Thirty Years Ago Today at The Chapel on the Campus at LSU

The Mission Foundation
P.O. Box 46358
Baton Rouge, LA 70895

May 20, 2009, A Special Day

Dear friends,

I ask you to please bear with a bit – maybe more than a bit – of personal nostalgia. You see, it has just occurred to me that it was thirty years ago today that I preached my first sermon in Baton Rouge. I preached on “The Judgment Seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10; 1 Cor. 3:11-15) at The Chapel on the Campus at LSU. I was 28 years old.

I well remember how I felt throughout the earlier parts of the worship service as Bec and I sat together there on the front row. I kept the Holy Scriptures open on the seat beside me to Exodus 4:12, “Now then go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say.” Although I had prepared diligently and knew what I was going to say, I found God’s words to Moses to be very reassuring as the time neared when I would rise and walk to the pulpit before that wonderful throng of enthusiastic worshippers and before God. It was truly one of the most blessed moments of my life.

About five years earlier (sometime in 1974, I think), I had told my pastor, Rev. Donald Tabb, that I felt called to preach. I was quite surprised by his counsel. He told me to get one message and preach it over and over again – in the woods, in my truck, wherever – just preach it and preach it.

Well, that’s what I did. Each morning it took me forty-five minutes to drive my truck to the site where George Morgan and I were building Southern Silica of Baton Rouge (a blasting sand plant). I usually kept one hand on the steering wheel as I preached to my very patient congregation who assembled in the dawn’s early light to listen to me starting and stopping, correcting, and starting again. I preached from Baton Rouge to Baywood, Louisiana! How many times? I really don’t know. But I do remember that those were wonderful days of traveling with my Teacher.

At long last, on May 20, 1979, there I was – standing before God’s people with the highlighted manuscript of my forty-five minute message restlessly lying on the pulpit of The Chapel on the Campus at LSU. For years it had waited. Now the time had come! Yes, I had in fact preached this sermon and others many times in other cities and towns in the intervening years. But on this Sunday morning, I was back at my alma mater, Louisiana State University, the place where God had rescued me from my waywardness, the place where I had heard Him calling me to preach His Word to His people.

Now, thirty years later, I would like to ask you to prayerfully reflect on the texts that I sought to exposit for my brothers and sisters on that long ago Sunday morning just across the lake from where I am writing this letter at my desk on Myrtledale. In 2 Corinthians 5:10, the Apostle Paul says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” In 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, Paul speaks specifically about the judgment of the work of God’s ministers who teach His Word. But there is application of that text for everyone because we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ to experience either the reception of reward or the loss of reward in accordance with the “quality of each man’s work,” which is to be “revealed with fire.” Paul says, “If any man’s work . . . remains (i.e. endures the fiery judgment), he will receive a reward.” Conversely, “If any man’s work is burned up, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire.”

As you think about Paul’s words, please be encouraged because, through our Lord’s redemptive work, you now have a new capacity for godly intentionality. Through Christ you can do that which is “good.” By God’s grace, you and I can be among those whose “work remains”! By His grace, we will receive our Savior’s reward on that great, soon-coming Day!

In the good Shepherd’s Hand,


Rod (for Bec and me)