Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Series: Foundations of Faith

Foundations of Faith: The Life Everlasting, Part 3

About this sermon

Revelation 22 shows the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and the tree of life yielding its fruit for the healing of the nations. God removes the curse and restores paradise. God and the Lamb share one throne, so the Son is equal with the Father. His servants will see his face, bear his name on their foreheads, and need no lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light. This is the hope confessed in “I believe in the life everlasting.”

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Sermon transcript

Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. We finish up our sermon series on the foundations of faith. I title my sermon this morning, Foundations of Faith, The Life Everlasting, Part 3. And for my sermon text this morning, we consider a passage, another passage from the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter 22, verses 1 through 5. You’ll find that beginning on page 1234 in your Pew Bible. I’m going to read the first seven verses of this chapter to fill out the context a bit. So let us hear with reverence and awe the word of our God. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.

The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads, and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. And He said to me, These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent His angel to show His servants what must soon take place. And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book. Your friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

Let’s seek the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of His word. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we would pray that as we approach this text of sacred scripture, that your Holy Spirit would help us to see the glory contained in this passage of your word. We ask, Lord, that you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word. We pray, Lord God, that through this text of scripture, you would strengthen our faith, deepen our hope, and broaden our love. We would pray, Heavenly Father, that you would once again set a guard over my lips, that I, your unworthy servant, may only speak that which is faithful in your sight, for the edification of your people, the salvation of the lost, and the glorification of your holy name. In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen.

You may be seated. And the six key words that the children can listen for today are the words water, spirit, tree, curse, light, and life. Think about Adam and Eve before the fall. Adam and Eve had it made. The Bible teaches that God created mankind, male and female, after His own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures. As our shorter catechism summarizes the Bible’s teaching on this subject in its answer to question number 10. Dear friends, the Genesis creation account tells us that Adam and Eve were created in God’s image and likeness. No other creature was created in God’s image and likeness. Adam and Eve were. They were created without sin. They were created in a way in which they were possessed of a perfect righteousness, and they were placed in a perfectly safe, sinless environment, the Garden of Eden.

Not only did they have all of their material and physical needs met in that original garden paradise, the Garden of Eden, but most important of all, Eden was also a place of spiritual delights. It was a place where Adam and Eve enjoyed unhindered, unbroken personal fellowship and communion with the loving and holy God who had created them in His very image. Eden was not merely a lush garden with ample fruits to satisfy their physical hunger. It was also a holy sanctuary where they could freely glorify and enjoy God in worship and in personal communion with their covenant Lord and Creator. This was paradise indeed. But sadly, and you know the story, sadly our first parents forfeited their place in the garden paradise of God by their own free choice to sin against God through their eating of the forbidden fruit.

And as scripture indicates that Adam had been appointed by God as humanity’s original covenant head and representative, when Adam under the temptation of Satan, when he fell into sin by eating the forbidden fruit, we sinned in covenantal union and solidarity with him. And what was the result of this act of cosmic treason on the part of Adam and Eve? Well, tragically, paradise was lost. In its covenant head, Adam, mankind was now fallen into a state of sin and misery. Adam and Eve themselves were thrust out of the garden sanctuary and paradise of Eden into a dangerous world, a world where they would have to eke out an existence by the sweat of their face in toil and suffering and pain. In Adam, fallen humanity was now under God’s righteous wrath and curse and barred from eating of the tree of life, a sacramental tree that symbolized and pointed forward to eternal life in a glorified, consummated, never-ending paradise.

Ever since that tragic day, ever since that tragic day when God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, the history of the human race has been a tragic story of almost unbroken disease, suffering, hunger, death, crime, cruelty, greed, violence, injustice, and war. But dear ones, in our text for this Lord’s Day morning, we are given a glorious vision of paradise restored. In this vision of paradise restored, the water of life flows freely. It flows freely from the throne of God and of the Lamb. The tree of life bears abundant fruit and its leaves bring healing to the nations of mankind, and the Lord God replaces the darkness of sin with the light of his presence. This restored and consummated paradise that we read about in this highly symbolic vision is made possible because of the saving work of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who taketh away our sin.

The ultimate paradise of the consummated new heaven and new earth, the ultimate life everlasting that we in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ confess in the Apostles’ Creed, that ultimate life everlasting is secured for God’s people in Christ because of our Lord’s suffering on the wood of the cross. Indeed, my friends, the cross of Christ has become the tree of eternal life for all who are effectually called by God’s sovereign grace to embrace Jesus Christ as their very own Lord and Savior. Beloved, this wonderful passage of God’s Word continues the vision of the holy city, New Jerusalem, a vision which is revealed to John by the angel beginning back in chapter 21 verse 9. The New Jerusalem, of course, is not to be understood as a physical or earthly city, you know, a city of brick and mortar, of buildings and bridges and roads and so forth, but rather it represents, it symbolizes the elect church, it symbolizes the body of Christ, in other words, it symbolizes all true believers, all who are savingly united to the Lord Jesus Christ through faith in him and him alone.

Like the new heaven and the new earth, the holy city, New Jerusalem is already in principle a spiritual reality in the hearts and lives of those who follow Jesus and in the life of Christ’s true church. But the New Jerusalem will not be here in its final, glorified, consummated form until our Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory at the end of this age to usher in the ultimate new heaven and new earth wherein righteousness dwells, the ultimate life everlasting, and that will happen at our Lord’s future glorious second advent. So friends, this is a glorious passage of scripture. Let’s dive in and consider what we can learn from this passage of God’s inerrant word. And the first thing I want us to consider as we consider the first two verses, the opening two verses of our passage, let’s consider first of all the meaning and significance of the water of life, the meaning and significance of the water of life.

We read in verse one, then the angel showed me, and let me just pause there and remind us that the term angel means messenger. This is a heavenly messenger that had been sent by the Lord to John the apostle to reveal these glorious apocalyptic visions that are recorded in the book of Revelation. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Now, would this be a concept that would be unfamiliar to John? Is this a concept that was unfamiliar to the people of God before the book of Revelation was written? No, of course not. The idea of water of life coming from the throne of God traces all the way back to passages like the one we see in Ezekiel, and I would argue even goes further back to the Garden of Eden out of which flowed the various rivers and so forth.

And so friends, this is a familiar image, but what does it represent? What does this water of life represent here? When we consider this passage of God’s word in its context and in the broader biblical context as well, it is clear that the water of life symbolically represents eternal life in Christ, that life which Christ communicates to us by the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Think about the imagery of water. Water is life-giving. You know, I’m not much of a gardener. I don’t have much of a green thumb, but you don’t have to be into gardening to know that flowers and fruits and plants don’t ordinarily flourish without a proper supply of water. And likewise, animals and people will eventually die of dehydration without water. Well, friends, that’s true in the physical realm, but in the spiritual realm as well.

Spiritual and eternal life is not possible without the divine supply of the water of life. In this passage, the water of life is a symbol for God’s gift of eternal life, a gift which he gives to his people through the Holy Spirit in which they receive by faith in Christ alone. This is confirmed when we compare Scripture with Scripture even in the book of Revelation. Let me just refer you to a couple other passages in this book. Let’s turn back to Revelation 7 and look at verse 17, Revelation 7, 17. It says this, For the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Living water, the water of life. And then skipping ahead to chapter 21 and looking at verse 6 of chapter 21, we read these words, And he said to me, It is done.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. Again, the water of life representing the gift of eternal life. And if you go towards the end of the very last chapter here in Revelation, chapter 22, look at verse 17. It says this, The spirit and the bride say, Come, and let the one who hears say, Come, and let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life without price. Without price, it’s free. It’s a gift. Now what is the source? So the water of life represents and symbolizes life eternal, which is found in Christ and by his grace alone. But what is the source of this water of life?

Again, as we consider verse one of our passage, we are told that the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from where? Flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb. Now one thing is very important to understand. God is a spirit. He doesn’t have a body like we do. And since God is not a body but a spirit, he doesn’t need a throne to sit upon. But what does this throne imagery represent? It is a symbol. It is a representation. It points to the lordship and rulership of God and of the lamb. This throne imagery highlights the royal sovereignty of Almighty God and the divine royal lordship of Jesus Christ, the lamb of God. Jesus as the lamb of God is not only the crushed and bruised lamb who was sacrificed for our sins.

Remember that the lamb of God is also the lion of the tribe of Judah. He is the royal messianic son. And this throne imagery highlights his divine lordship. And I want you also to notice that God and the lamb are presented here as being on the same level. They are presented as being equal one to another. Did you notice that God and the lamb, in other words, God the father and God the son, seem to share one and the same throne? It says that this water of life was flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb. It doesn’t say the thrones of God and of the lamb or the throne of God and the throne of the lamb. The implication seems to be there’s one throne. We see that also in verse three.

No longer will there be anything accursed but the throne of God and of the lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him. Again, friends, this would seem to clearly imply that the lamb, Jesus Christ, is equal to God the father. Here it seems we have just another powerful biblical testimony to the full deity and godhood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus the lamb is not a helpless lamb. He is God Almighty. So the source of the water of life is the throne of God and of the lamb. And what is the course that is taken by this water of life? Look at verse two. It says that this water of life goes through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life, and so forth.

The course of this water of life goes through the middle of the street of the city. It’s going as it were through Main Street in the New Jerusalem. What is this symbolism meant to imply? Well, I believe brothers and sisters that this may be understood to imply that the good news of eternal life in Jesus Christ is absolutely central to the life, the vitality, and the well-being of the true church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every true church of Jesus Christ will proclaim and have at the center of its life and confession the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he was crucified for the forgiveness of sins and raised from the dead for our justification, and that all who believe in him might not perish but have eternal life. That is at the heart and center of every true church of Jesus Christ.

And when that is removed from the heart and center of the life of the church, the church is on its way to becoming a synagogue of Satan. We need to keep Christ and his gospel central to the life of the church. Certainly we must preach the whole counsel of God. The Bible touches upon many different subjects and we need to address those subjects from the Word of God. But we always need to keep Christ crucified and risen from the dead central to the life and fellowship of the church. Dear ones, may God grant us the grace to keep Jesus and his gospel central to the life of Grace Church now and always. And what are the effects of this water of life that we read about? The effects are spiritual sustenance and healing for the nations of humanity.

It says this in verse 2, that this water of life goes through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life. Remember reading about, where did we read about the tree of life? Genesis, right? Adam and Eve, when they fell into sin, they were barred from eating of the tree of life, that tree which signified and sealed glorious consummated life eternal. But now the tree of life is accessible to all who would avail themselves of it. The tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for what? The healing of the nations. The healing of the nations. This is not preaching some kind of superficial, worldly minded health and wealth and prosperity gospel. The ultimate thing we need healing from is the cancer of sin.

And Jesus Christ, by his death on the wood of the cross, the true tree of life provides forgiveness and ultimate healing, forgiveness for our sins and reconciliation with the Father through his obedient life and atoning death upon the cross. Through the saving work of our Lord Jesus Christ, paradise has even now been restored, at least spiritually speaking, and in an inaugurated sense. Even in this present evil age, we as God’s people have access to the spiritual healing and saving fruits produced by the tree of life. Man’s fall in Adam barred access to the tree of life. But now through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, God given faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and ultimately on the final day when Christ returns in glory, access to the tree of eternal life and communion with God have been opened up to repentant believing sinners through the proclamation of the gospel.

Dear listener, are you burdened by your sin? Are you contrite for your sin? Does the Spirit convict you of your sin? You are called to repent, to have a change of mind that leads to a change in direction, to turn away from your sin to Christ receiving and resting upon him and him alone for your salvation. And the good news is that whoever believes in him, whoever trusts in Christ and his perfect atonement on the cross and his glorious resurrection from the dead shall not perish but have everlasting life. Would you know in your own heart and life what we confess in the church in the Apostles Creed? I believe in the life everlasting. Would you know that life everlasting in your life today? Then by the grace of God receive and rest upon Christ and Christ alone for your salvation.

Friends, as we move on in our text of verse three, I next want you to observe the curse removed and paradise restored. The curse removed and paradise restored. It says in verse three, no longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him. His servants will worship him. Dr. G.R. Beasley Murray in his commentary on Revelation says, there shall no more be anything accursed may simply mean that nothing unclean or abominable shall find entrance into the holy city. But it is more likely that we have here a deliberate contrast to the curse pronounced in the original paradise that brought woe on all creation. And he refers us back to Genesis 3 verses 14 through 19, where God pronounces a curse upon the ground and a curse upon humanity because of its fall in sin.

Beasley Murray goes on to say the effects of that curse have been completely overcome in the New Jerusalem. And indeed, this is what the gospel points to. I would have you turn briefly. Let me read to you from Galatians 3 verses 14 through 19. Galatians 3 verses 10 through 14. Galatians 3, 10 through 14. Paul writes this, For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to do them. God required of Adam and Eve perfect personal and entire obedience, and they failed because they gave in to the temptation of Satan in the garden. They failed that probationary test, and the curse came upon them. And the curse of the law is pronounced on everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to do them.

It’s all or nothing. You either perfectly obey or you’re not obedient at all with respect to the demands of God’s law. And Paul goes on to say, Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith, but the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them. And here’s the good news. Christ redeemed us from what? From the curse of the law. The law is good. The law is spiritual. The law is holy. We love the law, but the law cannot save us. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. How? By becoming a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

Dear ones, the curse has been overcome and reversed through the Lord Jesus Christ, who himself became a curse for us on the cross, the ultimate tree of life, so that we who trust him for salvation from sin might know the blessing and gift of eternal life. God the Father and Christ the Lamb reign redemptively over the holy city. In other words, over the church, which is presented in this passage in idealized and glorified form. Believer, rejoice for Christ, your Savior took that sin burden upon himself, and he bore your sin on the tree of the cross. Praise God for his amazing grace that gives us the spiritual blessings of salvation and eternal life as a free gift in Christ. But finally, beloved, as we look at verses four and five, rejoice in the promise of the vision of God and his illuminating presence.

Rejoice in the promise of the vision of God and his illuminating presence. It says in verses four and five, of those who are redeemed, those who taste of the tree of life and its fruits, they will see his face. Now let me pause there. Throughout the Bible, there is this teaching that no man can see God, that is, see him in his inexhaustible, unhidden glory. No man can see God and live. To see God is to face death, because God’s holy presence requires the death of the sinner. But here it says, they will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads. We’ll talk about that in a second. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever.

Here is the ultimate hope that we affirm when we confess together, I believe in the life everlasting. Dr. Dennis Johnson, in his helpful commentary on Revelation entitled The Triumph of the Lamb, says this. He says, the promise that God’s name will be on the foreheads of his servants reminds us of the role of that name as a seal, marking believers as God’s property and therefore assuring us of protection from his coming wrath. We are sealed in the Spirit, cleansed by the blood of Christ, sealed in the Spirit. Through Christ, the biblical principle that no man may see God and live will be overturned. In principle, we already, through the eyes of faith, see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, of course. If you know Christ as your Savior, there is a sense in which by faith you see his glory.

As you read the Gospel, the Word is alive to you. And as you read about Christ and the glorious saving work that he accomplished for us, your heart is strangely warmed and you see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul hints at this or speaks to this in passages like 2 Corinthians. Let me just read 2 Corinthians 4 verses 3 through 6. Let me just get there. 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 3 through 6 says this. And even if our Gospel is veiled, why is it that not all see the glory of the Gospel? Why is it that to some the Gospel and its glory is veiled? Even if our Gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world, referring there to Satan, has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the glory, the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants, for Jesus’ sake. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. By faith, we even now see the glory of Christ, not with our physical eyes, but with the eyes of faith. However, ultimately, we believers are promised that we will see our Lord face to face in consummated glory when Jesus returns in glory. Christian, are you looking forward to that day when you will look your Savior in the eyes and you will see him face to face? That beatific vision is a central aspect of that ultimate life everlasting that we look forward to at the end of the age.

The life everlasting is not going to be a boring eternity of floating around on a cloud and with a harp. That looks rather boring to me. No, it will be an amazing eternity of worshiping and serving the God who created us and who in grace through Christ has redeemed us. And then it goes on to say in verse 5, and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever. Friends, our Lord Jesus speaks of himself in John 8 verse 12 as the light of the world. Friends, through Christ and his gospel, the church, in other words, the holy city, new Jerusalem of this vision, receives spiritual light and illumination. As we walk by faith in Christ and in the light of his word, walking in obedience to him and bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit, we can even now be assured that we reign spiritually with Christ as we’re told that we do in passages like Ephesians 2 verse 6.

And by his grace, as we walk in the light of his word in this present age, we can be assured that we will one day dwell in that ultimate consummated holy city, that new heaven and new earth where there will be no need for light or lamp or sun, for the Lord God himself will be our light. Beloved, let us walk in the light living in fellowship with Christ, Christ who is the light of the world, Christ who is the life everlasting. Amen. Let us pray. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you for paradise restored. We thank you for Christ, our tree of life. We thank you for the gift of grace and life eternal that we have in him. We pray that by your Holy Spirit, as we continue to make our journey through this valley of tears to that ultimate new heaven and new earth where in righteousness dwells, that you would give us grace to be strengthened in the hope that we have in Christ, for it is not a misty hope that will pass away, but it is sure and certain, even as your promises are sure and certain and confirmed.

And so Lord, as we wrap up our time in your word and especially as we receive together the gift of the Lord’s Supper, we pray that by your Spirit you would confirm us in faith, in hope, and in love that we might faithfully confess and live out the implications of the life everlasting. In Jesus name we pray and all of God’s people said, Amen. Friends, let’s respond to what we’ve heard today by rising and we’ll sing him 473 by the Sea of Crystal, 473.

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May 12, 2024
Foundations of Faith: The Life Everlasting, Part 2

About this sermon

1. Believer, realize that you are a new creation in Christ!
2. Dear ones, take to heart that all things have become new for those who are in union with Christ (v. 17)!

More sermons from 2 Corinthians · Browse all sermons

Sermon transcript

Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. My sermon text today is taken from Paul’s second letter, his second epistle, to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 5.17. In order to fill out the context a bit, I’m going to begin reading at verse 11. Again, you’ll find this on page 1148 in your Pew Bible. 2 Corinthians 5.17 is what we’ll be focusing on, but I’m going to read from verse 11 through verse 21, so let us hear God’s Holy Word.

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known

to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves

to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer

those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. For if

we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you. For

the love of Christ controls us. Because we have concluded this, that one has died for

all, therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might no longer

live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore,

we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to

the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ

reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ,

God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them,

and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ,

God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to

God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become

the righteousness of God. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our

God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of the word.

O heavenly Father, we thank you that you have spoken to us, that you have given us a sure

and certain and reliable word in the holy scriptures, which are a lamp unto our feet,

a light unto our path, a guide to our way. We would pray, heavenly Father, that by your

spirit that you would illuminate our minds and open our hearts this day, that we might

receive wonderful things from your word. And we pray that you would grant me, your servant,

the grace to speak forth and declare your word with clarity and power this day. We pray,

heavenly Father, that Jesus would be exalted in our hearts and in our midst. We ask all

of these things, heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen.

Congregation, you may be seated.

Title of my sermon this morning is Foundations of Faith. This is the second part focusing

on the life everlasting, and there’s a couple words that children can be listening for today

in my sermon, the words eternal, life, new creation, and union.

Well, dear ones, on the last Lord’s Day, we began to consider the biblical basis for

the final affirmation of that great Bible-based creed of the church known as the Apostles

Creed. And that final, glorious, hope-filled, life-transforming affirmation is in these

words, I believe in the life everlasting. I believe in the life everlasting. Brothers

and sisters in Christ, in that final affirmation, we as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ

declare and bear witness to a hopeless dying world that death, the final enemy, has already

in principle been defeated and will ultimately be defeated in the end. We have good news

for a lost and dying world, a world that is subject to death and hell and condemnation,

and that good news is that death will not have the final say. In fact, God’s Word teaches

us that death will be swallowed up in victory, and in principle already has been swallowed

up in victory, and that we as God’s people will reign with our Lord in life and in glory.

Scripture testifies that life, life with a capital L, life in its glorious, superlative

consummate sense will prevail victorious in the end. As our sovereign, triune, covenant-making,

covenant-keeping God establishes His final permanent consummate dwelling place among

His people forever in the new heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness dwells.

And as we, His people, behold our resurrected Lord Jesus face to face in luminous glory

and in inexpressible uninterrupted joy. That’s good news, isn’t it? One day, brothers and

sisters, do you ever think about this? Every day that passes is a day closer to that day,

that final day, when you will look your Savior in the eyes and you will see your Lord face

to face in unimaginable glory and joy. What makes this good news possible? Well, friends,

all of this was made possible by the glorious, miraculous, supernatural, physical resurrection

of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. Jesus of Nazareth, our incarnate Lord and Messiah,

God’s chosen and anointed King. For Jesus has finished the work and He has conquered

sin, death, the devil, and hell once and for all and forever. But, friends, on the

last Lord’s Day, we also considered that this life everlasting, this divine gift of

eternal life, this is a gift that doesn’t just have to wait until the future for us

to enjoy it. Indeed, friends, there is a very real sense in which even now, even in this

present age, we believers, by sovereign grace, can begin to experience the life everlasting.

As we saw, Scripture teaches that there are already not yet aspects to God’s gift of

salvation in Christ. And when the Scriptures speak of eternal life, they’re not merely

speaking of our future life with God in heavenly glory. Although that, praise God, that’s

a wonderful aspect of the gift of eternal life, that we have the prospect that we will

dwell with God in heavenly glory forever. But, friends, in Scripture, this terminology

of eternal or everlasting life speaks to life in union, communion, and fellowship with our

sovereign, triune God. What is eternal life? Eternal life is knowing God. Knowing God is

enjoying personal communion, fellowship, and friendship with him in Christ. Friends, that

life eternal begins in our souls the moment we sinners become new spiritual creations

in Christ and are brought by sovereign grace to a personal saving faith in Christ as our

very own Lord and Savior. If you’re here today and by the grace of God you have received

and rested upon Christ and Christ alone as your Lord and Savior, having been born again

by the Holy Spirit, you have received the life everlasting, at least in its initial

first installment. You have received the life everlasting, the gift of eternal life. And

that gift that you have received now in its initial installment, you will enjoy forever

in consummate glory when the Lord Jesus returns and brings you to be with himself forever.

And so to consider this present or already aspect of God’s gift of eternal life, I thought

a most appropriate passage for us to consider this morning is this very passage from the

Apostle Paul’s second epistle to the first century church in Corinth. Now, if you’ve

ever tried to read through 2 Corinthians, well, you know if you’ve read any of Paul’s

works, Paul’s letters, that Paul was an intense personality. He was a brilliant man and God,

you see how God sovereignly and providentially prepared him and fitted him to be the apostle

to the Gentiles that he was called to be. But the Apostle Paul’s second epistle to the

Corinthians is probably one of the most deeply personal, if not the most deeply personal

and emotional letter that he penned under the Spirit’s inspiration. I mean, you read

through 2 Corinthians and it’s like Paul is just so transparent, so bluntly honest and

he wears his emotions on his sleeves, if you will. Well, in this letter, there are a number

of major pastoral issues or concerns that Paul addresses in this God-inspired letter

of 2 Corinthians. And one of Paul’s major concerns in 2 Corinthians is to defend his

ministry as an apostle of Jesus Christ and also to defend his personal integrity against

those who were attacking his integrity. He was defending his apostolic ministry and his

personal integrity against the charges and slanders of certain false apostles who had

infiltrated the Corinthian church. In our text for this morning, Paul is explaining

his gospel ministry as an apostle of Jesus Christ. And remember that term apostle means

spokesman. In order to be an apostle with a capital A, you had to be a witness to the

resurrected Jesus. You had to have seen Jesus after his resurrection from the dead and you

need to have been personally appointed by Christ. And that’s, brothers and sisters,

that’s why anyone who today in the 21st century claims to be an apostle is actually a false

apostle. There are no apostles, at least not in this biblical sense, around today. I understand

that there’s a more generic sense that the term apostle can mean messenger or missionary

and certainly we can speak about it in that less, that more informal sense. But in terms

of a biblical apostle, as were the 12 plus Paul, there are no such apostles today and

anyone who claims to be such an apostle is a false teacher headed for hell. They’re false

teachers with false gospels and do not listen to them. Do not give a cent of your money

to them. That would be like giving your money to the devil. Anyways, I’ll try not to get

off onto that tangent too much, but friends, you can tell I get fired up about this a little

bit, don’t you? But friends, so Paul is trying to defend his integrity and his apostolic

ministry. In verse 18, he describes his apostolic ministry as what? As the ministry of reconciliation.

Why does he describe his apostolic ministry in those terms? Well, he describes his ministry

in those terms because the gospel message, the good news about Jesus Christ brings about

reconciliation between the infinitely holy creator God and sinful humanity and it does

so through the instrument of God-given faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Through the instrument

or means of faith, we receive the benefits that Christ has won for his people by his

obedient life, his atoning death and his glorious resurrection from the dead. Now in the midst

of explaining his apostolic gospel ministry, Paul reminds his readers in verse 17 of that

glorious truth. He says in verse 17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old

is passed away, behold, means pay attention, the new not will come, but has come. Speaking

of the already not yet aspects of our salvation, we are already new creations in Christ. This

power packed statement in verse 17 follows from what Paul had said in the previous verse

about his own Christian experience. He explains that before his conversion to Christ, he and

those like him viewed Jesus from a worldly point of view as the NIV translates it in

verse 16. In other words, before the apostle Paul was converted to faith in Christ, how

did he view Jesus as a pharisaical Jew prior to his conversion? Like many of the other

Jews of Jesus’ day and of the days of the early apostles, Paul had viewed Jesus as just

another messianic pretender, a false messiah, someone claiming to be the messiah, but not

truly the messiah. But what changed? What changed? Well, because of the transforming

gospel message of Christ’s death and resurrection, and especially because the resurrected Jesus

himself appeared to Paul in glory, Paul saw Jesus face to face in his resurrected glory

on the road to Damascus because of this. Paul no longer viewed Jesus in this way from a

worldly point of view. Instead, now he saw Jesus of Nazareth as who he truly is, namely

as the promised messiah, God’s chosen and anointed king, the Christ, the son of the

living God, the only God-appointed savior for fallen mankind. Paul now had a new face

on Christ because he was a new creation in Christ. Have you ever tried to share the gospel

with unbelievers, family, friends, co-workers and what have you, and you can bring the most

convincing argumentation to the table, but unless the Holy Spirit is at work in their

hearts and gives them the eyes to see, they might understand it at an intellectual level

but they’re not going to get it until the Spirit effectually calls them to faith, until

they become new creations in Christ. Paul has a new perspective on Jesus as a converted

apostle now than he had before his conversion because he is a new creation in Christ. And

what was true for him is true for anyone who is in Christ as we’re told in verse 17. My

dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as we again approach this text of Holy Scripture,

let us pause to reflect upon the fact that by the sovereign grace of God we are new creations

in Christ and let us consider some of the implications of this powerful gospel truth.

The first point in your sermon outlined by way of application that I want to draw your

attention to. Brothers, sisters in Christ, believer, realize that you are a new creation

in Christ. You are right now, if you are in Christ, if he is your Lord and Savior, you

are a new creation in Christ. Think about what that means. Well, in order to understand

the significance of what it means to be a new creation in Christ, it’s important to

at least have some idea of what Paul means when he talks about being in Christ. If you

read the corpus of Paul’s writings, the body of his writings in the New Testament scriptures,

you realize that this terminology, in Christ, this is one of Paul’s favorite phrases. And

he uses it to describe the believer’s relationship to Christ. One Bible commentator puts it this

way, union with Christ summarizes our experience of redemption. Believers are elected, justified,

sanctified and glorified, quote, in Christ. Here Paul focuses on the momentous significance

of the believer’s union with the Savior. The great Reformed theologian John Murray,

in his classic book Redemption Accomplished and Applied, explains it this way. He says

union with Christ is really the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation, not only

in its application, but also in its once for all accomplishment in the finished work of

Christ. So friends, I hope you can see the significance and the importance of this doctrine

of the believer’s union with Christ. But what does the Bible mean when it talks about us

being in Christ? What does this union with Christ, what’s the significance of it? The

great Princeton theologian Charles Hodge explains it this way. He says to be in Christ is the

common scriptural phrase to express the saving connection or union between him and his people.

They are in him by covenant as all men were in Adam. They are in him as members of his

body through the indwelling of his spirit and they are in him by faith which lays hold

of and appropriates, that is takes to themselves, him as the life and portion of the soul. He

goes on to say this union is transforming. It imparts a new life. It effects a new creation

This expression indicates not only the greatness and radical nature of the change effected,

but also its divine origin. It is a divine work, in other words, one due to the mighty

power of God. It is therefore called a creation, the commencement of a new state of being.

And so if you’re a Christian, if Christ is your Lord and Savior, if you are united to

him by faith, you are a new creation in Christ. Now, we don’t have time to get into all of

the ins and outs of what it means to be in union with Christ, but let me mention there

are in the scriptures reveal that there are various aspects to our union with Christ.

There are what we might call the legal aspect of our union with Christ and spiritual or

mystical aspects to our union with Christ. First of all, our union with Christ is a legal

union in the sense that God as the judge of heaven declares us to be righteous in his

sight. The moment the spirit calls you through the gospel to trust Christ as your Savior,

God as the glorious heavenly judge in the courtroom of heaven, the gavel of God goes

down and he declares you to be righteous in his sight. This is what justification means.

Justification is the opposite of condemnation and it’s a legal term. In a courtroom case

today there are two possible verdicts. Either the accused is what? Guilty or innocent. Declared

to be justified or not guilty or to be condemned. Guilty. And this is what is focused on, for

example, in our passage, Paul focuses on this or mentions it in verse 21 where he says in

verse 21, for our sake, for the sake of we believers, for our sake he, the Father, made

him Christ to be sin, not that Jesus became sinful, but Jesus was made to be sin who knew

no sin, Jesus was sinless, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This is speaking to our legal union with Christ. In Adam we are guilty. In Adam we are fallen.

In Adam we are condemned. But in Christ we are forgiven. In Christ we are adopted. In

Christ we are justified, declared righteous in the sight of God, not because we are righteous

in ourselves, but because of Christ’s perfect everlasting righteousness imputed to us, credited

to us, received by faith alone. So the moment that the spirit opens your heart to receive

Jesus, to trust Jesus, not only are your sins imputed to him, he died for those sins 2,000

years ago and he said it is finished, he’s paid the penalty for your sin, but his perfect

everlasting righteousness is credited to you. There’s an exchange, a great exchange. He

takes your sins and pays for them and he gives you as a gift his perfect everlasting righteousness.

And that is why Paul says in Romans 8 verse 1, passages like that, there is therefore

now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If you are in Christ, you need not

fear condemnation. God has justified you and God doesn’t go back on his verdict. It’s

not that you bounce back and forth from a justified to an unjustified state, sort of

like a ping pong ball going back and forth. Many of our Arminian and Wesleyan friends

for example view salvation that way, justification that way. You can be justified one day, unjustified the next and then you can get re-justified the following day. That’s not how God works

in justification. Justification is a once and for all and forever and irreversible,

unchangeable declaration of God. And that is why passages like John chapter 5 verse

24, I love this passage, just going to read that briefly to you. John 5 24, Jesus says

this, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me

has, not might have, may have, will have, but has, right now, has eternal life or what

the creed calls the life everlasting. He does not come into judgment, why? But has passed

from death to life. He’s already passed from death unto life eternal. And so we have legal

union with Christ. But we also have a living or spiritual or mystical union with Christ.

And this mystical union pertains to our progressive sanctification. When we are united to Christ,

we are united to him legally, but we are also united to him spiritually. And his spirit

abides in us and works in us, enabling us more and more to die unto sin and live unto

righteousness by the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul touches upon that aspect of our union

with Christ in passages like Romans 6 verses 1 through 11, where he says we have been united

to Christ in his death and resurrection, which is signified and sealed in our baptism. So

friends, what does it mean to be a new creation in Christ and how should it or how does it

impact your life as a believer? There’s many things that could be said about this, but

by way of application, let me mention four ways that being a new creation in Christ impacts

your life. First of all, believer, you who are in Christ, you have a new representative.

You have a new covenant head and representative. And what’s his name? His name is Jesus Christ.

You see, because of the fall of mankind in Adam, in the real historical Adam, the Bible

teaches that Adam was a real historical man, Adam and Eve were real, and Adam represented

us. He was the initial God appointed representative of the human race. When he fell, we fell in

solidarity, in covenant solidarity with him. And therefore, sin, we receive a sin nature

from Adam. God doesn’t create you sinful, by the way. God doesn’t create bad stuff.

He created you in his image, but you became a sinner because of your covenantal representative,

your federal representative, Adam. You are fallen. We are fallen in him. But now, if

you are in Christ, Adam is no longer your covenant head and representative. If you are

in Christ, he, the second or last Adam, is your representative. As Paul writes in that

famous passage in Romans 5, beginning at verse 12, he says, therefore, just as sin came into

the world through one man, that would be Adam, and death through sin, and so death spread

to all men because all sinned, for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given,

sin is not counted where there is no law, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses even

over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the

one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass, for if many died through

the one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace

of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many, and so forth. We see that comparison

and contrast between Adam and Christ. Christ is the new Adam, the final Adam, and he is

our representative, brothers and sisters. If you are in Christ, you have a new representative,

a perfect covenant head and representative, the Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, if you are

in Christ, you have a new relationship to God. You are no longer a guilty and condemned

sinner whom God relates to as an offended judge. God is very patient and forbearing

and long-suffering toward those who are outside of Christ. He causes his Son to shine on the

just and the unjust. He sends the rain on the righteous and the wicked. He is a good

God, a kind God, a patient God, and yet his basic attitude towards those outside of Christ

is an attitude of holy anger and righteous indignation. And that is how he viewed you

and me when we were outside of Christ. But if you are in Christ and thus have received

the gift of the life everlasting, you have a new relationship with God. You are no longer

a guilty and condemned sinner whom God relates to as an offended judge, but you are an adopted

son or daughter of God whom God loves as the apple of his own eye. I am reminded of that

wonderful passage found in John chapter 1 verses 10 to 13 where the Apostle John writes

about this, and he says in those verses of Jesus, the Word made flesh, he says, He was

in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came

to his own, that is, he came to his fellow Jews, and his own people did not receive him.

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children

of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of

man, but of God. If by the grace of God you have received Christ as your Savior, you have

a new relationship with God. You are a child, a beloved, blood-bought, adopted child of

God. So you have a new representative, you have a new relationship with God. Believer,

you have also in Christ received a new disposition from God. See, before Christ saved you, you

were dead in your trespasses and sins, not just sick or injured or incapacitated, but

you were dead, spiritually dead, dead to the things of God, as we are told in Ephesians

2, 1-10. Before your conversion to Christ, before you were in Christ, you were dead in

trespasses and sins, but now in Christ, you are no longer dead in your trespasses and

sins. You are no longer a willing subject of Satan and the ungodly world. Now you are

alive unto God through Jesus Christ, and if he is your Savior, the deepest desire of your

heart is to please your loving Heavenly Father and to love the Christian Brotherhood. That

love is not always as deep or as intense as it perhaps ought to be. We all struggle with

sin, we continue to struggle with sin, but God has put within your soul, if you have

been born again by the Spirit, you have a new disposition, a disposition that hates

your remaining sin and longs for hungers and thirst after righteousness. I just want to

read what John the Apostle says about this in 1 John 4, verses 7 through 11. In 1 John

4, verses 7 through 11, he writes this, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from

God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does

not know God because God is love. And then he gets specific, he makes it clear, he’s

not talking about sloppy agape, he’s not talking about ooey gooey emotionalism. Here he defines

it, he says, in this the love of God was made manifest among us that God did something.

What did he do? That God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through

him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son

to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love

one another, and we will by the grace of God. And then skip down to verses 20 and 21, it

says, if anyone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does

not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And this commandment

we have from him, whoever loves God, must also love his brother. So you have a new representative,

you have a new relationship with God, you’ve received a new disposition from God, but believer,

you are also headed for a new destination. Before your conversion, before you were in

Christ, you were traveling down that broad road that leads to destruction. You were traveling

the way of the world, the flesh and the devil. You were traveling the road of self-justification,

of trusting and relying upon your own works and labors and efforts, the way of trying

to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps. But now that you are in Christ, you are on

that narrow road that leads to life. And that narrow road is, of course, the way of faith

in Christ and Christ alone. Beloved, you were headed towards eternal punishment in the lake

of fire, under the just righteous wrath of the infinitely holy God, as he would direct

that wrath against all who are in sinful rebellion against him. But now you are headed for the

glorious new heavens and new earth, where in righteousness dwells the ultimate life

everlasting. Why? Because Christ has redeemed you from your sins. You are forgiven. You

are justified. You are in him. Now that you are in him with a new covenant head, with

a new relationship with God, a new disposition toward God, and a new destination from God,

now if that is the case, live your life for the Lord.

And that brings me to my final point of application. Dear ones, take to heart that all things have become new for those who are in union with Christ. Not just some things, but all things have become new for those who are in union with Christ. Again, as Paul says in our passage for today, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, anyone, not just Jews who believe in Jesus or Gentiles who believe in Jesus, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. The new has come.

Again to quote from Charles Hodge, Dr. Hodge writes, old opinions, views, plans, desires,

principles and affections are passed away. New views of truth, new principles, new apprehensions

of the destiny of man, and new feelings and purposes fill and govern the soul. However,

let’s get real here. This is real. I’m not denying that. But maybe you’re scratching

your head. Maybe as I’m preaching this, you’re thinking to yourself, pastor, okay, I’m a

Christian. I’m a believer. I’m a follower of Jesus. He’s my Lord and Savior. But I got

to tell you, pastor, if I am a new creation in Christ, if all things have become new,

if the old has passed away, why do I still find myself falling into those old sins that

dominated my life before my conversion? If I am a new creation in Christ, if all things

have become new, why do I still have to contend with my old sin nature? Or others of you may

wonder, well, pastor, if all things are indeed new, why do I still have to contend with

this aching, aging body of mine and with sickness and disease? Or if all things are new, then

why do Christians living before the second coming of Jesus have to experience and undergo

physical death with all the sorrow and grief that it brings with it? Are all things indeed

new? Well, friends, we need to understand, again, the dynamic of the already and the

not yet. All things are new in principle. All things are new in prototypical form in

terms of initial installment. But one day all things will be new in consummate glory.

Christ’s death and resurrection have dealt the death blow to the old fallen order in

Adam and have brought us powerful glimpses of the glorious age to come. By the word and

spirit of God, we get a foretaste of the glories of the age to come. Whenever a sinner is born

again by the Holy Spirit, it is as if there is an in-breaking of the age to come and we

get that spiritual foretaste of the glory to come. A foretaste that wets our spiritual

appetite for the heavenly glory yet to come. Wets our appetite even more than the wonderful

food that awaits us might be wetting your appetite at this very moment. And don’t worry,

we’ll be getting to that soon. But friends, even though Satan and his old order are in

principle defeated, the effects of the old fallen order continue to remain in this present

age. We still feel the effects of the common curse. And these effects of the old order

will only be completely done away with when Jesus ushers in the eternal state. The life

everlasting in its consummated permanent form. So yes, all things are indeed new in principle

and in initial installment in prototypical form, but all things are not new in the ultimate

final sense that they will be new one day. But until that time of consummated glory,

we groan, we groan both inwardly and at times outwardly as we long for the end of the ages

and as we cry out for the soon return of our Lord Jesus. But let us never forget that even

in this present age there is a very real sense in which the new creation has already come.

Remind yourself of that when you’re tempted by sin. Remind yourself of that when you’re

tempted by sinful doubt and questioning of the word of God. Remind yourself of that when

you face challenges and trials and tribulations, persecution and pain. Remind yourself that

you have a foretaste of the life everlasting even now through the gospel. The life everlasting

is already present. We who have tasted the goodness of the Lord and know Christ as Lord

and Savior are already new creations in Christ. And there is a very real sense in which all

things have already become new for us. Believer, this is what should give you and me hope as

we face the struggles of this present age. As we close our time in the Word this day,

I want to ask you, dear listener, whether you’re here present or listening through the

internet, dear listener, are you a partaker of the life everlasting? Have you received

God’s free gift of eternal life offered to sinners, presented to sinners in the gospel?

Have you by the grace of God received the gift of eternal life? The word of God says

that Jesus calls all who are weary and heavy laden to come unto him. Come to Jesus. Trust

him as your Savior in faith and repentance. Turn to him. He will receive you. He will

not turn away anyone who comes to him. So believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ who was

crucified for sinners just like you and me and who was raised from the dead that all

who believe in him, all who trust in him might not perish but have everlasting life.

Receive and rest upon Christ as your very own Lord and Savior and then you can know

with assurance that by the grace of God you are a new creation in Christ now that you

have received the life everlasting now and you will receive on that final day life everlasting

in that ultimate heavenly glorious sense. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in

heaven, we thank you for the good news of Jesus. We thank you that Christ our Savior

has conquered sin and death and hell and we thank you Lord for the gift of life everlasting

that we have received in him. We pray that as we have received Christ Jesus the Lord

may we continue walking in him keeping in step with the spirit putting to death the

sinful deeds of the old nature and walking after a new obedience out of gratitude for

your gift of salvation. Grant this we pray heavenly Father in Jesus name and all of

God’s people said amen. Let’s rise as we close our time of worship today. We’ll rise

and sing together hymn 448 union with the 448.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

May 5, 2024
Foundations of Faith: The Life Everlasting, Part 1

About this sermon

1. A vision of the new dwelling established by God in Christ (v. 1).
2. The “already / not yet” aspects of the new covenant order in Christ (vv. 2-4).

More sermons from Revelation · Browse all sermons

Sermon transcript

standing for the reading of God’s word. My sermon text this morning taken from the very last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. Revelation chapter 21 verses 1 through 4. You’ll find that beginning on page 1233 in the back of your pew Bible. I’m going to begin reading at chapter 20 verse 11 and read through chapter 21 verse 8 to fill out the context a bit. But our focus will be especially on chapter 21 verses 1 through 4. This is the Word of our God. Let’s hear it with attentiveness and reverence. Beginning at Revelation 20, verse 11. Then I saw a great white throne and Him who was seated on it. From His presence, earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.

Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new. Also he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. And he said to me, it is done. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. May God add his blessing to this reading of his holy word. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we once again ask that by your spirit, you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word. We ask that you would grant us the grace to hear and receive your word with faith and love and to put it into practice in our lives. And we ask that you would once again set a guard over my lips that I might speak only that which is faithful to your word. We pray these things heavenly Father in Jesus name and all of God’s people said, amen.

You may be seated. The title of my sermon this morning is Foundations of Faith, The Life Everlasting. We’re gonna take this in several parts. Again, our passage, Revelation 21, one through four, and if you are following along in the sermon outline, there’s a number of words, quite a number of words that the children can be looking for or listening for in my sermon today. Well, dear ones, this Lord’s Day morning, we begin our consideration of the very last affirmation of the final credo, the final I believe section of the Apostles’ Creed. And that affirmation is in these words, I believe in the life everlasting. I believe in the life everlasting. Well, what does the creed mean by the life everlasting? I imagine that many folks interpret that to say, well, I believe in heaven. And certainly, as we will see, that’s part of what it means.

But there’s more to it than just that. More important than what the creed says, what does God’s word, the Bible, upon which the creed is based, what does the Bible mean when it speaks of eternal or everlasting life? We’re familiar with that kind of language in scripture. As you know, probably the best known verse of the Bible is what? John 3 16 for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him should not perish or shall not perish but have what everlasting life. Beloved, as we study the scriptures and as we trace the progressive revelation of God as it is unfolded within redemptive history, we learn that eternal or everlasting life is life in communion and fellowship with Almighty God. It is life on a higher level than mere natural or animal life, the natural biological life that we human beings share with the animals of the lower creation.

Eternal life is life that is life indeed. It is spiritual life. Life in covenantal union and communion with the sovereign triune creator God made possible by the work of the sovereign spirit of God. Because it is life in fellowship with God, it is eternal. Why? Because God himself is eternal. It is a type of life that does not have to wait for the future consummation, however. It actually begins in its initial installment in this present age. Even now, you and I can experience and taste the blessing of life everlasting. We begin to experience eternal life when we are regenerated, when we are born again by the Holy Spirit and saved by God’s sovereign grace through God-given faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But it is a life whose ultimate goal and ultimate manifestation is yet to come.

It will come to us and be experienced by us in its ultimate sense when Jesus returns in glory at the end of this age and ushers in the ultimate final consummate new heavens and new earth wherein righteousness dwells. So from the ultimate perspective, the life everlasting is the glorified resurrection life that we believers will experience in the new heavens and the new earth throughout eternity. What a glorious, joyous hope our Christian hope is. And the ultimate blessing of this life everlasting is the blessing of God’s covenant of grace, the ultimate goal of God’s covenant of grace. And what is that goal? Well, namely that God in Christ will reestablish his dwelling place among redeemed men and women. God will dwell among us in the new creation forever. As it says in verse three of our passage for today, it says, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, children, what does behold mean?

It means pay attention, this is important. Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. And so, friends, to enjoy the gift of life everlasting is to enjoy God himself as your dwelling place, to enjoy God in perfect, unbroken covenant union, communion, and friendship forever. The covenantal dwelling of God with man is one of those central themes of the Bible. In fact, arguably, it is the central theme of the Word of God. It’s a theme that ties the whole of the scriptures together in unity and harmony. In fact, it begins at the very beginning of the Bible. The ultimate goal of God’s plan of redemption was to restore redeemed humanity after its fall to His dwelling place, or rather to reestablish His dwelling place among redeemed men and women.

Think about the Garden of Eden, the very beginning. Now I know that the Garden of Eden is often presented as just a garden and that Adam, that his job was just to tend and to be a farmer basically and to do landscaping and to tend the garden. Well certainly the Bible presents Eden and I believe that Eden was a real geographical place, a real place, a real garden. That’s how we are to understand it and certainly Adam did engage in farming and landscaping activities and all of that in the Garden of Eden. But there are indications in the Scriptures that Eden was more than just a garden. It was a garden temple. It was the dwelling place of God. That’s why we learn, we read of imagery of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden had perfect covenant communion and fellowship with their creator God. But of course, you know what happened. When the serpent tempted Adam and Eve, they fell into sin. And Adam being the covenant head and representative of the human race, when he sinned, we sinned in him. And what happened to Adam and Eve after they were judged for having fallen for the serpent’s temptation? What did God do? He kicked them out of the garden. He sent them east of Eden. He thrust them out of his dwelling place. But ever since that time, God has been at work in redemptive history, reestablishing His dwelling place among man. We see that symbolized, for example, in the tabernacle and the temple. You might wonder, as you read through the Old Testament, why so many chapters and so many verses, so much ink is spilled describing the furnishings and the structure of the tabernacle and later on the temple.

Well, the reason for that, brothers and sisters, or one of the reasons for that, is that the temple was the dwelling place of God in the tabernacle, which was a a mobile temple, if you will, and then later on in Solomon’s temple, which was a permanent fixed temple. the tabernacle and temple were symbols and types of God reestablishing his gracious, covenantal, kingly dwelling among his redeemed people. And of course, Jesus himself is the ultimate dwelling place of God among men. For Jesus is the word made flesh who came to do what? According to John 1.14, Christ came as the divine logos incarnate to tabernacle, to make his dwelling place among us. And friends, today we consider a passage, again from this last book of God’s Word, the book of Revelation, which promises that one day God in Christ will dwell with redeemed humanity permanently in consummated glory.

Now in terms of the context of our passage for today, St. John the Apostle had just finished predicting the final judgment in the previous section, the Great White Throne Judgment scene that we read in chapter 20, verses 11 through 15. That passage tells us that those whose names are not found written in the book of life will be cast into the lake of fire. They will be ultimately exiled, permanently exiled, banished forever from God’s favorable presence, from God’s dwelling place. But as we see in today’s passage, those who by grace are among the saved, those who belong to the new Jerusalem, to the Lamb’s bride, to Christ’s elect church, those whose names have been written in the Lamb’s book of life will enjoy God’s dwelling place forever in the new heavens. and the new earth, and the ultimate promise is, as it says in verse three, God says, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. What do we have in our passage for this morning? Well, this brings me to my first main point. If you’re following along in the sermon outline, we see here as we focus on verse one of chapter 21, a vision of the new order that has been established by God in Christ. What we have here in this apocalyptic language of the book of Revelation, we have a vision of the new order established by God in Christ. It says this in verse one, John, as he is writing under the inspiration of the Spirit, as he sees this prophetic vision, he says, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and the first earth, that would be this present age, this present cosmic order, the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. And then he makes an interesting comment that we’ll focus on in a little while. He says, and the sea was no more. One Bible commentator introduces this section with the following words. He says, the destruction of the last enemy death and the last judgment will finally lead to the renewal of the entire created order, heaven and earth, to be the perfect home in which the lamb will live forever with his bride, the people whom he has redeemed out of all the nations through his atoning death. However, friends, as we will see, this new heaven and new earth language that John uses here in this passage under the inspiration of the Spirit, this language is rich and it has implications not just for our future, but even for this present life as well.

And so what we need to do now is consider the Old Testament source for this new heaven and new earth language that John uses here in this passage. Now, I know that the book of Revelation is a challenging book. And many folks think that, well, wow, I could never understand the book of Revelation. But Revelation has been rightly described as the most biblical of all of the Bible’s books because Revelation has numerous either quotations from or allusions to the Old Testament prophetic books. And so the best way or the only way you can understand Revelation, and it was written to be understood, is to understand the Old Testament scriptures, especially the prophets. John assumes in writing this, again under the Spirit’s inspiration, he assumes a certain level of knowledge of the Old Testament prophets. And John is using this imagery here that is adopted from the passage I read earlier in the service, Isaiah 65, verses 17 through 25.

So let’s turn back, keep your finger in Revelation 21, but let’s turn back for a few minutes and consider the Old Testament background passage to our passage in Revelation today, Isaiah 65. verses 17 through 25. Now in this Isaiah passage, the new heavens and the new earth, which are introduced to us in verse 17 of that passage, are identified with the new Jerusalem that is spoken of in verse 18. Both of which God says he will create. The language of creation is prominent in this passage. Let me just read these two verses again. For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind, but be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy.” I think we’re to understand because of the close connection of these two verses that the new heavens and the new earth and Jerusalem the significance of Jerusalem are intended as two different ways of speaking about the same reality.

I create Jerusalem to be a joy and her people to be a gladness. Here God uses cosmic language, the language of a new heavens and a new earth, to describe the creation of a new or renewed people of God living under a new order. Meaning, as we will see, the new covenant order that will be introduced in the Messianic Age. Friends, this is an Old Testament prediction of the new covenant order that God would create through the coming of the promised Messiah, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so that raises the question, the question of whether this imagery, this language of new heaven and new earth in Revelation refers exclusively to a future reality, namely the eternal state, or whether it refers exclusively to a present reality, namely the new covenant order of this present messianic age, or is it speaking of both realities?

Now most Bible commentators today, under the influence of dispensationalism in many cases, most Bible commentators today interpret this kind of new heavens and new earth language in an exclusively futurist way. They say, that’s only speaking about events that are yet in our future. A minority of commentators advocate for an exclusively preterist interpretation, which says that all of these things have already been fulfilled with the coming of Christ, and preterism in its full-blown sense is the belief that all of the Bible prophecies have basically been fulfilled by the establishment of the New Covenant order, which was confirmed by the destruction of the Old Testament temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. I have a lot of problems with that view. I think it’s actually a heretical view because it denies the future return of Christ and the future bodily resurrection of the dead.

But nevertheless, I would suggest to you, brothers and sisters, that there is a sense in which there’s truth in both of those views. And let me clarify. Let’s look at this passage in Isaiah 65, which serves as the background to our passage for today. Let’s look at the details of this Isaiah passage a little more in depth. Let’s look at Isaiah 65, verse 20. As Isaiah, under the Spirit’s inspiration, is describing this new heavens and new earth, he says this. No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days. For the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.” Let me ask you, brothers and sisters, will there be death in the eternal state, in the consummated new heavens and new earth?

Will there be sinners in the new heavens, in the new earth in its consummated form? And the answer obviously to both of those questions is no. Look again at verses 21 and 22. It says, they shall build houses and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and inhabit. They shall not plant and another eat. For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. Now let me ask you this again, looking at the details of this Isaiah passage, this new heavens and new earth prediction here in Isaiah. In the ultimate eternal new heavens and new earth, shall we expect that houses will need to be built and vineyards will need to be planted in the eternal state?

No, of course not. Again, let’s skip down to verse 25. It says in that passage, the wolf and the lamb shall graze together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord. From the details of this verse, this passage, are we to expect that the various species of animals that now exist in our present cosmic order will exist in the final new heavens and new earth? I know that many folks often ask the question, will I get to see my pets in heaven? Will Fido be there in the new heavens and the new earth? And those are interesting speculative questions. The answer I think is, I don’t know, but should we expect that to be the case because of this kind of language used here in the prophet Isaiah?

Now friends, the point that I’m making here in these questions I’m not at all suggesting from these questions that we should interpret this prophetic imagery in an overly literalistic way. In fact, I think we’re not intended to interpret this in a woodenly literalistic way. This is prophetic language and thus highly figurative language. In fact, the biblical prophets often seem to use the realities that we are familiar with in our present age in a figurative or metaphorical way to describe the glories of the age to come. And so eternal life is typologically or figuratively spoken of as great longevity, for example. But my point here, friends, is that Isaiah is using the cosmic terms new heavens and new earth to describe a new spiritual order, an order that was to be brought about by the coming of the promised Messiah and the establishment of his messianic kingdom, all of which was fulfilled in an initial sense when our Lord Jesus came to this earth in his first advent.

But scripture indicates that this new order will be perfected and consummated when our Lord Jesus Christ returns at the end of this age in glory and ushers in his eternal kingdom, the ultimate and final and consummated new heavens and new earth wherein righteousness dwells. Now since this Isaiah passage is the Old Testament background of the New Heaven and New Earth text from Revelation that we’re considering this morning, and since the Isaiah passage did not refer exclusively to the eternal state, it makes sense to conclude that the Apostle John is not using this New Heaven and New Earth language to refer exclusively to the eternal state, although that’s part of what he is referring to. In other words, let me make it simple. Are the new heavens and the new earth here? In one sense, yes.

If Christ has made you a new creation in himself, if you are a new creation in Christ, the new heavens and the new earth is a present reality in your life. And the new heavens and the new earth is a present reality on a spiritual level in the church, the elect church of the Lord Jesus Christ. But what about John’s statement as we’re considering chapter 21, verse 1? What about John’s statement, and the sea was no more? He says, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. Now some folks might say, well, that’s a bummer. I love the water, I’m a beach bum. I hope there’s water in the heavens. I hope there’s water in the eternal state.

Is this saying that there won’t be water in the eternal state? Again, that’s a speculative question. But the point here, again, this is symbolic language. It’s important to understand that in the ancient world, the sea was often used to represent the forces of chaos, the forces of chaos which threatened the world order. In the first creation, God brought order out of chaos by sovereignly setting boundaries to the sea. Let’s go back briefly to Genesis 1. I’m sure a familiar passage to you folks, Genesis chapter one, verse two. After declaring the original beginning, the creation ex nihilo in chapter one, verse one, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, it goes on to say in verse two, the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of what? The face of the deep.

Did these chaos waters, so to speak, threaten the Creator God, as in ancient pagan mythology, where even the gods could be overcome by the chaos waters? No. It says the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters, just like an eagle hovers over its young. The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters, and the Spirit of God brought order out of that chaos, as we read in verses 9 and 10, where it says, And it was so. God called the dry land earth and the waters that were gathered together, he called seas. And God saw that it was good. The original seas were good, but the chaos waters that John is speaking of here in chapter 21 represent the forces of chaos, the chaotic forces that had been unleashed by human sin.

But those forces have been subdued by Christ’s saving work and they will ultimately be banished forever in the consummated new creation. And all of that brings me to my next point of application here, beloved. Consider next the already not yet aspects of the new covenant order in Christ. That’s what this is all getting at. The already not yet aspects of the new covenant order in Christ. We read verses two and three, it says the following. He says, and I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem. Notice just like Isaiah connects the new heavens and the new earth with God’s creation of a renewed Jerusalem. John the apostle does the same. He speaks of the new heavens and the new earth in verse one, and then he speaks of the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Where else in the scriptures have you heard of a bride, of God’s bride, and what does God’s bride represent? It represents the people of God, the body of Christ. We, brothers and sisters, we are the bride of Christ. And so this is speaking about a renewed people of God. When it comes to God’s plan working itself out in history, the word of God indicates that there is an already not yet dynamic in God’s plan. Now at this point you might be saying, Pastor, you’ve really lost me here. Can you kinda simplify this? Well let me try to simplify it in this way. Have you ever had someone approach you on the street, perhaps a street preacher, an evangelist approach you and say, brother, sister, are you saved? It’s interesting, I actually had an experience like that this past week as I was jogging.

I was out jogging on our street. There were some road work being done on our street this last week. And I’m jogging down our street and there’s a work truck parked to my right. And the gentleman in the truck was crying out to me. He says, hey, come here. I’m like, oh, did I do something wrong? And I approached the truck. He said, yes, sir. and he hands me a gospel tract, and he said, you know, very friendly guy, he said, you know, this is not about religion, this is about a relationship with Jesus, and I know he was trying to ask me, are you saved? And I, because I wanted to get on with my jog, I took the tract, I thanked him, and I said, I’m a Christian, Christ is my Savior, and he said, praise the Lord, brother.

Well, anyways, maybe you’ve had an experience similar to that. Someone asks you, are you saved? What’s the correct answer to that question? What is the biblical answer to the question, are you saved? Well, when it comes to the gift of salvation, we learn in the scriptures that our salvation involves definitive aspects, progressive aspects, and consummative aspects. Oh, pastor, there you go again with that fancy language. What are you saying? Well, think about it this way. The correct biblical answer to the question, are you saved? If you’re a believer, if Christ is your Lord and Savior, the correct answer is, yes, I have been saved. Yes, I am being saved. And yes, I will be saved. Yes, I have been saved when God called me through the gospel and by the Spirit to faith in Christ.

He forgave my sins. He justified me. He adopted me as his child. And we, brothers and sisters, we enjoy that aspect of salvation here and now. But not only are we saved now, we are also being saved through progressive sanctification as the Spirit continues to work in us and we grow in the knowledge and love of Christ. But we will be saved in the ultimate consummate sense when we go home to be with the Lord and ultimately at the final resurrection of the dead when Jesus returns in glory and raises us from the dead to live with him in the ultimate new heavens and new earth forever. This is what is meant by the already, not yet dynamic. Are you already saved? Are you saved? Well, yes, I’m already saved in one sense, but not yet saved in another sense.

The same could be applied to the new heavens and the new earth. In principle, the new heavens and the new earth are already present. They’re already here. How are they here? They are here in the hearts and lives of Christ’s followers. They are here in the true visible church as God’s people gather around the gospel word and sacraments and worship God in spirit and in truth. But in its final fullness, the ultimate new heavens and new earth are not yet a reality and will not arrive until Jesus returns. You say, well, wait a minute, pastor, what do you mean the new heavens and the new earth are already here? Well, again, let’s briefly, and then we’ll close up our time in the word, but let’s compare scripture with scripture. Let me have you turn to 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17.

And this should be a familiar passage to many of you. The Apostle Paul writes, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, talking about spiritual and saving union with Christ, anyone knows Christ is their Lord and Savior. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, a new creation. You have been created anew, brother, sister in Christ. The reality of the new heavens and new earth exists in spiritual seed form in you right now and among the people of God in the body of Christ, the church. And so again, Paul uses this same kind of cosmic new creation language to describe those who have been brought to new spiritual life through union with Christ. The new heavens and new earth is already a present reality as well in the elect church, which is described again in our passage in verse 2 as the holy city, New Jerusalem.

And we don’t have time to dive into all of the biblical passages that support this contention, but oftentimes in the scriptures, God’s people, God’s covenant people, called the church under the new covenant, God’s people are often described as the holy city, as a new Jerusalem, and as the temple of God. We see that, for example, and we don’t have time to look at it, but you could look it up in your own time, Galatians 4, 21 through 26, or Hebrews 12, verses 18 through 24, and so forth. And so the new heavens and new earth is already a present reality also in the sense that God already dwells among and comforts his redeemed people. We read this in verses 3 and 4. It says, And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

This is the consummation and the ultimate fulfillment of the new covenant, that God will reestablish His gracious covenantal permanent presence among his redeemed children. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. And what will the result of that be? What will God do? Verse four, he will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. When we think of verse four, you might say, well, Pastor, look, the new heavens and the new earth, if they’re present spiritually, the comfort of the new heavens and the new earth is certainly not present because we as God’s people, we still suffer in this present age.

We still face sickness. We still face death. So while this promise will not be perfectly or completely fulfilled until Jesus returns in glory, when there will certainly be no more pain, no more crying, no more tears, no more death, no more sorrow. Nevertheless, God does comfort his people even now. He comforts us, his people, in our affliction. How does he do that? He does it primarily through his word, through the gospel promises. He does so through his gospel, through his spirit, and through the ministry of his church as we brothers and sisters come alongside each other, as we support one another, pray for one another, lift one another up to the throne of grace in prayer, and seek to support and minister to one another’s needs. That is Christ comforting us and giving us a foretaste of the ultimate comfort of the new heavens and the new earth.

But brothers and sisters in Christ, the new heaven and the new earth, while in a sense, in an initial sense, it is here already, it has not yet come in its final form. The new heavens and the new earth has yet to come in its perfect, consummated, cosmic, glorious form. And that will happen when? That will happen when Jesus our Lord returns physically, bodily returns in the clouds of glory and the new creation and brings in the new creation, judges the humanity and ushers in the ultimate new creation on a cosmic universal scale. At that time, faith will give way to sight. The covenant of grace will be consummated in its final fullness, and our joy in Christ will be made complete. I want you to think about, as we close our time in the Word today, I know time is getting along here, but as we close our time, brothers and sisters, I want you to think about this.

Now, some would say, this is, you know, you’re just preaching all about heaven and future glory. You know, you’re too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly good. Think about this, brothers and sisters. If you really embrace and grasp the truth that you are headed for everlasting glory with the infinitely glorious Creator God who not only created you but loved you with an everlasting love, chose you in Christ from before the foundation of the world, sent His Son Jesus to die the shameful, painful death of the cross, to redeem you, and poured His Spirit upon you, drawing you with the cords of love unto faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you really believe, that God has saved you, and forgiven you, and has sealed you with the Spirit unto the day of redemption, and that one day you will see your Lord face to face, and that every tear will be wiped away, and that your joy, joy beyond even the beginnings of imagining, will commence.

If you really believe that, it has the power to utterly transform the way you live your life in the here and now. Because you are a child of God. Christian, you are a child of God. You’ve been redeemed. You’ve been loved. So live like it. Live your life in light of that. Live your life in light of the truth that you are headed for this final new creation, this life everlasting. Do you know that you are headed for this life, the life everlasting? If not, have soul dealings with Jesus this day. Jesus in the gospel calls you to repent, to recognize your sin, and to trust him and him alone for your salvation. The Bible says that Jesus died for sinners just like you and me. His death is of infinite value. He rose from the dead.

He conquered sin and death and hell. And He calls you, dear listener, each and every one of you, to turn away from trusting yourself, to trust Him and Him alone. Receive and rest upon Christ alone as your Savior. And then, He will forgive you by His grace. He will forgive you and seal you unto the day of eternity. And you can look forward to the life everlasting. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you for your amazing grace to us in Christ. And we thank you that the new creation has begun spiritually speaking, that it has begun in us through the powerful working of your Spirit in bringing us to faith in Christ and dwelling in us and among us as your people. We pray, Heavenly Father, that as we have this foretaste in the gospel of the ultimate new heavens and new earth, that you would grant us patience, that you would grant us the perseverance, that you would keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, may we endure trusting in him and him alone.

In your name we pray and all of God’s people said, amen. Let’s close our time today by rising and we’ll sing together hymn 464, Jerusalem the Golden, 464.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

April 28, 2024
Foundations of Faith: The Resurrection of the Body

About this sermon

1. The unity and equality of the Father and the Son
2. Christ, the Source and Bestower of resurrection Life (vv. 25-29)
3. God’s Son, the Divine judge (vv. 22, 26-30)

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Sermon transcript

Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. And as you’ll see in your bulletin, my sermon text for this morning is taken from the Gospel of John, John 5, verses 18 through 30. You will find that on page 1,058 in your Pew Bible. John 5, beginning at verse 18 and reading through verse 30. Dear friends, this is the Word of God. Let us hear it with reverence and awe. John 5, beginning at verse 18. This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the father doing.

For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all that He Himself is doing. And greater works than these will He show Him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself. and He has given Him authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. I can do nothing on my own, as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the proclamation of His word.

Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, once again we thank you that you have spoken to us in the scriptures a sure and certain word. We thank you, Lord, for your inerrant, infallible word, for indeed it is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. We pray that by your spirit the lamp of your word would shine brightly this day, We pray, Heavenly Father, that you would illuminate the Word by your Spirit and cause your Word to find a lodging place in our souls. We ask, Lord, that you would set a guard over my lips, that I might speak only that which is faithful to your Word, glorifying to your name and edifying to your people. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated.

As you can see from your sermon notes, the title of my sermon today is Foundations of Faith, the Resurrection of the Body. And there’s four key words that I’d encourage the children to listen for in my sermon today. The words honor, life, judge, and resurrection. Well, dear ones, as we are nearing the end of this Foundations of Faith sermon series, which has been guided by that classic Bible-based creed of the church known as the Apostles’ Creed, this morning we consider the next to the last affirmation found in the third credo, the third I believe section of this creed, namely the affirmation, I believe in the resurrection of the body. Now, if you’re a follower of Christ, if you’re a Christian, as I imagine you are all here today, you would no doubt confess to believe in the resurrection of the body.

But one of the things that we need to realize, brothers and sisters, is that our ultimate hope as followers of Christ is not simply that we get to go to heaven when we die. Although praise be to God, that is indeed a wonderful and a glorious part of our Christian hope. But rather, friends, the ultimate hope proclaimed by the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, is that one day when Christ our Savior returns in visible glory, our glorified souls will be reunited with our glorified, resurrected bodies to live forever in the glorious, majestic presence of our sovereign triune God, living forever with Him in the new heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness dwells. That is our ultimate hope. That is the ultimate promise of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Not just the salvation of our souls, but also the resurrection of our bodies.

The affirmation that we consider today expresses this ultimate hope and expectation of the future glorious resurrection of the body. As Christ rose from the dead in a glorified body, so we who by grace are united spiritually and savingly to him, we will likewise be raised with him in glory. Praise be to God. Now friends, there are many passages of the New Testament that speak to this ultimate hope of the resurrection of the body. But today I would have us consider a passage from the Gospel of John in which our Lord Jesus clearly and unambiguously teaches the resurrection of the body. A passage which underscores the honor that is due to the Son of God. You see, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is worthy of honor. In fact, our passage for this Lord’s Day morning teaches that Jesus the Son is worthy of as much honor as God the Father is worthy of honor.

For the Son shares in the same divine essence, the same divine being as the Father. And Jesus the Son is perfectly united with the Father in will and purpose. While God the Father and Jesus the Son are distinct persons of the Holy Trinity, with distinct roles and functions, yet they are one in divine being and essence. They are co-equal, co-eternal, consubstantial, to use the words of the Nicene Creed, for example. They are one in being and essence, as well as being one in purpose and will and divine authority. The majestic, awe-inspiring words of our Savior, as recorded in this morning’s passage, underscore this divine unity between God the Father and God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. This divine unity between the Father and the Son intersects with our lives in some very powerful ways, as I hope to have us consider.

For the Father and the Son work together to bring about both the salvation of the elect and the judgment of the wicked. The Father has authorized the Son to exercise life-giving resurrection power in bestowing the gift of eternal life upon sinners. And He has also entrusted to the Son the authority to exercise all judgment. What great honor, indeed, the Father has bestowed upon His eternal Son. And therefore, what great honor and adoration and worship ought we to bring to the Son of God, beloved, the Son of God who loved us and gave His life as a ransom for us. Now, as we turn our attention to our passage for this Lord’s Day morning, we need to ask ourselves, what was the occasion that prompted our Lord Jesus to speak these powerful words? Well, if you read the entirety of John 5, you will see that in the immediately preceding section of this chapter, John records how Jesus had miraculously healed a paralyzed man at the pool called Bethesda in Jerusalem, and Jesus had healed this man on a Sabbath day.

Of course, that got the attention of the Jewish religious leaders. The Jewish religious leaders were upset with Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. But in verse 17, our Lord defended his actions by saying, and these are some rather provocative words, Jesus says, my father is working until now, and I am working. My father is working until now, and I am working. See, by referring to God as my father, Jesus in this context was clearly claiming to be equal with God, a claim that, of course, enraged the Jewish authorities all the more. And not only does Jesus claim to be God by calling God, not just our Father, but my Father. Not only that, but Jesus equates his works with the works of the Father. He says, my Father is working until now, and I am working.

In other words, I’m doing the same kind of divine works that my Father is doing. And so what happens? Well, as John the Apostle comments on this interchange in verse 18, he says, this was why the Jews, meaning in particular the Jews who were hostile to Jesus, the Jewish religious authorities, this was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him. Because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, I don’t believe he was actually breaking the Sabbath. I believe John implies that in their minds, in the minds of the Jewish religious authorities, Jesus was breaking the Sabbath by daring to heal someone on the Sabbath day. But not only did Jesus trample on their pharisaical misconceptions of the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.

The Jews who heard Jesus say these words, they understood what he was getting at. It’s amazing to me how many folks who claim to be Bible followers and claim to believe the Bible but reject the deity of Christ, how they miss this. They say, oh, well, Jesus never claimed to be God. Well, yes, he did. It’s right here. It’s in plain black and white. Jesus called God his own Father, making himself equal with God. And so, friends, it is in response to this conflict with the religious authorities that our Lord Jesus speaks these sublime, powerful words that we read in our text for this Lord’s Day morning. And as we turn our attention to this passage of God’s Word, we note, first of all, the unity and equality of the Father and the Son. This is the first point in your sermon outline, if you’re following along in that.

This passage emphasizes both the unity and the equality of God the Father and God the Son. Dr. Merrill Tenney, in his commentary, makes a helpful comment. He says, equality of nature, identity of objective, and subordination of will are interrelated in Christ. And these aspects of Christ’s relationship to the Father come out in this passage. Christ’s equality with the Father and his full deity are further established in this passage as Jesus continues to comment on and respond to the Jewish religious authorities who had taken such exception and offense at what he had said back in verse 17. It says in verse 19, so Jesus said to them, truly, truly, in the Greek it’s amen, amen. In other words, Listen up. This is important. Truly, truly, I say to you, again, Jesus speaks by His own divine authority.

He doesn’t quote the rabbis. He doesn’t even quote the scriptures. He says, I say to you, because He is God in the flesh. Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of His own accord. Now, He’s not commenting there on His power, He’s not denying His omnipotence, but He’s emphasizing His unity of will and purpose with the Father. He says, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. The Son does what He sees the Father doing, which again, this implies that our Lord has the same divine power to do what God the Father does. And so all of this emphasizes and supports the truth of our Lord’s full deity, His full Godhood.

And yet he does so in willing, humble submission to what he sees the Father doing, which again indicates a perfect unity of will and purpose between the Father and the Son. And then he goes on to say this in verse 20, it says, for the Father loves the Son. Let me just pause there. The Father loves His Son with infinite, perfect, pure, holy love. And if you are united by faith through grace to the Son of God, the love that the Father, the infinite love that the Father has for His Son, you are a partaker of that love, for He has loved you in Christ. Anyways, the Father loves the Son and shows Him all that He Himself is doing. The Father hides nothing from His Son. The relationship among the persons of the Trinity is totally, completely transparent, harmonious, and glorious.

The Father loves the Son and shows Him all that He Himself is doing. And greater works than these will He show him, so that you may marvel.” Now in the context here, what do these greater works include? Well in the context of this passage, these greater works that Jesus will show include his work of raising the dead, both bringing spiritual new life through the new birth, as well as physical resurrection from the dead, as well as the work of judging, for all judgment has been committed to the Son. So again, Jesus emphasizes here that the Father loves the Son. And by the way, in the context What a contrast this sets between the Lord Jesus and the unbelieving Jewish leaders who rejected the Son as being equal with the Father and who refused to love the Lord Jesus.

And then verse 21, he goes on to say, for as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. Let me ask you this, brothers and sisters, If our God truly exists, if the sovereign triune God of the Bible truly exists, which indeed He does, the God who spoke the universe into being by His simple word of power, if God had the power to create and sustain the universe, Does he not have the power to raise the dead? Of course he does. He is omnipotent, all-powerful. And so our atheist and skeptic friends who scoff at and mock at the truth of the resurrection of Jesus or the biblical teaching on the future resurrection of the body and bring excuses like, well, what about people who’ve you know, been incinerated in a nuclear holocaust?

Or what about people whose bodies have been eaten by wild animals and so forth? God, that’s not a problem for God. He knows how to put us back together. He is the omnipotent sovereign God. And Jesus says, the Father raises the dead, no problems. But notice what he says in verse 21. He says, for as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. Jesus is claiming for himself as the Son of God the same power to raise the dead that God the Father has. And again, this is a clear claim to full deity and equality with the Father. And then verse 22, he goes on to say, for the father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the son. What an honor the father has bestowed upon his son in committing all judgment to the son of God.

All judgment has been committed to the son. And this must have really gotten the attention of the Jewish religious authorities, because according to the Old Testament, only God Only God has the right and authority to judge humanity. And yet Jesus is saying, the Father has given that authority to the Son, to me, as the Son of God. This again, all throughout this passage, Jesus is claiming to be God Almighty, the Word made flesh, God incarnate. And not only that, look at what he says in verse 23. Why has the Father given all judgment to the Son? Verse 23, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. The Son of God is to be honored with the same level of worship and adoration and praise and obedience and service as God the Father. which again underscores Christ’s full deity and equality with the Father.

It goes on to say, whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. And this is why, brothers and sisters, those religions that claim to believe in one true God, that worship a monotheistic creator God, I’m thinking of religions like Judaism and Islam, those religions reject the deity of Christ. They reject Christ as the divine Son of God. And they claim to be honoring the one God by doing so, but Jesus says, no, it’s the Father’s will that the Son be honored just as the Father is honored. And he says, whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Those who reject the deity of Christ dishonor the Father. the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So the Son is to receive honor, which implies worship, by the way, just as the Father is to receive worship.

And so, friends, in this passage, we see the Son’s perfect unity of will and purpose with God the Father. This is the main thrust of what Jesus is getting at here in this passage. It’s also, it clearly brought out later on in this passage, for example, in verses 26 and 27, where Jesus says, for as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. As John wrote earlier in this gospel of Christ, in him was life and the life was the light of men. Life is found in Jesus Christ. He is the source, the divine source of all light and life. For he is one with the Father and the Spirit in the unity of the Godhead. And then it goes on to say in verse 27, and he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the son of man.

Jesus is the messianic son of man. He is the anointed one, the God-man, the word made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us. Beloved, if Jesus, the Son of God, is equal with God the Father, and united with Him in purpose and will, then He deserves to receive honor equal to that which is given to the Father. Dear ones, let us strive by the grace of God to honor the Son of God by our worship, by our obedience, by our service, and by our lives. For as we honor the Son, the Father, as well as the Spirit, are also honored. What does this have to do with the resurrection of the body, Pastor? Well, it’s all important foundation truth when it comes to this matter of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. And that brings me to my next point as we focus especially on verses 25 to 29 of our passage.

Notice next, we learn here of Christ as the source and bestower of resurrection life. Christ, my friends, Jesus Christ is the source and bestower of resurrection. Now, as a prelude to this point, look again at verse 24. And this is one of my favorite passages. It’s such a comforting passage in terms of presenting us with gospel promises, gospel truth. Jesus says, truly, truly, in other words, this is what I’m telling you is absolutely true Everything Jesus says, of course, is absolutely true, but Jesus emphasizes the truth and importance of what he’s about to say. Truly, truly, amen, amen. I say to you, whoever hears my word, meaning the gospel, the good news, grace and salvation, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has what? eternal life. Not may have eternal life, might have eternal life, but has, here and now, has eternal life.

You don’t have to wait for the future to enjoy the gift of eternal life. Eternal life is a gift that God bestows upon those who come to repent and believe in Christ today. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. And he doesn’t stop there. He goes on to say, he does not come into judgment. Now the Bible does teach that believers and unbelievers alike will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. This is not denying that. Jesus is not denying that. But he’s talking here about a judgment unto condemnation. He who believes in Christ does not come into judgment in the sense of condemnation, but has already passed from a state of spiritual death to eternal life. And so with this in mind, And of course, Jesus can only say this because he has the power and the authority to give life to whom he wills, as we learned back in verse 21 and as is also emphasized in verse 26, where Jesus says that the father has granted the son to have life in himself.

But that brings us to verse 25. Notice, friends, that the voice of the Son now raises the spiritually dead to new spiritual life. Verse 25, Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here. In other words, this is not something you have to wait for. An hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. Now in the context of this passage, it seems that Jesus is here speaking of the spiritually dead. Jesus says, The dead, the spiritually dead, will in this hour hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. An hour is coming and is now here. Now this is something, again, that Christ now does, and he does this through the word that is proclaimed, that word that he spoke about in verse 24, where Jesus says, whoever hears my word, that’s the gospel, the good news.

Whoever hears my word, not just hears it externally, hears it as a matter of intellectual information alone, but who hears and embraces it by faith. Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. And this is what Jesus is speaking of here. This is something that Christ now does. And Christ continues to do this even today in the 21st century. As the gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed and the spirit blesses that proclamation, the spirit through the word brings spiritually dead sinners to newness of life in union with Jesus Christ. Of course, you know, the word alone is not sufficient. The spirit has to use the word, but the Bible does say faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. This is why we emphasize the importance of preaching, the centrality of the word, because it is through the word that Jesus, by his spirit, operates in bringing sinners to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But Jesus then goes on to say that the voice of the Son will one day raise the physically dead on the final day of judgment. It says in verses 28 and 29, do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming. And notice, by the way, in verse 28, Jesus says an hour is coming, but he does not add the words and is now here, because this is something that’s still in the future. Here he is speaking not of a spiritual resurrection or the new birth that comes through the word being proclaimed, as the spirit uses that word, but here he is speaking of the physical resurrection of the body at the end of the age. He says, do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out I believe in the resurrection of the body because of passages like this.

It makes it so clear. There will be a time when Jesus speaks his creative, re-creative voice and physically and bodily raises the dead at the end of this age and they will come out of their graves and then it goes on to say those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. Now again, he’s not He’s not proclaiming here that our final salvation is by works or anything of that sort. Those who have done good in the context of this passage are those who’ve heard the word with faith and believed in the Son of God. Those who have done evil are those who have rejected and not honored the Son by disbelieving and rejecting his gospel. Do not marvel at this, an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

Dear ones, if the Son of God is the divine source and bestower of both spiritual and physical resurrection life, then hearing His voice through the word, the message of the gospel, and believing that word is the only way that we can be assured that we have received the gift of eternal life in this present time. And the only assurance that we will be raised to the resurrection of life on the last day is if we now in this period of redemptive history, receive and trust in Christ, in Christ alone, for our salvation. Dear listener, do you have the assurance that you have heard the voice of God’s Son summon you to himself in the gospel? Whoever you are, Each and every one of you, brothers and sisters, and those who may yet be apart from the kingdom, God the Son in the gospel speaks to you.

Jesus summons you to repent of your sin, to turn to Christ in repentance and faith. Jesus says, and I know I quote this often, but it’s so important. Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Are you wearied and burdened by sin, your sin? Jesus offers you rest, spiritual, eternal rest. Come to Him in faith. Call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, trusting Him for salvation. And the Bible says, you will be saved. Turn to Christ today. Heed His summons. Heed His call to believe and repent. For Jesus died on the cross to save sinners, just like you and me. And He rose from the dead so that whoever believes in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. And this brings me to my final point briefly.

We learn in this passage that God’s son is the divine judge. That’s the final point on your sermon outline. God’s son is the divine judge. When will the resurrection of the body occur? According to the scriptures, it will occur when Jesus returns in glory at the end of this age. And he will raise the dead and judge humanity. We learn back in verse 22 that the Father has entrusted this judgment to the Son. Again, as verse 22 says, for the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. And then also in verses 26 through 30, this is clearly declared. And in verse 30, Jesus assures us that his judgment is just because his judgment is in perfect harmony with the Father’s judgment. As Jesus says in verse 30, I can do nothing on my own.

As I hear, I judge. And my judgment is just because I seek not my own will, but the will of him who sent me. Who’s the one who sent the Son? The Father, God, the Father. Now again, notice in verses 28 and 29 that the resurrection of life and the resurrection of judgment will happen at one and the same time. It says in verse 28, do not marvel at this for an hour is coming. He’s not saying, well, there’s gonna be two resurrections of the dead. There’s gonna be a resurrection of the righteous and a resurrection of the wicked, and they’ll take place at different times. No, that’s not what he says. He says an hour is coming, an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs, not just some, but all who are in the tombs will hear his voice.

This is important to notice because there are some schemes of end time understanding or eschatology which teach that there will be separate resurrection events in the future, but that’s not what Jesus teaches. He will return once, not twice or more than twice. He will return once in glory, and at that return, he will raise all who are in the tombs, all of the dead, But then it goes on to say in verse 29, that these who are raised from the dead will come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. He’s not saying there’s two separate resurrections, but that the resurrection will have two different effects, if you will. The resurrection of life in the case of those who by grace have believed in Christ and obviously lived out the implications of that in their lives.

The resurrection of judgment to those in the case of those who have continued impenitent in their sin and rebellion. Dear ones, again, to wrap up our time in the word for this morning or now this afternoon, all judgment has been given by the Father to the Son. Jesus Christ, as the Messianic Anointed One, is the Supreme King and Judge who will have the honor of presiding over the proceedings of that great and final Judgment Day, that final Judgment Day that will occur when Jesus returns in glory and raises us bodily from the dead. As those who by sovereign grace have been united to Christ the Son as Lord and Savior, we have no cause to fear Christ as our judge, for we have already passed from death unto life. The good news is that Christ our judge has taken the judgment that we deserve upon himself, and he fully satisfied for our sins by his atoning death on the cross.

That’s why on the cross Jesus said what? Okay, well, one stage of the salvation process? No, he said, it is finished. The penalty has been paid. Your sins have been atoned for, believer. So while we should reverence and honor our heavenly judge, the Lord Jesus Christ, at the same time, we need not shrink from him in terror, for our holy judge is our perfect savior. We who have believed in him already have eternal life, as verse 24 tells us. Indeed, Jesus promises us that we will not come into judgment, for we have already passed from death unto life eternal. Hallelujah. Not only that, but we who know and trust him can look forward to the resurrection of the body, for ours will be a resurrection of life, not a resurrection of judgment. It’s all by the grace of God.

So be comforted by these truths, dear ones, and let’s proclaim this good news to others. Amen, let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you. that Christ is indeed the resurrection and the life. We thank you, Lord Jesus, that you have granted unto us, unworthy sinners though we be, you have graciously bestowed newness of life upon us. You’ve called us out of the deadness and darkness of our sin into the wonderful, marvelous light of new life. resurrection life. Oh Lord, we ask that as we make our journey through this life and as we encounter not only distresses in our souls but also pains in our bodies as our bodies get old and wear out, we pray, Heavenly Father, that the truth and hope, the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the body would give us strength and would keep our eyes fixed upon you, Lord.

We pray these things in your name, and all of God’s people said, amen. Let’s respond to what we’ve heard proclaimed by rising and we’ll sing as our closing hymn number 470, when this passing world is done, 470.

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April 21, 2024
Foundations of Faith: The Forgiveness of Sins

About this sermon

1. Good News! In Christ, God forgives our sins!
2. The complete and comprehensive nature of God’s forgiveness.
3. O Church, let us take to heart how God’s forgiveness of our sins should lead us to be forgiving toward others.

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Sermon transcript

please remain standing for the scripture reading tonight. This evening we take a little break from our study of 1 Peter to actually continue the morning series just for this evening, the Foundations of Faith series on the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins. Since we are celebrating the Lord’s Supper on this Lord’s Day evening, I thought it would be appropriate for us to consider this important affirmation of our holy Christian faith. I believe in the forgiveness of sins. And this evening we’re going to consider a brief passage, Ephesians 1, verse 7. I’m going to read verses 3-14 to fill out the context. Paul’s opening doxology of praise to our sovereign triune God for his amazing grace to us in Christ. So let us hear God’s holy word, Ephesians 1, verses 3-14, but our focus this evening will especially be on verse 7.

Hear the word of God. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.

In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him, who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance, until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory. And again, our focus will be verse 7, in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace. Let’s pray together. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, We pray that by your spirit, once again, you would give us wisdom and give us insight.

Illuminate us, Lord, as we seek to understand your word, not just to understand it in its natural sense, but to understand it with spiritual insights that we might know, oh Lord. the riches and glory that are ours in Christ our Savior. We pray that you would bless your word as it goes forth this evening. May it be to the salvation and sanctification of your people and to the glory of your name. We pray these things, Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. Again, the title of my sermon tonight, Foundations of Faith, the Forgiveness of Sins. And this evening, there are only four key words that you can be listening for, and I encourage the children to keep track of these words. The first word is the most important word with respect to tonight’s sermon, and that is the word forgiveness, as well as redemption, grace, and sin.

Well, dear friends, One foundational article of the faith that we Christians confess is in the words of the Apostles’ Creed, which we confessed earlier in the service, the words, I believe in the forgiveness of sins. This affirmation of our faith is found in the third credo or I believe section of the creed. We who profess to trust in Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten son, as our very own Lord and Savior, we joyfully confess to believe that God mercifully forgives our sins because of Jesus and because of what he did for us on the cross by dying on the cross for our sins. All of us who claim the name Christian would no doubt confess, I believe in the forgiveness of sins. In fact, if you think about it, in the very act of partaking of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which we’re going to do in just a little while during this worship service, in the very act of taking that bread and drinking from the cup, we proclaim in that very act our belief in the forgiveness of sins, for the Holy Supper declares to us that Christ’s body was broken for us on the cross of Calvary, that His precious lifeblood was poured out for the forgiveness of our sins.

In other words, He died for our sins as our substitutionary atonement for sin. But sadly, friends, we often live our lives as if we don’t really believe in God’s gracious gift of the forgiveness of our sins. We often live our lives as if we are still on a treadmill of works righteousness and religious performance. We still live our lives as if somehow God loves us less when we mess up. What are some of the evidences that we are not always consistently walking the talk when it comes to our professed belief in the forgiveness of sins? There’s many examples that could be given, but just to name a few, and maybe more would come to your mind. Have you ever had the situation where perhaps you’ve confessed a sin to the Lord, the Holy Spirit has convicted you through the Word of a particular sin, and you’ve confessed that sin, and you’ve claimed the promise of 1 John 1, verse 8, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to purify us from all unrighteousness.

As time goes on, you continue to be plagued by feelings of guilt over that sin that you’ve already, by the grace of God, repented of and forsaken and confessed before the Lord. At that moment, you are not consistently, at least, believing in the forgiveness of sins. We betray a lack of firmness and consistency in affirming the forgiveness of sins when we fall into a legalistic approach to God, into the idea that, well, hey, God is going to be more pleased with me if I read my Bible more or pray more. And certainly those are practices that we would wholeheartedly encourage. But it is sort of a revivalistic pietism that says, you know, that God’s pleasure in you, dear brother, sister in Christ, is dependent upon your religious performance. Or to put this on the horizontal level, we often betray an inconsistency in our profession of faith and the forgiveness of sins when we betray an unwillingness to be generous and forgiving towards others.

God has forgiven us wretched sinners that we are. We sang that beautiful hymn, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. God has saved me, a wretch, and yet am I unwilling to extend forgiveness to fellow wretches who confess their sins to me, their sins against me, and so forth. Or we are not consistent in holding to this affirmation of our faith when we tend to believe the worst about others and their motives. Or when we harbor bitterness, strife, and resentment in our hearts toward fellow believers or when we spread gossip or a bad report about others. And the list could go on and on and on. You see, friends, this is not just a mental act when we say, I believe in the forgiveness of sins. It’s not just, okay, I check that off my list of theological notions that I affirm with Orthodox correctness.

No, this is a doctrine that when it’s carried out to its logical conclusion, and impacts our lives has the potential to transform the way that we treat others. God has been so good to us, and out of gratitude for his amazing grace to us in forgiving our sins through Christ, he calls us to be forgiving toward others. Well friends, all of this leads us to our passage for this Lord’s Day evening. And I would just again remind us of the context of this passage. I know I preached from Ephesians this morning as well, but we’re gonna, in chapter two, but this evening we find ourselves in chapter one. And as I mentioned before I read this passage, this is Paul’s opening doxology Paul opens up this letter to the Ephesians with an explosion of praise to the sovereign triune God of the universe.

He praises God for all of the spiritual blessings that we believers have received in Christ. Blessings that God has planned for us in eternity past. Blessings that he has secured for us through the redeeming work of Christ. Blessings that he has sealed to us through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. The forgiveness of our trespasses is just one of the many blessings that Paul mentions here in this opening doxology. But friends, for those of us who know ourselves to be hell-deserving sinners, unworthy of the least of his mercies, for those of us who understand our true spiritual condition apart from grace, Oh friends, one of the most precious blessings that we have in Christ is the blessing of the forgiveness of sins. That leads me to my first point here as we consider verse 7 of this passage, again recorded in the midst of this opening outburst of praise from the Apostle Paul’s pen.

And we read in this passage good news. Brothers and sisters, there is good news. The good news is that in Christ, God forgives our sins. In Christ, God forgives our sins, or as Paul puts it here, our trespasses. And we’ll talk more about that particular term in a moment, but it says again in verse 7, in Him, again, Paul highlights our union with Christ, our spiritual and saving union with Christ, excuse me, in Him, in Christ, we have, not we might have, we may have, we could have, we would have, no, we have what? redemption, how? Through His blood, His substitutionary atonement, and then specifically the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace. Now, it’s important to define our terms. What do we mean when we talk about forgiveness? What does Paul mean when he uses the term forgiveness?

Well, in the Greek, the term forgiveness, according to Dr. A. Skevington Wood, this term means loosing someone from what binds him. Losing someone from what binds him. Before Christ saves us, before we are brought into saving union with Christ, we are bound, the guilt of our sin is bound to us. But in forgiving us, he loses that which binds us. In this passage, Paul had in mind, of course, particular sins or trespasses. The Greek word is paraptoma, and these trespasses are trespasses in the sense of deviations from the right path. That’s what that term indicates, deviating from the right path. So in particular, he focuses on specific sins, specific deviations from the right path, the path that God has outlined for us in his holy law. But again, it’s always important to remember, and no doubt Paul would affirm this as well, even though he’s focusing on these specific sins.

These sins or deviations are the fruits of a sinful heart, of a sin nature. We always need to remember that sins are the result of sin. In other words, I know I’ve said this perhaps many times before, but it’s so important for us to get this right, brothers and sisters. We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. We have inherited a sin nature from Adam, and apart from the intervention of sovereign grace, we freely choose to act and live in accordance with that sin nature. We are willing slaves to our sin nature until sovereign grace intervenes in our lives. So when God forgives us sinners through Jesus Christ, he forgives us not only for our sinful thoughts, words, and actions, he not only forgives us for our trespasses, are deviations from the right path, but he also forgives us for the sinful condition of our hearts, which give rise to those sinful thoughts, words, and deeds.

It’s not enough just to repent of sinful actions. More deeply, we need to repent. By the grace of God, we need to repent of that sin nature, which gives us the desire to commit those sinful actions, to engage those sinful thoughts, words, and actions. In other words, what Paul would call the flesh, the sin nature. It is because we in the church today, along with our culture, we tend to have such a superficial externalistic idea or ideas about sin, even pharisaical ideas of sin. It’s because of that that we don’t really appreciate as we ought to the utter wonder of God’s forgiving mercy. The common attitude out there in our culture today is that, hey, nobody’s perfect. Yeah, of course I’m a sinner if you mean that I’m not perfect. Nobody’s perfect. But hey, it’s God’s job to forgive, right?

So we have this kind of superficial idea out there that, well, I make mistakes, quote unquote. But in the Bible, Sin is not just, sins are not just making mistakes. Sin is committing, and to use, to borrow a phrase from R.C. Sproul, committing cosmic treason against the Lord, shaking our fists at the creator who made us in his image and whom we have rejected. Sin goes to the very core of our being and repentance therefore ought to as well. So God forgives us our trespasses, not only our trespasses, but the sin nature that leads us to trespass in those ways. That is implied at least in this text. And how does he do this? Well, God forgives us on the basis of Christ’s redeeming work on the cross. He says in verse seven, we have redemption.

How? How can we wretches have redemption? We have redemption through his blood. the forgiveness of our trespasses. Under the old covenant, the blood of the animals that were sacrificed, the blood represented the life. To say that Jesus redeems us by his blood means that he poured out his very lifeblood to spare our lives, to redeem us from the wages of sin and death and hell. We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. Now, this does not mean that forgiveness, that the forgiveness of sins exhausts the meaning of our redemption in Christ, nor does it mean that our justification before God consists merely in the pardon or remission of sins. It includes as well the imputation of Christ’s perfect everlasting righteousness, which alone serves as our title to heaven, to glory. When you stand before the judgment seat of Christ, the only thing that will matter is do you have Christ’s righteousness credited to you.

That’s the only thing that matters now in our justification. That’s the only thing that will matter on Judgment Day. Our works are brought up on Judgment Day not to determine whether or not we get in, Our works are brought up as evidences of the true and living faith that God, by His sovereign grace, has worked within us. So we are redeemed by His blood. And again, redemption through the blood of Christ, the forgiveness of sins doesn’t exhaust the gift. that Christ has purchased for us in his redeeming act. But nevertheless, the forgiveness of sins is one of the greatest blessings of the salvation that Christ has won for his people. Dear ones, every spiritual blessing we have received flows to us through the cross of Christ. Christ’s substitutionary atonement on the cross is the ground and basis for our regeneration, our conversion, our justification, our adoption, our sanctification, and ultimately our glorification.

And that is why we affirm as Reformed Christians, sola gratia. It is by grace and grace alone that we are saved from first to last. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us never take our eyes off of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us never take our eyes off of his cross work for us sinners. Let us never get beyond being awed by the saving grace of God displayed in the cross of Christ. I’m thinking of that old hymn, I love to tell the story, the old, old story of Jesus and his love. Does the old, old story get boring to you? Does it get, oh yeah, I’ve heard this so many times before. I know, I know, Jesus died for my sins. That should never be our attitude. Having tasted the goodness of the Lord, the grace of God in Christ, his forgiving mercy, we should continue to be awed by his amazing grace.

Let us be warned, beloved, about getting bored with the gospel message of Jesus and his cross and resurrection, or thinking that, you know, we need to spice things up in the church by kind of getting on some hobby horses, and yeah, we’ll still preach Jesus and the cross, but we’ll put front and center some other things. We always need to keep Jesus and His finished work front and center. Not only do we have redemption through the blood of Christ, though, this passage tells us that our redemption and the forgiveness of sins that it secures for us is according to the riches of God’s grace. As it says in verse seven, in Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace. I’ve shared this illustration before, but I think it’s a powerful one.

And I read this in one of my books. It is an account of a man who was converted to Christ on the night of his execution. It says, one night, a condemned conspirator on the life of the premier of Ceylon sat alone in his cell waiting for dawn and his own execution. Suddenly, he roused himself from apparently somber despair to ask that a certain Christian missionary he named be summoned to his cell as quickly as possible. When the astonished missionary arrived, knowing that the condemned man had been a Buddhist monk all his adult life, He was even more surprised to hear the man ask that he might be baptized immediately in the Christian faith. Assured that the man knew and understood the basic implications of his request, the missionary finally asked why he wanted to be baptized at that moment.

The man replied with patent conviction that since he must die, he, quote, wished to die in a faith by which he could come freely to God, unrestrained by personal unworthiness, and confident that he could entreat forgiveness simply out of love and mercy. Beloved, it is God’s amazing grace that allows us to come freely to God, unrestrained by personal unworthiness, and confident that God forgives us simply out of love and mercy, and based upon the redeeming work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Dear listener, do you believe that you may come to God freely, unrestrained by your personal unworthiness, or do you think that you have to clean yourself, clean your life up first? I used to think that when I was a teenager before my conversion. I knew I was a sinner. I knew I was doing things I wasn’t supposed to do and not living right with God.

But I thought to myself, you know, I’m going to try real hard. I’m going to make myself better and show God I’m serious. And the more I tried to make myself better, of course, the more I failed. And that’s the point. The point, by the grace of God, I finally understood. It’s not because of what I’ve done. I’ll never be good enough in myself. But what I lack, Christ provides by his amazing grace and mercy. Do you believe, dear listener, that you may come to God freely, unrestrained by your personal unworthiness? Jesus welcomes sinners, repentant sinners. Come to him tonight. Rest in him. and you will be forgiven. And that brings me to my next point, and this is an important point. The forgiveness of our sins, as revealed in the scriptures, is complete and comprehensive.

This is the second point on your sermon outline. Consider next the complete and comprehensive nature of God’s forgiveness. This complete and comprehensive forgiveness of God is expressed through many different images in the scriptures. And let me just read a few passages that highlight it. Let’s turn to Psalm 103 and look at verse 12. Psalm 103, verse 12. Psalm 103, verse 12, a wonderful psalm of forgiveness. It says this, as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. Actually, I meant to start reading in verse 11. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. And notice verse 12. As far as the East is from the West, so far does He remove our transgressions from us.

Children, how far is the East from the West? Five miles? 10 miles? 200 miles? 2,000 miles? 20 million miles? As far as the East is from the West, God’s saying, He’s totally removed your sin from you as far as the East is from the West. In other words, it’s dealt with. It’s no longer brought up again to be used against you if God forgives you in Christ. Or think of Isaiah 38, verse 17, Isaiah chapter 38. And as you’re turning there, I will mention, and I’m looking forward to this and excited about this, after the Foundations of Faith series is completed for the morning services, I’m hoping to begin soon a series in the book of Isaiah, Gleanings from the Prophet Isaiah. There’s so much wonderful stuff in the book of Isaiah. But look at Isaiah chapter 38. verse 17.

We read these words, What an image! God, our Heavenly Father, casts our sins behind His back. In other words, they’re not in front of His face anymore. He’s dealt with them. He’s put it behind Him. It’s no longer an issue anymore. Or consider Jeremiah 31, verse 34. Jeremiah 31, verse 34. We read these words. And no longer, in the promise of a new covenant, and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. That doesn’t mean that God suffers from cosmic amnesia. That it means that God, He knows about our past sins, but He chooses not to bring them to remembrance and use them against us.

And then finally, Micah 7, verse 19. Micah 7, verse 19. We read these words. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. Here we have some powerful images, God trampling or treading our iniquities underfoot and casting our sins into the depths of the sea to be forgotten, in other words. In the words of one commentator, When He forgives, when God forgives, men’s sins are dealt with thoroughly. God sees them no more. O believer, rejoice in the fact that God, your gracious heavenly Father, has totally, completely, thoroughly forgiven you your sins. You have His promise offered to you in the Word and offered to you as well in His visible pledge given to you in the Holy Supper. Trust in his promise and in his pledge, for it is sealed to you in the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ.

And as you receive the bread and the fruit of the vine in the cup tonight, receive it as Jesus saying to you, my body was broken for you. Not just for us, praise God, he did die for us, but for you, believer. My blood was shed for you. It is His promise. It is His pledge. It is sealed unto you by the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ. And may this precious truth motivate you to greater obedience and holiness out of gratitude for your heavenly Father’s love for you in Christ. Well, what should we do with all of this? Well, oh church, this leads me to my final point. Oh church, let us take to heart how God’s forgiveness of our sins should lead us to be forgiving toward others. C.S. Lewis is reported to have said, and I quote, everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive.

Amen. But how often scripture calls us to forgive. We see this, and I read from this passage later on in Ephesians, in Ephesians 4, 1-6, earlier in the morning service. But if you turn to Ephesians 4, look at the end of this chapter, verses 30-32. In chapter 4, Paul is exhorting the believers in Ephesus to Be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And one of the ways that we do that is by forgiving each other. It says this in verses 30 to 32, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. By the way, he’s addressing the church corporate here. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, how? As God in Christ forgave you. That’s a tall order, only by the grace of God can we do this. As we pray in the Lord’s Prayer each and every week, forgive us our debts as we what? As we forgive our debtors. Dear ones, we affirm together as a foundational article of our faith the confession, I believe in the forgiveness of sins. Through faith in Christ, we are forgiven. As God’s forgiven people, by the grace of God, let us seek to be a forgiving people out of gratitude for God’s amazing grace to us in Christ, amen. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you. for the full, complete, comprehensive forgiveness that you have granted to us and to all penitent believers who rest in Christ and Christ alone for their salvation.

We would pray, Heavenly Father, that we would treasure this gift of forgiveness and we pray that you would grant us the grace to manifest that forgiveness toward others We pray that by your grace you would bear the fruit of your spirit in and through us, that we might manifest that fruit to others in forgiving their sins, even as you have forgiven us our sins. In Jesus’ name we pray and all of God’s people said, amen. Dear friends, let’s respond to what we’ve heard proclaimed by rising and we’ll sing hymn number 454, 4-5-4, I Lay My Sins on Jesus, 454.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

April 14, 2024
Foundations of Faith: The Communion of Saints

About this sermon

1. We are citizens of God’s kingdom (v. 19).
2. We are God’s household, and are growing into a holy temple in the Lord (vv. 19b-21).
3. We are a living temple of God, who dwells among us by the Spirit (v. 22).

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Sermon transcript

standing for the reading of God’s Word as we continue our Foundations of Faith sermon series which is based on the, is being guided by the Apostles’ Creed. We consider this morning the communion of saints and for my sermon text today I would have us turn to Ephesians chapter 2. I’ll read verses 11 through 22. You’ll find that on page 1160 in your Pew Bible. letter of the Apostle Paul to the church in Ephesus, Ephesians 2, beginning at verse 11. Dear friends, here, with reverence and awe, the Word of our God. Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who are far off, and peace to those who were near. For through him, we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In Him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Dear ones, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of His Word. Oh Lord and Father in heaven, how amazing it is to consider that you, the great, the awesome, the infinite creator of the universe, would stoop to speak to us. We thank you that you have given us a sure and certain word in the Holy Scriptures, which are indeed a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path. We thank you, O Lord, for your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. We would pray, Heavenly Father, that we would sit as it were at the feet of Jesus as we learn by your spirit through the word this day.

We pray that you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word and we ask that you would set a guard over my lips that I, your unworthy servant, might speak forth your word with clarity and power for the salvation of the lost, the edification of your people, and the glory of Jesus our Lord. In his name we pray and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this morning is Foundations of Faith, the Communion of Saints, and there’s quite a number of key words that you can be listening for if that helps you to follow along in the sermon. If you’ve got your sermon outline, the words are holy, saints, communion, kingdom, household, temple, and spirit. Well, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this morning we continue our consideration of the foundational biblical truths of our holy Christian faith as those truths are summarized and affirmed in that classic Bible-based creed of the church known as the Apostles’ Creed.

The Apostles’ Creed is not, of course, itself inspired, but it is a summary of inspired biblical truth. We find ourselves today in the third and final credo or I believe section of the creed and today we reflect upon an important but much neglected and sometimes misunderstood affirmation of our faith, namely the affirmation I believe in the communion of saints. But that affirmation, if you think about it, think about those words, think about what you are affirming when you say, I believe in the communion of saints. Right away, some questions should arise in your minds. What is the communion of saints? Indeed, what is a saint? And are you and I saints? Are we part of the communion of saints? So friends, right away, right out of the gate, this affirmation of our faith has the potential of being misunderstood.

After all, what do many folks think of today when they think of a saint? I would suggest to you that due to the ongoing cultural influences of certain Roman Catholic ideas about sainthood, that many today imagine a saint to be a super spiritual Christian. If you’re a saint, then you are a super spiritual Christian. Or perhaps many think of saints as referring exclusively to faithful believers who have died and who now reside in heaven. You might overhear a conversation, you might hear a coworker or a friend talking about maybe one of their neighbors and they might say something like, oh yeah, my neighbor Joe, he’s a nice guy, he’s a decent guy, but he’s no saint. In other words, he’s a really likable fellow, but he’s got some character flaws. You might hear people say, hey look, I’m no saint, but I try my best, right?

This kind of popular usage of the term saint reflects a misunderstanding of what the Bible teaches about the saints and about sainthood. You see, friends, in the Bible, the term saint is not referring to a class of super holy or ultra pious or exceptionally godly Christians. You know, believers who live their lives on a higher plane of spirituality than the rest of us schleps, the rest of us ordinary Christians. Nor does the term only refer to Christians who have died and gone home to be with the Lord in heaven. No friends, in the Bible, a saint is a holy one, a set apart one. one who is set apart by and indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. And brothers and sisters in Christ, that includes each and every one of us. According to God’s Word, this would include all genuine believers, all who through sovereign grace have come to trust in Christ and Christ alone for their salvation.

For the Bible teaches that all true believers have been born again and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. And the fact that saints include all true believers, well, this is reflected even here in Ephesians. If you go back to the beginning of Ephesians, in Ephesians 1, verses 1 and 2, notice how Paul addresses these Christians here in Ephesus. He says this. as was customary in the letter writing customs of the time, he starts off by identifying himself. Nowadays, when you write a letter, you sign your name at the end, but back then, they signed their name at the beginning, and so he identifies himself, the author. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, so he’s identified himself as the author of this letter, and who’s he writing to? To the what?

To the saints who are in Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus. To the saints He is writing, and then he says, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, is Paul only writing to a certain segment of the church at Ephesus, to certain mature or super spiritual believers? Well, no. Is Paul writing to dead people, Christians who have died and gone home to be with the Lord? No. He’s writing to the Christians, to all of the Christians in Ephesus, and he calls them all saints. So friend, whether you are a brand new convert to Christ or have been a follower of Jesus for decades, whether your faith in Christ is weak or strong or perhaps somewhere in between, whether you’re young or immature or unstable or perhaps even somewhat backslidden in your faith, or whether you are the most seasoned, mature, godly, stable, consistent follower of Christ on the face of planet Earth, If Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, then you are a saint by the biblical definition of that term.

And because, believer, because you are a saint, you are part of the communion of saints. That means that you belong. You are connected. Indeed, brothers and sisters, we are connected. We are connected first and foremost to our faithful Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are connected to Christ, and in union with Him, we are connected to one another in the communion of saints. By the grace of God, we are citizens of God’s kingdom, Jesus is our messianic king, we’re part of his kingdom, God’s reign of grace and salvation that has drawn near to us in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And not only are we citizens of God’s kingdom, we are members of God’s household. So God is not only our king, he is our father. and we are part of his household.

Through Christ, we belong to God in a unique way, in the way that the unbelieving world does not belong to God. We are connected in the ultimate spiritual saving sense. We belong to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. And friends, in belonging to him, We belong to his universal church. We belong to the body of Christ. We belong to the communion of saints. For the Holy Spirit dwells in us and among us and has set us apart, consecrated us to belong to our Father in heaven, both now and forever. Well, friends, our passage for this Lord’s Day morning underscores and explains all of this by stressing the fact that we who are believers in Christ, we are, as it says in verse 19, we are what? We are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

It is to this powerful and instructive passage of God’s Word that I would now like to direct our attention. And as always, it’s important to understand the context of our passage if we’re going to get its full impact. In writing this letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul is writing to a congregation of mostly Gentile believers. Before they had been converted to Christ, the Ephesian Christians, to whom Paul wrote, had not belonged to God’s covenant people. They had been pagan, idol-worshipping Gentiles. They had lived outside of the commonwealth of Israel. They had been strangers from God’s covenant of promise, living in this world without hope and without God, and that is a bad place to be. as Paul writes in verses 11 through 13 as Paul is reminding them of their situation as Gentiles before the coming of Christ and before the coming of the gospel into their lives.

He says, therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, the circumcision referring to the Jews, the uncircumcision referring to the Gentiles or how the Jews referred to the Gentiles. He says in verse 12, remember that you were at that time, either meaning at that point in redemptive history before the coming of Christ or at that point in time before your conversion to Christ, at that time, You were what? Separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. By the way, I want to briefly draw your attention to what Paul says here at the end of verse 12. What is the condition of those, the spiritual condition of those who have not heard the gospel of Jesus Christ? those who do not have access to the word of God.

What is their spiritual condition? Can they find Christ through their own religion, through their own efforts at seeking the God that is revealed in natural revelation? No, they have no hope and they are without God in the world. That’s why the church must take the gospel. That’s one of the major impetuses, one of the major motivations that we have for taking the gospel to the lost because without the gospel, they have no hope. They have no hope of salvation. And then he goes on to say that something has changed. Verse 13, but now, now that Christ has come in redemptive history, now that the gospel has gone out to the Gentiles, now that they’ve heard the gospel, now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off, Far off from God, far off from the possibility or hope of salvation.

You were once far off, but have now been brought near. How? By the blood of Christ, by his substitutionary atonement. So in terms of their covenantal status, they, along with the rest of the unbelieving Gentile world, they were outsiders to God’s covenant community, outsiders to God’s household. They had lived their lives separated from Christ, separated from God’s covenant people, as verse 12 makes so clear. At that point in time, they did not belong to the communion of saints. But now, now that they had heard the gospel and by sovereign grace had come to trust in Christ, now they are again, as verse 19 says, no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Now they belonged, and for those of you, for some of you who maybe were not raised in the church or did not, or you came to Christ later in life, you can remember a time in your life when you were separated, when you were an outsider, but God had mercy upon you.

God in his sovereign grace caused you to hear the gospel, and the Spirit effectually called you to faith in Christ and repentance unto life. Now you are no longer an outsider. Now you are in Christ. Now you belong. Dear ones, what was true back then of these first century believers, it’s true of us today if we have trusted Christ as our Lord and Savior. So let us consider what we learn in this passage about our privileges and our identity as those who are now in Christ and members of the communion of saints. What do we learn? Let’s focus especially on verses 19 through 22. Right now, our focus is especially on verse 19. We are, first of all, citizens of God’s kingdom. This is the first point on your sermon outline, the first point of application.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are citizens of God’s kingdom. As Paul writes in verse 19, so you are no longer strangers and aliens. You’re no longer outsiders. but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Recently, in one of my sermons, I talked about the fact that the Bible says that we are actually dual citizens. We all have an earthly citizenship. Most of us gathered here today are citizens of the United States of America, and with that earthly citizenship comes certain privileges, rights, as outlined, for example, in the United States Constitution, but it also implies certain responsibilities. But not only are we citizens of an earthly realm, or an earthly kingdom, or an earthly nation state, We are also more significantly, as believers in Christ, we are citizens of God’s kingdom. we have a heavenly citizenship.

And there are privileges as well as responsibilities that come with being citizens of God’s kingdom. In this particular passage, Paul focuses on our privileges as citizens of the heavenly kingdom. And what are those privileges? Well, as already mentioned, we have the privilege of being no longer outsiders. We are no longer outsiders or mere temporary residents but we are full citizens who enjoy all of the privileges of God’s kingdom. What a contrast to the Old Testament situation. If you were a Gentile living in Old Testament times, You might come to hear about the God of Israel. You might even come to believe in the God of Israel. And the Old Testament law has provisions for temporary residents, for aliens and foreigners, sojourners, Gentiles who lived amongst the Israelites and so forth. But if you wanted to be a fully initiated member of God’s covenant people under the Old Covenant, you would actually not only have to personally convert and trust in God, but you would have to actually become an Israelite citizen.

Because under the old covenant, the church was a theocracy. Now under the new covenant, the church is not a national theocracy. Now the church is international. And Jesus says, take the gospel to all the nations. The kingdom of God is not bound by a particular nation state. It’s not nationalistic in its character. It’s international. So we’re no longer temporary residents. There were occasional Gentiles who came to faith in the true and living God in Old Testament times, and no doubt, if they shared Abraham’s faith, they would no doubt share in the salvation that Abraham enjoyed. But they were not, with respect to the visible church at that time, fully initiated members unless they became full, circumcised members of the nation of Israel. But now that has changed. We’re no longer outsiders or temporary residents, but full citizens who enjoy all of the privileges of God’s kingdom.

And Paul mentions some of these privileges. For example, one privilege is that we have access, free access and introduction in Christ to the very throne room presence of God. Look at verse 18. It says in verse 18, for through him, that’s Jesus, through Jesus, We both, we both meaning we Gentiles and Jews who believe in Jesus, through Jesus, we both, whether we be Gentile or Jew, through Jesus, what? We have access in one spirit to the Father. And by the way, did you notice how this passage is saturated with the doctrine of the Trinity? Our salvation is a Trinitarian salvation. The Father has chosen us in Christ, the Son has accomplished our redemption, and the Spirit applies to us the redeeming work of Christ. And so, our access to God is a Trinitarian access. And praise God, when we come to Christ, we are introduced and have access to the very throne room presence of God.

That’s what’s going on in worship, brothers and sisters. See, when you come to church, you don’t just come to hang out with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Although it’s wonderful to reconnect with one another and fellowship with one another, one of the things that I really appreciate about a grace church, even if I preach long, which I usually do, I confess, But still, even if the service goes a little long, a lot of you folks decide to hang around and just visit with one another after the service, and I praise God for that. Now, I know some of you need to run out the door and get home, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But praise God, we do get to hang out with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We do get to connect with one another.

But the most important and significant aspect of worship is that when we gather in the name of Jesus, we are actually entering by the Spirit and through faith. we are entering into the very throne room presence of God. And if the Lord were to take the scales off of our eyes, we would see this room filled with angels. God is here. Christ promises to be present in a special way where his people are gathered in his name. We have access. Of course, as individual believers, when you go to the Lord in your prayer closet, you are entering into the throne room presence of God as well. But when we come to church, we do that together. And if you realize that, if you realize spiritually what’s going on in worship. It’ll transform your view of worship and it’ll actually make you more eager for worship because you’re not just coming here to fulfill a social duty or to, you know, check off something on your to-do list.

You’re here, brother or sister, you are here to enter into the very throne room presence of God. the heavenly realm through faith in Christ and by His Spirit. That, I believe, is the implication of what we read here in verse 18. For through Him, we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. We have access in one Spirit to the Father. Another privilege that we have in Christ is peace and reconciliation, both with God and in principle, at least, with our fellow believers. And this is made clear in verses 14 through 17. Paul, one of the big issues in the early Christian church was, remember Jesus was a Jew, the earliest Christians were Jewish believers, the earliest apostolic church made up of Jews, the apostles were Jews. But when the Gentiles started to come into the church, The Jews were like, the Jewish Christians were like, well, what do we do with all these Gentiles who are coming to believe in Jesus?

Do they need to get circumcised? Do they need to keep the Mosaic law in order to be fully initiated or fully saved Christians? No, no. Paul and the rest of the apostles, at least eventually, stood up and said, no, we are all one in Christ. As he says in verse 14, For he himself, speaking of Christ, Christ himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. Under the old covenant, there was a dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. There were ritual laws and food laws and even laws about how you were to clothe yourself that set you apart from and separated you from your Gentile neighbors. But now in Christ, those ceremonial laws, those food laws, those ritual laws were fulfilled. And now that dividing wall has been broken down.

And by the way, having said this, You need to reject any kind of theology or approach to Bible interpretation that suggests that someday that dividing wall’s gonna be built back up and there’s gonna be a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem with sacrifices taking place again. That’s to set up again the dividing wall of hostility that God in Christ has torn down. In Christ, Jew and Gentile are on equal footing as the covenant people of God. And this was an amazing revelation in the first century, and it has so many implications for our lives today. And those dividing walls, that dividing wall of hostility, he explains what he means in verse 15. He says, Christ has done this by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, I believe he’s referring there to the ceremonial laws of the old covenant that separated Gentiles from Jews, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body, how?

Through the cross. thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off. The far off ones, those are the Gentiles who had been before the coming of Christ, they had been far off. He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. That’s to the Jews as well who came to believe in Jesus. For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father. Note again how Christ’s saving work tears down the dividing wall of hostility between believing Jews and believing Gentiles. Through his cross work, Christ brings together into one body people from all kinds of different backgrounds. Notice, by the way, that there is only one true people of God. There’s not, as our dispensational friends would say, there’s not an earthly people of God, namely the Jews, and a spiritual people, the church.

Israel and the church, two separate things. No, the church is the Israel of God, and this is not replacement theology. This is fulfillment theology. This is expansion theology, because now the gospel goes to the world. and all peoples through faith in Christ are welcomed in to the communion of saints. There is only one true Israel of God, the church of Jesus Christ. But as I mentioned before, these privileges also imply responsibilities. There are duties that attend our heavenly citizenship. And Paul does not focus on the duties here in this particular passage, but later on in this epistle, Paul does speak about some of our spiritual duties as heavenly citizens. One of those duties is that we should seek to maintain our spiritual unity. Look, for example, if you’d skip ahead to Ephesians chapter four, let me just read the first six verses of Ephesians chapter four.

Paul writes, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called. You’ve been called by the Messianic King, Jesus Christ, to be part of his kingdom. What a high privilege. Live your life as one in a way that is worthy of that calling. And how is that to be done? Verse two, with all humility and gentleness, with patience. bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Let us, brothers and sisters, as the communion of saints, seek to maintain that unity in Christ that God has blessed us with.

But not only are we citizens of God’s kingdom, as we move on and consider verses 19 through 21, we are God’s household and are growing into a holy temple in the Lord. We are God’s household and we are growing into a holy temple in the Lord. We are a temple that has been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone. Look at verse 20. It says in the end of verse 19, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of what? The foundation of the apostle Peter as the first Pope. Is that what it says? No. built on the foundation of plural, the apostles and prophets. Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. John Calvin, in picking up on this language of the foundation, Calvin writes, foundation in this passage unquestionably means doctrine.

For no mention is made of patriarchs or pious kings, but only of those who held the office of teachers and whom God had appointed to superintend the edification of his church. So he’s not talking about, again, about the Pope. Again, notice the church is built on the apostles and prophets, plural, not upon any one particular apostle or church leader like the Apostle Peter as the supposed first Pope. But notice the focus on Christ. Yes, God builds His Church, Christ builds His Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, meaning the apostolic and prophetic teaching, the doctrine of the apostles and prophets. But what is the cornerstone of the Church? Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone. Dr. William Hendrickson in his commentary explains the significance of this language. He says, the cornerstone of a building, in addition to being part of the foundation and therefore supporting the superstructure, finalizes its shape for being placed at the corner formed by the junction of two primary walls.

It determines the lay of the walls and cross walls throughout. all the other stones must adjust themselves to this cornerstone. So also, in addition to resting in Christ, the spiritual house is determined as to its character by Him. And John Calvin explains it further. He says that he, that Paul, means that Jews and Gentiles are two separate walls, but are formed into one spiritual building. Christ is placed in the middle of the corner for the purpose of uniting both, and this is the force of the metaphor. Now, what do we learn from all of this? We learn many things, but I think, again, to credit Dr. William Hendrickson, he makes some good applications here. First of all, Christ as the cornerstone is the principle of the church’s stability. Christ as the cornerstone, he is the principle of the church’s stability.

That is to say, the church is only stable as it builds its life and doctrine and worship on the solid rock foundation of Jesus Christ and his word, his gospel message. If a church wanders from the rock of Christ and begins emphasizing and focusing on other things, hobby horses or what have you, and loses Christ or waters down the gospel, the church that does that loses its stability and is headed in a bad way. Christ is the cornerstone and he as the cornerstone is the principle of the church’s stability. But Christ is also the cornerstone in the sense that he is the principle of the church’s direction. Christ, as the cornerstone, is the principle of the church’s direction, just as a cornerstone of a building determines the direction of its walls. Christ directs his church by his word and through the Holy Spirit, not by human tradition, nor by experience, nor new revelations, or signs and wonders, or things like that.

By his word and spirit. And Christ is revealed as the principle of the church’s growth as well. We see that in verse 21, where it says, in whom, in Christ, the cornerstone, the whole structure being joined together grows into a what? A holy temple in the Lord. Godly biblical church growth will only come about as the gospel is faithfully preached and as we live lives of faithful discipleship and grateful obedience. Dear listener, is Christ the source of stability, direction, and growth in your life? Is he the source of stability, direction, and growth at Grace Church? Finally, beloved, as we wrap up our time in the Word this morning, or right now this afternoon. We are a living temple of God who dwells among us by His Spirit. As Paul kind of brings this language to a climax here, and he says in verse 22, in Him, in Christ, you, whether you be Jew or Gentile, you are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

In Old Testament times, God’s special presence, his kingly, covenantal, saving presence dwelt in the temple. And it’s interesting that the old covenant saints were directed to pray toward the temple because that was the intersection of heaven and earth. That was the meeting place between heaven and earth. But now under the new covenant, how are we to pray? Are we to face any particular direction? We’re Orthodox Presbyterians, do we face Geneva when we pray? You can if you want to. We certainly don’t face Mecca, I hope not, or Rome. Where do we face? It’s not a matter of where you face. We don’t have to pray toward an earthly temple, because Christ is the living temple. So we pray in Christ’s name. And we are a living temple in Him. In Old Testament times, God’s special presence dwelt in the temple.

The Shekinah glory was there in the Holy of Holies. But Christ is now the living temple, the divine Son of God in whom the Holy Spirit dwells above measure. And together, we are a living temple in union with Him. As Paul writes in verse 22, in him, you are being built together into a dwelling place, that would be a temple for God, by the Spirit, or this could be translated as in or by the spirit. It could technically, the term spirit there could refer to either the Holy Spirit or the human spirit, but I think given the Trinitarianism of this passage and given the context here, Paul is probably referring here to God’s spirit rather than to the human spirit. Basically, what Paul is doing here in this passage, what he’s discussing in this passage is similar to what the Apostle Peter writes in 1 Peter 2, 4-10.

Let me just quickly read that as we wrap up our time in the Word today. 1 Peter 2. Verses 4 through 10, Peter writes, as you come to him, that’s to Jesus, as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.

They stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race. This is Old Testament language, by the way, that Peter’s using here. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. What is the end of this? What do we learn in all of this? Well, I think I will leave us and close our time by asking you to turn on the back of your Psalter hymnal to the Confession of Faith, Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 26, section one.

You’ll find that on page 935 in the back of your Psalter hymnal, 935. We have a whole chapter in our confession about the communion of saints. And section 1 says this. All saints that are united to Jesus Christ their head by his spirit and by faith have fellowship with him in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory. And being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other’s gifts and graces and are obliged to the performance of such duties, public and private, as do conduce to their mutual good, both in the inward and outward man. brothers and sisters in Christ. God’s spirit dwells in us both individually as believers and corporately as Christ’s body. And we are a fellowship of God’s spirit. In Christ and by his spirit, we are the communion of saints.

So let us live in love as the communion of saints. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you, Lord God. that you have redeemed us, and not only have you redeemed us as individuals, but you’ve brought us into the body of Christ. We thank you that in Christ we are citizens of your kingdom, members of your household, and part of the communion of saints. Grant us grace, Lord, as individuals and as a church to live our lives together as the communion of saints for your glory. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. As we respond to what we’ve heard from the word, let’s rise and we’ll sing as our closing hymn, number 406. We’ll sing the first four stanzas as well as stanzas six and nine. Stanzas one, two, three, four, six, and nine.

Jesus with thy church abide. Let’s rise and sing 406.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

April 14, 2024
Foundations of Faith: Covenant and Catholicity

About this sermon

The Apostles’ Creed confesses ‘the holy catholic church,’ and that confession reaches back to God’s call of Abram. God called a moon-worshiper out of Ur by sovereign grace and promised to make him a great nation. God does surprising things when he saves sinners, so believers should never give up on those far from him. God promised that all the families of the earth would be blessed in Abram, and that promise is fulfilled in Christ, who gathers one church from every nation.

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Sermon transcript

Amen. Dear friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word as we continue our Foundations of Faith sermon series today. My sermon text is taken from the book of Genesis, Genesis 12, verses 1-3. You’ll find that on page 10 in your Pew Bible. And I’m gonna actually start reading in chapter 11, verse 27, toward the end of chapter 11, and kind of fill out the context a little bit, and I’ll read through verse four. But again, our focus will be on Genesis chapter 12, verses one through three. So friends, let us hear God’s holy word. Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot. Haran died in the presence of his father, Terah, in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. And Abram and Nahor took wives.

The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milca, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milca and Isca. Now Sarai was barren. She had no child. Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.” Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God to bless the preaching of his word. Oh, heavenly Father, sovereign and eternal God, we thank you and praise you for your inerrant, God-breathed, infallible word. It is indeed a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. But Lord, we understand that we cannot spiritually understand your word unless your spirit illuminates us and gives us insight. And so we would beseech you, God, for you to grant the spirit of illumination this day.

Pour your spirit upon us. Open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from Your Word, that we might not only understand the natural sense, but that we might also embrace this as the very saving truth of God as it is revealed. We thank You for giving us Your Word, and we pray that Your Spirit would abide with us. Grant unto me, Your unworthy servant, the grace to declare Your Word with clarity and power and faithfulness. for your glory and for the benefit and salvation of your people. In Jesus’ name we pray and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon today is Foundations of Faith, Covenant and Catholicity. And the key words to be listening for, I’d encourage the children to keep track of the number of times I say these words, if that will help you follow along in my sermon today.

The words which are provided for you in your sermon outline are Catholic, call, covenant, promise, and blessing. Dear friends, I believe in the Holy Catholic Church. This statement is from the second affirmation of the third credo or I believe section of that classic Bible-based creed of the historic church known to us today as the Apostles’ Creed. It is this creed that has been guiding my Foundations of Faith sermon series, a series where we’ve been reviewing some of the basic foundational truths of our holy Christian faith as revealed in the Word of God. But as you might imagine, not every Christian or not every Christian church has felt comfortable reciting the language of this particular affirmation of the creed, in particular Some Protestant Christians might have scruples about using this kind of language, about saying, well, I believe in the Holy Catholic Church.

Some Protestants might protest, pun intended, they might protest this language by saying something like, well, hey, listen, I’m not a Catholic, I’m a Protestant, and I certainly do not believe in the Roman Catholic Church. And I’m also aware of at least one conservative Protestant denomination that has changed the language of its liturgy in this affirmation to read, I believe in the holy Christian church instead of I believe in the holy Catholic church, obviously in an attempt to clarify the meaning. But dear ones, may I suggest to you this morning that there is no need for us to get rid of a perfectly good word just because it has been historically distorted and misappropriated by the Roman Church. The fact is that we are Catholic, though we are Protestant, we are also Catholic Christians. We are Catholic in the good original sense of that term.

You see friends, the word Catholic simply means universal. And it is a word that points to the truth that with the coming of Christ and with the coming of the new covenant, God’s covenant people in this new covenant era of redemptive history are no longer confined to one nation, namely the theocratic nation of Israel. Now, God’s covenant people, His church, includes redeemed sinners from every tribe, every tongue, every people group, every nation. It includes not just Jews who believe in Jesus, but Gentiles who believe in Jesus as well. And that’s what we mean when we say, I believe in the Holy Catholic or Universal Church. That means I affirm the spiritual unity of all true believers all over the world. This catholicity or international reach and fullness of Christ’s church was part of God’s plan all along, even going back to the beginnings of redemptive history.

In fact, it was anticipated and promised all the way back in the early stages of redemptive history in God’s covenant with Abram, as recorded in the book of Genesis. And so that brings us to our passage for today, which records for us God’s covenant with Abram. Now our passage for this Lord’s Day morning represents a pivotal turning point in redemptive history. In fact, friends, there is a sense in which we could say that the rest of the Bible simply unpacks the implications of God’s call and covenant with Abram as recorded in this passage. And it shows how these covenant promises given to Abram are ultimately fulfilled in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In our text for this morning, we have a record of God’s initial establishment of a covenant with the patriarch Abraham, who is called Abram at this particular point in the book of Genesis.

God changes his name to Abraham a little bit later on. Now even though the actual word covenant is not used specifically in this passage, friends it is clear from the details of this passage that God is here establishing a covenant relationship with Abram because the elements of a covenant are included here in this passage. And that raises the question, and we’ve been studying this, by the way, to give a little plug for our adult instruction class. We’ve been considering the covenant theology of the Bible in our morning instruction classes, and I’d encourage you to come out for that and learn about this. But it raises the question, what, in fact, is a covenant? What is a biblical covenant? Well, in Scripture, the concept of covenant is a deep and rich concept. Dr. O. Palmer Robertson, in his excellent book, The Christ of the Covenants, has rightly said that asking for a definition of covenant is something like asking for a definition of mother.

But nevertheless, friends, I think that we can give at least something of a definition of covenant. And I think Dr. J.G. Voss, in his little booklet on the covenant of grace, does a good job defining a biblical covenant when he writes this. He says, according to the teaching of the Bible, a covenant of God made with man is an arrangement for a certain purpose, made by God and imposed on man. involving certain promises on God’s part and certain obligations on man’s part. By such a covenant, a religious relationship between God and man is constituted or restored. And so let’s break that down. In other words, God’s covenants with humanity are, first of all, they are sovereignly imposed. In other words, we don’t get to bargain with God about the terms of the covenant. He imposes those terms upon us because he’s God and we’re not.

He’s the sovereign one. We are his subjects. Secondly, it establishes a religious relationship between God and man. Covenants in the Bible establish a relationship, a religious relationship between God and man. And thirdly, covenants involve promises on God’s part and obligations on man’s part, although some of God’s covenants with man are of an unconditional nature. God’s covenant with Abram is important, friends, because it represents a major step forward in the unfolding of God’s one overarching covenant of grace, that covenant of grace by which God secures our eternal salvation through the obedience and sacrifice of Christ. And so that brings us to our text for today. And let’s first of all, beloved, as we turn our attention to this portion of God’s word, let us consider the significance of God’s call to Abram. This is the first point on your sermon outline if you’re following along.

And I believe the word that is to be supplied is the word call. Consider the significance of God’s call to Abram. Let’s look at verse one. It says, now the Lord, let me just pause there. Notice the word Lord is in all capital letters. Why? Well, that’s a way for the translators to signal to the English reader that they are translating a particular name of God, namely the name Yahweh. Sometimes it’s transliterated as Jehovah, shows up in your Bible as Jehovah, but this is the covenant name of God. This is the name by which God enters, that indicates that God relates to us covenantally. The Lord, Yahweh, said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. What is the significance of God’s call here to Abram?

There’s much that we could, much that we could mine, many riches that we could mine from just this first verse of our passage for today. But I want you to consider here from this passage that God’s call to Abram was first of all gracious, it was sovereign, and it was surprising. God’s call to Abram was gracious, it was sovereign, and it was surprising. Let’s focus on the graciousness of this call to Abram. See, God’s covenant with Abram certainly called upon Abram to respond with faith and with the obedience which evidences true faith. After all, the Lord says, the Lord gives him a command. He says, go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. But nevertheless, it was not a covenant based upon Abram’s works or merits.

God did not come and issue this command to Abram on the basis of Abram’s worthiness or merits or goodness. It was based solely and exclusively upon the absolute free grace of God. God says, go from your country Now Abram had lived in Ur of the Chaldeans when he received this call. Now there’s a little question that some raise the question, well wait a minute, when did Abram receive this call? This call of Abram is recorded after we learn about Abram and his father Terah and his nephew Lot. traveling out of Ur of the Chaldeans and settling in Haran. However, the scriptures indicate that Abram actually had received this call back when he and the rest of his family were living in Ur of the Chaldeans. In fact, verse 1 could be translated, as I believe it is in the New International Version, as, now the Lord had said to Abram, kind of rewinding the tape, if you will, and saying back when Abram lived in Ur of the Chaldeans, the Lord had said this to him.

And this chronology is also indicated or implied by what God says to Abram in Genesis chapter 15, verse seven, where it says, and he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. He doesn’t say I am the Lord who brought you out of Haran, but I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans. And this is also confirmed by the martyr Stephen’s testimony as recorded in Acts 7, verses 2-4. I’m just going to read that very quickly if you want to follow along. Acts 7, verses 2-4. It says, And Stephen said, Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when? when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran and said to him, go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you.

So hopefully we’ve made clear the chronology here of this call. Abram was still living as a pagan in Ur of the Chaldeans when Yahweh the Lord reached out to him in covenant grace and mercy and called him into relationship with himself. Now, what do we know about Ur of the Chaldeans? Well, this was an area that was given over to pagan idolatry. I believe that Ur of the Chaldeans was known for its worship of a moon god. So before his call, Abram and his family were probably moon worshipers. By calling Abram to separate from his kindred and his father’s house and the country of his origin, God was calling Abram to turn from the idols of his past and to follow Yahweh in faith and discipleship. All of this, friends, underscores God’s free and sovereign grace in making covenant with Abram.

Another implication of this passage, by the way, is that Abram’s father, Terah, who went with Abram instead of staying with the rest of his family, was perhaps through that action indicating faith. We learn back in verses 31 and 32 of chapter 11, it says, Tara, that’s Abram’s father, took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. What does this indicate? Well, this would seem to indicate, beloved, that by God’s grace, Terah, Abram’s father, Terah II, came to believe in the promise that God had made to his son Abram. And in faith, Terah chose to associate himself with blessed Abram, his son.

As John Calvin writes, whence it also appears that Terah was not so far deluded by superstitions as to be destitute of the fear of God. And so this call given by God, this gracious call given by God to Abram, a pagan, a moon worshiper, was gracious. It was not based on Abram’s worthiness or works or merits. And it was also sovereign. God, not Abram, initiates this covenant of his own sovereign will and good pleasure. Not because he was forced to or constrained by anything outside of himself to choose and call Abram into covenant with himself. And again, as I’ve already said, not because God was drawn to something worthy in Abram. But out of pure sovereign grace, God took the initiative. And out of all the people living then in Ur of the Chaldeans, God revealed his covenant mercies to this particular man, Abram, who became Abraham.

And this is why God’s call to Abram is also surprising. Again, as I’ve already mentioned, Abram lived among the idolatrous Terahites in the paganized land of Ur of Chaldeans. Abram was, before God’s call to him, Abram was a slave to his pagan idolatry. But God removes him out of that idolatry. Look with me, if you would, at chapter 15, verse 7 again. Turn to Genesis 15, verse 7, and notice the language here. The Lord says this to Abram. He says, I am the Lord, I’m Yahweh, who did what? Who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. The Lord says, Abram, I’ve brought you out. I’ve brought you out. You didn’t bring yourself out. I brought you out as an act of redeeming mercy and grace. This language should be familiar, because it’s the same language that God uses when he reveals the Ten Commandments to his people from Mount Sinai.

If you turn to Exodus 20, verse two, and look at the prelude of the giving of the Ten Commandments, what does the Lord say to his people Israel as they are gathered there at the foot of Mount Sinai? He says, I am Yahweh, I am the Lord your God, who did what? Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. See the similarity in language? The Lord had brought Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans, just as he would later bring the Israelites out of their enslavement to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. And this was all by grace. And this was surprising. Again, Abram came from an environment steeped in idolatry. Abram himself and his family were idolaters, no doubt. How surprising that God would choose such an unworthy and such an unlikely man to be the great patriarch of the faith.

Abram was indeed surprised by grace. What does this teach us? many things, but one thing this underscores, beloved, is that our God is a God of surprises. He often delights in saving and redeeming some of the most unlikely individuals. You ever, brother, sister in Christ, you ever wonder to yourself, Why did God choose to give me the privilege to hear the gospel and open my heart to receive Christ as my Savior? Why me, Lord? And you’re surprised that God would choose and have mercy upon a wretch like you. I’m surprised that he would have mercy upon a wretch like me. since God is a God of surprises. This should actually encourage us, brothers and sisters. I know some of you are probably praying for and seeking to share the gospel with neighbors, friends, loved ones, and so forth, and you want them to come to Christ, and they seem hardened to the gospel, and you’re tempted to give up.

Oh, don’t give up. Our God is a God of surprises. He is a God who delights to save sinners. He saved you, didn’t he? He saved me. What a surprise, what a blessed, glorious, gracious, sovereign surprise indeed. Believer, don’t give up on that unsaved friend, neighbor, coworker, loved one. God is able to reach them. And don’t give up on yourself. If you’re listening this morning and you’ve wandered far from the Lord, you’ve backslidden from the Lord and you think, oh, there’s no hope for me. I’ve gone too far. Remember that our Lord is a God who delights to receive and welcome home the prodigal son. So get out of the muck, turn back to the Lord. He will receive you as you return to him in repentance and faith. Believer, let us remember, brothers and sisters, that God’s saving call to us was gracious, sovereign, and surprising, even as his call to Abram was gracious, sovereign, and surprising.

But another aspect of this call, this covenantal call that God gave to Abram, is that it was a call to discipleship under Yahweh’s lordship. The Lord says to him, go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house. In other words, leave everything you’ve known Turn your back on it all and go where? He says, go to the land that I will show you. At this point, Abram didn’t know where he was going. He simply had to trust God that God was gonna lead him. Even though some of Abram’s larger family went with him, namely Terah, Abram’s father, who died in Haran, and Lot, the son of Haran, Abram’s nephew. Nevertheless, Abram still left his kindred and his father’s house in the broader sense of those terms. He left behind everything that he had known.

And God says, go to the land that I will show you. Not only did Abram move away from someplace, he moved away from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to go to a land that God would show him. Abram is being called to forsake all and follow Yahweh in faith as his disciples. Just like the disciples of Jesus had been called to forsake all in order to follow Jesus in faith. Abram was to entrust himself completely to the guidance of God, trusting entirely in Him, trusting entirely in His word of promise. And through the gospel, dear friends, God calls you and me to forsake all to trust Christ and follow Him in faith. Dear listener, the Lord Jesus Christ calls upon you to follow Him in faith and discipleship. Do you trust Him enough to follow Him?

God’s call to Abraham was also a call to a great destiny. Again, as we see in verse one, God says, leave your father’s house and kindred and go to the land that I will show you. The implication here is this is a land that is greater than the land of Ur of the Chaldeans. Hebrews chapter 11 verse 10 tells us that Abram was waiting for a city with foundations whose builder and maker was God. Let’s turn to this New Testament commentary on God’s call to Abram. Let’s turn to Hebrews 11 and let me just briefly read verses eight through 10. Hebrews chapter 11 verses eight through 10. You know, some folks read the account of God’s call to Abram and they say, well, you know, God called Abram just to earthly blessings and to an earthly land of promise.

And Abram didn’t have any expectation of eternal life or heaven, but that’s not what the Bible teaches. We read this in verses 8 through 10 of chapter 11. It says, by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. Abraham’s ultimate hope was not in an earthly piece of real estate in the Middle East. the land of Israel. Certainly God did promise Abraham and his descendants the land of promise, the promised land, the land of Israel.

But we need to remember that that land is not the ultimate hope of God’s people. That land was but a shadow, but a picture, but a type of the ultimate promised land, the new heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness dwells. And so God was calling Abram to a glorious future. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have not even begun to understand the amazing glories that God has in store for us as his redeemed people. Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard what God has planned for those who love him. By God’s grace, we have been called to a great destiny, a heavenly homeland, the ultimate land flowing with milk and honey. And therefore, beloved, that being the case, let us live our lives in the awareness that we are headed for that glory land and that we are citizens of heaven.

Though we are residents of earth, our ultimate citizenship is in heaven. May that awareness motivate us to live holy lives of gratitude for all that God has done for us. So we’ve considered the significance of God’s covenantal call to Abraham. What does that have to do with Catholicity? Well, that brings me to my next point in your sermon outline. Take to heart God’s covenant promises to Abram. Take to heart God’s covenant promises to Abram. And what is the first thing that he promises? Verse two, God says to Abram, and I will make of you a what? A great nation. God promises to make Abram a great nation. This promise obviously had an initial fulfillment in the covenant nation of Israel, which was the church under the old covenant, the church under age as Paul describes it in the book of Galatians.

But this covenant promise actually continues to be fulfilled today in the new covenant church. Since the New Testament scriptures tell us in 1 Peter 2 9, that the church is a quote, chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy what? a holy nation, a people for his own possession. Where is this holy nation today? It’s actually an international nation, if you will. It’s a nation in the sense that it includes people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, Jew and Gentile alike, who believe in the Lord Jesus. Now God says in Genesis 12, verse two, Abram, I will make of you a great nation, but then hold your finger there and turn to chapter 17, Genesis 17, verse four, because God expands that promise in Genesis 17, verse four, where God reveals the covenant sign of circumcision.

And God says this, behold, my covenant is with you and you shall be the father of what? not just a nation, but a multitude of nations. God explicitly expands this promise in Genesis 17, verse four, where Abraham is promised that he will be the father of a multitude of nations. To put that in the terminology of our Apostles’ Creed, the church is going to be Catholic, it’s going to be international, it’s gonna be universal, not just confined to the nation of the Jews as it was under the Old Covenant. Now this, of course, in our passage for today, this international aspect of the covenant promise is implied in verse 3 where God says to Abram, In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed, not just all the families descended from you, but all the families of the earth shall be blessed by you.

But nonetheless, there is an unfolding of this promise and an expansion of this promise. And all of this is ultimately fulfilled, beloved, in our Lord Jesus Christ and in the church’s international mission to the Gentiles. The apostle Paul affirms this very clearly, for example, And you’re welcome to turn there if you’d like to Galatians chapter three. Let me just briefly read Galatians three verses seven through nine as we compare scripture with scripture. Galatians three verses seven through nine. The apostle Paul writes, and Paul is writing to Gentile Christians here, he says, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. In other words, you’re not a son of Abraham just because you have his genetics in your body, just because you are physically descended from him. No, it is those of faith, those who share Abraham’s faith, who are the sons of Abraham.

And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed, along with Abraham, the man of faith. Could it be any clearer, beloved? Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you. So let’s just praise the Lord, right? As that little ditty goes. And then also, if you stay in Galatians 3, look at verses 28 and 29. Paul, the climax of this chapter, if you will, he says, there is neither Jew nor Greek. He’s using the term Greek there as a general term for Gentile. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And here’s the clincher, verse 29. If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. And so God promises to make Abram a great nation, indeed to be a blessing. to all nations, to cause a multitude of nations to come from Abraham, those who share in his faith. And then God also promises in verse 2 to bless Abraham. He says, and I will bless you and make your name great. Obviously, Abram was blessed. His descendants were blessed with the promised land, the land of Israel. But the ultimate blessing, what is the ultimate blessing, brothers and sisters? The ultimate blessing is our eternal salvation, which has been secured for us by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ our Savior. And it’s interesting here in Genesis 12 verse 2, God also promises to make Abram’s name great.

He says, I will bless you and make your name great. What’s the significance of that? Well, this appears to be contrasting Abram with the tower builders of Babel who sought to make a name for themselves. Go back to chapter 11, verse four. It says, then they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a what? Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. Let’s make ourselves great. Let’s build this tower to heaven. Let’s work our way up to God. Let’s climb up to God. And what does God do? He defeats their purpose. He overthrows their purpose because we can’t work our way up to God. We can’t climb our way back up to God.

God has to come down to us in mercy and grace. They sought, the tower builders sought to make a name for themselves by their works. But Abram’s name would be great. It would be made great, not by his own works or his own efforts or his own strivings, but by the sovereign grace and promise of God alone. And that’s why God says, I will bless you and make your name great. In other words, I’m gonna make your name great. You’re not gonna make your own name great. And why will God make his name great? Look at the end of verse two, so that you will be a blessing. God promises that Abram will be a medium, a conduit of blessing to others because it is from Abram’s loins, it is through a descendant of Abram that would be the Messiah that all the nations would be blessed.

Again, all of this is ultimately fulfilled in Abram’s great descendant, the Messiah and Lord Jesus of Nazareth. God will bless those who bless Abram and curse those who curse him. As it says in verse three, I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you, I will curse and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Now, I want you to notice, did you notice there the subtle shift from the plural when it comes to the blessing to the singular when it comes to the curse? God says, I will bless those, plural, who bless you Those who align themselves with your faith, those who are of the faith of Abraham, I will bless those who bless you, but him, singular, who curses you, I will dishonor. Him who dishonors you, I will curse, God says.

And so the point here, the implication is that the blessing of the covenant far outweighs the curse. This means that God will be the ally of Abram’s allies and the enemy of his enemies. Friends, to be an enemy of God’s people is to be an enemy of God. Whose side are you on? Are you on the Lord’s side today? But finally, we see that all the families of the earth will be blessed. God promises it. He says, in you, Abram, all. the families of the earth shall be blessed. God’s covenant with Abram was not just a nationalistic, localized covenant. It had international salvific import to it. John Calvin writes, therefore God, in my judgment, pronounces that all nations should be blessed in his servant Abram because Christ was included in his loins. In this manner, he not only intimates that Abram would be an example but a cause of blessing so that there should be an understood antithesis between Adam and Christ.

So again, in closing, friends, notice the extensiveness, notice the catholicity of this promise. God says, in you, Abram, all the families of the earth would be blessed. I believe in the holy Catholic Church. That’s what that implies. That God has taken a people for himself. He has redeemed a people from every tribe, every nation, every people group. Not just Jews who believe in Jesus, but Gentiles too who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Not just Europeans, but Africans, and Asians, and Australians, and so forth. makes me think of the line in that great Advent hymn, Joy to the World. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse has found. Has he made his blessings flow in your life, dear friend? Only in Christ will you experience his saving blessings. So come to Christ today, come to Christ, repent and believe in him, and you will be saved. and you will be part of this universal body of Christ.

Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

April 7, 2024
Foundations of Faith: I Believe in the Holy Spirit

About this sermon

1. Because of our status as adopted children of God, the Father has sent the Spirit into our hearts (vv. 4-6).
2. The Holy Spirit is identified as the Spirit of God’s Son (v. 6).
3. The Holy Spirit enables us to commune intimately with God as a loving heavenly Father (v. 6).

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Sermon transcript

Just turning to your Bible, Galatians 4, my sermon text this morning, Galatians 4, verses 4-7. Now in order to offer the full context, I’m going to begin reading in chapter 3, verse 23, and I’ll read through chapter 4, verse 7, but our focus will be on chapter 4, verses 4-7 in particular. as we continue our Foundations of Faith sermon series this morning. So beginning at chapter three, and you’ll find this passage on page 1156 in your Pew Bibles, beginning in chapter three at verse 23, let us hear God’s holy word. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. But he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of his word today. Almighty, most merciful God, our gracious heavenly Father, once again, we are thankful that you have disclosed yourself to us. You have revealed yourself to us in the Holy Scriptures. This scripture is the word of God, which is breathed out by you, for all scripture is indeed God-breathed and profitable. We pray, O Lord and Father in heaven, that you would grant by your grace that each and every one of us would profit from this portion of scripture that we consider today.

And we would ask that your word would find a lodging place in our souls this day and would bear much spiritual fruit in our hearts and in our lives, and also in our fellowship as a church. We would pray, Heavenly Father, that you would once again set a guard over my lips, that I, your unworthy servant, may declare only that which is faithful to you, glorifying to your holy name, and edifying to your people. We pray these things through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. As you can see, the title of my sermon this morning is Foundations of Faith, I Believe in the Holy Spirit. And if you have a sermon, your sermon outline, a number of keywords that you can listen for in my sermon today.

And one keyword I wanna point out to you, and I’ll be explaining in a little bit what this word means, but it’s filioque, F-I-L-I-O-Q-U-E. So I hope I’ve piqued your curiosity. You might learn a new word today. Well friends, I believe in the Holy Spirit. So begins the first affirmation contained in the third credo, the third I believe section of that classic Bible-based creed of the church that is known to us today as the Apostles’ Creed. The Creed has been guiding this Foundations of Faith sermon series in which we’ve been reviewing some of the foundational truths of our holy Christian faith. And it is important and good for us to do that periodically, to go back to the basics and review the basics. And we’ve been seeking to do that. Now as we’ve already considered earlier in this series, the Word of God and the historic Christian Church in all of its Orthodox expressions teach that the one true Creator God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, exists in three co-equal, co-eternal, co-essential persons, namely God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

In the words of our Shorter Catechism, in answer to question six, the question being, how many persons are there in the Godhead? We read this Bible-based answer. There are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one God, the same in substance, or essence, or being, the same in substance, equal in power and glory. Now as we’ve seen in the Creed, the first credo or I believe section deals with the first person of the Holy Trinity, namely God the Father. It also deals with the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of creation typically being ascribed to the Father. The second credo section deals, of course, with the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, both with his divine person and with his historic works in accomplishing our redemption.

Well, this third credo section of the creed that we are beginning to consider today deals with God the Holy Spirit. And by implication, it deals with his ministry of applying Christ’s work of redemption to us and of sanctifying us. Today we turn our attention to the deeply important subject of the person and the work of the Holy Spirit. A subject that in itself could fill a lengthy sermon series since there are so many passages, multitudes of passages in the Word of God that touch upon the subject of the person of the Holy Spirit, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit’s ministry to God’s people and to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. But friends, Since this foundation series is simply intended as an overview, as a review, I will resist the temptation to multiply sermons on the Holy Spirit, at least at this time, and I will confine myself today to one sermon on one specific passage dealing with this subject.

And the text which I’ve chosen for our consideration on this Lord’s Day morning is found in the Apostle Paul’s fiery, white-hot letter to the churches in the first century region of Galatia in the Roman This morning we consider a very central passage in Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, namely chapter 4 verses 4 through 7. And our special focus today will be on verse 6 in particular because verse 6 describes the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of His or God’s Son. the Spirit who enables us as believers to enjoy an intimate relationship with God as a loving Heavenly Father, as is expressed by that prayerful cry, Abba, Father. Now, what are we to make of this letter, this epistle that Paul writes to the Galatians? The Holy Spirit inspired this letter and included it in the canon of Holy Scripture.

You know, Galatians is arguably Paul’s most intense epistle. And I don’t know about you folks, but as I read Paul’s writings, Paul seems to me, I get the impression from Paul’s writings that Paul was naturally sort of an intense individual. But here we find the most intense, if you will, of his letters. And what accounts for this intensity, the fiery nature Indeed, Paul is intense and forceful in the letter to the Galatians because the stakes are so high. Paul is intense and forceful in this epistle of Galatians to the Galatians because the very gospel message itself is being threatened by a group of Jewish Christian false teachers, false teachers who are typically referred to by the Bible scholars as Judaizers. These Judaizers, these false teachers, were seeking to convince Gentile Christians in Galatia that their faith in Jesus Christ, while certainly important and necessary, was simply not enough to bring them into a saving relationship with God and into full covenantal standing among the covenant people of God.

The Judaizers taught that these Gentile Christians must, in addition to believing in Jesus Christ, they must also be circumcised and keep the law of Moses if they would be saved. In other words, Gentiles must become Jews first before they can become fully initiated Christians of an equal standing among the covenant people of God. According to the Judaizers, we are justified, that is to say we are declared righteous before God by faith in Jesus Christ plus works of the law. So they preached and taught a faith plus works scheme of salvation. But friends, according to the gospel of Jesus Christ as preached by the Apostle Paul and indeed by the other apostles, we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, not plus works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ apart from works of the law.

Or as the reformers put it, we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ alone, sola fide, faith alone. In the particular section of Galatians where we find our passage for this Lord’s Day morning, Paul has been driving home the point that both Jewish and Gentile believers are adopted sons of God and therefore are equally heirs of salvation. We see this, for example, let me just review a couple of verses. If you go back to chapter three and look at verse 26, Paul writes, for in Christ Jesus, you, and who’s he addressing? He’s addressing these Gentile believers in Galatia. In union with Christ Jesus, you, you Gentiles, whether you be Gentile or Jew, in fact, you are all sons of God through faith. And then he goes on to say, if you skip down to verses 28 and 29, he says, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And here’s the clincher, verse 29. If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. Even if you don’t have any of Abraham’s genetics, even if you are not a physical descendant of Abraham, if you are a Gentile but you believe in Jesus, you share Abraham’s faith, then you too are Abraham’s offspring in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we see this also summarized in verse seven of our passage for today. So you are no longer a slave. but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. Again, remember, he’s addressing these Gentile Christians in contradiction to what the Judaizers have been telling them. The Judaizers have been saying, well, yeah, you can become a fully initiated member of the people of God. You can become a fully initiated Christian, but you gotta be circumcised and keep the law of Moses and not just believe in Jesus.

And Paul says, no. By grace through faith, if you trust in Christ and Christ alone, you too are Abraham’s offspring. And you’re no longer a slave, you are a son. You are a child of God, a son or daughter of God. And if you are a son or daughter of God, an adopted son or daughter of God, then you are an heir through God. You’re an heir to the promises of God. You are an heir to everlasting salvation. So friends, in this section, Paul also drives home the point that the law given through Moses served as a guardian of God’s people until Christ came in the fullness of time. The law’s function in redemptive history was to prepare God’s people for the coming of the promised Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. And similarly, one of the main functions or uses of God’s moral law in our personal lives is to show us our sin and therefore to show us our desperate need for a sinless savior, namely the Lord Jesus Christ.

So with all of this context in mind, let’s dive into our text for today and consider, first of all, that because of our status as adopted children of God, the Father has sent the Spirit into our hearts. Because of our status as adopted children of God, the Father has sent the Spirit into our hearts. as we are told in verse 6. Now let’s start at verse 4. In verse 4 we read these words, In the fullness of time, what’s Paul referring to? What does he mean by the fullness of time? Well, one commentator says that this means the time set by God for His children to become adult sons and heirs. As he had been discussing in the previous section of this chapter, were heirs, but they were not fully adult heirs until the coming of Christ.

So now is the time in redemptive history when they were to become adult sons and heirs. In other words, this is referring to the divinely appointed time in redemptive history. And at that time, what happened? It says, God sent forth his son. There’s so much rich theological and doctrinal and redemptive historical truth just jammed into these few verses. First of all, this points out that this highlights the father’s sending of his son. And this is a clear teaching throughout the New Testament scriptures. Let’s compare scripture with scripture a little bit. Let’s turn to a couple other verses. Let’s go to John, very familiar passage, John 3, 16 and 17, speaking of the father’s sending of his son into this world. You’re familiar with this, right? For God so loved the world that he did what?

He gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. And then it goes on to say in verse 17, for God did not, what? God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. So we see there, the father’s sending of his son. This was a unified, this was the united teaching of the apostles of Jesus Christ. We see this also in the Johannine corpus in 1 John 4 9-10. If you turn to 1 John, the letter of 1 John 4 9-10, we read similarly these words. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God did what? God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.

In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins. So getting back to our passage for today, when did this sending forth of the Son occur? It occurred in the fullness of time, at just the right time in redemptive history. And I know I’ve said this many times before, some of you might be getting sick of hearing me say this, but what is history? Children, you know it, history is his story. God is working out his plan and purpose in history. He prepared for the coming of Christ through the long ages of human history prior to the incarnation and virgin birth of Christ. Prior to that time, God was preparing humanity and in particular, preparing his people for the coming of the promised Messiah.

But now in the fullness of time, at just the right time in God’s preordained plan, he sent forth his eternal divine son. And this is another thing that is implied by this language here. The language that speaks of God’s son, of Jesus as God’s son, highlights Christ’s full deity. Christ is the son of God in the sense that he shares the same divine nature as The Father, there is one divine being, one divine essence shared fully by all three persons of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So Jesus, by being called the Son of God, that does not subordinate his deity, but it points out that he shares fully in the same nature, the same being as the Father. But he was also born of woman. This indicates our Lord’s full humanity. This is Paul’s way of saying what John says back in John 1, 14, that the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. So he is true God, fully God, and fully man in one divine person. And he was not only born of woman, but we are told that he was born under the law. What does that mean? Well, not only was Christ as a Jew obligated to keep the law of Moses, but in a deeper sense, he was born under the law as a covenant of works, as the second Adam, in order to obey and keep that law on behalf of all of God’s people. And that leads us to verse 5, where Paul goes on to say, He, that Christ came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law to do what? To redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

Christ accomplished our redemption so that we might be adopted as children of God. In our fallenness, in Adam, we are not children of God. We are, spiritually speaking, we are children of the devil. We are part of the kingdom of darkness, but in his saving mercy, Christ redeems his elect. He brings them out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his great grace. But what does that word redemption mean? I like how Dr. James Montgomery Boyce defines redemption. He says, redemption means to buy out of slavery. Men were slaves either to the law as Jews or to the elemental spirits of the universe as Gentiles. Christ paid the price of their redemption and set them free.

So, what does this point to? This points to the fact that the Father has planned salvation. We have been chosen by the Father. Christ executed the plan of redemption. But that plan of redemption that Christ accomplished is useless to us unless it gets applied to us. And how is that work of redemption applied to us? It is applied to us by the sovereign spirit of Almighty God. And this is what is pointed to And this is what we infer from Paul’s words here in verse six. See, we’ve been redeemed by the blood of Christ. We have been adopted as beloved sons and daughters of God through faith in Christ. Verse six, and because you are sons, God has done what? He has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Back in verse four, we are told that God sent forth His Son, but here in verse six, we learn that not only has God sent forth His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, but now that Christ has come and has accomplished our redemption, God also sends the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. not just into the world outside of us, but into our hearts to apply to our hearts and lives the redeeming work of Christ.

Again, not only did God the Father send forth His Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Redeemer, in this verse, we learn that the Father also sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts. And by implication, He did so in order to apply to us the benefits of Christ’s redemption, and therefore, to bring us into a close personal communion with God as our loving Heavenly Father, an intimate spiritual communion which is expressed when we cry out to God in prayer, Abba, Father. Now, I’ll speak more about the significance and meaning of that term in just a few moments, but let me make a couple points of application at this particular time. Friends, first of all, the Father’s sending of the Spirit into our hearts implies an important truth that is clearly taught throughout the Word of God.

Namely, the truth that the Holy Spirit is a person, not a force. And this is important. If you’re taking notes, write this down. The Holy Spirit is a person, not a force. In other words, the Holy Spirit is a he, not a she. an it, and I have to confess, and I’ve probably done this myself, I sometimes hear Christians in their less guarded moments, and again, I probably have done this too, when speaking of the Holy Spirit, referring to the Spirit as an it rather than a he. And that’s kind of, that’s certainly would be understandable if we were Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, you may or may not know this, but Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the doctrine of the Trinity. They are an anti-Trinitarian cult. And they teach that Jehovah is the Father, that Jesus the Son is a God, lowercase g, that he is divine but less than Jehovah.

But how do they explain the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is God’s active force. That’s how they describe the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s active force, they say. But that’s not what the Bible teaches. The Bible tells us clearly that the Holy Spirit is a person. And just as, again, as we compare scripture with scripture, let’s jump to a few passages that underscore this truth. Turn with me, if you would, to Matthew 12, verse 31. Matthew chapter 12, and look at verse 31. And here in this discourse of the Lord Jesus, he says this. He’s being accused of performing his miracles by the power of Beelzebub or Satan, the prince of demons. And his enemies are accusing him of doing his works by the power of Satan rather than the power of God.

And Jesus says this, therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Now let me ask you this, if the Holy Spirit is a force rather than a person, how do you blaspheme a force? How do you blaspheme a force? No, you can only blaspheme a person. You can only blaspheme God. And so the Holy Spirit is divine and He is a divine person. And consider also Acts 5, verse three, Acts 5, verse three. where Ananias and Sapphira lie in order to make themselves look better to the Christian community than they actually were in terms of their generosity. And when Ananias is confronted with this, the apostle Peter says the following. If you look at Acts 5, verse 3, it says this, Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land?

What did Ananias, what was he guilty of doing? Was he guilty of lying to a force? How can you lie to a force? I mean, one force is the force of gravity. Can you lie to the force of gravity? No. but you can only lie to a person. So this too implies that the Holy Spirit is a person. Not only that, if we turn to Ephesians 4.30, and again, I’m sure you get the point, but I just wanted to underscore the importance of this point and the testimony of the scriptures to the personhood of the Holy Spirit. We see this in Ephesians 4.30. Paul writes to the church in Ephesus, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom, not by which, but by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Again, let me ask you, dear friends, Paul warns the church against grieving the Holy Spirit, but can an impersonal force an active force, if you will, experience grief? Again, no. So clearly, the Holy Spirit is a divine person. And we learn in this passage, too, that the Spirit applies the work of Christ to God’s people and indwells them. Praise be to God. The Spirit graciously indwells the people of God. Let’s look at another passage in which Paul teaches this. If you turn to Romans chapter 8, and comparing our passage for today with Romans 8 is very helpful because these two passages, in these two passages the Apostle Paul brings out some of these truths with slightly different emphases. But let me read verses 9 through 11 in Romans chapter 8. Paul writes this, you however are not in the flesh, meaning the flesh meaning the sin nature.

You’re not dominated by under the dominion of the sin nature if you are a believer in Christ. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the spirit if, in fact, the spirit of God does what? Dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. The Spirit who the Father has sent to Christ’s redeemed children indwells them. Dear listener, does the Spirit dwell in you? He does dwell in you if He has convicted you of sin and you are trusting Christ as He’s offered to you in the gospel.

But if you’ve rejected Christ and rejected the gospel, the Spirit does not dwell in you. But God calls you through the gospel to repent, turn to Christ, trust in Him and Him alone as your all-sufficient Redeemer. And then you can be assured that the Spirit of God applies the saving work of Christ to you and dwells within you. So the Spirit of God dwells in the hearts of God’s adopted children. We also learn, however, in this passage, and this brings me to my next point, that the Holy Spirit is identified here as the Spirit of God’s Son. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God’s Son. It says in verse six, because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, the Spirit of His Son. Again, it’s helpful to compare this terminology which describes the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of God’s Son.

Let’s compare that with the terminology that Paul uses back in Romans 8 9. Again, Romans 8 9. How is the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, described in Romans 8 9? You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of whom? The Spirit of God, meaning God the Father. So in Galatians 4, verse 6, the Holy Spirit is defined as, described as the Spirit of God’s Son, but here in Romans 8, verse 9, he is described as the Spirit of God the Father, and then in this verse, Romans 8, verse 9, it goes on to say, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. So the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God the Father and the Spirit of Christ the Son. And this passage, therefore, my friends, would seem to support the so-called Filioque clause in the Latin or Western version of the Nicene Creed. where we say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

In contrast to the Eastern Orthodox version of that creed, which does not contain the Filioqueor and the Son clause in it. as I mentioned, means and the Son. And based on passages like John 15, verse 26, where Jesus says that the Holy Spirit, described there as the Spirit of truth, proceeds from the Father, based on passages like that, the Eastern Orthodox version of the Nicene Creed, which I believe was the original one, because it was simply parroting the words of John 15, verse 26, that version of the creed affirms that the Holy Spirit only proceeds from the Father and not from the Son. But on the other hand, the Western version of that creed adds the words, and the Son, philioque. So the Western Catholic churches confess that within the triune Godhead, the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, philioque, whereas the Eastern Orthodox churches confessed the Holy Spirit proceeding only from the Father, thereby rejecting the philioque clause.

And now you may be scratching your heads at this point saying, okay, pastor, it’s afternoon. This is kind of a finer point of theology. Is it really all that much of a big deal? I mean, on the surface, this may seem like a rather minor and abstract theological difference. But friends, we need to understand that in the 11th century, it was regarded as such an important theological difference that it ended up being at least the theological catalyst and basis for the so-called great schism. between the Western Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches in the 11th century during the Middle Ages. Now we could certainly debate whether or not this difference over such seemingly fine points of theology should be such a severe schism or division in the visible church of that time, but it does show us how seriously the church at that time took theological matters.

I mean, the things that matter most to you will be the things that you fight for the hardest. And according to the church at that time, the most important thing or one of the most important things was how they understood God and what the God, the nature of God, the persons of the Godhead, and so forth, and how they relate to one another. Now, there were, of course, political and other factors, you know, that fed into the great schism, but this was the theological issue. But in any case, with that history lesson in mind, the language of our passage for this morning would seem to support the filioque clause, the and the son clause. And it is because of such passages as this that we are considering today that the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and our Westminster standards confess as biblical the truth that the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from both God the Father and God the Son.

As it says, and I invite you to turn there, so on page 940 in the back of your Psalter hymnal, Larger Catechism Question and Answer 10, page 940. The question is, what are the personal properties of the three persons in the Godhead? The Bible-based answer to that question is this. It is proper to the Father to beget the Son, and to the Son to be begotten of the Father, and to the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit to what? To proceed from the Father and the Son. And it is because the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son from all eternity that our passage can speak of the Lord Jesus as, speak rather of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of God’s Son. So with this in mind, you might be thinking, okay, well, is the purpose of this passage simply to tune us in to these finer points of theology?

And these are important points. But I will close my sermon today with this final point. See, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s person and work, it’s not an abstract doctrine that is only to be relegated to the halls of the theological seminary or relegated to questions such as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and so forth. Now friends, the Holy Spirit, we learn in this passage that the Holy Spirit enables us to commune intimately with God as a loving Heavenly Father. The Holy Spirit enables us to commune intimately with God as a loving Heavenly Father. Verse six, and because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying what? Abba, Father. the indwelling Spirit of God, the Spirit by whom we’ve been born again and renewed, the Spirit whose indwelling presence sanctifies us through the Word, the Spirit by whom we are sealed unto the day of redemption, as we are told by Paul in Ephesians 1, 13 and 14.

That Holy Spirit, my friends, is the one who enables us as believers to cry out to God in prayer as a loving Heavenly Father. And again, I know I’ve been referring often to Romans 8, but we see this, Romans 8, Paul kind of fleshes this reality out. In Romans 8, verses 15 through 17, we read these words, it says, For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. Or we think in verses 22 and 23, Paul goes on to say, for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we await eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. and skip down to verses 26 and 27, we learn that the spirit also ministers to us in a very personal way. As Paul writes, likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray for as we ought, or excuse me, we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. You know, sometimes when you’re praying, you can’t figure out what to say. You don’t know what to say. but those groanings in your soul, that’s the Spirit interceding for you. The Lord Jesus intercedes for us at the Father’s right hand.

The Spirit himself, though, intercedes within us with groanings too deep for words. And it says in verse 27, he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to God. the will of God. What does that word Abba mean? Some have suggested that it means daddy, and it was used in that way. But others have suggested, well, you know, applied to God, that’s kind of a trivialization or a sentimentalizing of God to say that Abba means daddy. Well, again, I like what Dr. Boyce says. He says, it may be sentimentalizing the word Abba to translate it daddy, but it should not be forgotten that the word is a diminutive and implies intimacy. Think about the implications of that. God is not, our God, brothers and sisters, is not a distant, uninvolved deity that we can only know from a distance.

He is a God who has become one of us. He has taken upon himself in Christ our full humanity and he died to redeem us so that he might send the Spirit to dwell within us and bring us back into communion and fellowship and friendship with God our creator as a loving heavenly Father. Dear ones, God has created us and redeemed us in Christ in order that we might commune with Him, fellowship with Him in love and friendship, both now and forevermore. In Christ and through the Spirit’s application of Christ’s redemptive work to us, we may enjoy personal communion, friendship, and spiritual intimacy with God as a loving Heavenly Father. It was revolutionary when Jesus referred to God the Father as his Father. And when he called his disciples to pray, our Father which art in heaven.

Certainly Israel viewed God as the Father of the nation, but this personal approach to God was unheard of before the coming of Christ. But now in Christ, although it is hinted at in the Old Testament, we see that kind of personal intercourse with God exemplified in the book of Psalms, for example. But nevertheless, in Christ and through the Spirit, we, brothers and sisters, can have a deep, satisfying, personal, spiritual connection to God as a loving, heavenly Father. Dear listener, do you have a personal, intimate relationship with God? as your loving Heavenly Father? This is not sentimentality to ask this question. This is the goal of our redemption. What is man’s chief end? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. God desires that we delight in Him as our chief and highest goal, our chief and highest joy.

Or do you view God as a distant, austere, stern judge? Now I will say that if you are apart from a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, you ought to fear God. to view God as an offended judge because he is. Now God is good to all. He is kind, he’s good, he’s loving. He causes his sun to shine on the just and the unjust and sends the rain on the righteous and the wicked because he is a benevolent and kind and patient and forbearing God. But he is a God who has an attitude of holy righteous wrath towards those who have rejected him. and who have blasphemed him and who reject his son. Oh, turn from your rebellion. Turn to Jesus Christ who offers himself freely to sinners in the gospel. Turn in repentance and faith to Christ.

Receive and rest upon Christ alone as your Lord and Savior. And you too, by the grace of God, can enjoy this intimate saving communion and fellowship with God. You too will be enabled to cry Abba, Father. And so the next time you confess the Apostles’ Creed and confess those words, I believe in the Holy Spirit, think about these things that we’ve considered today. Amen, let us pray. Thank you and praise you for the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of adoption, the spirit by which we are enabled to cry unto you, as a loving Heavenly Father, Abba, Father. Lord, we would pray that we would truly desire above all other desires to love and commune with you and to serve you with all that is in us out of gratitude for your amazing gift of salvation.

We pray these things, Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. As we close our time of worship, let’s rise and respond to what we’ve heard from the word by singing together Psalm 46a, God is our refuge and our strength, 46a.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

March 24, 2024
Foundations of Faith: The Coming Judge

About this sermon

1. God’s righteous judgement will be fully manifested when the Lord Jesus returns from heaven in glory (vv. 5-7).
2. The two outcomes of the final judgment: destruction and glory (vv. 8-10).

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Sermon transcript

This morning we consider a passage from 2 Thessalonians, my sermon text today, 2 Thessalonians 1 verses 5-12. You’ll find that on page 1175 in your Pew Bible. 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 5 through 12. I’m gonna read the chapter in its entirety. It’s a brief chapter to fill out the context a bit. So dear friends, this is the word of God. Let us hear it with reverence and awe. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians, in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore, we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring.

This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering. Since, indeed, God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted, as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed because our testimony to you was believed.

To this end, we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of His calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Dear ones, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God to bless the proclamation of His Word. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you that you have given us clear guidance and direction in the Holy Scriptures, which are your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. We pray, Heavenly Father, that by your Holy Spirit, you would illuminate our minds and open our hearts to hear and receive that which the Spirit has revealed in this portion of your Holy Word.

We pray, Heavenly Father, that your Word would find a lodging place in our souls and would bear much spiritual fruit in our lives. And we would ask, Lord God, that you would grant unto me, your unworthy servant, the grace to declare and speak forth your word with clarity and power and with the assistance and grace of your spirit for the edification of your people, for the salvation of the lost, and for the magnification of the name of Jesus. We pray these things in his name and all of God’s people said, amen. Dear ones, you may be seated. I did remember the sermon outlines, remembered to bring them this week, so you’ll notice in your sermon outline, there are quite a number of words you can be listening for in my sermon today, if you find that helpful to follow along.

Title of my sermon today, Foundations of Faith, The Coming Judge. Well, my dear friends, one of the sad realities of living in this fallen, sin-cursed world is that oftentimes injustice abounds, oftentimes evil seems to rule the day, and even on those seemingly rare occasions when justice actually prevails, one would suspect that it often turns out to be only an approximate or relative justice, or even a delayed justice that is done. and not the full or absolute or ultimate justice that we might have hoped for. It’s easy to look around our world today and to harbor bitterness, anger, and resentment in our hearts as we witness great evils being ignored or perhaps downplayed, as we witness oppressions and abuses abounding, and as we witness the wicked prospering as they arrogantly boast in their pride. We might be tempted to fret because of evildoers, to borrow the terminology from one of the Psalms.

We might even be tempted to despair that ultimate justice will ever be done, that the multitude of wrongs which fill our world will ever be righted, and that the unrepentant wicked will ever be held to account. But my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this is why the foundational doctrine of our holy Christian faith that we will be considering on this Lord’s Day morning is so vitally important for keeping us from sinking into discouragement and despair, and for encouraging us by bolstering our faith, our patience, and our hope. The doctrine, of course, to which I am referring is the doctrine that is summarized by the words of the final affirmation that is found in the second credo, the second, I believe, statement of the Apostles’ Creed. The affirmation that says of our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus who now reigns at the Father’s right hand.

It says, from there, from the Father’s right hand, He, Jesus, shall come to judge the living and the dead. Dear ones, the Word of God makes it very clear that a final judgment day is indeed coming, a day when God will right all wrongs, a day when God will bring ultimate justice, pouring out His holy and righteous vengeance and wrath upon the unrepentant wicked and vindicating His believing afflicted people. And Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the coming judge who will come from the Father’s right hand, from the place of highest power and authority and honor to preside over the cosmic proceedings of that final eschatological judgment day. Now there are numerous passages in scripture that teach the truth that there will be a final judgment day and that it will happen when our Lord Jesus returns at the end of this age in glory at his future glorious second advent.

And so there’s many passages that I could have preached on this morning as we address this particular subject. But one passage of scripture that is particularly clear and particularly powerful in its teaching about the coming judgment day and about Christ the coming judge is of course our text for this Lord’s Day morning from 2 Thessalonians 1. And so we now turn our attention to this passage from God’s word. Now, the Thessalonian epistles are powerful and an important section of scripture. The Thessalonian epistles are likely the earliest canonical letters that were written by the Apostle Paul. 2 Thessalonians was probably written sometime around 51 A.D. We don’t know the exact year or date, but scholars tend to think 50, 51 A.D. was about the time when 2 Thessalonians had been written. And it was probably written shortly after Paul had written 1 Thessalonians.

So 2 Thessalonians was written as sort of a follow-up letter and it’s possible that Paul might have written 2 Thessalonians within about six months or so of writing 1 Thessalonians as some of the issues that he addresses in 1 Thessalonians were continuing to be issues in the church of the Thessalonians. In these epistles, Paul, under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, seeks to encourage and to commend the church in Thessalonica for standing firm and for manifesting the virtues of faith, of hope, and of love, even though they were suffering persecution. We see this brought out, for example, if you would turn to 1 Thessalonians and look at verses 2 and 3. We kind of get an idea of why Paul is writing these epistles. It says here in verses 2 and 3 of 1 Thessalonians 1, Paul writes, we give thanks to God always for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope. in our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so he commends these believers, these persecuted believers, that they were manifesting the Christian graces, the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love in spite of the difficult circumstances that they were facing. And then if you stay in 1 Thessalonians 1, let me skip down and read briefly verses six and seven, where Paul says, and you became imitators of us, and of the Lord, for you received the word, that is, you accepted the gospel, you received the word, the message of the gospel, in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to the believers in Macedonia. and Achaia. So Paul is writing to these precious brothers and sisters in Christ to commend them and to encourage them as they are faithfully displaying the graces of faith, hope, and love.

But in 2 Thessalonians, Paul, as a follow-up, he also seeks to address some apparent confusion that had arisen in the Thessalonian congregation about how to understand the day of the Lord. The Thessalonian Christians were having confusion and issues with understanding the final day. And so Paul, for example, in 2 Thessalonians addresses that issue particularly in chapter 2, and then if you read on to chapter 3 of 2 Thessalonians, you’ll see that Paul warns these believers against idleness, which apparently had become a problem among some of the believers in that church. Perhaps some of the believers in the Thessalonian church were thinking, well, you know, since Jesus is coming back really, really soon, or perhaps he’s already returned spiritually, so to speak, we don’t have to work, we don’t have to go about our day-to-day life.

So Paul deals with some theological as well as some practical issues in 2 Thessalonians. But in our passage for today, Paul is reminding them of the truth about the final judgment day. And this brings me to our text for today and to the first point. Beloved, we learn here in this passage, as we focus right now on verses five through seven, we learn here that God’s righteous judgment will be fully manifested when the Lord Jesus returns from heaven. God’s righteous judgment will be fully manifested when the Lord Jesus returns from heaven in glory. Paul writes in verse 5, after he has just commended them for their steadfastness and faith in all of the persecutions that they had been enduring, he says in verse 5, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering.

Since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels and so forth. Let’s first of all focus on verse five. Paul mentions that what is evidence of God’s righteous judgment? He says, this is evidence of the righteous judgment of God. Well, we refer to what he had said about them in the previous verse. As one commentator puts it, the Thessalonians’ endurance and faith under persecution constitute evidence of the righteous judgment of God. Since God is granting them the grace to endure, He is clearly on their side and is working to make them worthy for entrance into the kingdom of God. Now, what is this kingdom of God that Paul refers to? the phraseology, the terminology of the kingdom of God is not used very often in Paul’s writings.

Paul tends to use terms like salvation and so forth to refer to this spiritual reality. But what is the kingdom of God? When he says that God is making them worthy of the kingdom of God, for which they are also suffering, the kingdom of God in what sense? See, God’s kingdom is his reign of grace and salvation that has been brought near in the person and work of Christ. And there are already and not yet aspects to the kingdom of God. There’s a sense in which the kingdom of God is already here. And we who are believers in Christ, who have received Christ as Lord and Savior, we are already in the kingdom, at least in principle, because Christ the King has come to reign over us. We are participants in his reign of grace and salvation through our faith in him.

But there’s also an ultimate consummate sense of the kingdom of God, and that is the sense from the context that Paul seems to be speaking of it here. From the context of this passage, it is clear that Paul has in mind the kingdom of God in its final consummated expression. In other words, the eternal kingdom of the new heavens and the new earth that Christ will usher in at his second advent when he returns in glory. Now, this terminology here that Paul uses about God making them or working in them so that they might be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, what does Paul mean by that? He says, this is evidence of the righteous judgment of God that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering.

What are we to make of Paul’s language here, his language of being considered worthy of the kingdom of God? Perhaps some of you are thinking right now, wait a minute, pastor, isn’t it the case that apart from Christ, we are unworthy of the least of God’s mercies, that we are unworthy sinners? And certainly that is true. The Bible makes that very clear. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. None of us is worthy of the kingdom in and of himself or herself. So what are we to make of this language that Paul uses here? Is Paul here intending to teach that we can somehow become worthy in ourselves of entering into the heavenly kingdom? Is he teaching a message of works righteousness as if we could gain heaven by our own good works or our own merits or our own worthiness?

Well, beloved, if that’s what Paul is saying here, then he is contradicting himself. He would be contradicting what he clearly teaches elsewhere in his letters about the fact that we are justified, we sinners are justified and saved, not by our own good works or our own merits or our own worthiness, but by God’s grace alone, through God-given faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ alone and apart from works of the law. So friends, here we must avoid reading into Paul’s language what he never intended to teach. Dear ones, we misread and misinterpret Paul’s language here if we imagine that he is promoting a works-based merit theology or if we think that he is somehow teaching that we can somehow earn a place in God’s kingdom by our own good works or by our religious performance.

Instead, the language, it’s interesting to note that the language that Paul is using here is the language of being counted or being considered worthy of the kingdom of God. And again, what is Paul commending these believers for? What is he commending the Thessalonian church for? Well, he is commending them for their faith. The believers at Thessalonica persevered in clinging to Christ and Christ alone with an enduring saving faith and they clung to Christ, they continued to trust in Christ in spite of great pressure from their persecutors to reject and to disown him. It was because of their living personal faith in Christ, a faith which itself is a sovereignly bestowed gift of God. It is because of that faith in Christ, Christ who himself is the worthy one, that they were counted or considered worthy in him.

And likewise, friends, we show ourselves to be worthy as we continue to cling to Christ and Christ alone as our worthiness and salvation. We’re not worthy in ourselves, we’re worthy in Him. We are not worthy by works or merit, we are worthy by faith, not merit or works. by grace because of Christ. So it is only those who cling to Christ with an enduring saving faith who are counted worthy to enter the kingdom of God. For only such faith unites us to Christ and his worthiness. Let me ask you, dear listener, have you trusted in Christ for your salvation? Are you clinging to him and him alone as your worthiness? Christ is the Savior of sinners, the only God-appointed Savior for sinners. He is the only way to the Father. And Jesus Christ died for sinners just like you and me.

He paid the penalty for sin. He rose from the dead so that whoever, by sovereign grace, believes in Him and Him alone might not perish but have everlasting life. Receive and rest upon Christ today as your Lord and Savior, and you, by the grace of God, will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God because of Christ’s worthiness and mercy alone. And then Paul goes on to say, He says that they are suffering for the kingdom of God and God is working to grant that they would be counted or considered worthy of the kingdom of God. And then he fleshes this out. He explains it in the next few verses. He says, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you. and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels.

God will manifest his righteousness and his justice by bringing affliction upon those who impenitently afflict God’s people. What Paul is speaking of here, especially in verse six, but also verse seven, is what is sometimes called retributive justice, retribution. It’s the lex talionis, the eye for an eye. that those who are guilty of persecuting and afflicting God’s people, if they do not repent of that wickedness, they themselves will receive affliction for the affliction that they have inflicted upon the people of God. But on the other hand, those among Christ’s sheep, those among God’s people who have suffered affliction at the hands of the wicked, will instead at the coming of Christ will be granted relief. Verse 7, Christ will come to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us. I mean, Paul and his companions In his apostolic ministry, Paul experienced much in the way of affliction and persecution as he sought to faithfully fulfill his calling and mission as an apostle of Jesus Christ.

And so, there will be justice, ultimate justice, the righting of wrongs. on that final day when Jesus returns. But some would look at this and say, well, Paul must be teaching here that these persecuted believers are made worthy of the kingdom of God and somehow are counted worthy of the kingdom of God through the virtue of suffering affliction for the cause of Christ. And in response to that kind of thinking, the Bible-believing Lutheran commentator Richard Lenski responds as follows. He writes, the idea that their suffering affliction merits this reward is the very opposite of all that the scripture teaches and of the justice here set forth. For the acts of afflicting God’s people are only public evidences of ungodliness and unbelief. In other words, of the rejection of God in Christ. The reason that the persecutors of the church persecute the church is because they are impenitent and unbelieving.

Then he goes on to say, while the perseverance under such affliction belongs as public evidence of faith in God and Christ, in the grace and salvation that they bestow. So again, we must banish, as we read this language of Paul, we must banish from our thoughts all notions of merit theology or works righteousness. To interpret this language in that way is to read into this passage, to do eisegesis, rather than to take out of the passage that which is there. And when is all of this perfect justice, this righting of all wrongs, this retributive justice, when is it going to be brought to bear? Are we to expect that it will happen this side of the return of Christ? Are we to expect perfect justice to be done in this present age? Certainly we should pray for and hope for a greater expression of justice and righteousness in society.

Certainly we should always be concerned about that. But can you put your hope in finding ultimate justice and ultimate peace in this present age? The answer is no. When will this occur? Look again at verse 7. He will grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us. When? When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven. with his mighty angels. That’s the parousia, that is the apocalypse, that is the return of Christ in glory at the end of this age. That is when perfect relief will come to God’s suffering children, and that is when perfect justice and vengeance will be done in the case of those who have persisted in their impenitence and unbelief. And so what do we learn from this passage so far? Well, we learn, first of all, that God is a righteous judge and his righteousness will be vindicated in the end.

It will be vindicated through the punishment of the unrepentant wicked, the vengeance of the Lord being poured out upon them. It will also be vindicated in that God will vindicate his suffering believing people, granting them relief and rest in the end. We also learn here too, as I’ve already mentioned, that God’s righteous judgment will be fully manifested when Jesus our Lord returns in glory. And that is where we ought to place our ultimate hope and trust in Christ, our coming king, the coming judge. We who are in him, we who are believers in Christ, we’ve already been judged and justified in Him. So we need not fear that final day. For that final day, when Jesus returns in glory and judges His people, that will be a judgment of vindication, not a judgment of condemnation.

But in the case of those who refuse to believe and repent, it will be a day of doom, a day of vengeance. Are you ready for His return, dear listener? You’re only ready for the return of Christ and he could return at any time. You’re only ready if you are in him, if you’re trusting in him. May God in his sovereign grace grant that you and I may trust in Christ and Christ alone and be ready for his revealing from heaven. We note here also in our passage as we consider verses eight through 10 and move on in our passage, we see that there are two outcomes of the final judgment that Paul expects and that we ought to expect. The one is the outcome of destruction, the other is an outcome of glory. The two outcomes of the final judgment are either destruction or glory.

Again, look at verses eight through 10. We read of Christ’s being revealed from heaven in His parousia, His second advent, and He will be revealed in flaming fire. Remember, the Bible says our God is a consuming fire. He is a God of infinite white-hot holiness. He is the God whose praise, as we sang earlier in the service, as we sang that wonderful hymn, holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty. He is a God of infinite white-hot holiness. He is a consuming fire. And Jesus, when he returns, will return in that theophanic glory fire, in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel. We learn here that when Jesus returns in glory, there will be vengeance and eternal destruction for those who reject God and refuse the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

But as I already said, there will be blessed relief as well as glory and awe-filled marveling for those who have believed. But in verse eight, we read of this vengeance being poured out on two categories of people. It says, on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Now, some have suggested that Paul is intentionally here referring to two distinct categories of people. By the category of those who do not know God, those who hold this interpretation would say that, well, that refers to the Gentile pagans, those who’ve never heard the gospel, never seen a Bible, never heard the gospel, have not been confronted with the gospel of Jesus Christ, so that would be the Gentile pagans on the one hand, with those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, well, that would be pagans as well as Jews who hear the gospel but refuse to believe in the gospel.

Well, that’s one possible way of understanding this passage, but we need to understand that this passage could be translated as follows, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God, even on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. In other words, Paul may be seeking to clarify what he means by those who do not know God. Those who do not know God are those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now Paul addresses the issue of the judgment of those Gentiles who have never been exposed to special revelation. He addresses that in passages like Romans 1 and Romans 2. But here he seems to have in view those who have heard about God and know God in the sense of knowing about him, but they ignore him.

They do not know him in the sense that they reject him. They ignore him, and they show that they ignore him by not obeying the gospel call, by not repenting and believing in Christ. But again, however we are to understand this passage, clearly unbelievers are in view, those who persist in their sin and unbelief. They will experience, they will have inflicted upon them vengeance. And then he explains further in verse 9 what they will face. It says in verse 9, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. Now, some have latched onto this terminology of eternal destruction and have said, aha, see, there’s not going to be an eternal hell. There’s not going to be everlasting punishment. They’re simply going to be annihilated.

But is that what Paul means when he talks about eternal destruction? Is he referring to annihilation? Well, no. Again, if Paul were teaching that, he would be contradicting what is clearly taught elsewhere in Scripture and what Paul himself, I believe, clearly teaches. This is not eternal destruction in the sense of annihilation, but in the sense of utter and complete ruin. It is eternal destruction. Annihilation is not an eternal thing. It happens just once. Its effects go on for eternity, but if you’re annihilated, that’s it. There’s no eternal punishment or destruction in that. But notice it is an eternal destruction that is described as being away from the presence of the Lord. which indicates that those who suffer this destruction will still be conscious and aware, but they will be destroyed away from the presence of the Lord, meaning His comfortable, loving presence.

Of course, Jesus our Lord is present everywhere because He is God in His divine nature. God is present even in hell. So when we say that hell is separation from God, it doesn’t mean that God is absolutely absent from hell. It means that God is absent in his love and mercy. God is very present in hell in his holy wrath and justice and indignation. And so, this is not referring to annihilation, but utter and complete ruin. Just a couple passages to confirm this teaching, and it is a difficult teaching, I acknowledge. But this is what the Bible teaches. God is so infinitely holy, and sin is so horribly awful. that our sin merits eternal destruction, eternal punishment, away from the gracious, loving presence of the Lord. This is confirmed by that passage that I read earlier in the service from Matthew 25.

In Matthew 25, verse 46, the Lord Jesus says, and these, meaning these wicked that he speaks of on that Judgment Day scene, these will go away into eternal punishment Ionos, eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. The word for eternal in front of punishment and life, it’s the same word in the Greek. If eternal life is never ending, Likewise will the punishment, eternal punishment be never ending. And then we think of what we consider what is written in Revelation chapter 14 verse 11, Revelation chapter 14 verse 11, where it says, Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand, and so forth. And this angel will come. And I’m sorry, verse 11, I skipped ahead down to verse 14.

Verse 11 says, and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name. But in contrast to the doom and the fate of those who reject Christ and refuse to obey the gospel call to repentance and faith, in contrast to that, Paul has comforting words to the Thessalonian believers and to all believers, especially those who face affliction for their faith in Jesus Christ. For he says that this will happen, this vengeance will come, when he, when Jesus comes on that day to be what? To be glorified in his saints, his set-apart ones, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. In other words, including you, because you believed our testimony.

You heard the gospel from our lips, you believed the testimony, and therefore, you too, Thessalonian believers, you too, will be glorified. He will be glorified in you, and you will marvel at him. Oh, brothers and sisters in Christ, think about it. When Jesus returns in glory, we will see our Savior face to face. We will see face to face the one who stretched out his arms upon the hardwood of the cross to redeem us, to embrace us, to forgive us, to justify, adopt, sanctify, and glorify us. And what a wonderful sight that will be as we will marvel at our Lord and His amazing grace and glory and goodness to us. And so for the saints, for those who know Christ as their Lord and Savior, this future at the return of Christ will be a glorious future.

And that is your future, brother, sister in Christ. If you are trusting Him for your salvation, that is the future that awaits you. Well, as we close our time in the Word today, let me leave you with a few points of application here. Beloved, First of all, let those who persecute Christ’s church and those who reject the gospel take warning and repent, lest they face the holy, just, retributive justice of Christ. Let all who do not know Christ flee to Jesus from the wrath to come while the day of grace yet remains. May God in his sovereign mercy and grace give you the grace to turn to Christ and trust in him as your very own Lord and Savior. But let those among God’s people who are afflicted by the wicked take heart. God will relieve, deliver, and vindicate them in the end.

And if you are afflicted or distressed or persecuted for your faith, you need not fret because of evildoers. You need not get frustrated. Commit your soul to a faithful creator. He will one day deliver, relieve, and vindicate you. And since Christ will one day come from the Father’s hand to judge the living and the dead as we confess in the Apostles’ Creed, let us, brothers and sisters, strive by the grace of God to walk worthy of His calling. That is to say, to walk by faith, not by sight. the closing section of this chapter. This is what Paul says is his wish for the Thessalonians. He says, Notice God is the one who makes you worthy. You’re not worthy in yourself. It’s by grace that our God will make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power.

Why? Verse 12, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. May God be glorified in you. as we are built up in him. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, our sovereign and eternal God, we thank you that Christ our Savior will one day return again, that he will come from your right hand to judge the living and the dead. And Lord Jesus, we know that you are a perfect, holy, righteous, just judge. We thank you, Heavenly Father, that we have been judged and justified in union with Christ, and we pray that you would give us the grace to bear faithful testimony to Christ, the worthy one. For it is in his name that we pray, and all of God’s people said, amen.

As we respond to The word that we’ve heard, let’s rise and we’ll sing as our closing hymn, number 480, I Have No Other Comfort, 480.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

March 17, 2024
Foundations of Faith: Seated at God’s Right Hand

About this sermon

1. Believer, because you have been spiritually raised with Christ, seek heavenly things (v. 1).
2. Christian, because you are united to Christ, set your minds on eternal and heavenly realities (v. 2).
3. Believer, consider your incentives for seeking and setting your mind on things above (vv. 3-4).

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Sermon transcript

Well dear friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. We continue today our sermon series on the foundations of faith. Today we consider that statement in the Apostles’ Creed that Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. The Apostles’ Creed is guiding our study of these things. And my sermon text today is a portion of Scripture that mentions the fact that Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Colossians 3, verses 1-4, and I hope in my sermon today to show you that these affirmations of our faith, these foundational affirmations of our faith actually have many practical implications for our daily Christian lives and our discipleship to the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m going to begin reading at chapter 2, verse 20, and read through chapter 3, verse 4.

Colossians 3 beginning at verse 20. You’ll find this on page 1169 in your Pew Bible. Once again, hear God’s holy word beginning in chapter 2 verse 20. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God to bless the preaching of His Word. Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, by the power of Your Spirit, we would ask that You would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from Your Word. And we pray that You would feed our souls through the Word, that You would implant Your Word within our souls, that You might draw forth from us praise and worship and obedience. Be with us now and bless the preaching of your word. Jesus, be present by your spirit in the proclamation of your word this day and set a guard over my lips that I might speak only that which is faithful in your sight.

We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. Again, the title of my sermon today, brothers and sisters, is Foundations of Faith Seated at God’s Right Hand. And there are a number of key words that the children can be listening for to follow along in my sermon today that are listed in your sermon outline. I do wanna give credit where credit is due. The outline for the main points of my sermon today is drawn from Dr. Curtis Vaughn’s commentary on Colossians. Well, dear ones, what is involved in living a faithful Christian life? And how can we, we who continue to wrestle with sin, the sin that remains in our hearts during this present life, how can we ever hope to live out the life of discipleship to which Jesus our Lord has called us?

Well, friends, in our passage for this Lord’s Day morning, Saint Paul the Apostle begins a section in this letter to the Church of Colossae in which he gives more focused attention to matters having to do with daily Christian living. But as Paul does so, the Spirit of God through the Apostle Paul reminds us that the ability and the incentives to live out our Christian lives in this world are rooted in our identity as those who have been spiritually united to the Lord Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. Indeed, friends, not only has our Savior Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, not only has He risen from the dead for our justification and ascended into heaven, for his session at the right hand of the Father. As Paul points out in verse one of our passage, our risen Lord Jesus Christ is now, at this very moment, seated at the right hand of God.

We’ll consider the significance of that and what that means in a little bit. But as the historic Church confesses in the 2nd Credo, the 2nd, I believe, section of the Apostles’ Creed, Jesus Christ, our Lord God’s only begotten Son, sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. The implications of Christ’s session, as the theologians put it, His sitting at the right hand of God the Father, the implications are multiple. There are many implications of Christ’s sitting at the Father’s right hand, but one implication, beloved, is that we believers are seated with Him. We are seated with Him in the heavenly realms, spiritually speaking. We are seated with our Savior, at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. You see, because of our union with Christ in His death, His resurrection, and His session at the Father’s right hand, our life is now, as Paul says in verse 3, our life is hidden with Christ in God.

And friends, because our lives are hidden with Christ in God, when Christ returns to this earth in glory from the Father’s right hand, the life that we now share in Christ, a life which is now hidden in the invisible heavenly realm, that life, beloved, will be openly revealed for all mankind to see, as we’re told in verse four. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Isn’t that a marvelous thought? Isn’t that a marvelous hope, beloved, that we have? Now this section of Paul’s letter to the Colossians contains many imperatives. As if you keep reading on in chapter three, you’ll see those imperatives, those commands. But one of the things we learn from our passage for today, beloved, is that the imperatives, the commands for Christian living that Paul lays before his readers in this section of Colossians, are rooted in and they flow out of the indicatives of our position, our standing in Christ.

Christ being the risen Lord who is now seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. And as we will consider the right hand of God the Father Almighty, what does that represent? What does that stand for? Well, the right hand of God the Father Almighty stands for the place of highest honor, highest authority, highest power. Christ is seated. in highest honor and glory, power and authority at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Now, what is the relationship of this passage, our passage for this morning, with the preceding section of Paul’s letter to the Colossians? It’s always important to read Bible passages in their broader context. To quote from Dr. Vaughan, he says, the opening verses of chapter three sustain the closest connection with the closing verses of chapter two. There the apostle reminds the Colossians that ascetic regulations are of no real value in restraining indulgence of the flesh.

The only remedy for sinful passions is found in the believer’s experience of union with Christ, a union by virtue of which the Christian dies to sin and to the world’s way of thinking and doing. So that leads me to my first point as we dive into our passage for today, beginning at chapter 3, verse 1. First of all, believer, because you have been spiritually raised with Christ, seek heavenly things. Because, brothers and sisters, we have been not only died with Christ in His death, but have been raised up to newness of life in Him. Because we have been spiritually raised with Christ, we are to seek the things above, seek heavenly things. As it says in verse 1, if then you have been raised with Christ, or as some translations translate it, since then you have been raised with Christ.

I don’t believe that Paul is trying to cast any doubt upon the fact that these believers that he’s writing to have been raised up with Christ. So since then you have been raised with Christ. Seek, here’s the imperative, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. The indicative is that you, because of your union with Christ, have been spiritually raised up with Christ. Therefore, the imperative is, seek the things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. Now, being raised with Christ, this is the counterpart of dying with Christ, spiritually speaking. And Paul has already addressed the matter of the fact that we believers, because of our union with Christ, have died with him in his death. Go back, for example, to chapter 2, and let’s look briefly at verses 11 and 12.

Paul says in those verses, he says, in him, in Christ, you also, you were circumcised. Now let me pause there. In Colossians, Paul is addressing a congregation of mostly Gentile Christians. And he said they’re uncircumcised. They are viewed by the Jewish community as, oh, those are the Gentiles. They’re the uncircumcised. They don’t have the covenant sign. But Paul says in verse 11, in him, in Christ also, you, you Gentile believers, you were circumcised But then he clarifies what he’s talking about. You were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh, the fallen nature, by the circumcision of Christ, by which he probably means there the death of Christ on the cross, having been what? Having been buried with him in baptism. Baptism being a sign and seal of our union with Christ in his death and resurrection.

Having been buried with him in baptism in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised Him from the dead. We’ve been united to Christ, circumcised in Him, we have died with Him in His death, and been raised up to newness of life in Him. And then also verse 20 of chapter 2, if with Christ you died, spiritually speaking or in terms of spiritual union with Christ, you’ve died to what? You’ve died to the things of the world, to the elemental spirits of the world. to those demonic spirits that control the fallen world system and its thought patterns and its culture and its religious philosophies and so forth. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?

He’s speaking there of regulations of mere human tradition and man-made religion and so forth. Because we have died with Christ, the counterpart to that is that we have been raised up with Christ, as we’re told in verse 1 of our passage for today. And since that is the case, brothers and sisters, since we have been united to Christ in His death and His resurrection, what are we to do? Seek the things that are above. But what does that mean? What does it mean to seek the things that are above? Does that mean that we should walk around all the time with our head in the clouds, always thinking about heaven and spiritual things? Does that mean that we neglect the things of this earth? Well, no, friends. Again, to quote from Dr. Vaughan, he says, that one’s attitudes, ambitions, and whole outlook on life are molded by Christ’s relation to the believer, and that one’s allegiance to him takes precedence over all earthly allegiances.

The verb is in the present imperative, suggesting a continuing action. In other words, don’t just seek the things above once, but keep on seeking the things that are above. So it means a A reorientation in our thought life, that we live our lives with Christ and heavenly things at the center. And when he talks about seeking the things that are above, he says where Christ is. where Christ as the God-man, as the Word made flesh, the Son of God incarnate, where He presently is, seated at the right hand of God. Now again, literally speaking, God is a spirit. He doesn’t literally have a right or left hand. So what does Paul mean when he talks about being seated, Christ being seated at the right hand of God? Well, this is obviously a very familiar teaching in the New Testament.

If you’re familiar with the New Testament scriptures, you know that the apostles and the writers of the other writers, the apostolic writers of the New Testament, often mention Christ being seated in his present state at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Well, what does that mean? As Dr. Donald Guthrie points out, the picture of Christ being, quote, seated at the right hand of God the Father is, quote, an idea which is borrowed from the imagery of enthronement, which comes from Psalm 110, verse one. It speaks of the glory and triumph of Christ. See, friends, when the New Testament says that Christ is seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, the meaning is that Christ, as the risen Son of God incarnate, as the Theanthropos, the God-man, has been raised to the place of highest honor and privilege, authority and power.

Jesus, our incarnate Lord, has been enthroned on high as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. In these words, beloved, Paul is saying essentially the same thing that our Lord Jesus taught when Jesus told us to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Of course, again, as I already mentioned, this does not mean that we should cloister ourselves up in a monastery separate from everyday life or the everyday world, nor does it mean that we shouldn’t be involved in the affairs of daily life in this world. There is an important and significant role that we play as believers in this present age and in terms of this present life. But what Paul is saying here, what he does mean is that our highest interests, our highest aspirations, our highest goals in life should be centered on Jesus Christ and on eternal things, the things that are permanent, the things that matter the most.

I think our catechism, which I often refer to, puts it well. And you know the answer to this question. What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to be happy, Man’s chief end is to pursue his career as the ultimate end. No, man’s chief end, you know it. Man’s chief end is to glorify God. It doesn’t stop there. And what? To enjoy Him forever. God’s not a cosmic killjoy. He creates us to delight in Him. And that’s what worship should be all about. I mean, yes, at one level, gathering for worship on the Lord’s Day, it is a duty. We are commanded not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. But we should want to be here because we delight in our heavenly Father and his amazing love for us in Jesus Christ.

We delight in hearing the gospel. I think of that, one of my favorite hymns is that hymn that says, I love to tell the story, the old, old story of Jesus and his love. If Christ is your Lord and Savior, if you have been born again by the Holy Spirit, You can’t get enough of Jesus. You can’t get enough of the gospel. You wanna hear it over and over again. You delight in it. This is the thing, because we are united to Christ in his death and resurrection, and because we are seated with Christ our Savior in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, we are to seek the heavenly and eternal things. We are to delight in them. We are to aspire to them as our highest end and goal. They are to be our chief, not our only, but our chief preoccupation, not earthly things.

And so, dear listener, let me ask you, is this true of you? Are you seeking those things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty? But how do we go about seeking and setting our hearts on heavenly things? And let’s be honest, none of us of values and aspires to and delights in heavenly things as we ought to because we’re still sinners, we still struggle with sin. And our sin often drags us down and gets our focus and our preoccupation on earthly things, temporal things, things that may be important and may matter but don’t ultimately matter or are not of ultimate importance. How is it that we then go about seeking and setting our hearts on heavenly things? Well, that brings us to the closely related imperative of verse two and to my next main point.

Consider next, Christian, because you are united to Christ, set your mind on eternal and heavenly realities. Verse two, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Because we are united to Christ, Let us set our minds on eternal and heavenly things. Now this verse, as I mentioned, verse two is very similar to verse one. And oftentimes the Bible uses repetition to drive a point home. And that’s what Paul seems to be doing here. He’s driving this point home. He’s saying, this is really important. You need to get my drift here. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. As Donald Guthrie puts it, This verse emphasizes even more vividly the mental reorientation which new life in Christ necessitates. And as Lightfoot comments, you must not only seek heaven, you must also think heaven.

Are you thinking heaven? Is that a chief delight and preoccupation in your life, a chief priority in your life? But again, what exactly does it mean to set your mind on things above as it is translated in the NIV? Dr. Vaughn says, to set the mind on, literally to think on things above, has among other connotations that of giving such things a large place in one’s thought life, seeing to it that the bent of the inner nature, the governing tendency of thought and will is toward God. Paul expected Christians to maintain normal relationships in this world, yes. The things of this earth are of significance. They’re important. It’s important. You’ve got to put food on your table. You’ve got to fulfill your daily vocation, your calling. You’ve got to pay your taxes. OK, I know that’s not a popular one, but we have duties and responsibilities.

You’ve got to love your wife or your husband. You’ve got to raise your children and give them a good education and provide for them and protect them and so forth. And so yes, as Vaughn says, Paul expected Christians to maintain normal relationships in this world. But as Barclay explains, there will be this difference. From now on, the Christian will see everything in the light and against the background of eternity. He will no longer live as if the world was all that mattered. He will see this world against the background of the large world of eternity. What are you gonna be doing in 500 years from now? You say, I’m not gonna be around. Well, if you’re a believer, you know what you’ll be doing? Worshiping your Savior. The things, you know what? You can prepare for the day that you pass away, you can prepare a huge monument for yourself, that in 50, 60, 100 years, no one’s gonna remember you.

But if you are in Christ, you belong to eternity. You have an eternal hope, firm and certain and secure. We need to live with a heavenly perspective. Now some would say, you know, you Christians, you’re just too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good. But let me suggest to you, you read church history, you read the annals of human history, who are the ones in the church who have done the most earthly good? I would suggest to you that in most cases, it is those who are the most heavenly minded because they have their priorities straight. They know it’s, think about, for example, Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer. Think about how much change came into this world through Dr. Luther’s ministry of the gospel. It’s my understanding, if I’m remembering correctly, Luther would spend hours a day on his knees in prayer.

I think something like four or five hours a day in prayer. And I’m not suggesting that you have to spend four or five hours a day in prayer. But the point is, he was extremely heavenly minded. But think about how much earthly good, how much fruit that bore earthly good that came out of his life. So away with this silly saying, oh, you’re too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good. The only way to be of earthly good is to be heavenly minded in the biblical sense of that term. Dear listener, are you living your life with this eternal perspective? Are you setting your mind, reorienting your life on things above? Are you preoccupied with the ultimate things, the things that matter most in the long run, the things of eternity? Or is your mind and focus stuck and fixated on the things of this earth?

Even if those things are good things, significant things in themselves, but are you preoccupied, obsessed with them? How is it, you say, that I can be heavenly minded? How can I set my mind on things above? Well, let me suggest that one thing you can do, brother, sister in Christ, is continue doing what you’re doing. I would exhort you to the diligent use of the means of grace. Be in the word. Read your Bibles. Sit under the faithful preaching and teaching of the Word. Make that a regular, routine part of your life. Be often in prayer. Talk about the things of the Lord with your family. If you have family devotions, sing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs together as a family and as an individual to the Lord. Sing praises to God. Be in the Word.

Read good theological books. Use the means of grace, the Word, the sacraments and prayer. Use them diligently and ask the Holy Spirit to bless your use of those means to fix your eyes, the eyes of your faith on heavenly things. And that brings me to my final point. Believer, consider your incentives for seeking and setting your mind on the things above. Consider our incentives for seeking and setting our minds on the things above. Well, Paul lays these before us in verses three and four. He’s called his readers and the Holy Spirit through Paul calls us to set our minds on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, the place of power, authority, dominion, and so forth. And then he reminds us, he says, for you have died. Now, he’s not speaking there of physical death, obviously, but he’s speaking of you have died with respect to the kingdom of Satan and the fallen world system.

You’re no longer part of that system. You’ve been transferred, you’ve been delivered from the kingdom of darkness and have been transferred by sovereign grace into the kingdom of God’s beloved son. You belong to him now. You have died and your life Your true life is what? And I love this phraseology. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. You and I live the hidden life. That means that because your life and mine, brothers and sisters, are hidden with Christ in God, Satan can’t touch you. Oh yeah, Satan can oppress you and you can be persecuted, you can be martyred for your faith, and you and I are not exempt from the ordinary challenges and struggles of life in a fallen world. We were talking in the morning instruction class this morning about God’s common grace, that grace by which he sustains the world and causes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust.

Well, as believers, we are subject to the common curse. You know, believers get sick too. Believers perished on 9-11 in the Twin Towers, not just unbelievers. Believers are subject to the pains and the sorrows of this present world. But our lives are hid with Christ in God. We are safe, ultimately. We are secure in the ultimate sense. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. That is our true and ultimate identity. What this teaches us, beloved, is that by the amazing grace of God, you and I have been united with Christ in his death and resurrection, as we’re told in verse three. Because of your spiritual and saving union with Christ, your life is hidden and secure with Christ in God. You have received, brothers and sisters, all of the benefits of his saving grace, and you have received all fullness, all fullness of grace and salvation in him.

And this is why worship is a delight and a joy. When you come to worship with the attitude that, oh, I guess I gotta go to church, you know, all that stuff. Guess I gotta read my Bible. Guess I gotta pray. It’s a duty. But when you come, with the idea that my life is hidden with Christ in God. I belong to Him. I’m united to Him. I’m His blood-bought child. You come with joy and delight in the things of the Lord. You have received all of the benefits, believers. You have received all of the benefits of His saving grace, and you have received all fullness of life and salvation in Him. What greater incentive to live out in your day-to-day life your identity in Christ by seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness, and by living in such a godly and Christ-centered manner that others will see that you march to the beat of a different drummer.

You don’t march to the beat of the drum set by the world or its standards or priorities. You have a different set of priorities from above. Remember too, as an incentive to live a Christ-centered life, seeking and setting your minds on things above, the greatest incentive I think is given to us in verse four. Brothers and sisters, you and I will appear with Christ when he returns in glory. Verse four, when Christ who is your life, our life is, Christ is our life. We have eternal life in Him, He is our life. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Think about it. Think about it. You’re headed for glory. When Jesus returns in glory, as the Word of God says He will at the end of this present age, we who are in Him will appear with Him in glory.

His return from the Father’s right hand to this earth will be our public vindication. Since we are destined for such a glorious and such a noble future, beloved, should we not strive to live our lives in this present age in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called? Should not our lives in this present world have a heavenly quality about them? After all, as Christ Himself is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, we believers are seated with Him in the heavenly realms because of our union with Christ. Our lives are hidden with Christ in God and therefore our lives in this present age ought to have a heavenly quality about them. and heavenward focus to them as we seek the things that are above. May God give us the grace out of gratitude for God’s amazing gift of salvation.

May God give us the grace to set our minds on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father. And may we seek those things that are above. Amen, let us pray. Heavenly Father, We would pray, Lord, that by your Spirit you would take these truths and drive them home to our hearts. I pray especially if there are any who are here today or any who are watching over the internet who have not had their lives hidden with you, oh God, with you, oh Christ in God. If there are any who have not put their faith and trust in you as their Lord and Savior, we pray that by your spirit you would draw them with the cords of love that they might turn to Christ in faith and repentance even this day.

And Heavenly Father, we would pray that you would give us the grace to be a people who are focused on the things that matter most. And may we live our lives in the light of eternity. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. So we close our time in worship today. Let’s rise and we’ll sing number 281, Rejoice, the Lord is King. Rejoice, the Lord is King.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

March 3, 2024