Baccalaureate 2021

A. What is the next step?

St. Augustine once said that “when you look back over your life, the steps you have taken can first appear like chicken tracks in the mud, little chicken tracks going this way and that in the muddy chicken yard, without direction. But through the eyes of faith, sometimes those seemingly purposeless tracks take on pattern, a direction. We begin to see that they are going somewhere. They suggest the hand of God. And it is then that you realize that the life you’re living, the meaning that you mean, is not all that there is. We are busy, meaning this for evil, or for our selfish ambition, but God is busy meaning this for good.”

B. What if your life is not your own?

1 Corinthians 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

C. A more complex, faithful question, “What is God doing with you after graduation?”

There is an old theological word for it – Providence. One day you will be able to look back on your life, maybe by your twentieth reunion, and see that the times, the bad times as well as the good, had in them a sense of direction. While you were busy making your choices and decisions, God was also busy. Weaving. Creating.

The Parable of the Sower or the Four Soils

I. The Parable of the Sower

Matthew 13 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. 2 And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3 And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. 5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, 6 but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8 Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9 He who has ears, let him hear.”

1. Some seed falls on the hard road. It does not take root. Birds eat the seed.

2. Some falls on ground with a thin layer of dirt over rock so that the roots cannot find purchase and wither away in the sun.

3. Some falls among thorns that choke the young plant so that it dies.

Rather than being driven from the truth by hardship, this person is lured away from the truth by promises of something better.

Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer.

J. C. Ryle

4. Then, some seed falls on good ground which produces fruit of a hundredfold, sixty-fold and thirtyfold (vv. 3–9).

This is where we need to find ourselves.

Seeking god’s will means giving him glory with our life.

Bible study. Prayer. Fellowship.

The promise we see here is that these seeds will produce.