Remember Who You Are!

Rev. Joseph Novenson gives the commencement address on Proverbs 11:30 at RTS Atlanta. The message is entitled “Remember Who You Are!”

Introduction: My family and I started attending Lookout Mountain Pres. in 1998. My children were 10 and three and three (I have twins) and one when we started. Three or four years into our time there, my daughters together, my twins, came running up to me before the service started and said, “It’s Pastor Joe,” because there’s more than one preaching pastor at Lookout, and it’s a carefully guarded secret who’s preaching on Sunday morning. I don’t know how carefully it’s guarded, but no one ever knows. The girls would run ahead and get the bulletin, and if it was Pastor Joe, they would run back excited because it was Pastor Joe.

One measure of godliness is the attention that people give to the people that the world says you can safely ignore. And my daughters, all of my children, knew that if they ran to Pastor Joe, he had time for them. He would treat them, no matter their age, with all the seriousness that their questions had for them. They always wanted to hear what he had to say from the pulpit or anywhere. And they’re parents are like them. We’re always eager to hear what he has to say.

I’m going to stick to the minimal introduction that he authorized. Well, except for that first part that he didn’t authorize. He’s been a follower of Jesus since 1968, the husband of Barb since 1975, the father of Matthew, his wife, Michelle, Andrew, Ellie, her husband, David. All of them love the Lord and are living to serve him. He’s been the senior pastor of Lookout Mountain Pres. since 1997. He’s my pastor. It’s Pastor Joe.

Joe Novenson: Mr. President and members of the board, esteemed faculty, esteemed graduates and family and friends, it is an honor for me to be here. I mean that with the utmost sincerity. I come to you, though, with a touch of laryngitis. So the help of the dear brother at the P.A. system is the reason that I’m probably sounding very loud to you.

I would like in just a moment to read to you a passage of Scripture that was written, as best as I can tell, 150 before the India caste system even existed. This is 150 years before Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey are written. Rome doesn’t exist. This is three centuries before Buddha or Confucius. This is four centuries before Socrates. The Parthenon hasn’t been built yet. It’s 1,500 years before Mohammed. These are the words of Proverbs 11:30: “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise.”

Let’s pray.

Father, from ancient words come immediate help. Thank you for the gift of your Word. Now, please forbid that the one who speaks will detract or distract from you. And please, cause what is said today to be a help that may actually be remembered five billion years from now. So work, Holy Spirit. We pray through Christ, Amen.

I had the privilege of being the pastor of Albert McMakin, a name you do not likely know. Albert McMakin was the man who invited a then 15-year-old boy named Billy Graham to go to an evangelistic crusade held by Mordecai Ham. I was told by Albert the only reason Billy went is because he was allowed to drive Albert’s truck, even though it was illegal. It was at that crusade that Billy Graham was rescued by Christ, and for the remaining months of their close relationship, Albert McMakin discipled, taught, and mentored Billy Graham. He was a member of my congregation. You have to know I spent a lot of time in this man’s living room asking questions. He taught me so much, and then Alzheimer’s took his mind.

I remember visiting him in the nursing home when he could not remember who I was. I remember visiting him in the nursing home when he couldn’t remember who his own family was. But the hardest thing for me, and this is a mark of my selfishness, is when he couldn’t remember who he was. Because now Albert was in the room, but he was gone because he had forgotten who he was. I’ve come to say to every one of you as graduates and all of you as followers of Christ who number yourself among his people: you must not forget who you are.

From the verse I just read you, the estimate of Solomon or Agur or Lemuel, for they all contributed to the Book of Proverbs, which one? I’m not sure. From the estimate of the author, what you bring to this world is in excess of what I thought of Albert McMakin. I want to show you three things quickly. You have a stunning identity, it has a stunning cause, and you are called to stunning behavior.

Christians Have a Stunning Identity

First, your identity. The author just said “the fruit of the righteous.” We’ll look at what that is. That’s the cause. But the fruit is a tree. He’s playing with words. Fruit is the tree. In other words, the fruit isn’t just the pomegranate. It’s not even just a bushel. It’s not even just a harvest or multiple harvests. The fruit is the tree, and it’s the tree to end all trees. This is the tree that was in downtown Eden: the tree of life. Listen to Genesis 2:9: “In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” If this tree ingested by anyone coming near became part of them, all of the beauty, all of the wonder, all of the nobility, all of the love, all of the perfection that was ours before sin hit the world would have never ended.

My stars! What a picture! Let me be frank and say any illustration falls short. Pick your best vacation, the most wonderful worship experience, your closest relationship, improve them to absolute perfection in your imagination, and you still don’t get it. When you see the Bible describing when this is brought back to earth, they go into hyper word. Listen to Isaiah 55:12, “The mountains will sing and the trees will clap their hands.” When what was once here is brought back, poetry is all that we have to even approximate the wonder. Is Solomon saying that when you walk into a room, there ought to be the faint applause of trees? There ought to be a measure of life like no other time.

Well, then further, to see your identity, sin hits, of course, in Genesis 3:23, and it says, “So the Lord God banished man from the Garden of Eden . . . . [3:24] After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”

Now sin has hit and God just said that there would be multiple angels because the “im” ending, as you know, is plural. So you’ve got multiple angels, but there’s only one sword. We don’t know: were they all carrying the sword or was the sword so big that it took all of them to hold it? We don’t know, but here’s the point. Is Solomon or the author of this section saying that when people get to you, they will have access to something that God forbids by angel war that they find anywhere else? My stars! This is over the top! With you, they ought to be able to touch the untouchable, reach the unreachable, find the unfindable, hear the unhearable, know the unknowable. Whatever this cause is, we need to listen.

But your identity gets even more stunning because it goes on at the end of the Bible, which, of course, Solomon would not have known, but God did. Listen to Revelation 22:2–3: “On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse.” I thought it was stunning already. Is the Word of God telling you that when people get near you, they should sense the curse reversed? That even the periphery of you, if I may, the leaves of your life, a conversation, should be healing, restorative, renewing?

I just have to illustrate this briefly to prove its fact. I have a dear friend who’s now in glory named Marion Smart. Marion had a disease called polymyositis. It slowly took out all the ability of her body to function flexibly. She was one of the most godly women I’ve ever known in my life. Even though she was in her late eighties, I told my wife, “If you go to heaven, I’m going to marry Marion.”

A young man came to the office to see me. He was ready to take his own life because his fiancée had dropped him. I struggled with what to do to help him, and this was my honest decision. I said, “Get in the car.” I said, “Why am I getting in the car?” “Because I want you to meet a woman.” He said, “I don’t need a woman!” I said, “You need this one.”

I drove him straight to the nursing home. And I said, “From now on, your Friday and Saturday nights are going to be open. I want you to be here in the nursing home. I want you to be with Marion Smart.” I said, “Marion, teach him everything you know about the living God.” And I said to him, “You listen to her because her words are soaked in Scripture.” This is not a lie. I came back months later to visit Marion. As I walked up, I stood in the door and there were 20-somethings and 90-somethings all in the room studying the Bible, laughing, and praying. The nurses were walking by like “. . . ?” You know why? In the room was life. This is what it can produce. This is what we’re called to be.

The Cause of Your Identity Is Stunning

Second, not only is your identity stunning, but the cause is peerless. Listen: “the fruit of the righteous.” So there’s the cause. Whatever this thing is will turn you into a tree like no other. Now, let’s not import New Testament insight right away. Let’s start: what would Solomon have thought when he wrote this line? Well, according to Deuteronomy 17:18, every king of Israel had to write the whole Torah by hand and read it every day. So he would have known this: listen to Deuteronomy 6:24. “The Lord commanded us to obey all these commands . . . so that we might always be kept alive, as is the case today. And if we are careful to obey all this law before the Lord our God as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.”

There it is. So what is righteousness? One, he says you have to be careful, nobody does it by mistake. Second, to obey. Not study, not pass exams on, not read, not discuss. Obey all the law. You’re graduating. You know, inside the Torah are social laws, military laws, sexual laws, economic laws, medical laws, familial laws, ecological laws, marital laws, penal laws, parental laws, architectural laws, horticultural laws, agricultural laws, hygienic laws, city planning laws—I’m just warming up. You are to obey them before the Lord your God, not before each other, going, “At least I’m doing a little better than you are!” No, before him, as the Lord has commanded, and he doesn’t just want a checklist. He wants the obedience all the way down, deeper than your DNA to what you most yearn and desire.

The Bible speaks more about our being in Christ than Christ being in us.Now, I don’t know about you, but this is pretty crushing. In fact, Solomon, who probably wrote this section, would have known that his daddy, David, had written some hit tunes. One’s called Psalm 14. One’s called Psalm 53. Another’s called Psalm 143. And in all three of them, David, his daddy, wrote these words: “No one living is righteous before you.” We have a problem. So was Solomon just, you know how preachers are, exaggerating?

No, because there’s another verse Solomon would have had to write by hand. It’s Genesis 15:3. “Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness.” So by not performing this, but by trusting you, this perfection is credited—it’s not cash. I know I don’t have cash—it’s credited to me? Yes. Tell this illustration to your families, because I know you know what it means. The Bible speaks more about our being in Christ than Christ being in us.

Would you please look up here if you’ve been asleep just a minute? My hands were crushed in 1975. I had to hold them over my head for one year. This thumb got cut off in the accident, and they gave me a new thumb. They sewed my hand on my chest for six weeks so that the circulation in my chest would feed my hand. This is now my chest skin, my hip bone, and the nerve from the side of this finger. So when I touch it here, I feel it over here. It’s really amazing. This is believing that all that is wrong with me is in him, so that all that’s right with him is given to me. It’s not because I’m good. It’s because he is.

Now, here’s the good news. If the cause of this stunning identity is righteousness, then it’s not gifts. Aren’t you glad? I can’t be as smart as Bill Davis. I can’t be as articulate as your professors. It’s not about your gifts. It’s about the gift he gave you. When he credits this righteousness to you and his Holy Spirit enters you, he begins to infuse the righteousness into you and through you. That means it’s time to stop saying, “I’m too old. I’m too dumb. I’m too young. I’m too anything.” He gave you the gift. It causes life.

The Christian’s Identity Produces Stunning Behavior

Now, this produces one more thing: stunning behavior, really drop-the-mouth-open, stunning behavior. You know that in Hebrew a poem doesn’t rhyme; it either contrasts or compares. Here Solomon probably is comparing “the fruit of the righteous is the tree of life” and “he who wins souls is wise.” So the winning of souls is like this tree that bears this fruit, and it is because of this gift of righteousness. What does it mean to win souls?

Well, first of all, when most preachers talk about this, they speak about evangelism. Please hear me: this is not less than evangelism, but it is so much more. The word here for “win”: the Hebrews did not have a developed understanding of leisure or sport, so get rid in your mind of any athletic competition. The word here is a war word. It’s a word that came from battle. It’s why some translators see it as a contrast instead of a comparison. I think they’re wrong. What he’s telling you is when this righteousness is given to you, you will become the warrior for what is deeper than the DNA in every human you meet. Not that their bodies don’t mean something, but all the way down to the soul. You will become like a Navy SEAL: “I will fight for you no matter what the fall is done to you. No matter how deep the stress fractures, no matter how tough the battle. I’ll take friendly fire. I’ll take enemy fire. I may die, but I will fight for you.”

This is why the name Jesus, Yeshua, which means “the Lord is our defender,” is also a battle word. It has more to do with the sound of defending one than it does with organ music or stained-glass windows. That you would join and say, “Yes, I too am willing to give my life for the spiritual, physical, emotional, familial, relational restorational well-being of any human to which you call me.” So you have an incredible identity. It has an incredible cause. You are called to incredibly stunning behavior.

I close with this illustration. This is a true story. I am not making this up. There was a book written in 1997 called Small Miracles. It was a New York Times best seller. It produced multiple copies and subsequent books. It was put together by three children of survivors of the Holocaust, and they describe remarkable events. When I read these books, I was just like, “If I could get near Yitta Halbersham and Bernie Siegel and Judith Leventhal, I would love to talk to them about Christ.”

Here’s one of their stories. It’s a story of a 50-year-old man who is coming home in the same walk he’d always walked while he’s leaving work. He was a shift worker. He worked until it was pitch black outside, and he would carry his lunch pail through the middle of a park day after day after day, year after year after year. He was used to it so well, it never bothered him that it was dark. As he’s walking through the park, he goes past the bush. And this actually happened.

He hears the sound of a woman in the bush obviously being accosted. He can hear them. He stops, and all this took place in seconds. And he thought, “I’m 50. I’m out of shape. If I try to help her, I’ll be no help. I got to get the cops. If I go get the cops, by the time I’m back, she’ll be dead. I’ve got to help her.” He pushes the bush apart, jumps on the back of a would-be rapist. The guy is so shocked that he pushes him off and runs for his life. But for the dear woman in the complete dark, all she thinks is there’s two attackers. She starts screaming and backing away to the tree, and this dear 50-year-old shift worker says, “Lady, lady, you’re OK, you’re OK.” And when she hears his voice, she says these words—this is true—”Daddy, is that you?” He had saved his own daughter from being raped.

Here’s why I tell you that story. If you don’t forget who you are, you’ll finally have a motive to jump in the bush no matter what shape you think you’re in. Remember, he’s the one that makes you the tree of life. And you may actually hear people say these words, not to you but to him: “Daddy, is this you?” And you’ll be able to say, “Yes. The Father sent me. I’ve come to serve.” Don’t forget who you are.

Let’s pray.

There are so many reasons we don’t jump in the bush. Heavenly king, help us. Help these graduates, help the faculty, the staff, the administration, the board, all of us. Thank you for every person that jumped in the bush for me. I’m so far from where I was to stand at a seminary’s graduation. My mom and dad would be laughing out loud. Lord, make every one of these men and women bush jumpers for Christ’s honor and glory because they remember who they are. In Jesus’s name, Amen.