My charge to you, Brian Tabb, as the third president of Bethlehem College and Seminary, may be spoken in a rhyming couplet with iambic tetrameter. It goes like this:

Hold fast the word, unchanged and true;
Let insight, joy, and song be new.

Hold Fast the Word

Hold fast the word, unchanged and true. Be like those who received the word in good soil: “Hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience” (Luke 8:15).

Hold fast the word, unchanged and true. Be a firm and steadfast lover of the gospel: “I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word” (1 Corinthians 15:1–2).

Hold fast the word, unchanged and true. Be a guardian of the apostolic traditions: “Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

Hold fast the word, unchanged and true. Be dogged in holding our confession: “Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession” (Hebrews 4:14).

Hold fast the word, unchanged and true. And be obedient to the risen Jesus when he says in Revelation 2:25, “Only hold fast what you have until I come.”

Hold fast the word, unchanged and true. You are our leader, our pacesetter, our example, our ethos builder, our inspiration, and our truth protector. Hold fast to the inerrant word, for “the words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times” (Psalm 12:6). And Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35). “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:10). Hold fast to the inerrant word.

Hold fast to Reformed soteriology — that is, the unchanged truth that our great salvation is a decisive work of God, start to finish. He chose, he predestined, he died, he rose, he bore our sin, he took condemnation, he calls, he causes new birth, he gives saving faith, he forgives, he adopts, he guards and sustains and keeps, he sanctifies, he perfects and brings us to God where there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. And whatever contributions we make in the obedience of faith, it is not we but the grace of God working in us what is pleasing in his sight, so that our salvation — from eternity to eternity, from start to finish — redounds to the glory of his sovereign grace. Hold fast to the infinitely precious Reformed, biblical soteriology.

“Hold fast the word, unchanged and true; let insight, joy, and song be new.”

Hold fast to the fullest glorification of God through the joy of God’s people in God. Hold fast to Christian Hedonism — by whatever name. Hold fast to the serious joy that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him — or as Paul expressed it: “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Hold fast to the truth that gladness in Christ in weakness magnifies the glory of Christ.

Hold fast to the beauty of biblical manhood and womanhood as God created them and orders them in complementary relationships. Hold fast to marriage as a lifelong covenant union between a man and a woman, with the man taking his cues from Christ as the head of his wife, and the woman taking her cues from the faithful, submissive, loved body of Christ, the church. Hold fast to the burden that men must bear as those responsible for the pastoral leadership of the church. Hold fast to the truth that God has spoken in Scripture and in nature that men are men all the way down and women are women all the way down, and this is a godly, glad, and glorious thing.

Hold fast to them all, Brian Tabb — all the precious realities of our Affirmation of Faith.

Hold fast the word, unchanged and true.

Let Song Be New

And in all your steady, solid, stable, unflinching, unchanging holding fast to what is true, let insight, joy, and song be new.

Oh sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth! Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! For great is the Lord, and greatly [freshly, newly!] to be praised. (Psalm 96:1–4)

When the psalmist said, “Sing to the Lord a new song,” he did not mean, “Write a new Bible, find some new doctrine, bow to a new Lord, bless a new name, tell of a different salvation, praise a novel glory, or be amazed at a greatness that never existed before.” That’s not what he meant.

He meant, “Hold fast the word, unchanged and true, but by all means, let insight, joy, and song be new.”

You have a great faculty in the school. And they have amazingly gifted eyes to seek and find treasures in the Bible — “the word, unchanged and true.” The word of God — and the world of God — is like an ocean of insight without bottom and without shore. Inspire these teachers. Challenge them, equip them, and pay them to see what is really there — insights they may never have seen before — so that they may train the students to do the same. “Every scribe [and these are worthy scribes] who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure [his bottomless ocean] what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52). Old truth, new insight.

Let insight, joy, and song be new. Let joy be new. “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5). Yes, there is a serious joy that endures through the night of weeping: “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10). But dawn is not darkness. Dancing is not weeping. Birth is not death. And the joy of the bridegroom coming out of his chamber at sunrise is not the same joy as the joy of the old man thankful for sixty years of marriage, standing by his wife’s grave. They’re all different. Every joy is different. The mercies are new every morning; the joys are new every morning — and every night.

Brian, know this, savor this, live this, and pray this until education in serious joy in this school is new every morning.

Let insight, joy, and song be new. If our president, our faculty, and our students are finding new insights in the ocean of God’s unchanging truth, and if we are tasting new joys every morning, we will sing new songs. And we will sing old songs like we’ve never sung them before.

So, I wrote a new song for you, Brian, which I would like our congregation to sing over you. (It’s to the tune of “All People That on Earth Do Dwell.”)

God’s Truth stands like his holy Name,
     No origin, nor e’er became,
Eternal, absolute, the same,
     Forever one in sum and aim.

Yet oh how new and fresh the taste!
     Linger with him and make no haste.
Through every line the sweet is traced;
     May we forever so be graced.

Come every scholar, poet too;
     Keep ancient truth and bliss in view.
Hold fast the word, unchanged and true;
     Let insight, joy, and song be new.

Amen.