The next is an abridged model of President Tom Egger’s graduation tackle Mekane Yesus Seminary, the principle seminary for the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on June 22, 2024.
Rev. Dr. Yonas Yigezu, President of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, Rev. Teshome Amenu, Common Secretary of the EECMY and Chairman of the Seminary Board, Rev. Dr. Bruk Ayele, President of Mekane Yesus Seminary, Different distinguished leaders and visitors, College of the seminary, Buddies of the seminary, Households of the scholars, And honored graduates of this 12 months’s class,
Peace to you within the Lord Jesus Christ. What an honor to be with you for this event. Thanks for the invitation and in your heat hospitality. I carry greetings to all of you from your pals in The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in the USA, and greetings out of your brothers and sisters at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, the place I serve.
The theme chosen for this 12 months’s graduation is “Rooted in Christ and His Phrase.” This theme is predicated on the phrases from St. Paul in Colossians Chapter 2: “As you due to this fact have obtained Christ Jesus the Lord, proceed to stay your lives in him, rooted and constructed up in him and established within the religion, simply as you have been taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”[i]
Rooted in Christ. Pricey pals, we’re God’s little crops.
Isn’t it superb that you could take a tiny seed, put it within the soil, give it water and lightweight, and up comes a plant! A flourishing, flowering plant is an incredible factor. A stupendous miracle! However what we see above the floor of the soil is, in fact, simply part of the story. Every little seed, earlier than it begins to develop upward, sends down the start of its roots. The basis is what’s going to maintain the lifetime of the plant.
Jesus describes the unfold of the Gospel as a farmer sowing seed. And, in Jesus’s parable, a few of the seed was eaten by birds or choked out by weeds. And a few of the seed fell on rocky locations with out a lot soil. “And when the solar rose,” Jesus says, “[those little plants] have been scorched. And since that they had no root, they withered away.” What a blessed factor it’s, certainly, when the seed of the Phrase falls on soil during which it will possibly develop roots, be deeply rooted, and develop, and bloom, and produce grain! And that’s my prayer for you, for us—to be rooted in Christ and rooted in His Phrase.
To be rooted in Christ is to be rooted in His Phrase. That is our Lutheran heritage. We’re a sola Scriptura church—Scripture alone. Our Lutheran Confessions spring from the Scriptures, and they also spring from Christ. A correctly rooted church should develop up from Jesus Christ and from His scriptural Phrase.
Jesus says, “In case you abide in my phrase, you’re actually my disciples.”[ii] To be rooted in Christ is to be rooted in His Phrase.
Brothers and sisters, attend to the Holy Scriptures. Don’t add to them, and don’t take away from them. Don’t depart from them to the left or to the precise. Graduates, in your lives as Christians, in your service to the church, it is a essential dedication. Mekane Yesus Seminary, in your worthwhile educating and for the edification of your church that is the essential dedication: that the Phrase of God be the unshakeable basis of your work. The Holy Scriptures, the impressed, unbreakable, prophetic, and apostolic witness of the Outdated and New Testaments, this supply of heavenly knowledge which reveals to us Jesus Christ and the Gospel of life. This Phrase won’t deceive us. From this Phrase movement sap and vitamins into our core, into our trunk, into our branches, into our leaves, flowers, and fruit. This valuable written Phrase that offers us Christ and life. Oh, allow us to stay rooted in Christ and in His Phrase.
With humility and with cohesion, let me be part of to this phrase of encouragement some phrases of warning. On the one hand, it’s unthinkable that we might depart from God’s Phrase or that our youngsters would reject God’s Phrase. Then again, we have to be humble and sober-minded, acknowledging that the story of God’s individuals all through historical past has been a narrative of turning away from His Phrase, being gradual to listen to, gradual to imagine. “To the Torah and to the Testimony,” the prophet Isaiah needed to exhort the individuals, as a result of that they had uncared for the Scriptures of their life as a individuals, and non secular darkness had descended upon them.[iii]
Proud disregard for the Phrase of God is a contemporary downside however not solely a contemporary downside. Proud disregard for the Phrase of God is a Western downside however not solely a Western downside. It’s a perennial human downside. Skepticism towards the Phrase of God goes all the best way again in historical past to the Backyard of Eden. “Did God actually say?” That’s what the satan taught our first mother and father to ask, and sinful human beings have been asking it ever since. All through the historical past of God’s individuals—in Outdated Testomony instances, in New Testomony instances—all through the historical past of God’s individuals, their turning away from the Lord has at all times been their turning away from His Phrase, from the Phrase of His impressed prophets and apostles.
In the latest centuries of the Christian Church, nothing has been so lethal, nothing has carried out extra to chop off the Church from her Root, from her Lord, than the smug, humanist concept that someway God’s divine revelation in His Phrase ought to be open to our critique, to our reinterpretation, and even to our outright dismissal. Voices exterior the church, and, extra tragically and extra dangerously, voices contained in the church, level on the Bible and ask, “Did God actually say?”
Inside the world of theological schooling within the twenty-first century, there are some, even some who bear the identify Christian, who would declare that they themselves, with their nice intelligence, non secular consciousness, and ethical sensibility, that they themselves should perform as an excellent brighter gentle than the Scriptures. They need to inform us the place the Scriptures are proper and the place they’re unsuitable. In the long run, they need to inform us what’s true, and the Holy Scriptures should sit within the again seat.
However that’s not the educating of Jesus, or of the Bible itself, or of Luther, or of our Lutheran Confessions. What Lutherans confess about our Triune God and about ourselves we confess from the Scriptures. To all that the Bible teaches us, to the whole lot of which it bears witness, we are saying “Sure. Amen. It’s so.”
“Lord, to whom we could go? You have got the phrases of everlasting life.”[iv]
Pricey pals, don’t be deceived, to favor human knowledge to the Phrase of God is to show the plant the wrong way up. To put human knowledge and human non secular concepts forward of what the divinely impressed prophets and apostles have written and handed all the way down to us, that is to tug a stupendous flower up from the earth, roots and all, after which to plant it once more with the flower underneath the soil and the roots upward, baking within the solar. It is a higher flower! some may exclaim. It is a flower that will likely be engaging to individuals on the planet right this moment, some could plead. However it’s a poor flower, and it’ll quickly be useless. This is without doubt one of the nice causes for the decline of the church within the Western world. Don’t think about that this can’t develop into a temptation for you in Ethiopia.
The plant should rely upon the foundation. We should drink from and take heed to all that the Lord has to say in His Phrase. How silly it could be for us to attempt to instruct God. Dr. Luther himself acknowledged: “For neither [church] councils, [church] fathers, nor we [ourselves] . . . will do in addition to the holy scripture—that’s, God himself—has carried out . . . As such, we should let the prophets and apostles sit on the lectern, and we right here beneath at their ft should hear what they are saying, and never say what they need to hear.”[v]
Pricey graduates, sooner or later, earlier than the throne of God, we are going to give an account of our stewardship of God’s Phrase. Allow us to be discovered devoted. As pastors and lecturers, you bear an amazing accountability. As leaders of the church, you bear an amazing accountability. As the biggest Lutheran church on the planet, you bear an amazing accountability. Stand firmly, clearly, unapologetically, uncompromisingly, then, upon the Phrase of Christ, the phrases of Holy Scripture.
“As you due to this fact have obtained Christ Jesus the Lord, proceed to stay your lives in him, rooted and constructed up in him and established within the religion, simply as you have been taught.”
From the dear Root of Christ’s Phrase, you’ll acquire the data of the fullness of Christ’s love.[vi] This, above all, is why we treasure the truthfulness and the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. For they testify of Jesus Christ. They testify that there’s now no condemnation for many who are in Christ Jesus. They testify that nobody who takes refuge in Him will ever be put to disgrace. They testify that He won’t ever go away us or forsake us. They testify that He’ll increase us up on the final day. They testify that “neither loss of life nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor issues current nor issues to come back, nor powers, nor top nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will have the ability to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[vii] And this data of God’s love for us in Jesus fills our hearts with thanksgiving and reward that may by no means finish.
Little crops. We’re Jesus’s little crops. Allow us to stay rooted in Him. Allow us to endeavor to drink with pleasure and gratitude from the nourishment of Christ and His Phrase. My prayer for you, at Mekane Yesus Seminary, is that 100 years from now (if Christ has not but come), this will likely be a spot the place your descendants will say:
Although all of the world was turning away from the Phrase of Christ, our forefathers devoted themselves to this vivid Phrase. They studied it deeply. They liked and trusted God’s Phrase. To what they learn there, they humbly mentioned, ‘Amen,’ and they didn’t substitute it with the notions of males or with the fashions of the day. They proclaimed the reality of God’s Phrase to all. They discovered the Savior Jesus there. They usually preserved this Phrase, and confidence on this Phrase, for us.
Brothers and sisters, could your descendants say this. Might those that observe you right here nonetheless say this in 100 years. God grant this, for Jesus’s sake.
“The grass withers, the flower fades, however the phrase of our God will stand ceaselessly.[viii]
[i] Colossians 2:6–7 NRSV. The theme and Bible passage (in NRSV translation) have been chosen by Mekane Yesus Seminary because the theme for his or her 2024 Graduation.
[ii] John 8:31 ESV.
[iii] Isaiah 8:20 within the broader context of Isaiah 8:16–9:2.
[iv] John 6:68.
[v] Cf. AE 34:284. Cited in and translated by John A. Maxfield, Luther’s Lectures on Genesis and the Formation of Evangelical Identification (Kirksville, Mo: Truman State College Press, 2008), 12.
[vi] See particularly Colossians 2:1–9 and Ephesians 3:16–19.
[vii] Romans 8:38–39 ESV.
[viii] Isaiah 40:8 ESV.
