Stay The Course By Chaplain Greg Thogmartin

What follows is a transcript of our guest speaker's message from our Sunday morning gathering. We share these messages on our blog for those who appreciate the opportunity to read the sermon again—whether for deeper reflection, personal study, or a quieter moment of prayer and introspection. As you read, we invite you to linger with the words, notice what resonates, and remain open to how God may be speaking to you through them.

by Greg Thogmartin

So it's a pleasure to be here this morning, and we'll see how this works. I've got so many wires between my hearing aids and now the microphone over my ears. We'll see how this goes.

So I'm Greg Thogmartin. If you don't know me, this is the way I introduce myself in many places. I am the hospital chaplain here in Maryville, but if you don't know me, that might be a good thing.

So I grew up in Princeton, and I was once introduced at an Army function when I was receiving an award. My brigade commander had asked me how I wanted to be introduced, and I said, well, you can tell them that I'm a graduate of Princeton with honors. And then you pause, and then you say, Princeton High School, Princeton, Missouri.

I formerly pastored in this area. I pastored down at Rosendale for almost eight years back in the 90s. My daughter number two was about seven weeks old when she took her first boat ride when we got out of Rosendale during the floods of 93.

But, so I'm married. My wife, Julie, and I have been married 41 years in August, and we have nine children. We've got a couple of grandkids and another one on the way.

My son and his wife have two boys, and I don't know what this one's gonna be, but we'll be glad to find out in December. So, maybe the other thing you ought to know is that when we left Rosendale in January of 1998, then I went on active duty with the Army. Somebody asked me the other day, so did you make a career out of it? And the only thing I knew to tell them was, well, yeah, but I didn't intend to.

My wife and I both kind of thought that it would be, in some sense, like an extended sabbatical from being in a pastorate. I loved being a soldier in the Army Reserve and thought it would be kind of a neat thing to be a part of. And then the longer we were in it, it seemed like there were just doors that opened for us, and then, as they say, there was no turning back.

So, spent a couple tours in Iraq, spent nine years out of my life up in Alaska. And so, just so you know, if life in Alaska was not so pricey, we would still be there. So, because my wife and kids loved it.

And I did enjoy it, but I would have had to have moved to a different house because my driveway was just way too steep for a guy that's in his 60s to be scooping off. In 2018, they had a big earthquake up there, and it was on November 30th. We were selling a house in Kentucky, and right about the time, they would have been putting the ink to the contract for our realtor that was signing on our behalf.

We had this earthquake in Alaska. And depending on where you are, where you happen to be in the Anchorage area, whether you were in a building or out on the highway, everybody had a very different experience. I was in an exam room at the hospital seeing a dermatologist because I had this skin rash, and because of the vibrations and the shaking, the power went out, and then the generators were trying to kick on.

So, there would be light for a moment, then they would go off, and he was sitting on a stool with rollers, and every time the light came on, he was in a different part of the room. When it finally came back on, he was hanging onto a table like this. But for my wife and kids, it was a really powerful experience, in part because there was all this glass breaking in our home.

The kitchen cabinets just emptied themselves. We had two 96-gallon rolling carts for our trash, one ended up being completely filled with glass. And then with that steep driveway I was talking about, I did not take the trash down to the curb.

The trash took me, just so you know. So, what I'd like to do is give you just a little bit of homework. And this gets a little awkward today because my watch is fast compared to the clock on the wall.

I think the clock on the wall is slow, so if we hit the median, maybe we'll be all right. 250th anniversary of the United States. In the 200th, for the bicentennial, I had a chance to go to Washington, D.C. on what was called the Citizenship Short Course that 4-H sponsored.

We went after the bicentennial, but there are certain memories from that trip that really kind of live large in my memory, and one of them is standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial and I was just sure he was gonna talk. Because it's such a lifelike rendering, although, you know, larger than life, although I think Abraham Lincoln was a larger than life kind of person. If you remember, though, that's also, so 50 years ago, that's also on the night of the primaries, that's the night that Jerry Lytton died in a plane crash in Chillicothe.

And I think a lot of rural Missourians probably were hoping at that time that he would somehow be a voice for sanity related to rural life and agriculture and all those things. And anyway, we had relatives in Chillicothe, so we would go past the Lytton Ranch, and that's back when Sam, the big Charley bull, there was a statue of him out by the road, and I've gazed up on Sam many times, right? That's the first place I knew of, too, that had carpeted stalls in the barn, as far as the walls, in order to protect those bulls. So we fast forward now, we're in the 250th, and if we allowed the anniversary of that 250th just to be for July the 4th, we would be remiss.

So I have some homework for you. First, there was a movie that came out earlier this year called A Great Awakening. It's about the relationship between George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin.

Whitefield may not be a name that's known to you. I'm sure Benjamin Franklin is, right? George Whitefield was a preacher who came over from England. Over the course of his lifetime, he went back and forth seven different times from England to the United States and preached in the colonies.

God had given him vocal abilities as far as the ability to project his voice that are not often repeated. Benjamin Franklin didn't believe the stories he had heard, and so as George Whitefield stood on a balcony of what was then the courthouse in the city of Philadelphia and spoke to a crowd that had gathered down Market Street, Benjamin Franklin had rushed into his shop and got what he called his graphite stick, and he began to walk backwards down the road, trying to figure out how far back, and then he was figuring like two square feet per person, and by the time he got down to the docks and could still hear him, he estimated that there were 30,000 people gathered on that street to hear George Whitefield. So Whitefield's known for his preaching, but what maybe we don't sometimes realize is also that the colonies were very divided.

Big colony, little colony. Congregationalist colony. Anglican colony, right? And so one of the things that Whitefield is known for are what are called the Father Abraham sermons.

These are not mentioned in the movie, but I recommend the movie to you. But this is, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson. He wrote this.

He said, he began, Father Abraham, with his hands and eyes gracefully directed to the heavens, as I have more than once seen him, according to Adams. Father Abraham, whom have you there with you? Have you any Catholics? No. Have you any Protestants? No.

Have you any churchmen, which is a fancy term for Anglicans? No. Have you any dissenters? That would be Congregationalists. No.

Have you any Presbyterians? No. Quakers? No. Anabaptists, which would be the Amish and the Mennonites, right? No.

Whom have you there? Are you alone? No. My brethren, you have the answer to all these questions in the words of my next text. This is Whitefield talking.

He who feareth God and worketh righteousness shall be accepted of him. Now, in the 1700s, there was a thing called the Great Awakening. And Jonathan Edwards lit the match.

He struck the flame, the initial flame to that up in New England. But George Whitefield spread the fire through the colonies. He went from the farthest tip all the way down to Georgia on multiple occasions.

And he would preach. There is a possibility that at one point, he preached to a crowd of 80,000 people, and they heard him. Which I just can't even imagine.

I mean, I have this fear of microphones. I'd much rather not have a mic on. But after trying to really pitch my voice out there for about 10 or 15 minutes, then I'd probably be talking like I was chewing on gravel or something, right? But he could go and preach for an hour, get on a horse, ride to the next town, and preach there.

And he is credited then historically with creating a sense of unity. Because what he highlighted was the importance of knowing Jesus Christ. And of having a real experience of the grace of God that leads to a changed life.

And out of that created then this unity where people realized maybe some of their labels weren't as important as this relationship. And if that's the case, that they could join together. And they look back and believe that he created the unity that was necessary for independence to become reality in the United States.

There's a thing called the Black Robed Regiment. Have you ever heard of it? Black Robed Regiment had to do with the influence of ministers in the colonies. And during the Revolutionary War, but also before, there's one by the name of Wise.

I think it's for John Wise. He preached from like 1687 up to maybe 1720 or so. But some of his sermons were published in 1710.

And again in 1717. And he articulated from the pulpit many of the things that we would hold dear as far as no taxation without representation. And he laid a biblical foundation for all that.

I suspect that he also laid a biblical foundation for the idea that we didn't want a king because Deuteronomy makes it so very plain. If you have a king, you're gonna have problems. Which Israel experienced then when they got Saul.

And then with David's sons that came after him, right? But the thing about Reverend Wise is that those sermons that were preached in the late 1600s and in the early 1700s and then were published, were republished in 1772 by the Sons of Liberty. And they published, they did two printings. And things that he wrote are actually included in the Declaration of Independence.

It's not just all Thomas Jefferson's original thinking. So, and there's another preacher by the name of Mayhew. And Mayhew had preached a sermon about submission to government.

And the idea that if the king did things that were unlawful, then resistance was required. And out of Mayhew's influence comes that whole thing about resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. Okay? So I would challenge you, if you have time, you can stream this movie.

It is a great movie, A Great Awakening. There's an original piece of music that's written for it called Awaken Us Today. It's sound, so in the movie, John and Charles Wesley are a couple of prominent characters early in the movie with Whitefield's history there in England.

My wife, when we watched this movie, she thought, this must be a Charles Wesley hymn. And it's not. It was written specifically for the movie, but it's cast in kind of a flavor that would make you think that it was two or 300 years old, right? And it's a plea for God to awaken us.

♪ From the oceans through the valleys ♪ ♪ From the mainland to the shore ♪ ♪ Let your kingdom be awakened ♪ ♪ In the hearts of men once more ♪ ♪ Call your children into freedom ♪ ♪ Captive souls to liberty ♪ ♪ Come awaken, Holy Spirit ♪ ♪ Come awaken us today ♪ Okay, now there's three more verses, and I'm not gonna try and sing them for you, but I would suggest, I've been fascinated by this song. And I keep being drawn back to it ever since I heard it, because I think there's a prayer there. I think the lyrics probably, in many ways, were a prayer that gets set to music, but there's a prayer there for us and for our churches if we're gonna live faithful for Jesus Christ.

So two other things for your homework. Have you seen the movie, The Patriot? It came out years ago, had Mel Gibson in it, set in South Carolina. My title today, Stay the Course, comes from that movie, because at one point in time, as a younger man, I was a pastor in a church and a younger man, his wife had told him, stay the course, when he was getting frustrated with some things, stay the course.

And there's several other places through the movie where he hears that, and every time he's frustrated because somebody reminds him of that, but stay the course. And because he stayed the course, Benjamin Martin made a huge impact. At the same time, that movie, the reason I would highlight that movie is because it does demonstrate that the pursuit of freedom was a very expensive thing.

And I would say that to maintain freedom is an expensive thing. And then the third thing. So right before the 4th of July, there was a discussion going on in our emergency room.

And a doctor was talking to three of the nurses that work in there, and there was some conversation going on about the significance of the 4th of July. And the doctor had brought up this deal about where this guy that interviews college students and he walks around like with a lot of $100 bills. And then if they can answer historical questions for him, he peels off money and gives it to them.

He also asked very basic story problem kind of things. And if they can answer those, he gives them to them. So one of the questions was something to the effect of, if you're in a car traveling West at 60 miles an hour, how long will it take you to travel 60 miles? Now I think the average third grader should be able to answer that probably, but these college students couldn't.

So then he asked the question, and this was a $500 question, on what day was the Declaration of Independence signed? And he walked out of there with $500 still in his pocket because those college students couldn't answer that. So then one of the nurses responded by beginning, well, doesn't the Declaration say, and so they, we the people, in order to form, right? And so he goes, no, no, yeah, he stops, or that's the preamble to the Constitution. And then he quoted the Declaration of Independence down to where the grievances began.

He didn't go through all the grievances. It was an extremely powerful moment. So maybe I ought to go back and just reread the Declaration.

And then with that, I'd ask you to do one other thing. So in some ways I got two sermons, right? I got this historical piece, then I got a biblical piece I want to take you to, but what does it mean to say we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Notice it doesn't say life, liberty, and happiness. It says the pursuit of happiness.

And I think with what little knowledge I have of like classical philosophy and things about ethics, that what the pursuit of happiness is all about is seeking to live a virtuous life. A virtuous life is a good life. And true happiness, for the classical philosophers, would have something to do with living with virtue.

It's not he that dies with the most toys wins. It's not, my apologies to Joel Osteen, but it's not living your best life now as far as stuff. But I don't know that too many of our young people would understand that, but I would think that would be a great conversation for a family to have, grandparents with grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren.

What does it mean, the pursuit of happiness? Because I don't know how many times as a pastor I've had somebody, you're talking to them, and you say, well, what do you think God really wants for you? Well, he wants me to be happy. Will you show me chapter and verse? He wants you to know the Lord Jesus Christ. He wants you to experience his grace.

He wants you to be conformed to the image of Christ and have a Christ-like character. There's a whole bunch of things you could say that God wants for you, and he would like for you to know some joy, but joy and happiness are not necessarily the same thing, because the kid I was talking to one evening sitting on a tailgate of a pickup out at Fort Riley in a training area, when he said that, I knew exactly what he meant. Well, I can go ahead and jump into this other relationship because she's cute, and I'll leave this girl behind.

That's not what the pursuit of happiness is all about. Okay, so the next piece that I wanna jump to for just a moment is, I thought in terms of what would a pastor, what would he, you know, the revolution's coming, or maybe it's begun, what kind of a text might a pastor examine with his people? And I thought Joshua chapter one, verses one through nine was a great place to start. And actually, there's it, but let me ask you this before I go, how many of you, you guys remember the Pledge of Allegiance to the Bible from Vacation Bible School? Did you ever do that? We did it over at Princeton.

I mean, the Princeton way must be the right way, right? But there would, in the, when you vacation Bible school, there would be this pledge. I pledge allegiance to the Bible, God's holy word, a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my feet. It's words while I hide in my heart that I might not sin against God.

Now, the Psalms that's referenced in your bulletin as far as my text, those are the texts that are right there in that pledge. A lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. And then, how am I hiding that word in my heart? That's a key question.

But in Joshua chapter one, Joshua's been told, it's after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord. The Lord said to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses' aid, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I'm about to give them, to the Israelites.

And I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses, and your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river Euphrates, all the Hittite country, to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give to them. Be strong and very courageous.

Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Do not turn from it to the right or the left. That you may be successful wherever you go.

And keep this book of the law always on your lips. Meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. When I was a chaplain down at Fort Leonard Wood, Julie's dad sent me a t-shirt.

And it was black, it was a pretty neat shirt. But over here on one side it said, power will leave you heartless, lust will leave you loveless, money will leave you comfortless, drugs will leave you senseless, Jesus won't leave you regardless. Now it was tied to Hebrews 13 five, but Hebrews 13 five draws on this passage and Deuteronomy chapter 31.

And there's about five times in there when they are told, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So if you were gonna meditate on these scriptures, let me just suggest some things. The first place you'd wanna start is, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

Any of you speak Spanish? You know a little bit about un poquito solamente? I used to teach Spanish down at North Andrew. And I have found for certain things, because I don't know any Hebrew. And I just don't.

So sometimes Old Testament passages, I find there's a key as far as just some of the grammar that I can break down by going to my Spanish Bible. The interesting thing that's here, you know in English typically if it says you, how many are you? Is it you singular? Is it you all? Is it all y'all? If it's a good Southern translation, right? And in this passage, the first four verses, it's a plural you. This is what God's gonna do for the people.

And then suddenly says, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I don't know if that's a big deal to you or not, but like think about Aaron's blessing in Numbers chapter six. I didn't realize this until just a couple of summers ago.

And we had friends up from Mexico and I wanted to offer them a blessing before they left and I looked in my Bible and where it says the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you, that is all you singular. Interesting dynamic, don't you think? To stand in front of a group of people but speak in such a way that the blessing is for each individual. So what follows here, all these things, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

So this idea of leave and forsake, the two words are practically synonymous in my opinion. One kind of reinforces what the other one says, but it has to do with I'm not gonna let you go, I'm not gonna drop you, I'm not gonna leave you, I'm not gonna abandon you, I won't be slack toward you. If you look at the definitions of the words that are there, that's the thought, okay? Then he goes on to say, be strong and courageous.

Why do they need to be strong and courageous? Because there's things to be afraid of. Be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them. Be strong and very courageous.

So what's the strength and the courage tied to? As I was with Moses, so I will be with you, and I will never leave you nor forsake you. Then he goes on and says, be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. And this is where I think, as we read it from the perspective of the New Testament, it's not just about the law of Moses and it's about the entirety of scripture, but that scripture I'm supposed to hide in my heart.

If you're not familiar with Psalm 119, it's the longest psalm in the book of Psalms. It's actually the longest chapter of the entire Bible. It's 176 verses.

They're in eight verse stanzas, if you will, and it's an acrostic. And somebody put a lot of thought into it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So for example, the first eight verses, one through eight, all begin with the Hebrew letter Aleph.

The words do. And it's that way throughout. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, so 22 times eight gets you 176.

But we're to hide that word in our heart, and then that word is to be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. I was reading a commentary by a British guy, and he was saying it would be our torch, but he doesn't mean like this with a flame. He meant a flashlight.

So we hide it in our heart. One of the ways I think we hide it in our heart is even if you just find a phrase that stands out to you, like the thing that stood out for me here is as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. And I've let that roll around in the rock tumbler of my mind so many times over the last few weeks, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

And then as you go on through the rest of this, I would just challenge you, how do you hear it? And let me try and make this point, and then I can probably bring this to a close, right? When you hear be strong and be courageous, don't be afraid, don't be dismayed, how do you hear that? I spent a lot of time with drill sergeants. I can imagine some big angel with a big brown round on, where he's got his bill out here, right? And he gets right out in front of your face and he starts talking to you, and he's pecking on your forehead with a, but that's not how, that's not what the scripture's about. And I borrow this thought from a pastor that we met in Wellington, Kansas years ago.

What if we heard those statements as promises? So when the angel of the Lord shows up and he tells somebody, don't be afraid, he's not doing the drill sergeant, got his knife hand up here ready to smoke ‘em. What if he's telling them, you don't have to be afraid? There's things that are coming up that would make us fearful, and you don't have to be afraid, and you can be strong and you can be courageous because as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. But just let me bring this to a close by asking you to think about this.

The promises that are there that were given to Joshua become ours, ours individually. But they are for those who have trusted in Christ. We just ask you to examine your own heart and just see where you are in that relationship today.

I hope it's a living relationship. You know, we've sang a few great songs here today, and I hope that that grace we've sung about and what we've talked about, the banquet of grace at the communion table, that that's a reality for you that encourages you, gives you strength, and keeps you going on dark days. Because if I was the pastor preaching right as the revolution's kicking off, we had seven years of a lot of dark days before we got to the end, right? But we did make it through, and people living in that period of time would look back and see how God had carried them.

So can I offer a prayer, and I'll sit down. Lord, I wanna thank you for these folks. I ask your blessing to be upon them.

I pray that you'd encourage them. Bless them, Lord, to know your strength. Bless them, Lord, to know your presence with them.

Bless them, Lord, with reminders of the greatness of your love and the wonder of your grace and mercy. All the gifts that you offer us in Christ, may they experience those today. For it's in Christ's name we pray, amen.