Paige Patterson - Amos and Akin - Amos 7:10-15

dr. Aiken distinguished trustees board of visitors and wonderful students you are a blessing just for me to stand here and observe I cannot tell you what it means to me although dr. Aiken this week is about you not about me and you should be ashamed of yourself for trying to turn it and we are not going to let it be turned from our Thanksgiving for you whenever you leave a pastor it or a position one of two things almost inevitably happens more often than not whoever it is that follows you kills the church kills your heart and makes you sad or the other thing that sometimes happens is a man comes in and he builds it so wonderfully that nobody can remember who you are and of the two that's the one you want to have happen because then you get a plaque like this as he tries to tell everybody who you actually are the truth of the matter is that when I came not only we've been reduced to those 580 of students and my first day here was a memorable day because we got put on probation by both accrediting associations and not only that I lost seven million dollars that first day that's a beginning for you isn't it but we declared a smoke-free campus and when we did that all or tobacco money went south and so what an inauspicious beginning that was within about three weeks we discovered that the sons of the Confederacy were me home campus and we dismissed that group and that didn't make you too popular either and on top of that there are graves all over this campus that I'm responsible for my inauguration there was a group that buried the seminary right out there there's a box in the ground out there somewhere if I'd known what they were doing I would have stopped and prayed with them but we came on in and they they buried the seminary out there a few days later my dog killed a cat right out there and he's buried out there somewhere and then my dogs buried in his backyard over there so the truth the matter is I left graves everywhere and then along comes dr. Danny akin and life springs to the place and what a glorious glorious sight you are to my eyes today and I thank you and I think Danny akin very very much somebody said to me you're gonna have a lot of Aiken stories aren't you and yeah I got a lot of those and someday we'll come back and tell you all of those the only one I'm gonna allude to this morning is that sitting right there where dr. Rainer is sitting or standing right there where he's sitting there is a video that you must insist that he show you someday it was his last chapel here before he went to Louisville as vice president and knowing that dr. Aiken grew up in the city and had never touched a snake I thought it was fitting that we prepare him for the practices of some of the churches in rural Kentucky and so I got with dr. Alvin Reid who as you know has something of a problem about serpents and we were able to secure an 18-foot long living breathing Burmese python which we subsequently brought out on the platform and draped around dr. Aikens neck he could not move of course once the snake was there but the terror on his face manifests itself I didn't know why at the time but what happened was that the owner of the snake lost its head now if you know anything about pythons you know that they can't kill you in terms of poison but they can deliver a terrible bite and this man kept saying to dr. Reid grab his head grab his head I've lost his head and I couldn't understand why they dr. Aiken was so upset but he was hearing that and so it was a wonderful send-off for a ministry at Southern Seminary well I would like for you to take your Bible or your iPad or your iPhone and either turn to our scroll to the passage that I have chosen this morning it's in the Book of Amos the famous passage chapter 7 and we're going to begin reading in verse 10 and I want to talk to you today about Amos and Aiken and as I talk to you about Amos and Aiken for just a few moments I want to say to all of our mission volunteers that believe it or not the message is about Danny akin but it is to you and it is a challenge to you this day so let's read from the word of the Lord in Chapter 7 of Amos beginning in verse 10 then a messiah the priest of Bethel said to Jeroboam the king of Israel saying Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel the land is not able to bear his words full dust Amos has said Jeroboam shall die above the sword and Israel shall surely be led away captive from their own land so a messiah said to Amos go you seer flee to the land of Judah and there you eat your bread and there prophesy but never again prophesy in Bethel for it is the king's sanctuary and it is the royal residence well Amos answered and said to a messiah I was no prophet nor was I the son of a prophet but I was a sheep breeder an attender of sycamore fruit and the Lord took me as I followed the flock and the Lord said to me go prophesy to my people Israel as we read this text today we read the story of a old man not made bold by hours and hours pumping iron our by the size of the Arsenal that he had gathered but made bold by his presence in the face of the Lord God Almighty and as situations unfolded following the death of Solomon and the rending of the kingdom with a mason-dixon line located just about 20 miles due north of the city of Jerusalem the Northern Kingdom never one time had a godly King Jeroboam the son of Nebat came back from Egypt and he had just that much religion just enough religion to know that politics and religion should never be separated but religion should be exploited by politicians for their own good and so consequently he said I'm going to continue the faith and Jeroboam set up two locations far as we know this is the first multi-location church now don't take that as a criticism of that I'm just noting in passing that it is an old idea what the rest of the story is you may be critical about not only did he set up a place of worship and and and in beth-el so that they would be convenient in their faith but he also set up golden calves well where did he get that idea old idea that went all the way back to Aaron who did the same thing in the wilderness and the problem with that was not just that he made an idol and caused the people to worship it but if you read carefully in the exodus account what he said was hero Israel is Yahweh your God he named that golden calf the personal name for God what a terrible thing to do but where did Aaron get that idea what all the way back to Egypt and if you were to go with dr. Aiken if he had an ounce of religion he would take all of you to Egypt now it's fun right now and he would take you to saqqara just out of Cairo and you would ride a camel across the desert and you would come to the place there in saqqara where there are tombs you go down into a cavern and as you walk down through the cavern on either side there are rooms with enormous sarcophagi enormous caskets and you say my goodness go I have had more brothers than I ever knew look at all of these huge sarcophagi no those weren't for Goliath's brothers those were for APIs the sacred bull of Egypt the sacred bull of Egypt had a problem periodically he died tough on you when your gods died and so they had to do something about that so they like the Pharaohs embalmed APIs and placed him there and they found a little calf that was born somewhere in Egypt that bore some resemblance to a fost that just died and they said this is the reincarnation of APIs and they had a new God and the old God was embalmed and kept in those huge sarcophagi and so when the people said to Aaron make us a god he remembered APIs and he knew exactly what to do and that's how all this got started well now Jeroboam has done that and by the way we have now found up and Dan the very place of worship even discovered the foundations of the altar just to confirm that the biblical text is true well in those days not everybody was so enamored with what was going on in Israel and there were certain feds that were sent from Judah their stories are fascinating one of them was this man Amos and Amos came and began to prophesy throughout the land of Israel and as he did so a messiah who was in charge of the religious installment took exception to it and told King Jeroboam this prophet is in a conspiracy against us now isn't it interesting that the wicked always feel that there is a conspiracy the godly are out to get yet when actually all the godly are out to do is to secure a relationship with the Living God but this man is the conspirator he is attempting to buy off the land and so a messiah says to Amos go you seer flee on back to your own land of your home there he bred and there prophesy never again prophesy and betho because it's the king centuary and it is a royal residence and i want you to see Amos reply and then we'll comment on it just briefly I was no prophet nor was I the son of a prophet I was a sheep herder and a tender of sycamore free fruit and the Lord took me from following the flock the Lord said to me go prophesy to my people Israel so how is it today that Aiken and Amos are alike I find several thoughts interesting number one both of them came from humble origins most of you had no opportunity to know doc Bacon's mother and father they were literally the salt of the earth they were godly godly one parents who reared him and his sister all the siblings in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord but you will look in vain to find their pictures in any newspapers or any statement of their wide acclaim they lived in a relatively insignificant house on the backside of Atlanta where there were no wealthy homes and that's the way Danny akin grew up when the Lord God called him when he was on that Indian Reservation in Arizona there was no thought in his mind that he would someday be the president of South Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary had you suggested that to him at the moment he would have looked at you and suggested that you should lay off of the hard liquor there was no passing thought in his mind like Amos there was a sense in which he was a citified follower of the sheep and a pincher of Sycamore buds I don't know what you understand about the history of God's people but if you were to began with the time of Christ and come right up to the present you would make the startling discovery that the vast majority of the people that God has called and greatly used have come from very humble circumstances that number is legion that grew up on the ranch and grew up on the farm dr. LAN likes to speak of me as a denominational Prince because I grew up in the favored home of a denominational leader and a well-known pastor that's so unusual vast overwhelming majority of our leaders grew up in very humble circumstances you see there's something about that humble circumstance that positions a man to understand life that positions him to understand the intervention of God in all things when you grow up and wealth and prosperity when you grow up with position and prestige it is easy to think that you are owed that are some how it came about as a result of your own brilliance when you grow up like Danny akin did when you grow up like Amos did you realize very quickly that anything and everything you do is the touch of God upon your life and so humble circumstances give rise to greatness in men that perceive the things they ought to proceed and like Amos dr. Aiken suggests that another way in which dr. Aiken has modeled Amos life we don't know anything about Amos this family but I can tell you without knowing anything about it that we have a man here who was enough hated that had there been a problem in his family it would have been front-page news in the Jerusalem times and I can tell you that he must have been a man deeply devoted to his upbringing because he was a man of God and there were not many of the people of God who were really men of God and so it is dr. Aiken that you have modeled in your family a fact that's been noted last night and today again and again but I wonder if you understand how unusual it is you can take the graduates from any one of our institutions and to begin with you can just draw a line right down the middle and you can say this half of them will not be in the Lord's work in 20 years in 20 years many of them will have fallen prey to the wilds of the devil and will have ruined their lives but these over here who stay solid they are a remarkable group and every day that goes by we read about someone in the 50s and the 60s having done his ministry all of those days and now he's at the zenith of his ministry and he Gamble's it away by unfaithfulness to his wife god bless you danny akin and charlotte akin god bless you sweet boys and although your wives and your tribes that you are producing god bless you may you have more and more trial because the fact of the matter is you have honored God with the family in a day that no longer cares and I believe you follow the example of Amos in that well I would like to talk just briefly about your preaching and teaching ministry now all of you know that dr. Aiken is an unusual preacher but to be a great preacher and also to write good books and also to be a great teacher is a rare thing you know you hear people say well you know he's not much of a preacher but he's a great teacher what that means is that he bores you to death now I know a lot of people doc taken that have heard you preach I don't and remember ever a single one saying to me man I went sleep after the first ten minutes it absolutely does not happen whether you're preaching our teaching all righty I don't have time to do it all but I just wrote down some of the things that he's written and I'll just give you the shortest one here this is in his commentary on first second and third John in the new American commentary series one of the finest of the whole group of commentaries that were written in that series listen to what he says of course the overriding challenge in this verse is to abide in Christ only the one who continues or abides possesses this confidence and fearlessness the Christian is challenged as he awaits there and anticipates the arrival of the King to remain faithful and service those who are found faithful of those who will stand confidently before the king on the other hand those who do not abide in Christ will be ashamed and disgraced at his return in quotation and so it goes in the writings of dr. Aiken scholarly but always reaching out where you are and grabbing you by the heart and pulling you straight into the Lord Christ now taken thank you for like Amos writing a book two three four five six seven eight nine ten I couldn't count them over there this morning thank you for preaching and teaching and writing like Amos I'll have just one more thing I want to thank you for today particularly dr. Aiken Amos was following the Sheep one day man as you know that's not a very illustrious profession in some ways but God said to him leave the Sheep to me I want you to go to Israel and Amos doubtless thought following the Sheep in Judah is a hundred times better than putting your life on the line and going to Israel and God said I said good Israel and preach the preaching that I bid thee so what did Amos do he became a foreign missionary he became an international missionary and took himself into the presence of danger to deliver the word of Christ Doug and I thank the Lord that the beginnings of your ministry were on the Bishan feel I thank God that in those early days of your work at The Crucible College whenever we said missions we didn't find you hiding in the linen closet you were at the front ready to go I thank you that you have taken your children to a mission field and that they have committed themselves to working there I thank you that you have made it the heart and the soul of this school if I were Satan looking at the student body today I would be terrified I would think my goodness what will I do against the onslaught of these young men and women and so like Amos taken became the missionary statesmen president of a seminary preacher teacher author missionary evangelists young people if you want to do it right follow the example of Amos and look right behind him and in that line is dr. Aiken follow him fall into line behind him and you that are being appointed as missionaries today you fall in line behind you understand that you go to a difficult task in a dangerous world my challenge to you today on this day when we honor dr. Aiken is that you can praise him all you want to and it will affect him far less than hearing that you are faithful to God out there on the mission field that will bless us so more than anything else you can do and I want you to remember as you do so that the work of the pastor and the missionary is never done this is cruel to do but it serves my purposes and everybody that knows me knows I never stopped about being cruel so I do it I learned something one day Mobile Alabama I had gone there for the memorial service the chairman of your board his wife killed in a sorrowful accident on the highway we went down there to the young preacher and his family just to be there to love on him in that time huge crowd at the memorial service packed out pastor's wife you can imagine then we got into the automobiles and we drove to the funeral to the graveside and there when everybody had arrived at the graveside people stood around by the hundreds and hundreds and and you're chairman of your trustees they had Litton came with his children and sat under the little tent that they always make and the few other members of the family were close by and the congregation spread all around we had the final words at her graveside and said goodbye to her and then it came time to leave and everybody was supposed to leave and some people did leave and I stood there watching as at Litton and his family got into the coach that the funeral home provided and shut the door now for almost anybody the object at this point would be to get away you really don't need to talk to a lot of people and and you understand how they feel but they can't possibly enter into what you're feeling and you just want to get away but I noticed something interesting I noticed that fully three hundred of the people in that church didn't really know what to do so few of us attend funerals today that we don't know what to do we don't know what to stay and so they sort knew that they probably should dismiss and go home but it was our pastor's wife and it was our pastor and and that it stood there and nobody move and I thought well maybe I better go over and dismiss them I started to make a move that way and suddenly the door of that funeral coach opened and the pastor emerged from the coach and I watched him walk across the way in front of the place where his wife was to be interred and stand before his people and speak to their knee I thought to myself you know the pastor's work is never done even in the hour of deepest bereavement the pastor's work is never done the missionaries work is never done whatever your calling is today make up your mind not to begin well not to continue well but to finish well to stay in there till the very end follow the example of your president follow the example of the chairman of this board give your life for the cause of Christ the day will come when God will bless you unbelievably Heavenly Father we thank you for Amos the Prophet we thank you for Danny akin who can be called in the truest sense of the word the Prophet yes Lord he serves as president of the seminary and yes Lord he is a fine preacher and a wonderful writer but Lord he is your prophet thank you for calling him from the humble beginning to show your power and your glory in him and now Lord bless him and his family with length of days and sanctity of service and faithfulness to you until the end in Jesus name we pray amen

Channel: Southeastern Seminary

Views: 1,360

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Southeastern, Baptist, Theological, Seminary, Chapel, Message, Jesus, Preaching, God, Book, North Carolina, Wake Forest, Gospel, False Teaching, False spirits, Spirit, Danny, expository, Great Commission, Truth, Grace, Love, Discerning, Training, Education

Id: PBHm4-pxERo

Length: 29min 52sec (1792 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 09 2014