The following resource is from Desiring God.org.

Let's pray together.

Father, thank you for Elizabeth and Abigail and Tom,

their heart, their mind, their

their grace manifest in their lives.

And now I ask for a few more minutes

that grace would rest upon this moment, that I would be faithful to your word,

faithful to your vision for this school, that you would make what I say just as you have made what they said a blessing

to the graduates and the families and to those who contemplate coming here and to the faculty and to the staff

and everyone else who's listening I ask this in Jesus name.

Amen. One of my hopes for Bethlehem College and Seminary is that

the education received here will implant a lifelong habit of pressing through the wording of

scripture first to the intention of the author that they want to

communicate and then through that deeper down into the ultimate reality in which that intention is rooted.

That's the habit. I hope you formed and will continue to form.

Let me try to say it another way.

And then I'm going to illustrate it with the biblical text and with

Shakespeare and with the coronavirus.

God is the ultimate author of the Bible

and therefore all biblical meaning is rooted in God's view of reality which

carries the added implication that all biblical meaning is rooted in ultimate reality, God's reality, who he is, the way he relates to things, the way things really are.

Therefore, the Bible has greater educational potential than any other book in the world.

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