what it is that you and I are about the hunger and the longing to be related to God himself and so I say to you this is a glorious day for you you have worked hard and you are being affirmed rightly so many lives have poured themselves into you don't ever forget that the deepest longing of your soul is not just this degree of the accomplishment it is that you might know him to know whom his eternal life he is watching over you right now humility spirituality and lastly faith you know I'm a Christian apologist defending the faith in some hostile settings and many times I hear somebody stand up and saying something like this I cannot believe in God anymore because it's too much of faith I believe in reason and I keep thinking to myself what illusion are they living under what illusion are they living under that reason bypasses God and frames a naturalistic universe utterly irrational think of it for a moment I remember my professor of quantum at Cambridge University telling us one day he said ladies and gentlemen if you think of all of the contingencies that had to be just right in the picoseconds that this world was framed he said take just one of them take just one of them the early expansion and contraction relationship as the universe was being framed it had to be so exact the margin of error so small that it would be like taking aim at a one square inch object 20 light-years away and hitting it bullseye taking aim at a square inch object 20 billion light years away hitting it bull's eye and then John poking horn one of the great quantum physicists looks at us in typical English understatement and said folks there's no free lunch somebody had to pay God paid for this world it's not free he's put enough in this world to make faith in him a most reasonable thing he's left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason alone there are other converging factors and other realities that come into this world in which you learn to live and trust him and so I say to you as I bring this to a close that your faith is not irrational your faith is based on the solid reason of an intelligent universe and the complexity that he has poured into it he has brought you through these four years he asks you to turn to the Word of God for a mirror to find out what he wants in you what you may look like humility spirituality and faith I close with the words over him but before that I want to remind you the named Andres Tomas comes from two names we are familiar with in the scriptures Andrew and Tomas and their irony of it when I first read this story that he had not seen a mirror for 50 years and the first thing he wanted to do was take a look at his own countenance if you go back into the Bible you will see Andrew who was following John was instructed by John to follow Jesus Jesus looked at Andrew and said what do you want he said I want to see where you live Jesus had come and see Thomas was the one when he was told of the resurrection said I'm not gonna believe unless I can see and I say to you how wonderful to know that this is the word into which you can look and see what it is that God has in mind for you I encourage you to think of these words of Charles Wesley when he penned this same or thou who came us from above the pure celestial fire to impart Kindle a flame of sacred love on the mean altar of my heart dare let it for my glory burn in an extinguisher blaze and trembling to its source return in humble prayer and fervent praise Jesus confirmed my heart's desire to work and speak and think for thee still let me guard the holy fire still stir up thy gifts and me ready for all thy perfect will my acts of faith and love repeat till death die endless mercy seal and make my sacrifice complete the world longs for truth may you be instruments and reflectors of that truth may God bless you for the purposes made you to be humble to be spiritual and to be strong men and women of faith god bless you thank you for allowing me to share this day with you [Applause]

Channel: Taylor University

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Keywords: Taylor University, Ravi Zacharias

Id: jqC3xyVr7GM

Length: 29min 54sec (1794 seconds)

Published: Sat May 23 2020