This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of “The Bible and Calvinism” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 29, 1987.
About this sermon
Three reasons for preaching in a redemptive-historical way come first, before turning to the perseverance of the saints. The church is, collectively, Christ’s own body, so our perseverance finally rests on God’s, not our own.
Sermon transcript
This morning we are reading from Romans 8, and we will begin in verse 28. You might not be able to keep from saying this as I read it. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate them, he also called and whom he called them he also justified, and whom he justified them he also glorified.
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God he left? It is God that justifies us. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword, as it is written. For thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us, for I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Today, O Lord, as your Son travels across the face of the earth, so also does your Word. And that testimony concerning yourself, what glory is it after all that the heavens declare? Is it not the glory whereby you have redeemed for yourself a people, and that through your outstretched arms? Lord, today that message is heard in every continent, and congregations gather that they may hear the word. Lord, as we have hungered, so may we be satisfied by your word.
Amen. My habit has been to give to you exegetical messages. of what has been called a redemptive historical type. That is, messages that move through a particular passage, a particular passage in the Bible, while endeavoring always to relate that passage to the broader concerns of God’s program of salvation, historically culminating, as it does, in the person and work of Jesus Christ. My messages have moved through particular passages, while endeavoring always to relate that passage to the broader concerns of God’s program of salvation historically culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ. My hope in this regard has been threefold.
First, to place before you the Word, the Word of God. As I have said many times, echoing Surely what we hear in scripture itself, your life is found in the word of God. To that end, we neglect the word to our detriment. If I have been the reason for anyone becoming negligent of the word, its private reading or its public hearing. I repent here and now. Be in the Word and don’t miss those opportunities that you have for being in the Word. It is your life.
Second, my hope has been to convince you of the essential historical basis for your faith. The history of God’s redemptive work is a factual, substantial frame of reference, one into which you have been introduced because of what God has done for you. I cannot emphasize this too much, because I think that our habit of mind is to dismiss history as that subject we put up with, endured, when we were in junior high, high school, or maybe in college. But please understand, the Bible’s approach to this matter You are introduced in Scripture not to a make-believe world, not to an imaginary world, not to a mythological world. You are introduced to a world of realities. And there you are confronted with the drama, the historical drama, of God’s redemptive program as it focuses upon his people, his activities for them being their redemption. The significance of this is that as you read that history, you are not reading a history that is removed from you, distant from you, an abstraction from which you are disassociated, rather you are reading your own history. The story in the scripture is your story, and as such, you are a participant in it and not a spectator.
That is the significance, I might add, of God’s covenant. My hope has been, by way of the word, to persuade you about grace and its magnitude. I know that it is often the case when we speak about grace that we consider it exclusively as God’s gift and in light of our own unworthiness, we being sinners. I do not mean any disrespect, but my effort with regard to preaching, as it focuses on grace, is to bring you even beyond that description of it. My effort has been directed towards the objective which says, I hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit, and therefore we have been positioned by grace in this drama of redemption in such a way that that drama’s fullness and its finality have already been played out upon the stage of the world for our eternal benefit. Thus, even in our present circumstance, we enjoy, through this grace, our God’s eternal beneficence. It has been in the interests of expounding this grace This grace which is ours through our God, because of Jesus Christ, that I have embarked on this current series of messages for Bible and Calvinism.
The style and the approach of these messages have been different. These messages could be called topical in style. and analytical in approach. Rather than ordered around a particular text, they have developed a theme. And being analytical, they are more logical in their development instead of dramatic, or historical, or even existential in the best sense of that word. Oftentimes, these kinds of messages, the topical, are easier not only to construct, but to understand. They are useful, therefore, in that they not only set before us a compact presentation of a doctrinal interest, they are also able to supply us a breather if there has been a heavy diet of messages of the redemptive historical time.
Now, as you know, I am thoroughly committed to the first type of preaching, the type I described first of all. But my experience has taught me that the second type often comes as a welcomed refreshment to both people and preacher. This has been something of a hiatus. But if you are longing to get back to those exegetical messages of the redemptive historical type. My destination will be after the Christmas season, the pastoral pitfalls and a little unfinished business.
We will be taking up Second Timothy and also type. In following our exposition of those books, we will resume our messages on Matthew six and seven with an eye towards completing our messages on the Sermon on the Mount. For the present, we have this topical series on the five points of Calvinism to complete, and we have arrived at the fifth and last point, namely, the perseverance of the saints. This particular subject we will consider in two parts, the first part this morning and the second next week. Specifically this morning, we will look at perseverance in terms of the journey of the people of God and God’s promises concerning our success in that journey. And next week, we will look at perseverance in terms of our destination, where we are headed, and God’s bountiful blessing to us from and in glory.
Perseverance of the Saints. That journey under God’s sovereignty, in which we are sustained by the promises of God, and that infallibly. Perseverance of the Saints. That journey under God’s sovereignty, in which we are sustained by God’s promises, and that infallibly.
Here we may need something of a different orientation that is usually given to this point in Calvinistic doctrine. For as I have suggested to you as we have gone through the five points, each one of the points is a corollary to a doctrine which Calvinists hold dear. Specifically, I have related this last point to our doctrine of the Church. And it is well to remind ourselves of this fact.
For too often, as we move through the five points, it is so easy for us to become exclusively oriented to the individual and the individual’s place in the economy of salvation. Now, I don’t mean to gainsay the comfort that is gained by root of that individual concentration. Me, in my predicaments, speaking to me about the kinds of security that are extended to me through these wonderful doctrines of the Scripture. Me then delighting in those securities and delighting in them to the full.
But our habit of mind too often is to leave things at that level, as if the concern of those early Calvinists or the concerns of Scripture itself were exclusively individualistic. We take stock, for instance, of the first point of Calvinism, total depravity. It is the individual, we say, and we say again, and specifically me, that is totally depraved. The individual, we go on, is the object of God’s unconditional election, and with our thoughts concerning our own individual unconditional election, there we stop.
As far as the benefits of Christ’s atoning death, we tend to think of those benefits exclusively in individualistic terms. are the recipient of the Holy Spirit’s irresistible work upon us in grace. But by the time we get to the fifth point, we have pushed upon us in an unmistakable way an explicit reference to the collectivity of the people of God.
It’s the perseverance of the saints, you see. It might be well for me to say a word about the saints. Individualism has even prevailed there in a rather unfortunate way in that the Roman Catholic Church has made the saint truly an individual exclusive in his or hers identification, to the point of removing those Saints from the general company of the people of God. So here it is, the perseverance of the Saints, a point at which we cannot avoid our doctrine of the Church. the company of the reading.
That assembly which is the Lord. Now you might think that. Present day Calvinists. Would do well at this point. That they would not fail to point out to us. The corporate character of God’s workings with regard to his plan. Nevertheless, I consulted three classic texts this last week.
Systematic theologies written by tried-and-true Calvinists, and treatments of the five points of Calvinism by other tried-and-true Calvinists. In those three classic texts, with regard to this specific point, the perseverance of The Church wasn’t even as much as mentioned. To give you an idea of how far we have strayed from our Reformation moorings, all I need do is encourage you to read the final book in Calvin’s Institutes.
The Doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints according to Calvin is a sub-point of the Doctrine of the Church. The larger issue is the perseverance of the Church, Christ’s body. The Church of Jesus Christ shall, in fact, endure through every trial, persevere through every ordeal, overcome every failing every stumbling every fall every descent into sin even and in the end, according to the Word of God, enter glory purified and without blemish.
And you have God’s Word on it. I remind you of those Old Testament passages where the church is seen within the figure of the nation of Israel, and within the picture of that remnant which God is preserving for himself. Statements like that spoken in the midst of Israel’s declension during the days of Samuel, for instance. For the Lord will not forsake his people. What are those messages of Isaiah? Again, a prophet writing in times of severe declension amongst the people of God.
Can a woman, he writes, forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, that woman may forget, yet I will not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hand. And again, for the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee.
Isaiah 54. And in the New Testament, what further passage do we need? Amazing to me! was the absence of citation with regard to this passage in the treatment of this particular point of Calvinism. In the volumes I reviewed this past week, Matthew 16 verse 18.
Upon this rock I will build my church And the gates of hell will not prevail against it. It’s appropriate that we read this morning from Psalm 107. For in that psalm, there is mention made of the gates of death. And that’s what is in the mind of Jesus when he makes mention here of the gates of hell. What is in view is the strongest thing beneath God. In all the world, there is nothing stronger than death, the last enemy.
Yet, even the gates or the counsels of death will not prevail against the Church. Yes, the Church shall persevere in her journey to glory. As Calvin said, perseverance becomes hypothetical or exceptional, apart from the church. The Westminster Confession of Faith says, apart from the church, there is ordinarily no possibility of salvation. It is in this context, then, that we take up those classic texts concerning the Lord’s care for us all, for His own, and for us individually. as part of the church, as members of the body, receiving these promises and abiding in them. Think of those statements that we have rehearsed time and time again from John’s gospel.
Whosoever believeth shall not come into condemnation. I give my sheep eternal life, says Jesus. He that believeth in me hath eternal life. I will raise them up at the last day. They shall never perish,” he said. From Paul we have those glorious statements. There is now no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus. Our life, he writes, is his with Christ in God. He that has begun a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ. It is God who worketh in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
We have been chosen unto salvation. God hath chosen us from the beginning to salvation through sanctification and belief of the truth. All of this, quotations out of the epistles of Paul. And what further evidence could we gather from the letter to the Hebrews, or Peter, or John’s letter, or Jude, or the book of Revelation? But know that I suggest gives us more comfort, more encouragement, more of that spirit of certainty before our God than that one which we read today. It is with you as it is with me. Oftentimes you have found, have you not, found yourself pulling that passage out and reading again and again. And by the time you’re done, you’re in the ceiling. You’re no longer on the ground.
We could have a period of testimony here this morning, and each one of you, I dare say, could get up and tell of an instance in your own life when that passage specifically spoke to you. It speaks to you, as I have suggested, from within the context of our considerations about the doctrine of the church, God’s promises to his people, Christ’s love of his bride, and the fact that they will not be denied. But in not denying you, in not being denied themselves, rather, they will not deny you. of every good thing. This passage then inspires comforts.
The saints, those individuals whose journey, though distressing, ends at that place to which the Church shall be infallibly brought in the end. the saints persevere to the end. Now one last word is appropriate for you, and as we have gone through these passages, as you thought a little bit about the doctrine this morning, maybe you have already leaped to this conclusion. Why in the end It seems as if it isn’t the same who are persevering. But rather it is God who is persevering with his things and for his thing and therefore the perseverance doesn’t depend upon us as much as it depends upon him and our perseverance is only the reflection of his perseverance with us and for us.
So even more so. Don’t despair. Don’t despair in your life. Please. Remember your father’s care and his love and his mercy. He’s not forgetting. And he will never forsake you. Never. Father, refresh us in our knowledge of you. Teach us again about your Church and how dear to you she is. And that we, as members of the Church, are promised that as she endures, we too shall endure. and we have your word on that. Comfort us, then, Lord, when things look desperate or even when sin overtakes us and compromises us. May our confidence be not our righteousness, not our merit, but our God who perseveres with and for us. We glorify you through Christ.
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