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James Merritt’s 2001
SBC Presidential Address (Verbatim Transcription) Jerry Vines: It’s a personal privilege for me to introduce to you our president, Dr. James Merritt. Dr. Merritt is one of my closest personal friends. Dr. Merritt has that rare combination of devout scholarship and evangelistic fervor. He is indeed a scholar, but he is a personal soul winner. Few weeks go by without getting a call from him telling me about having the opportunity to lead someone to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He has done a wonderful job as our president this year. He has represented us with courage and with grace. Now this morning, he’s coming to do what he does best, open up the word of God and feed our hungry souls from its pages. Would you join me now in giving a warm welcome to our president, Dr. James Merritt. (twenty-two second applause from the messengers.) James Merritt: Thank you very much. If you have your Bibles, I want you to Turn to 2 Timothy, chapter 3. Being president of the SBC for one year has been both one of the greatest blessings and one of the greatest burdens of my life. On the one hand it has reminded me just how blessed I am to be a Southern Baptist. Southern Baptists are not a perfect people! But they are a precious people. I don’t believe there’s a group of Bible-believing people anywhere that love Jesus more than Southern Baptists. I sometimes feel like the lady who lived up in the mountains of North Carolina. She was a Baptist through and through. She even believed that the original manuscripts of the Bible were published in Nashville at LifeWay… (hearty laughter from the messengers) Her nephew was talking to her one day and he said, “Aunt Jane,” he said, “You’re such a strong Baptist, I just want to ask you a question.” He said, "If the Lord were to come back and you asked him if he was a Baptist, and he said, ‘No,’ what would you say?" "Huh!",… She said, "I’d know it wasn’t the Lord!” (loud laughter from the messengers) I do believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is dear to the heart of Southern Baptists. And I believe that Southern Baptists are dear to the heart of the Lord Jesus. And without question, one of the most humbling and honoring experiences of my life has been to serve as your president for the past year. And I want to thank you, my fellow messengers, from the bottom of my heart. On the other hand, being president of the largest evangelical denomination in the world, is a burden. Now, if you’re a pastor, you can relate to this. Being a pastor makes you feel like you live in a glass house. But being president of the Southern Baptist Convention makes you feel like that glass house has been moved right out into the middle of Main Street… You have to measure everything you say and everything you do. And at all times, pray that in both word and deed you will always make Southern Baptist proud of you… and I discovered early on it’s frustrating because I discovered that when people find out that you are a president… that they think you can do anything… Last year,…this really happened,… a man walked up to me in a conference and said, “Are you President Merritt?” I said, “Yes I am.” He leaned over and said to me, “I will make a ten thousand donation to your private library if you’ll give me a pardon…” (laughter and applause from the messengers). Even the president of the Southern Baptist convention cannot do everything… But as your president, I have a message burning in my heart. And both its title and its thrust come from the city we’re meeting in this year. Because I want to speak to you today…. On the “BATTLE… of New Orleans.” On January the 8th, 1815, one of the greatest battle in U.S. history was fought in this very city... More than fifty British ships and 8,000 crack British soldiers came to attack this strategic port city, and hopefully gain control of a vital part of the Mississippi River. Standing in their way was a rag-tag collection of 4,000 American volunteers, farmers, militia men with no experience, commanded by “Old Hickory,” Andrew Jackson. The only defense was a mud ramp which was 3/5 of a mile long and barricades made of bales of cotton. From the surface, it looked like the American “David” against the British “Goliath.” In fact, that’s what it was… The battle only lasted for one and a half hours. And when the smoke cleared, the American thrill of victory had met the British agony of defeat. There were two thousand British casualties, only 71 American… That battle saved New Orleans. It kept American control of the Mississippi. It raised the morale of an entire nation and it launched Andrew Jackson to national prominence and ultimately to the White House! But there was only one problem… The battle was not worth fighting… Because unbeknownst to Jackson, war had ended two years earlier when the treaty of Ghent was signed in Europe… Now we’re known to many on the outside of this arena as those “battling Baptists.” Quite frankly, that does not concern me, but my fellow messengers…what does concern me is that we make sure that we fight the right battles… I want to tell you that there are battles that ARE WORTH FIGHTING! There are battles raging outside this arena and we need to be on the front lines. There is a battle for the security of the family… The institution of marriage is being attacked on all sides and the nuclear family, as we know it, is falling apart. There is a battle for the sanctity of life. Never before, in this country, has the stock market been valued so highly and human life been valued so lowly… There is a battle for the sacredness of God… The syncretistic, eclectic God that more and more Americans worship bears no resemblance to the holy God of Israel we find in the word of God… There is a battle for the souls of men… Satan’s army is on the march even as we speak and he has redoubled his efforts to take as many souls to hell with him as he possibly can… and he does this by denying absolute truth and desecrating God’s word and defiling the church… And finally, there is a battle for the survival of society… Anyone with a modicum of common sense and spiritual discernment must know this society… this American culture… cannot continue its downward trend, in terms of morality, spirituality and ethics and survive as we know it today… It cannot happen!! Paul was a Four Star General in God’s army who never left the front lines of battle… And here’s what I love about Paul. He was on the RIGHT battlefield… fighting the RIGHT war… against the RIGHT enemy… And he reminds us in this tremendous passage of Scripture… those battles that are worth fighting. And I want to share with you, this morning, five battles that ARE WORTH FIGHTING! First of all, there is a cultural rebellion we must confront… Now let me ask you a question.. true or false? Times are worse today than they’ve ever been? Without a doubt, I believe that is true… I don’t know how that anyone could gainsay that spiritually, and morally, and ethically, and domestically, times have never been worse than they are right now in America! But that is exactly what we ought to expect. Because listen to what Paul says in 2nd Timothy 3 and verse 1. He said, “But know this, that in the last days perilous times WILL COME… And that word “perilous” in the Greek language is a word that literally means, “hard to bear,” “hard to deal with.” Paul said that when you get into the last days you’re going to find there’re going to be dangerously difficult days… Oh, economic indicators may be going back up… But cultural and social and spiritual indicators, he said, will be going STRAIGHT DOWN… For example, Paul makes it plain that in the last days that conditions will worsen… I heard about a pastor who resigned his church to go to another pastorate… After announcing his resignation, he was approached my one of the sweet senior adults in his congregation. She was weeping over the pastor’s decision to leave. She said, “Pastor, please don’t go.” She said, “Things will never be the same after you’re gone.” Well the preacher tried to console her. He put his arm around her and he said, “Mrs. Smith, don’t worry…” He said, I am confident that God will send you a new pastor. And he will be FAR better than I am.” Well, when he said that, she let out a large wail and said, “that’s what the last three pastors have said and they just keep getting worse…” (loud laughter from the messengers) Well, my friends, Paul said, “That in the last days, things… will… get… worse.” But not only will conditions worsen, Paul said, “Homes will weaken.” My friends, there is an assault on the family today that is unparalleled in the history of this nation… And much of the damage is self-inflicted… Paul said in verse 2 that, “Children would be increasingly disobedient to parents.” Edward, Duke of Windsor, once said that “The thing that impresses me most about America is the way that parents obey their children.” God knew what he was talking about when he said, “Dads ought to be the HEAD of the home…” That is true both in a spiritual sense and an authoritative sense… But let me tell you what we’re seeing in America. We’re seeing fathers abdicate the throne of authority by allowing children to execute a bloodless coup of the home… You go to any mall in America… You’ll see kids wandering aimlessly like rudderless ships… colored hair… Mohawk haircuts… rings coming out of ears, noses, and lips, and eyelids, and bellybuttons. And you wonder to yourself, “Where… IS… Dad? Where… IS… the father?…” No wonder... The inmates are running the asylum and the monkeys are running the zoo! (loud “Amens” from the messengers) I want to say that I thank God for the focus that we’re putting on the family in the Southern… Baptist… Convention… (applause from the messengers) My friends, listen to me!! Our convention ought to be known as a family friendly convention and as a convention that unapologetically stands for marriage between –that marriage ought to be between a man and a woman. Period. End of discussion! (loud applause from messengers) Sad to say that even in the church, too many marriages are meeting their Waterloo’s in divorce court. My friends, we need to get back to the biblical understanding of marriage, and hear me clearly, marriage is not a legal contract between two people that can be ended by judicial decree… It is a divine covenant bound in heaven that should never be broken before a Holy God!! (loud applause from messengers) Paul said that in the last days, conditions will worsen… Paul said in the last days, homes will weaken… Paul said in the last days, morals will wane… Beginning in verse two of this third chapter and going through verse four, Paul lists nineteen characteristics of a society that is pushing the self-destruct button. In our own country, in God Bless America, when we say “In God we trust”… profanity, pornography, perversity are becoming common place. My wife and I went to the inauguration of President Bush. While we were there, we went to the National Archives. She’d never been to Washington D.C. I said, “Honey… I want you to go… I want you to see the Declaration of Independence. She was shocked, as I was, when we got there to see that the ink on that document has faded so badly you can barely make out ole John Hancock’s signature… The guide said, “Well, you know the ink has fading and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” I thought to myself, “That’s a perfect analogy of what’s happening to America.” The principles and the values and the beliefs that once seemed indelibly written on our hearts and minds and culture are fading. And it seems like very few people are doing anything to stop it. Well, my fellow messengers, we can count three hundred pulpits in this country. And I can’t speak to all of them… But I can speak to ours… Every… day… four thousand, innocent, precious lives of unborn babies are being snuffed out and I say 41,000 pulpits of Southern Baptists must… not… be silent… (applause from messengers) The networks are making a mockery of Christians. The Christian faith and Christian values, with nearly every show they air… Program after program and movie after movie contains anti-Christian episodes and plots. News articles condescendingly refer to the “fundamentalist Right-wing Christians.” Those of us who speak out for the sacredness of life are branded as extremists [and] out of the mainstream of the culture. And I say 41,000 pulpits of Southern Baptists must not be silent… (applause) Christian morality cannot be taught in public schools, but atheistic immorality can be… And I say 41,000 pulpits of Southern Baptists must not be silent… (applause) What music fills out Southern Baptist children's’ hearts and minds with lyrics that legitimizes rape, murder, sado machiscim, adultery, and Satanic worship? And I say 41,000 pulpits of Southern Baptists must not be silent… (applause) One President commits sexual sins in the Oval Office and the Christian Right is told to shut up… Another president speaks openly of his faith God and trust in Christ and HE is told to shut up!! I believe 41,000 pulpits of Southern Baptists must not be silent… (applause) My friends, there is a cultural rebellion we must confront, That… is a battle… worth… fighting… I want to say second, there is a doctrinal recklessness we must condemn…Not only a cultural rebellion we must confront, but a doctrinal recklessness we must condemn… In verse eight,… Paul warns about people in the last days, who he said will, …now listen to this!!… RESIST… THE TRUTH!!! What did he mean by that??? In the last days, they’re… we’re going to find people… who CLAIM to be on the same side of the fence as we are… at least supposedly… But in reality, they will not just flippantly ignore the truth, they will fearfully resist the truth! That’s why Paul said in the next book over, in Titus 2:1, “But as for you… speak the things which are proper for SOUND… doctrine…” Now we need to understand… that you take what Paul said seriously, and you’re willing, as a pastor and a preacher of the gospel to say, “I’m going to speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine,” you’d just better understand… You’re going to go against the tide of personal opinion… You’re going to go against the tide of political correctness… But that’s alright. We are twice born men in a once born world… We should never stoop to go with the flow. (“Amens” from messengers) Now listen!! I do not believe we ought to be heresy hunters… but I do believe we ought to be heresy fighters. My friend, if the truth is worth believing... The truth is worth defending. And instead of following the paths of some denominations, who waste their breath debating what the Bible denounces as sin, we ought to spend out breath to defend what the Bible declares as truth… In my home state of Georgia, where I live, and the City of Atlanta, where I pastor, there was a controversy fed by a media frenzy over an association that refused to disfellowship two churches that had been just fellowshipped by the Georgia Baptist Convention. Churches who accept openly avowed homosexuals as members and even as leaders… The reason the association gave was, the autonomy... of the local... church... Now I want to say this straight and I want to make it plain... I believe in local church autonomy... I don’t want any leader,… any agency,… any institution or any convention giving orders to me or my congregation but hear me and hear me well… the ocean of church autonomy stops at the shore of biblical authority… (loud applause from messengers). Local autonomy without biblical authority becomes spiritual anarchy!! My friend, it is the height of spiritual callousness and theological hypocrisy to hide behind the skirt of local church autonomy or the priesthood of the believer while pretending that churches can do anything they want to do and believe anything they want to believe and still be a Baptist church!! (applause) I appreciate our Baptist distinctive… I am grateful for those beliefs that make us Baptists… But any time a so-called Baptist distinctive is used as an excuse NOT to follow sound Bible doctrine, it may be distinctive, but it’s certainly … NOT… Baptist…. So heed this warning… When an individual,… or a church,… or an association, …or a denomination,… burns with a righteousness indignation against sin and lives in the light of the fire of God’s truth, Society will launch its heat-seeking missiles of tolerance and political correctness to shut us up and destroy us if they can. Let me give you fair warning, pastor, if you cant stand the heat of persecution, don’t get into the kitchen of doctrinal warfare. (applause) I’m here to tell you, fellow messengers, until Jesus comes back, we have been commissioned by our Commander in Chief, the Lord Jesus Christ to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered for the saints… And that is a battle…worth…fighting… I say further, there’s not only a doctrinal recklessness we must condemn, there is a SCRIPTURAL REVELATION… we… must… commend… We do not go into battle unarmed… I got news for you folks, spiritually speaking, we are in a minority… There’s no moral majority in America… We are in the minority… And we may be out-manned, but we’re not out gunned. (loud “amens” from the messengers) we do not confront a Christless culture helplessly or hopelessly.. We confront it with the two-edge sword of the Lord that is sharp enough to cut through any barrier and cut down any foe… (loud “amens” from messengers) We all know those very familiar passages we read here in verse sixteen. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” I want to say this with a clarion call this morning… There is no doubt in my mind. There is a hermetically sealed, unbreakable, steel-chained, vapor-locked connection between the blessing of God and the Word of God. There is no question in my mind that God has blessed Southern Baptists because we have honored His Word. And God is duty-bound to honor a denomination that honors His Word. You see, it is the word of God that saves sinners and turns them into saints… That’s why Paul says to Timothy in verse 14 & 15, “But as for you,… continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. And that from childhood you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise to salvation through faith which is in Jesus Christ.” It is the word of God that takes a sinner and turns him into a saint! But it’s also the word of God that takes that saint, sanctifies that saint and turns them into soldiers. So Paul says in verse 16, “It is profitable for doctrine.” That is that it will tell you what is right… “It is profitable for reproof”… It will tell you what is not right… “It is profitable for correction”… It will tell you how to get right… “It is profitable for instruction in righteousness”… It will tell you how to stay right… You say, “How do you know it does that?” Because this book ALONE is the word of God! (loud “amens” from the messengers.) I recently got a copy of a letter from one of our missionaries in Zimbabwe. She was sitting out on the street waiting for some friends and she noticed a beggar reading a book with a can in front of him collecting coins… She got up and walked over to him as she got closer… and she noticed that the man was reading with his fingers like this… (Merritt pantomimes a blind man reading Braille) because the book was in Braille. Realizing he was blind, she went over and sat right next to him and although he did not know she was there, she just sat there and began to listen… She said, and I’m quoting her,… “I can still see his face staring blankly into the air as his fingers brushed across the page. And out of his mouth came words of immense truth and wisdom… because out of his mouth came the words of God. He was reading the Bible!!” After sitting there awhile beside him on this dirty street corner, she said. “Sir, are you a Christian?” He stared blankly into the air, got a smile on his face and said, “Yes, It was only four months ago when I became a new man in Christ Jesus.” She then asked him, “What is your favorite thing about God?” He said, “My favorite thing about God is that God provides me with everything I need and everything I want.” She said that she looked intently at this skinny,… smelly,… dirty man with no sight, no money, and old tattered clothes. And she thought maybe he didn’t understand the question… so said, “Well Sir, what do you need? And want do you want?” She said the man then replied with great excitement, “All I’ve ever needed and all I’ve ever wanted was to read the word of God. Somebody gave me the Bible in Braille and I’m now a new man in Christ Jesus!” Southern Baptists!! We ought to preach this book, we ought to promote this book, we ought to practice this book, and anytime this book is diluted, denied, or debased, we ought to defend it with pride. That is a battle worth fighting. (loud applause from the messengers) I want to say fourthly,… There is a personal responsibility we must complete… Now listen to what Paul’s says to Timothy in chapter 4 and verse 5… “But you be watchful in all things” If your afflictions do the work of an evangelist,… FULFILL… YOUR… MINISTRY!…” Now, my fellow brothers and sisters, I want you to see the linkage between doing the work of an evangelist and fulfilling…. our… ministry… I understand that not all ministry is evangelism but evangelism should be ultimately in ALL ministry… Twenty years ago… please hear my heart… Twenty years ago,… our battle was against LIVE… liberalism… protestations? of some notwithstanding, I’m here to tell you it was “live” and it was “liberal.” But today, may I candidly tell you that my greatest fear for Southern Baptist Convention is not live liberalism, it is DEAD orthodoxy… I fear, with all of my heart, becoming a denomination that is as straight as a gun barrel doctrinally but is dry as a gun barrel spiritually… I believe with all of my heart that “Southern Baptist’ and “soul winner” ought to be synonyms. I believe they ought to be found together in any dictionary because, my dear friends, whatever else we are… or whatever else we become… we will never be, could be, or should be what God wants us to be… if we do not stay committed to personal evangelism and sharing the Gospel as the only message of salvation and Christ as the only way to heaven… (light applause from the messengers) In 1929, when the Soviet government wanted to wipe out the church, what did they do? Very interesting… They passed a law,… not to close the orthodox church buildings or to prohibit meetings on Sunday mornings… No! what they said to the church was, “You can come on Sunday… You can open the doors… You can meet… You can sing… You can teach the Bible… You can pray… BUT!!, … It is a crime for you to conduct Sunday School. You CANNOT help the poor… You CANNOT go out into the neighborhood… You CANNOT reach out the people…” And what the world simply said was, “You can do whatever you want to do, but you gotta do it within the four walls of your church on Sunday morning…”, And my friend, unfortunately what the soviet Communists did to the church by decree in 1929, we’re allowing to be done today by default… The Great commission does not say, “Come and sit!” It says, “Go… and tell.” I got a letter recently from a dear pastor friend of mine. He said, “Dear James, I want you to think about something.” He said, “I want you somehow to challenge one million Southern Baptists, next year, to win at least one soul to Jesus Christ.” Well, I may be too bold in my thinking, but this morning, I would like to challenge sixteen million Southern Baptist, next year, to win at least one soul to Jesus Christ… Let me tell you kinda how I want you to help do this… On the first Sunday of October,… this year… working in conjunction with the North American Mission Board… I’m asking the entire Southern Baptist Convention,… every church and every pastor… to observe, what we’re going to call, “SAVED TO SHARE SUNDAY.” Many of you, when you walked into the building today, you received materials from the North American Mission Board… promoting this special day. And if you did not, they’re available at the NAMB booth… On that Sunday, here’s what I’m asking you to do… I’m asking every pastor to give time in the worship service for every Southern Baptist in his church, after he preaches a message on the “Power of A Testimony,” … Ask everyone in your church that day to write out their personal testimony of how they came to know Christ… And then ask them to take that testimony and over the next thirty to sixty days, share that testimony with at least one lost person and try to win that one lost person to Jesus Christ… Now let me tell you what will happen… Beginning with this pastor right here, you’re going to find we got Baptist sitting in our pews that won’t be able to write out a personal testimony because they don’t have one… They've never been saved… Furthermore, you’re going to find lost people in your church that day… They have no testimony because they’ve never been saved… But I’ll tell you something else you’re going to find… You’re gonna find a lot of Baptists in your church who have a personal testimony but they’ve never shared it with one… person… I pray to God right now, that God would use , “SAVED TO SHARE SUNDAY” throughout our convention to ignite a fire of evangelism that will burn from one ocean to the other ocean in the nation of America… Dwight L. Moody used to say, “I look on this world as a wrecked vessel,… a sinking ship,… and God has given me a gospel lifeboat and said to me, ‘Moody, save all you can.’” Southern Baptists, God has allowed us to build the largest evangelical lifeboat in the history of the world. And we need to go until he comes and get as many into that lifeboat as we possibly can… That… is a battle… worth fighting…(mild applause from the messengers) And then I say finally, there is… an eternal reward… we must… consider. Paul said in chapter 4, beginning in verse 6, “I’m already being poured out as a drink offering… The time of my departure is at hand… I have fought the good fight… I have finished the race… I have kept the faith… Finally there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day, and not only to me only, but also to all who have loved… His… appearance…” Listen!! Paul finishes everything he says to that young protégé, Timothy, with two words of advice…, “Finish….. well….” If you are a pastor of a church in our convention… would you stand to your feet for just a moment?…. I want every pastor to stand up… (Pause while pastors stand all around the arena.) My fellow pastors, listen to me this morning… Robert Clinton has done extensive study in the area of leadership… He has determined there are approximately 300 leaders chronicled in the Bible… He studied 100 of the most prominent leaders in the Bible, and to his dismay, he discovered that less than one in four of those leaders finished well… I charge you pastors today, In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to make a renewed commitment wherever you stand, “I… WILL… FINISH… WELL!!!! I’m going to hit the tape with my head held high!! I’m going to hit the tape with my chest pumped out!! ’m going to hit the tape, staying pure and clean, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ… I CHARGE you to finish well!! Thank you, God bless you, please be seated… (applause while pastors sit down) Paul; was a faithful fighter… He said, “I have fought the good fight.” Paul was a faithful finisher. He said, “I have finished the race.” Paul was a faithful follower, He said, “I have kept the faith.” And so Southern Baptists, let us stand firm!!.. Let us stay focused!… Let us stick faithful to the end!… Vince Lombardi, the great former head coach of the Green Bay Packers, said quote, “I firmly believe that man’s finest hour, his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle victorious.” Fellow pastors and fellow messengers, I know the temptations are great. I know that the enemy is strong. But I tell you today, finishing well is a battle worth fighting!!… Southern Baptists, we are in a battle. But I know that regardless of that the personal circumstances are, your life or mine,… what the national circumstances may be in our country,… what the political circumstances may be around the world… we will be victorious because the word of God says that we will be more than conquerors through Him… So let us stay faithful… knowing that ahead of us is a crown of righteousness… which the Lord our God will give to us on that day… Remember the words of Fanny Crosby. “Not to the strong is the battle, Not to the swift is the weight, yet to the true and the faithful, victory is promised through grace.” Several years ago, we observed the fiftieth anniversary of “D Day,” -- the allied invasion of Normandy. One of the television documentaries paired two contrasting interviews back to back. The first interview was a marine who landed on Omaha Beach… As he recalled the horror of that terrible battle, looking around at all his comrades falling like flies, he looked at all of the blood and all of the gore,… and all of the death, and he screamed out, “We’re going to lose!!!” But the very next interview was a US Army Air Corps reconnaissance pilot. He at the same time was flying over the whole battlefield area. He saw the carnage on the beaches… He saw the sacrifices on the hills… But he also witnessed the successes of the Marines. And the penetration of the paratroopers… And the effectiveness of the aerial bombardments. He looked at everything that was happening and said, “We’re going to win!!!” Same battle!… Different viewpoint… Precious saints, my brothers and sisters,… my fellow messengers,… my beloved Southern Baptist family,… We may be tempted to look around at all the forces that are arrayed against us and let the Devil convince us that “We’re going to lose!!” But I tell you that we are seated in the heavenlies with Christ… And because God is sovereign, and because Jesus is Lord… and the Spirit is omnipotent… I’m here to tell you “We’re… going… to win!!!…” (hearty applause from the messengers) So… Until… He… COMES,… Let us go forth, in His name,… under his blood!!… In his power!!… For the Battle… is… worth fighting…. God bless you… (Loud applause and standing ovation by the messengers) -- Transcribed verbatim by David Flick, June 25, 2001 |