Sermon preached by Dr. John A. Huffman
November 7 & 8, 2009
Copyright 2009, John A. Huffman
All rights reserved

A Final Word
Philippians 1:3-6

This is a very emotional moment for me. This is my last sermon as your pastor. I've titled it "A Final Word."

In a way, it is the final word. Our relationship will drastically alter as of midnight tonight. At that moment, I will no longer be your Pastor and the Head of Staff of St. Andrew's. As nostalgic as I am about these years we've shared, Anne and I know the time is right to hand the baton on to your new leader, Rich Kannwischer, supported by his equally gifted wife, Kelly.

This is not "THE" final word. Only God can deliver that. But this is my last opportunity to open my heart to you.

There are two final words I must share with you, and they both come out of today's text, Philippians 1:3-6, which reads, "I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ."

Final Word One: I thank my God for you!

The Apostle Paul, as Lloyd Ogilvie so graphically described to you last week, dictated this letter while imprisoned in Rome. Mostly likely, he's chained to his bodyguard. He remembers with fondness those believers who make up that first church he founded when he crossed the Aegean Sea from Asia Minor to Northern Greece. His heart overflows with the spirit of thanksgiving, as he recalls these years of friendship.

My heart resonates in a similar way. Several phrases leap out.

I thank my God for my memories of you from the first day until now.

Do you remember your first day at St. Andrew's?

Paul would never forget that first day at Philippi. For him, it had really begun on the road to Damascus when he had met the risen Christ, whose followers he had, up to that time, persecuted. His life was changed, years had gone by and, on this his second missionary journey, he had arrived in Philippi, led a businesswoman by the name of Lydia to faith in Jesus Christ, sent the demons out of a slave girl. Because of the disruption he had created, he and Silas were thrown into jail; and you know the story of the songs in the night which they sang, the earthquake, the ultimate conversion of the Philippian jailer and his family. Read about all this in Acts 16:16-40.

I have a number of first days.

I think back to that Labor Day morning, 1945, when, as a five-year-old child, I knelt before my parents in their bedroom and received Jesus Christ as Savior. I remember, as a 14-year-old in 1954, opening my life for the first time to the full Lordship of Jesus Christ and the fullness of His Holy Spirit.

And then I remember, in 1962 as a 22-year-old, enrolling in the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the Princeton Theological Seminary. A month and a half into my graduate studies, I bogged down with physical fatigue. A university doctor declared me in top physical shape, concluded that I was suffering from fatigue brought about acute career indecision between going into the ministry and going into politics. About the same time, I was privileged to meet an Episcopal priest by the name of Sam Shoemaker, who challenged me to go into full-time pastoral ministry, promising God that, if I would give up my political aspirations, He would in turn enable me to touch the lives of some men and women in politics, leveraging whatever success or failure I might have had in that way by ministering to them.

The call became clear. Norman Vincent Peale invited me to join the staff of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City in November of 1962 and, ever since that moment, I've been employed by churches serving Jesus Christ in full-time pastoral ministry.

I remember my own youthful frustration with some of the pastors to whom I have been exposed. One godly man, very faithful to teaching the Scriptures, parsed every Greek and Hebrew word. I sat under his ministry many months, could not fault a thing he said; but nothing he ever said seemed to apply itself to my life in practical ways. So I made a study of preachers and came up with three mentors with whom I was fortunate to work through the years. One was Dr. Harold John Ockenga, for 35 years the Pastor of the Park Street Congregational Church in Boston and founder along with Dr. Charles Fuller of the Fuller Theological Seminary. I admired the brilliance of that man and the faithful, scholarly approach he brought to his preaching ministry. I was privileged to participate in several Billy Graham crusades, and I was enormously impressed with his fervor for the Lord and evangelistic zeal. In every sermon he preached, he called for a decision. And I sat Sunday after Sunday for two years under the preaching of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. I was so impressed by the practical dimension he brought to his preaching, applying biblical truth in ways people could understand it. I knew I had not the genius and unique gifts of any one of these three, but I vowed to try, in my preaching ministry, to combine the intellectual integrity of Ockenga, the evangelistic fervor of Graham, and the down-to-earthiness of Peale. Whether or not I've succeeded in that, others will have to judge, but that has continued to be my goal.

So I started out as a young man with two years at Marble Collegiate, then a year at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, where I was ordained. In the meantime, Anne and I had married. Upon my graduation from Princeton, we were off to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I served as an associate pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Tulsa. Then there were those idyllic years of my first pastorate at the Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church in Florida and then our move to that great, gothic cathedral, First Church Pittsburgh.

And then, at the end of the service on what was just another Sunday in December 1977, a couple by the name of John and Elie Miller approached me after church. They said they were from St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach. That was the beginning of an eight-month torturous struggle to ascertain the will of God. Just as the announcement was to be made that we had accepted the invitation to candidate, uncertain that we had made the right decision, I abruptly withdrew my name. That was in early spring. Then in June, I allowed my name to be reconsidered and, by the end of July, I candidated, and we began in September of 1978. It was the first day of candidating at the end of July. It was the first day that we as a family appeared, riding in on a bicycle built for two, an evening of entertainment called the "Divine Follies." And then there was the first day officially preaching as your pastor, World Communion the first Sunday of October 1978, when I preached on this exact same text but a very different sermon.

I thank my God for you and all that's happened in these over 31 years.

It's hard to believe that Jimmy Carter was President when we came. There have been so many changes politically, economically, in technology. The Cold War was still being fought, inflation was high, as were the interest rates. We began our pastoral relationship. We started covenant groups and began to build a long-term staff with tremendous associates, such as Bill Flanagan, Lydia Sarandan, Steve Murray, Kirk McCormick, Jim Stout, Dick Todd, Leah Stout, Jim Birchfield to name a few. My dream was to have a pastor for every type of person at St. Andrew's. It was joy to see how 400-800 people could find themselves ministered to best by one of these I've mentioned, knowing that no one person could do it all.

All through this, from the first day until now, I've thanked God for you in every prayer of mine for you all for our sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.

I've done my best to preach the Gospel in a holistic way. I believe the Bible tells us that every one of us is created in the image of God to live a full and meaningful life. I believe that the Bible tells us that something's gone wrong in the life of every human being, going back to our first ancestors, Adam and Eve. In the freedom God gave us to make moral choices, all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's the bad news. There's no Gospel there, is there? But the good news is the Gospel that God still loves you and me. He, in the necessity of a way that goes beyond our full understanding, took human form. He lived among us, experienced all that we experience, tempted in every way we're tempted, yet without sin. The Bible then says that He himself bore our sins in His body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. That's good news, but there's also the reality that we need to make a decision whether or not to receive the good news and accept Jesus Christ into our life as our Savior and as our Lord. The Bible says that even Satan believes these facts about God, but he said "no" and lives in rebellion against God. God does not rape you and me spiritually. He invites us to receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. We're privileged to do it, and many of us have. And when we have received Him, He desires to deploy us in service for others, addressing the spiritual, social, physical and economic needs of others.

Let me share with you three footnotes.

Footnote One: All through these years, I have tried to preach in a way that has three dimensions to every sermon, with one of them being the standout emphasis and the other two being a wooing element, if not the main thrust, of that week. I believe that you can reduce all biblical truth to three main themes. One is a call to faith in Jesus Christ. This is evangelism. Another is the teaching of truth, doctrinal truth, what we need to know about God and each other as revealed by the Holy Spirit. And the third is an exhortation to ethical behavior. Every sermon I preach falls into one of these three categories but dare not be exclusive to any one of these. If it is an evangelistic sermon, there should be some content, some teaching that instructs the believer and also some kind of an awareness of implications of coming to Christ for one's ethical behavior. If the emphasis is on teaching doctrinally, it's not done in a vacuum. It's not storing up knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but it's based on the Gospel of lives being changed by Jesus Christ, growing in Him, to actually make a difference in the world. And if the emphasis is on the exhortation to ethical behavior, it dare not be simply a message of humanism. It's built on what God has done for us in Jesus Christ and the teachings that we have that are the foundation that provides the imperative for us to serve spiritual, physical and emotional needs of others.

Footnote two: As I look back on our fellowship in the Gospel from the first day until now, I have to admit there are some things I will not miss, as I step down as your pastor. I will not miss administration. Although I have some gifts in this area, this is not why I went into the ministry, and an undue proportion of my time has gone into administration. I will not miss fund raising. I consider it a privilege to teach biblical stewardship and to introduce people into tithing. But I don't like budgets, year-end closings and the unrelenting financial pressures of building programs, as much as they are needed. I will not miss late-night Session meetings. I will not miss the ongoing debates over styles of worship, which some have referred to as "the worship wars." We are not alone in facing those. These are going on everywhere in the world. There's not specific style of music outlined in the Bible as adequate to our profession of faith. I will not miss the conflicts over methodology that differs very much from discussions of the substance of the Gospel. There are multiple ways to administrate a church, multiple architectural designs, multiple legitimate styles of music and dress. I will not miss the controversial aspects of leading a diverse community such as we have at St. Andrew's.

Footnote three: What I will miss is what I went into the ministry to help accomplish. I will miss watching one after another of you come to personal faith in Jesus Christ. I will miss the privilege of helping you grow in your personal relationship with the Lord. I will miss helping you be deployed in servant ministry to others.

Footnote four: This is a warning. We at St. Andrew's are as prone as any other church to fall into the consumerism of American religious life at the end of the Twentieth Century and the beginning of the Twenty-first Century. When I started out as a pastor, I heard very little about "church growth." Pastors ministered faithfully to their congregations. They shared their faith. They reached into communities. But success in ministry was measured by "faithfulness," not by numbers. Today, so often even at St. Andrew's, we evaluate ministry by the "ABCs." By that, I mean Attendance, Buildings and Cash. I thank God for the large number of people who have been part of St. Andrew's through the years. I thank God for the buildings, this local mission center to go out into the world in the name of Jesus Christ. I thank God for the cash, the generosity of faithful people to carry on this ministry. But ultimately, when we stand before Jesus Christ in the day of judgment, the legacy of my years here will be measured by the people who came to know Christ, the people who grew in Christ, the people who reached out serving others in the name of Jesus Christ. Please keep God’s evaluation of success as faithfulness front and center.

Our history that counts will be the faithfulness of that little group that banded together around Tom Gibson and grew larger and deeper in commitment through those pastoral years of James Stewart, Charles Dierenfield and myself. We must realize that these four names we've mentioned were only facilitators of vital ministry, and ultimately, what really counts here is your sharing in the Gospel from the first day until now.

Final Word Two: I am confident that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.

A long transition is now over. Three and a half years ago, your leadership came up with this transition plan at a point that both Jim Birchfield and I were genuinely considering God's calls elsewhere. Your leadership asked Anne and me to stay on until May of 2010, when I would turn 70 years of age, to help facilitate the completion of the building program, Visioning of the Future, and a co-pastoral dynamic that would enable present staff to be considered in the national search for successor. When we said yes, they asked Jim and Marta Birchfield if they would be open to the call here and would be willing to be considered in an open, honest national search that could end up calling Jim or calling someone else. They agreed to it. They asked Dennis Okholm if he would be willing to be the designated co-pastor part-time, so that this process would be in conformance with the Book of Church Order and the guidance of the Los Ranchos Presbytery leadership.

I've discovered throughout my years of Christian living that God often is doing something different than I think He's doing. The Christian life is a life full of surprises.

During the most difficult time in our church's life back in July and August, my daily readings of the One Year Bible brought me to this profound truth of Proverbs 19:21. In the New RSV, it reads, "The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established." The NIV translates this, "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails." This has brought me to a brand new metaphor to help me understand how God works. I see Him as the great Cosmic Chess Player, who moves His players around on the chess board of life. What many of us thought would be one conclusion enabled something very different designed by God. Without our openness to this plan, Jim could never be considered for either St. Andrew's or for First Church Houston. He now has received God's call to a great church that needs his unique gifts and expertise for its future ministry. And without all the vulnerability of this prolonged transition, Rich would never have received the call here with all of its great opportunities for the future. So now the vision is in writing. The buildings are completed. The new pastor is in place. Now you need to help God bring to completion in the future the work that He has begun in these 60-plus years of St. Andrew's history.

I am very confident that He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion.

Let me share a word about my future.

Although we will stay in our home of thirty-one years, you will see very little of Anne and me for the next year. Our denomination is very strict in its determination that a new pastor has a right to get a toehold in ministry without being plagued by the presence of his or her predecessor. Rich has been very generous in encouraging Anne and me to feel at home at St. Andrew's. But I am determined to abide by the guidelines of the Los Ranchos Presbytery, which I helped write, that we must be very scarce during the next year. You may see us unobtrusively slip into a Christmas Eve service or attend a concert. But for the next year, we will visit other churches, even as we continue to support financially this ministry. I will, according to the guidelines of the Los Ranchos Presbytery, be doing no weddings, funerals or pastoral counseling. I promise to completely let go of the handles of decision-making and strategic input that have been my responsibilities for these 31 years.

At the same time, I am not retiring from ministry. What I'm retiring from is 47 years of local parish ministry. As I said before, I am retiring from administration and fund raising. I will, after a bit of decompression, begin a new ministry as "minister at large." I will do occasional preaching at other churches. After the first of the year, I will preach once at a church in Birmingham, Alabama, twice at First Church San Diego and four times at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. I will continue my duties as a member of the Board of World Vision U.S., Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and as Chairman of the Board of Christianity Today International. I've been invited by Dr. Timothy George to be an adjunct professor teaching a doctorate of ministry segment at Beeson Divinity in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. Richard Mouw, the President of Fuller Theological Seminary, has invited me to be a part-time chaplain to their doctorate of ministry program. And Dr. Dennis Hollinger, the President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary has asked me to be Minister in Residence for a week each fall semester and each spring semester. And I'll be involved globally during the next year in the leadership of Cape Town 2010, a great gathering of evangelical leadership of the Lausanne Movement from around the world, building on the major meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1973, and in Manila, Philippines, in 1989, and in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2010. I have also been invited back to Cuba to do a preaching mission. Anne will continue her psychoanalytic practice. We love our home, rich with the memories of raising our three daughters and being close to Janet, Ryan and little Owen, and having a place of hospitality for Carla and Raymond when they're able to be with us.

Do pray for us that we may be healthy in the way that we adjust to this next era of our lives. I am retiring from local parish ministry. It is the right time to do that. The prayer is now that Anne and I can be more "generative" in strategic ministry that counts free from the day-in-and-day-out heavy demands of a church this size.

Let me share a word about your future.

I'd like to speak to each one of you first as individuals and then a word to you corporately as a congregation.

First as an individual.

You know where you stand with Jesus Christ. I know that, in a room this size, there are basically three kinds of people. I don't mean to oversimplify it, because every one of us is complex, different and quite nuanced. Nonetheless, there are some in this room who have never decisively given your life to Jesus Christ. You've never opened the door and allowed Him to come in and be your Savior and Lord. The very fact that you're here means that you're open to hearing the Word of God, but it doesn't mean that you've made a decision. The Old Testament under Joshua called out to the people of Israel who had a national and religious identity. But he knew that some of them had made no decision to follow God. He challenged them with these words, "Choose this day who you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!" Hundreds of years later, the prophet Elijah stood on Mount Carmel and challenged a new generation of Hebrews with these words, "How long go ye limping between two opinions? Either God is God or Baal is God."

I remember a party Anne and I attended when we lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was called a "trolley party." The hosts of the party had invited approximately 50 people to spend an evening traveling through Pittsburgh, enjoying hors d'oeuvres and beverages in that unique setting. We were having a great time until, suddenly, our trolley screeched to a halt. There at a fork on the trolley line was a most astonishing sight. A trolley coming toward us from Pittsburgh had made a left turn at a fork in the tracks. There was only one problem, after the front wheels turned left, by some accident, the switch switched right and the back wheels headed in a different direction toward us. There in front of us was a trolley car literally going two directions at the same time. Fortunately, its power rod jerked free, and the forward motion stopped, literally a split second before a disastrous moment of truth.

Perhaps you, right now, are living a life in which one part of you is going the way of Jesus Christ, and the other part of you is going Satan's way. You can't continue this way without a disaster. I urge you now to open your life to Jesus Christ, who paid the penalty for your sin. I urge you to repent. I urge you to turn around and go a new direction, acknowledging your need of the Savior. I urge you to put your trust in Him, finding His salvation, finding the new life which He offers you.

Time after time, I talked with a friend about Jesus Christ. Time after time I urged him to make a decision for Christ which would both equip him to live and to die. On one occasion, I became so specific as to say that "If you don't say 'yes' and you don't say 'no' now, you in fact have made a de facto no decision." As I told my friend this, he said that in business we call that the "do nothing decision." You come to the point where you have to make a decision and you can't make it, so you do nothing. You may have lost the option to ever make that decision again. A nothing response is the final decision as of this moment. Not too long after that discussion, my young friend dropped dead. I don't know whether or not he ever made that decision or whether he went on indecisively straddling the fence. You know you can't go two separate directions at the same time. I invite you now to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior.

Then there's a second kind of person in the sanctuary today. You once were walking with the Lord. You knew better days with Him, but you've gotten away and you're doing your own thing. You're not happy about it. The person who once has walked with the Lord knows there's something better in life. Maybe some tragedy occurred that broke your heart and you thought that God had let you down. Perhaps there's some sin in your life. You know it's not right, and it's broken fellowship between you and God. I urge you to come back to the God who loves you, has great dreams for you, who went to the cross for you, rose in victory over your sin and death, and wants to restore you to a fresh, vital, new relationship with himself.

Or perhaps you're someone who is walking with the Lord. You simply need a fresh touch of His presence in your life. Or you simply need to say, "Thank you, Lord, that through it all-the good times, the tough times and the in-between times-I know you're there, and I want to celebrate the privilege of knowing you."

My final word to you is that whatever of these three groups you are in, God wants to wrap His arms around you and, by His Holy Spirit, energize you to live one day at a time as His person, and He will bring completion to that which He has begun in you by the promptings of His Holy Spirit.

Then, let me share a final word for you as a congregation: The best is yet to come.

Thirty-two years ago, Charles Dierenfield, in his last message, shared with those of you that made up the St. Andrew's of that day these words, "The best is yet to be." Over three decades later, I share those same words with you. This is not a denial of difficulty. The fact is we live in the "not yet" and in the "in between."

Nothing says that you as an individual can't mess up your life pretty badly.

And nothing says that you as a church can't do the same thing.

But if you, as an individual, stay close to Jesus Christ, you have a great future, and I am confident that He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ, which means either when Jesus Christ returns or, if before that date, you go to be with Him.

And I can assure you as a congregation, if you stay faithful to Jesus Christ, if you agree to stand firm on the essentials and to cut a lot of slack for each other on the non-essentials so as to avoid unnecessary church fights, He will take the imperfections of a community that can be referred to as "sinners anonymous," men and women who claim no perfection in their own right, but look to that perfection which is ours in Jesus Christ, and He will enable you as a community of faith to be all that He dreams of you being until He returns again.

One of the things I'm going to most miss at St. Andrew's is our music. The choir has prepared a special anthem of one of my favorite hymns. Many times I've told the story of loss of Horatio Spafford, a businessman from Chicago who lost one son and then, some years later, lost four daughters in a ship wreck in the Atlantic in the early 1870s. Only his wife survived. In the deepest struggle of his life as he sailed the Atlantic to meet her in France, he wrote these words to one of my favorite hymns:

When peace like a river attendeth my way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll,
whatever my lot, thou hast taught me say,
"It is well, it is well with my soul."

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come
let this blest assurance control:
that Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
and has shed his own blood for my soul.

My sin-O, the bliss of this glorious thought,
my sin-not in part but the whole,
is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more:
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

And, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
the clouds be rolled back as a scroll,
the trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend:
"Even so"-it is well with my soul.

Refrain:
It is well . . . It is well . . . with my soul . . . with my soul,
it is well . . . it is well . . . with my soul.