Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Series: Foundations of Faith

  • Foundations of Faith: Maker of Heaven and Earth

    Foundations of Faith: Maker of Heaven and Earth

    About this sermon

    The focus of these verses is not primarily on the material universe but on it’s function in an ordered system
    read Genesis 1:14-19

    1. The meaning of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth (v. 1).
    2. The unbounded chaos of earth’s original condition of being “without form and void” (v. 2).
    3. Understand the Spirit of God as God’s creative power which brings order out of chaos (v. 2b).

    More sermons from Genesis · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    standing, dear friends, for the reading of God’s Word. We return today to the Foundations of Faith sermon series, which is being guided by the Apostles’ Creed. And this morning we consider Foundations of Faith God as the maker of heaven and earth. And my sermon text today is Genesis chapter one, verses one and two. So the very opening verses of your Bible, please turn to Genesis one and hear the word of God as I read verses one and two. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Let us pray. Almighty God, Heavenly Father, We thank you that by your grace you have brought order out of the chaos of our sins through Jesus Christ.

    And we thank you that you have given us your word. It is a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path, a guide to our way. We ask that by your spirit you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word. We pray that by your spirit you would illuminate us and feed our souls through the word today and grant unto me, your unworthy servant, the grace to declare and speak forth your word with clarity and power for your glory and the building up of your saints. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. As I mentioned, the title of my sermon this morning is Foundations of Faith, Maker of Heaven and Earth. And if you’re following along in your sermon outline, again, I would direct your attention to a number of words that the children can be listening for.

    And even if you choose a number of these words to count the number of times that I say them in my sermon, if you find that to be helpful, I’d encourage you to do that. Well, dear ones, this morning we return to our Foundations of Faith sermon series. This is a Bible-based series which is being guided by that classic ecumenical creed of the historic Christian church, which is known to us today as the Apostles’ Creed. It is one of the briefest, most succinct of the creeds, but it is a pact full of important truth that we confess as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. While this is inevitably a more topical series, it is my intention to ground every truth, every credo that we consider throughout this series in a faithful exposition of relevant passages from the Word of God, the Bible.

    Now, some of you may recall that in introducing this series a number of weeks ago, I preached a sermon on the biblical basis for using creeds and confessions. And so far in this series, we have considered Bible truths from the first credo, or I believe, or statement of belief found in the Apostles’ Creed, the opening statement which says, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Now from that first credo, we have so far considered the foundational truth of the existence of the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the blessed Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who is revealed to us in the pages of God’s Word, the Bible. We also considered a brief overview of the central and important doctrine of the Holy Trinity and its vital significance to our holy Christian faith.

    And we’ve also considered the wonderful truth of God as the loving Heavenly Father of His believing people in Christ. Well, today, as we return to this sermon series, we consider another foundational truth of this opening statement of the Creed, namely, the truth that God is the Maker of Heaven In other words, we consider today the foundational truth of God as the almighty creator of the universe and we consider some of the important implications of that truth for our lives as individual Christians and also for our life together as the church. And what better place to turn to in the word of God to consider this important doctrine of creation, this doctrine of God as creator, than the creation account in the book of Genesis. And so this morning, friends, we return to the opening verses of Genesis chapter one.

    So let’s dive in to our text for today. And the first thing I would have us to consider from verse one, and this is the first point in your sermon outline, beloved, let us consider the meaning of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth. Let’s consider the meaning of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth. Verse one says, in the beginning, God, let me pause there. The Hebrew word that is translated there as God is the word Elohim. It’s a plural of majesty. This is the more generic name for God in the Bible. The name Yahweh, or sometimes it’s transliterated incorrectly, in my opinion, as Jehovah, is the covenant name for God. Yahweh has in view God as the covenant-making, covenant-keeping, redeemer God of Israel. But the term Elohim has in view God as the omnipotent, sovereign creator of heaven and earth.

    And that is the name of God that is being used here. In the beginning Elohim, God created the heavens and the earth. What does that mean? Why this terminology of the heavens and the earth? Now, some of you may be thinking to yourselves, okay, Pastor Jeff, this is really basic, isn’t it? It means God created the heavens and the earth, right? and certainly he did. But it’s important to understand the terminology that the inspired author of this Genesis account, whom I believe to be Moses, I believe Moses the prophet either composed this account of creation or received it as divine revelation, perhaps from the patriarchs, but whatever the case may be, Moses here uses the heavens and the earth. What does that figure of speech represent? Well, this is a figure of speech known as a merism.

    A merism is a figure of speech which pairs together opposite terms, in this case the terms heavens and earth, and these opposite terms are paired together to express totality. So in other words, when it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, this merism, the heavens and the earth, means everything. God created everything. There is not anything that exists that God did not create. To use our contemporary lingo, the heavens and the earth is basically a Hebrew way of saying the universe and everything in it. Now friends, I believe our. Our Shorter Catechism, which we love, our Shorter Catechism offers a biblically grounded, biblically-based definition of the doctrine of creation and its answer to question number nine. I’m sure some of you know the answer by heart. The question is, what is the work of creation?

    The Bible-based answer to that question is the work of creation is God’s making all things of nothing by the word of his power in the space of six days and all very good. Now there’s a lot to that catechism question and answer, but the central Bible truth that the Westminster divines express in that catechism answer is what the theologians refer to as creation ex nihilo. And those of you who know your Latin know that ex nihilo means what? out of nothing, creation out of nothing. In the beginning God created, meaning created out of nothing, the heavens and the earth. Now think about that for a moment. We are God’s image bearers. The Bible says that God created us in his image and because we were created in the image of the creator, we have creative capacity.

    And so we sang that beautiful hymn earlier in the service, God All Nature Sings Thy Glory. And in one of the verses it says, music, art, the fruitful garden, all the labors of His hands. All of these things God has called us to. Why is it that we have the capacity to create music and beautiful works of art and literature and so forth. It’s because we have been created in the divine image, in the image of God who himself is the creator. But there’s a difference between God’s creative work in the beginning and our creative work. Let’s say that you’re a master painter and you’re gonna make one of your masterpieces, you’re gonna paint a new masterpiece. When you set about to create, to paint your masterpiece, do you simply conceive of it in your mind and then speak it into existence and say, let there be this masterpiece that I have conceptualized in my mind?

    No. What you need to do is you need to find a canvas and you need to have paintbrushes and paints and so forth. In other words, you depend on the existence of preexistence stuff in order to make your masterpiece. Same thing if you’re a sculptor. You need that block of stone and a hammer and a chisel in order to sculpt your masterpiece. But God is different, especially when it comes to the original creation ex nihilo out of nothing. You see, God did not depend on pre-existent stuff in order to form the universe. The Bible assumes throughout, and our theologians have correctly taught throughout Christian history, that God created, in the very beginning, God simply spoke the word. His divine, creative, supernatural word and all things came into being out of nothing. This is what we might describe as the biblical Big Bang.

    God spoke, I saw this on a bumper sticker once by the way. Usually it’s not a good idea to get your theology from bumper stickers, but this bumper sticker I think had a good point. It said the Big Bang, God spoke and bang it happened. In the beginning, God spoke the universe into being by his divine word, his Logos, and we know that Logos to be the eternal Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ. So the scriptures, our passage for today, and the theological tradition rooted in the scriptures as expressed in our shorter catechism, affirms creation out of nothing, that God created everything out of nothing. But while the scriptures certainly teach and assume throughout that God brought the material universe as well as the spiritual universe of angels and archangels and so forth into existence, ex nihilo, out of nothing, by a supernatural divine fiat, As I hope to demonstrate in my sermon today, the biblical doctrine of creation involves much more than simply ascribing the material origins of the universe to the creative work of God, although the Bible certainly includes material origins in its doctrine of creation.

    While the Bible clearly teaches and implies the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, creation out of nothing, and while Genesis 1 clearly assumes this truth, Nevertheless, if you read Genesis 1 carefully and sensitively, when you read it carefully, the main focus of the Genesis creation account is on God, our creator’s sovereign assignment of roles, functions, jurisdiction, and purpose to his material creation. The evangelical Old Testament scholar, Dr. John Walton, who is an expert in ancient Near Eastern thought, says that people in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties, but by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system. What are you talking about, Pastor? Well, let’s flesh that out a little bit. The evidence from the ancient world suggests that the ancient peoples, including the ancient Israelites, whom the inspired author of Genesis addresses, shared this same view of existence as their Gentile neighbors.

    See. the question of the origins of the material universe was not really a primary issue for the ancient people of God or for the peoples of the ancient Near East. That was not really front and center in their thoughts, as it is for us today. I mean, we live in a post-Enlightenment scientific age, and so our concerns have to do with material origins. Where did the universe come from? When did it come into being and so forth? But the ancient people of God were more concerned with matters of function, purpose, and order in the universe. The matter of the origins of the material universe was not really on their radar screen as it is on ours today. Instead, what the ancient people of God needed to know was that Elohim, their God, he was the one who assigned function and purpose and order to the world, and he formed the creation for mankind’s benefit and blessing.

    And so the ancient view of existence was somewhat different from what ours might be. One illustration that I found helpful. Let’s say that you visit a junkyard one day and you come across an old car that is out of service, it’s rusting there in the junkyard. Now, does that old junked car still exist? Well, as a material object, yes, it still exists. But in a very real sense, that car no longer functionally exists. It no longer functions as a working vehicle that can navigate the roads as it once did. And you say, well, Pastor, where in the Genesis creation account do we have this emphasis on function and purpose within an ordered system? Well, we could spend a long time in Genesis chapter one. This is such a deep and rich portion of Holy Scripture, but let’s just skip down to verses 14 through 17, which has to do with the creation of the heavenly lights, the sun and the moon and the stars and their God-assigned function and purpose.

    And as I read these verses, I want you to notice the author’s, Moses’ emphasis on the function and purpose of these heavenly bodies, the sun and the moon and the stars. The focus is on function, not so much on material origins as such, although again, the biblical doctrine of creation includes that. Verse 14, this is the fourth creation day, and God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens. Let there be, right? Does it stop there with the material origins of the lights in the heaven? No. God explains why he has created these heavenly bodies. Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be, and notice that these are their functions with respect to man’s life on earth. and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.

    The signs and the seasons, obviously, the heavenly bodies make an impact upon the changing of the seasons and so forth. We judge our seasons and time them according to that, but also for days and for years, which anticipates the sacred days in the Jewish calendar, the Old Covenant calendar. for days and for years, and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to do what? To rule the day. There’s an emphasis on dominion, on rule, which again, focuses on purpose and function. To rule the day, and the lesser light, that would be the moon, which reflects the light of the sun, to rule the night. And the stars, the stars are almost mentioned as an afterthought.

    And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. In other words, the focus is on what is their purpose? Why did God create these great lights? What was their function? What was their purpose? God has created a purposeful universe an orderly universe, and when things are running as God intended them to run, they run for the benefit of his image bearers, mankind, male and female. Now Genesis chapter one, verse one, in terms of the structure of this chapter, the verse one of Genesis chapter one introduces the process of creation, which begins in earnest in verse two, and which is described in the creation days. So that’s the basic structure of this chapter.

    And as I mentioned, Genesis chapter one, verse one proclaims Elohim as the only true God. It shows that God has given our world and thus our lives meaning and purpose. And it shows that the ultimate eschatological goal of creation is God’s eternal Sabbath rest, a rest which we believers share in through Christ. What is the climax of the creation account? Again, the purpose of the creation account, although the creation account is relevant to modern scientific questions, its purpose is not to address the issues that might be front and center in our minds. Its purpose is to show that God created the universe with an eschatological purpose in mind, namely that we would share in his eternal Sabbath rest, as the opening verses of chapter two say. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

    And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. Does that mean that God was pooped, that he was worn out? Boy, that was really hard. What a week, what a work week, right? No, God wasn’t tired, he’s omnipotent. He rested in the sense that he sat back, if you will, and he took delight and pleasure in that which he had made. Verse three, so God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. He set it apart because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. And so with all of this in mind, God created the heavens and the earth. Yes, he is the source of their material origins. God created all things ex nihilo, out of nothing, but he also created with a purpose, a function, order and jurisdiction in mind.

    But what about verse two? That leads us to our next verse. As we consider the unbounded chaos of earth’s original condition of being without form and void. Look at verse two. The author writes, the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Verse two shows, beloved, that the creation account is primarily concerned with God’s sovereign assigning of purpose, function, and jurisdiction to his creation, and with preparing his creation to be inhabited by mankind, and not primarily with questions regarding material origins. Verse one, as I mentioned, had introduced the beginning of the creation account, which starts up in earnest here in verse two. It’s important for us, brothers and sisters, when we read this passage, many questions arise in our minds.

    It says in verse two, the earth was without form and void. What does that mean? The earth was without form and void. What does it mean that darkness was over the face of the deep? And what’s he talking about when he pictures the spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters? Here is where it’s important to understand how the ancient pagan neighbors of the Israelites would have been impacted by this kind of language. You see, my friends, darkness and the watery deep were seen in the ancient Near East as symbols of the threatening forces of chaos. You see in ancient Near Eastern pagan creation stories, darkness and the raging sea represented the forces of chaos, forces that threatened not only the order of the cosmos, but forces which threatened even the gods themselves, forces which represented an obstacle that the gods either had to conquer or to restrain.

    But is that the picture we get of Elohim, the true and living God here? Is Elohim having to do battle with the forces of chaos, with the chaos waters and the darkness? Do those forces pose a threat to Elohim, the true and living God? No. In verse two, these primeval unbounded forces of chaos are not pictured as a threat to Elohim’s sovereignty or as unruly forces that he must fight and conquer in order to subdue. Instead, the darkness and deep are depicted as tranquil yet unformed powers, powers which are totally under God’s sovereign control and ready to be reutilized for God’s purposes according to his timing and his plan. And this is what the picture of the Spirit of God hovering or circulating over the water seems to depict. So what we have here, beloved, is likely a divinely inspired polemic or argument against the idolatry of the ancient patriarchs or the ancient Hebrews’ pagan neighbors.

    The gods of the Gentiles were threatened by the forces of unbounded chaos. They were threatened by the darkness, the formlessness and void. But Elohim, the true and living God, the God of Israel, was and is sovereign over those forces of chaos, and those forces are under His control. available for his service whenever he chooses to use them. Now, again, what does it mean when it says the earth was without form or void? The Hebrew is tohu vabohu. This is a literary device known as a hendieties, if I’m pronouncing that right. This is the use of two words connected by and to express a single concept. Namely, in this case, formlessly void, or what have you. One example of this that you might be able to relate to, let’s say that it’s winter. I know winter’s coming.

    Some of us would wish that it didn’t come so fast. But someday winter’s going to be here. We’re going to have those frigid cold months. And let’s say that you’ve got a fireplace in your house. And there’s a nice fire in the fireplace. But you’ve been outside, maybe shoveling your driveway or working out in the cold. And you come inside. You’re shivering. You’re freezing cold. But ah, you enter the door. And what do you see? You see that fire in your fireplace. And you sit down, you get nice and comfortable in front of the fireplace, and you say, ah, I am nice and warm now. What does that mean, nice and warm? That’s a way of saying you are nicely warm. That’s an example of a Hendieties. And that’s similar. This is what we have here in this passage with the tohu vabohu, without form and void.

    The term Tohu without form seems to indicate the cosmos was empty of purpose, meaning, and function with respect to humanity. Dr. Walton writes that Tohu generally refers to a desert-like wasteland or to emptiness. So what does without form and void mean in the context of this passage? The answer, my friends, is it means that an ordered system of function and purpose for the benefit and flourishing of mankind had not yet been established. But God was ready to establish it, for the Spirit of God is pictured as hovering over the face of the waters, ready to bring order out of chaos, ready to form a habitation for His image bearers, Adam and Eve, humanity. Now what are some of the lessons that we can glean and take away from this verse, from this passage? Well, there’s many lessons we can learn, but let me suggest a few.

    My friends, without God’s blessing and action to bring purpose and order, our world and our lives would have no clear-cut purpose and meaning. You look around at our culture today. What do so many folks struggle with? They struggle with their identity. Who am I? Why am I here? These are age-old questions, by the way. The great philosophers in previous ages, what are some of the deepest questions they wrestled with? They wrestled with questions like, what is the meaning and purpose of life? Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing and so forth? The Bible has an answer to those questions. The Bible reveals to us a God who not only created the material universe, though praise God, he certainly did that, but he created it with a sovereign, ordained purpose and plan in view.

    And you and I, dear friends, we are part of that plan. What is our purpose, by the way? Why did God create us? Well, if you know you’re short of catechism, you know the Bible-based answer to that question, right? Our first catechism question, what is the chief end of man, which is an old-fashioned way of saying what is man’s purpose? What is the answer? What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. So you know your purpose. You, brother, sister, you were created to glorify God, to reflect His glory, and to enjoy Him forever. But that would not be possible without God’s sovereign blessing and action to bring about a world with purpose and order. Another lesson we glean is that without God’s sovereign ordering and blessing, unbounded chaos would reign and God’s covenant plan to dwell among His people in His created world would not go forward.

    What is the ultimate goal of creation? Well, as I touched upon a few moments ago, and we could really spend a lot of time in this, but we don’t have time this morning, but the ultimate goal of creation is covenant blessing. God dwelling in covenant communion and fellowship and friendship with mankind, male and female, his image bearers. This is reflected In the book of Revelation, if you turn to the very, I know we’re in the very first book of the Bible, but turn to the very last book of the Bible, Revelation chapter 21, verse three. This is the goal towards which all of creation is going towards. It says in verse three of Revelation 21, 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.

    Adam and Eve enjoyed that direct fellowship, God dwelling amongst them in the Garden of Eden before the fall. But when Adam and Eve fell into sin and dragged the human race down with them, They were kicked out of Eden. But ever since that time, God has been in the process of reestablishing his dwelling place among his redeemed covenant people. And that ultimately is fulfilled in Christ. Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh who came to do what? Who came to dwell in our midst. He is Emmanuel, God with us. That is God’s ultimate plan for your life. and for mine, that is the ultimate goal of creation. And what brings that about, what makes that possible? The redeeming work of Christ as well as the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit in applying Christ to us.

    Now this brings me to my final point. Understand, beloved, the Spirit of God as God’s creative power which brings order out of chaos. Understand the Spirit of God as God’s creative power which brings order out of chaos. We’re told that the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and if it stopped there, it would seem like a hopeless picture. But then, another sentence, the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The Spirit of God, the Spirit of Elohim. Now what does Moses, what does the inspired author here mean by the Spirit of God? As those who have the complete canon of scripture and those who know our theology, we automatically think, well, this is referring to the third person of the Holy Trinity.

    And certainly this language hints at that, but here the spirit of God or Elohim is probably similar to the phrase the hand of God. Probably it would have been understood by the ancient Hebrews to mean the power of God, not the third person of the Trinity as such. After all, the doctrine of the Trinity is a doctrine that had not yet been revealed to God’s people. But at the same time, beloved, This term certainly leaves room for what the Bible will reveal later on about the triune being of God and about the Spirit of God, the third person of the Holy Trinity. Let’s remember, friends, that God’s Word is a progressive, unfolding revelation. God gradually, over time, revealed more and more about himself. and about us and about his plan of salvation as the Scriptures unfold.

    And the doctrine of the Trinity is not fully clearly revealed until after the incarnation of Christ our Savior. But the point here, friends, God’s power brought order out of chaos and made the earth a habitation for mankind to dwell in and to flourish in. This is the truth that the apostle Paul proclaimed to the Athenian philosophers in Acts chapter 17. Look with me, if you would, briefly at Acts 17, verses 24 to 28. As Paul is preaching to these pagan philosophers, and preaching to them the true and living God, the God of the Bible, he says this, beginning in verse 24. Paul says, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God.

    Here’s again purpose and function, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is not far from each of us, for in him we live and move and have our being, even as some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. Of course, mankind has fallen into sin, but the good news is that God has sent his son Jesus to redeem us sinners from our sins. God’s grace and Holy Spirit brought order out of the chaos of our sin by making us new creations in Christ. He is brought in through Christ a new creation. Beloved, let us strive to further the order of God’s kingdom by living as faithful witnesses and servants of Christ. Dear ones, as we confess in the Apostles’ Creed, we believe that the one true God is the maker of heaven and earth.

    Not only did he create the material and spiritual universe out of nothing by his omnipotent creative power, he also created in the functional sense of forming a very good universe with a divinely ordered system of meaning, purpose, and function. A system where God might dwell with mankind, his image bears. The fall has put a wrench into that original plan, although God sovereignly decreed the fall to occur in his wisdom. But in Christ, that purpose goes forward. Do you know Christ? Have you trusted Him as your Lord and Savior? Do you recognize the chaos that sin has brought into your life? Are you repentant for that sin? Turn to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith. Receive and rest upon Christ and Christ alone as your Lord and Savior. And He, by His Spirit, will bring order, meaning, and purpose into your life.

    And He will align your purpose with God’s kingdom purposes. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven. We thank you for the redeeming work of Christ, who has brought about a new creation, who has made us new creations in him. We ask, oh Lord, that you would help us to live out the purpose for which we have been created and redeemed. We ask that you would help us to walk in all those good works that you have prepared for us to walk in, out of gratitude for your gift of salvation to us in Jesus. We ask all of these things, heavenly Father, through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said, Amen. Let’s respond to what we’ve heard from the Word today by rising and we’ll sing, soul adorn yourself with gladness, hymn 200, as we prepare to celebrate the Holy Supper together.

    Let’s rise and sing number 200. Okay. Soul, adorn yourself with gladness. Leave the gloomy haunts of sadness. Come into the daylight’s splendor. There with joy your praises render. Bless the one whose grace unbounded, this amazing banquet founded. He, though heavenly, high and holy, deigns to dwell with you most lowly. Hasten as a bride to meet him, eagerly and gladly greet him. There he stands already, knocking quickly, now your gate unlocking. Open wide the fast-closed portal, saying to the Lord immortal, come and leave your loved one never. Dwell within my heart forever. Now in faith I humbly ponder, over this surpassing wonder, that the bread of life is boundless, though the souls it feeds are countless. With the joystest wine of heaven, Christ’s own blood to us is given. O most glorious consolation, pledge and seal of my salvation.

    Jesus, source of lasting pleasure, truest friend and dearest treasure. Peace beyond all understanding, joy into all life expanding. Humbly now I bow before you. Love incarnate, I adore you. Worthily let me receive you. And so favored, never leave you. Congregation, you may be seated. Christ welcomes us sinners to the Feast of Salvation that is signified and sealed in this Holy Supper as we prepare our hearts To receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, let me read from 1 Corinthians 11, beginning at verse 23, which is the Apostle Paul’s recounting of our Lord’s words of institution of this supper, which he instituted on the night in which he was betrayed. 1 Corinthians 11, 23, for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you.

    Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also, he took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.

    But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. May God add His blessing to this reading of His Holy Word. What is the Lord’s Supper? Well, the Lord’s Supper is called the Lord’s Supper for a reason. If this is not the church’s supper, this is certainly not a Presbyterian supper, though we are a Presbyterian church. This is a supper instituted by none other than the divine Son of God, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And it is described in scripture in a number of ways. It is, first of all, described as a memorial. It reminds us of our Savior’s bloody death upon the cross to redeem us from our sins. It is also a proclamation. It’s a sermon, if you will. It proclaims Jesus’ sacrifice, declaring the good news in symbol form.

    It is also described in Scripture as a communion, a koinonia, a fellowship, a means by which we feast upon the benefits of Christ’s broken body and shed blood. Not in a physical sense, of course. The bread and the wine continue to remain bread and the fruit of the vine. But nevertheless, by faith and through the Holy Spirit, we partake of the benefits of our Savior’s broken body and shed blood. It is also presented in scripture as a foretaste of the feast of salvation that we will enjoy with Christ at the marriage supper of the Lamb, when Jesus returns in glory to take us to be with himself. The bread represents Christ’s broken body. and the cup represents Christ’s shed blood. Through this means of grace, Christ nourishes our souls as we partake with faith in him.

    And in a very real sense, the Lord’s Supper, like baptism, is a personalizing of the gospel. The gospel call calls all who would repent and believe and promises to all who repent and believe salvation. But the sacraments take that general gospel call and personalize it. Notice Jesus says, this is my body which was given for whom? For you. This cup is the new covenant in my blood which was shed for you. So as we gather to partake of this Holy Supper, let us understand that Jesus himself is speaking to you and to me and saying, I offer myself to you. So by faith, receive the blessings and the grace that he offers. Now the Lord’s Supper is for the Lord’s people. If you are a baptized Christian who is repentant for your sins and is trusting Christ alone for your salvation, having publicly professed your faith in Christ as your very own Lord and Savior, and having united in membership in a biblical church, then you are invited to partake of the Holy Supper.

    If you’ve not yet publicly professed your faith in Christ, or if you’re unsure if you should partake with us at this particular time, there’s no shame in that. I would simply encourage you to use this time to reflect upon what Christ’s death on the cross means for you personally. And I would also encourage you to use this time for prayerful self-examination before the Lord. But we all should examine our hearts before the Lord as that passage from First Corinthians states. So let’s spend a few moments, dear friends, silently searching our hearts before the Lord, examining ourselves as we prepare to partake of the supper together. Let us pray. Please join me in your hearts in prayer. All glory be to you, Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, for you, in your tender mercy, gave your only Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the cruel cross for our redemption, who made there on the cross a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, fully satisfying for all of the sins of all of God’s believing people, and did institute, and in his holy gospel, command us to continue a perpetual memory of that His precious death and sacrifice until His coming again.

    And so, our Heavenly Father, we give you thanks and praise from our hearts for the gift of your only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and for His perfect sacrifice for our sins on the cross of Calvary. Likewise, we give you thanks for the gift of the Lord’s Supper, which reminds us of our Savior’s sacrifice for our sins, and which signifies and seals to us believers all of the saving benefits of His broken body and His shed blood. O Heavenly Father, we pray that these elements of bread and the fruit of the vine would be set apart during this celebration from a common to a holy use, that they might symbolize, signify, and seal to us believers all of the benefits of Christ’s broken body and his precious shed blood. We do not presume to come to this table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, for we have none in ourselves, but we come trusting in your manifold and great mercies in Christ.

    We acknowledge, Lord, that we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs which are under your table, but you are the same Lord who is merciful to those who are repentant. We thank you that you are kind to the brokenhearted. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat spiritually and symbolically the flesh of your dear son, Jesus Christ, and so to drink spiritually and symbolically his most precious blood that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us. And we would beseech you, O God, to grant us your grace so as not to trust in the outward elements themselves, but instead may we look beyond these symbols to the spiritual realities to which these symbols point. In this sacramental feast, may we feed upon Christ In our hearts, by faith and with thanksgiving, we pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, Amen.

    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.

  • A Different Gospel, Part 2

    A Different Gospel, Part 2

    About this sermon

    1. Take to heart that there is one, and only one, Gospel (vv. 6-7).
    2. Heed the apostolic warning: Anyone who perverts the Gospel of Christ will be eternally condemned (vv. 8-9).

    More sermons from Galatians · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    churches of Galatia. So let us hear God’s holy word. Galatians 1 verses 1 through 10. Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me, to the churches of Galatia, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

    But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Dear friends, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord’s proclamation of His Word. Heavenly Father, we thank You for giving us, revealing to us Your Holy Word. We thank You that You have not left us alone in this fallen, sin-cursed world without direction, without a clear Word from Heaven.

    We thank you, Lord, for this portion of Holy Scripture, and we ask that you would give us wisdom and insight as we consider this portion of your Holy Word. We pray that your Spirit would illuminate our minds and open our hearts to behold wondrous things from your Word. We ask that your Word would find a lodging place in our souls by your Spirit, And we ask that you would grant unto me, your unworthy servant, the grace to declare and speak forth your word with power and clarity, with the unction and assistance of your Holy Spirit. May Jesus be exalted in the preaching of your word this day. May sinners be converted unto you and your people built up in their most holy faith. We pray all of these things, Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said.

    Amen. You may be seated. There are sermon outlines out in the foyer, if you’d like to use those to help you follow along, and there’s quite a number of words that I’ve suggested that the children can listen for in my sermon today, which could help them follow along as well. Well, dear ones, in 1 Timothy 3, verse 15, Paul describes the church as a pillar and buttress of the truth. functions of the visible organized church of the Lord Jesus Christ in this world is to hold up, to support, and to defend the truth of God before a lost and dying world. The church is called by God to be a witness for the truth of God’s word in the midst of a world that is filled with lies, deception, and falsehood. But in order to be a faithful witness for God’s revealed truth in this world, the church must guard the deposit of faith which her resurrected Savior has entrusted to her.

    When Jesus rose from the dead after training his apostles and appointing them to be his official spokesmen, his divinely inspired spokesmen, witnesses of his resurrected glory, when he appointed them, he gave them the charge to faithfully pass on that faith once for all delivered to the saints, that deposit of faith. One major aspect of guarding the faith once for all delivered to the saints is the church’s calling to protect God’s people from false teachers and false teaching. especially teachings that would seek to water down, distort, or even replace the true biblical gospel with a different so-called gospel. Guarding the integrity of the biblical gospel, especially the good news of our justification by God’s grace in Jesus Christ alone, apart from works of the law, is a central duty of the church and of its undershepherds, its pastors and elders.

    In his epistle to the Galatians, Paul shows himself to be a faithful apostolic under-shepherd of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he shows himself to be faithful because in this epistle, he exposes and seeks to refute a group of Jewish Christian false teachers who were seeking to lead these Gentile Galatian Christians away from a solid understanding of the biblical gospel. false teachers Judaizers, the theologians and scholars call them Judaizers, because they taught that Gentile Christians must not only believe in Jesus in order to be justified, in order to be saved, but must also be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. In order for a Gentile to become a fully initiated Christian and to become fully a part of God’s covenant community and to be regarded as saved and justified, declared righteous in the sight of God, not only was it necessary to believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior and Son of God, but it was also necessary, Judaizing false teachers for these Gentiles to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. especially the ritual laws, the ceremonial laws.

    And that is why they’re called Judaizers, because they were basically saying, if you’re a Gentile, you can’t become a Christian before first becoming a Jew. You must become a Jew first before you can become a fully initiated Christian. Well, friends, on the last Lord’s Day, as we focused on our passage for today, we focused especially on reveals that God the Father effectually, savingly calls elect sinners to salvation, not by means of the works of the law but by means of the grace of Christ. We saw that this implies, friends, that God takes the initiative in our salvation. We don’t take the initiative. God takes the initiative. It isn’t that we first step towards God before he reaches out to us. On the contrary, it’s the other way around. God reaches down to us in grace and mercy before we reach up to him in faith and repentance.

    We certainly must respond to the call of the gospel to repent and believe. but we respond because God has first been at work in our hearts through the gospel. We also saw on the last Lord’s Day that turning away from this biblical gospel, this good news of full and free justification by grace alone, through faith alone, apart from works of the law, turning away from this biblical gospel, is actually a turning away and apostasy from God himself. You see, to reject the biblical gospel for another so-called gospel is actually to reject the true and living God. It is to throw off the yoke of Jesus Christ and to set up in our hearts a golden calf of works righteousness, legalism, and self-righteous religious pride. And so, friends, with all of this in mind, today we’re going to focus on verses 7 through 9.

    But let’s first, again, let me read for you again verses 6 and 7. Paul writes, I am astonished. Why is he astonished? Why is he flabbergasted? Why is he just, you know, doing a double take? and wondering what’s going on among the Christians in the Galatian churches. Well, he says, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. As I pointed out on the last Lord’s Day, that word in the Greek that is translated as different is the word heteron. I believe we derive from that word heretical or heterodox. He’s talking about turning away from the pure biblical gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, to a heterodox, a different gospel. And then he goes on to say in verse 7, not that there is another one. but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

    What do we learn from this passage? Well, first of all, brothers and sisters, take to heart that there is one and only one gospel. There are not multiple gospels. I mean, there are different gospel accounts in the New Testament. Yes, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We’re not talking about the gospel accounts because all four gospel accounts claim and reveal this one true gospel, this good news, this message of Jesus Christ. And there is one and only one gospel. That is clearly implied by what Paul writes here in verse seven. He says not that there is another one. That’s essentially saying there’s only one. There’s one and only one gospel of Jesus Christ. This is important, friends. We live in a time where where there is such a cultural pressure put upon the church to change the gospel, to make it more palatable to contemporary trends and contemporary ideas and contemporary ideologies and philosophies.

    And there’s a temptation to reimagine the gospel, to kind of shave off its rough edges and make it more palatable to contemporary postmodern humanity. We saw this in the last century with theological, so-called theological modernism, also known as theological liberalism in the churches. The project of theological modernism was to make the Bible and the Christian faith more palatable, more accommodating to so-called modern man. but of course modern man was conceived of as a man who is rationalistic and naturalistic and rejects miracles in the supernatural worldview of the Bible. And so what theological modernism did in trying to make the Christian faith compatible to the ideas and thought trends of modern man what it ended up doing was gutting the Christian faith of its supernatural truths, such as the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, his physical bodily resurrection from the dead, and so forth.

    And what modernism ended up doing is replacing true biblical Christianity with a Christianity so-called that was not Christianity at all. As Dr. J. Gressam-Machen in his classic book, Christianity and Liberalism, pointed out, liberalism is literally another religion. It’s not Christianity, though it uses Christian terminology and traditional Christian language. It has hijacked that Christian language and imported into Christianity false concepts, foreign concepts. It has gutted Christianity of its supernatural reality. And so, the modernist struggle in the church over the last century reminds us that there’s only one biblical gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this, here, what Paul is doing, those who would change or pervert or try to improve upon the one and only gospel of Christ. You see, my friends, if you read the scriptures, if you familiarize yourself Word of God, you will see that the Scriptures contain many, many warnings against false prophets and false teachers.

    Let me just read a few of those to you. Let’s turn, if you have your Bibles with you, turn to Matthew chapter 7 verse 15. Matthew chapter 7 verse 15. This is as Jesus is getting towards the conclusion of his Sermon on the Mount. Matthew records in Matthews 5 through 7 the contents, a summary and contents of our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. And Jesus says, in verse 15 of chapter 7, Jesus says, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing. In other words, they’re deceptive. They hide themselves. Who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. These are wolves in sheep’s clothing. What do wolves do to sheep? They destroy the sheep. They kill the sheep. And so these, Jesus’ warning against false prophets, those who would spiritually destroy the sheep of Christ.

    Or think of, turn next to 2 Peter 2. Let me read verses one through three of 2 Peter 2. Again, just another example of an apostolic warning against false prophets and false teachers. In this passage, We read the following words, Peter writes, but false prophets also arose among the people, reflecting on Old Testament times, false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them. bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed, and in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” Again, very sobering words, a very sobering warning against false teachers.

    And the final passage we’ll look at is Deuteronomy 18. verses 20 to 22. Deuteronomy chapter 18 verses 20 to 22. The prophet Moses addressing the children of Israel says the following beginning in verse 20 Moses says but the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name God is speaking through Moses, and he says, a prophet, a so-called prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, That is a word that the Lord has not spoken.

    The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. And other examples, brothers and sisters, the one thing that should be clear from these biblical warnings about false teachers is that false teachers do not typically advertise themselves as false teachers. In fact, false teachers can often have very likable and engaging personalities. They can often be very articulate. They can often be very attractive and charismatic in their personalities. They don’t have horns growing out of their heads. They don’t walk around with sandwich boards strapped to their bodies that say, beware, I’m a false prophet, keep your distance. No. They’re often very, very likable. One thing that is common among false teachers is that they can be very, very subtle. We’re told in the scriptures that Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light.

    So some false teachers are very skillful at putting themselves forth as earnest servants of Jesus Christ and of his gospel. And no doubt that’s what these Judaizers were doing. They were probably coming along to these Gentile Christians and saying, oh, that’s wonderful that you’ve come to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. He is. We accept him as the Messiah. He’s the son of God. Yes, he died for our sins and rose from the dead. You got all that right. That’s wonderful. But you know, you’re missing one thing. You got to get circumcised and keep the laws of Moses, especially the ceremonial laws. And then you can be declared righteous before God. And then you can be regarded as fully a part of the Israel of God, fully a part of the people of God.

    You see how subtly they may have been presenting this to the Galatians and why these new believers in the churches of Galatia from a Gentile background were being drawn to that? These Judaizers were probably skilled smooth talkers and spiritual salesmen. Well, dear ones, we might be tempted to think, well, yeah, the early church, they dealt with heretics like the Judaizers and the Gnostics and the Antinomians and all of that. Well, but, you know, that was back in the first century. Don’t we have a better idea of things now? Well, friends, just as the early apostolic church had to contend with many slick false teachers like the Judaizers and the Gnostics and the Antinomians, So even today, the visible church of Jesus Christ continues to be plagued by false teachers who promote perverted, twisted, heretical gospels, gospels that lead from Jesus and away from the salvation that Jesus offers in the true gospel.

    That’s why Paul is so passionate in this epistle. That’s why he only gives a very brief opening section and opening praise before diving into his subject and saying, what’s wrong with you people? Wake up. I’m astonished at you. Why are you going astray? He knows that eternal matters, matters of eternal weight are at stake. Now, the point here, friends, is not that we should be hyperjudgmental or unlovingly suspicious of pastors and preachers and Bible teachers, or that we should be overly critical of every careless expression or word that a preacher might say. I know that many, My favorite meal after church is roast pastor and criticizing what the pastor said. And I don’t get the sense that you folks do that, or if you do, you certainly don’t let on that you do. But as someone who has been preaching for many years, I can tell you that part of the vocation of someone who’s calling is to publicly speak is that if you spend enough time publicly speaking, sooner or later, you’re going to misspeak.

    Sooner or later you’re going to say something that’s confusing or perhaps unintentionally misleading, and I can tell you that while it is my intention to carefully prepare and research my sermons and to deliver them faithfully to the text, I can look back on my many years of preaching and many times when I unintentionally opened my mouth and put my foot in my mouth or misspoke. So the point here is not to be ungracious and towards those who are entrusted with the task of preaching the word of God, but rather the point here, beloved, is that all of us, whether we’re clergy or lay people, whatever our calling or vocation may be, all of us have a biblical duty to be discerning. The call to discernment, that’s not just for the pastors and elders. That’s a call to all of God’s people.

    All of us in our office of believers, all of us are called to exercise discernment. If you do not exercise proper biblical discernment, we’re actually sinning. God expects you not to be gullible and open to false teachers. We are responsible before God to be discerning in terms of the preachers and Bible teachers that we listen to and follow and expose ourselves to. And we need to be on the lookout for those who may be peddling a false or misleading gospel. But you may wonder, how can you tell a false teacher from a true one? Not by how likable they may be, or by how good they may make you feel, or the number of followers that they have, or by the crowds that they draw. Rather, the answer is you can tell by the message that they teach and preach.

    What is this man’s message? That’s the issue. Is it a feel-good, man-centered message, or is it the good news of salvation through Christ crucified and risen from the dead? Does the preacher proclaim as the scriptures proclaim that all people are sinners fallen in Adam worthy of condemnation for their sins and that no man can be saved by his good works or religious strivings. Does the preacher proclaim Jesus Christ, God and man, the Word made flesh, crucified for the forgiveness of our sins, raised from the dead, physically and bodily raised from the dead for our justification? Do they proclaim this biblical Jesus as the one and only way of salvation? Does he proclaim that we sinners are justified, that is to say, declared legally righteous in the sight of God, not by works of the law, not by our good deeds, but by trusting in Christ’s obedience and sacrifice alone, trusting in Christ alone for our salvation?

    Or does the so-called preacher deny any or all of these biblical truths? If he denies or perverts or obscures or twists any of these or similar essential gospel truths, then there is a good possibility that he is a false teacher and should be avoided like the plague. He should be avoided like the plague because he is distorting what Paul describes here in our passage as the gospel of Christ. He says, not that there is another one, not that there is another gospel, verse seven, but there are some who trouble you. We’re troubling these Galatian Gentile Christians, causing them to be unstable in their faith off of Jesus and onto themselves and their own religious performance. Not that there is another, there are some who trouble you and want to distort what? They want to distort, they have an agenda, they want to distort the gospel of Christ, not a gospel of Christ or one of many gospels, no.

    The gospel of Christ. Notice that this one and only gospel is the gospel of Christ. In what sense is it of Christ? that I believe Paul has in mind here. The gospel is of Christ in its contents. That is to say, it is the message about Jesus Christ. If you go to a church service and you hear a pastor preach a sermon that has almost nothing to say about Jesus, you might as well go hear a sermon in a Jewish synagogue or a Unitarian Assembly. True gospel preaching is centered on the person and the work, the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ. True gospel preaching is not a theological TED talk. It’s not a motivational speech. It’s not moralistic do-goodism. It is about Jesus Christ. The biblical gospel focuses on Jesus Christ, on his person and saving work.

    It does not focus on man’s works or man’s free will or man’s decision. Although certainly, when the gospel, when the spirit brings the good news of Jesus to bear on your soul, it will impact your will. It will move you to receive and rest upon Christ if the spirit is active in it. But the gospel message itself, it’s not a message of decision. It’s not even a message of faith, it’s a message about Jesus. Romans 10 tells us, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by what? The word of Christ, not by the word of decision, not by the word of moralism, or do-goodism, or social justicism, or cultural warriorism, or anything like that. It’s the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel focuses on Christ, on things like his miraculous virginity, his obedient life as the second Adam, his mighty miracles, healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons, walking on the waters, multiplying the loaves and the fishes and so forth. especially his sacrifice, his substitutionary atoning sacrifice on the cross for our sins, and his physical bodily resurrection from the dead, his resurrection appearances to multiple eyewitnesses after his resurrection, and his ascension into heaven, his reign at the Father’s right hand, and his return at the end of this age.

    That’s what the biblical gospel focuses on. Dear ones, the central focus of the biblical gospel is not our faith in Christ, though that is important. The central focus is rather on Christ himself, because Christ is the object of our faith. So it is the gospel of Christ in that Christ, his person and work, are its central contents. But it is also of Christ in its origin. Not only is it a message about Jesus Christ, it is a message that originates from above, from Christ, and it comes to us through the risen Jesus and his officially appointed apostles, whose writings and teachings are contained in the New Testament canonical scriptures. Dear listener, do you believe in this Lord Jesus Christ? the Jesus of the Bible. That’s the only Jesus there is. That’s the only Jesus that can save you from your sins.

    You cannot be saved by a Jesus who was a great religious teacher and a great moral example, but nothing else. The true Jesus was indeed a great religious teacher, a great moral example, but he was great because he was also divine. He is the God-man, the Word made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us. And he came to this earth work out our salvation by his obedient life and atoning sacrifice. He has secured the eternal salvation of all who come through sovereign grace to trust in him as their Lord and Savior. Do you trust in this Lord Jesus Christ as your very own Lord and Savior? Jesus, through the gospel, calls you, each and every one of you, dear listener, God, through the gospel, calls you to repent of your sin, and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior from.

    You repent and believe today. So we see dear friends that there is one and only one gospel and that brings us then to the next two verses as we close our time and wrap up our time in the word this day next beloved heed the apostolic warning that is given here and that warning is that anyone who perverts the gospel of Christ will be eternally damned or eternally condemned. Again, this is a very sober point, but it’s what Paul is saying here, as I’ll demonstrate in a few moments. In verses eight and nine, we have an apostolic warning that anyone who dares to pervert, distort, change, or reimagine the gospel, the one and only gospel of Christ, anyone who does that and continues in that unrepentantly, will be eternally condemned. Look at what Paul says in verses eight and nine.

    He says, but even if we, he includes himself, he includes the apostles themselves, even if we apostles or even an angel from heaven, even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, Let him be accursed.” And then for emphasis, Paul repeats himself, or I should say the Holy Spirit through Paul repeats himself. Verse 9, as we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. Now, that word that is translated here in the English as accursed, In the Greek, it is the word anathema, or anathema, and that word obviously is carried over into the English language. The New International Version translates anathema as eternally condemned, which accurately conveys the meaning of this loaded and sober word.

    And what’s important to understand about this word, this Greek word anathema, is that it is related to the Hebrew word harem, which means ban. See, in the Old Testament, when God called his people Israel, when they had come out of Egypt, and God had rescued them from their slavery in Egypt, and God commanded them to go in and to conquer the promised land, and to put everyone in that land under the ban. All of them were to be devoted to destruction, all of the Canaanites. were not poor, innocent people. They were bloodthirsty, idolatrous people. They were people who did things like burn their infant children alive to their gods in worship and so forth. And God used the Israelites at that particular point in history as his instruments of judgment against the was not something that was to be repeated in other nations or in later redemptive history.

    But in any case, they were put, the Canaanites were put under the ban. Dr. Richard Longenecker in his commentary on Galatians points out that the word here refers to, quote, what is removed from ordinary circulation and given over to destruction. Longnecker goes on to say that anathema means, number one, something dedicated or consecrated to God, and so, number two, something delivered over to divine wrath for destruction. As Bible scholar Johannes Bem points out, the basic idea behind this word anathema is, quote, delivering up to the judicial wrath of God. And so, my friends, what we have in these sobering verses, verses eight and nine, We have the Apostle Paul writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writing in his capacity as an apostle, an official divinely inspired spokesman for the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, pronouncing a divine curse of eternal damnation upon anyone who would dare to pervert, to twist, to distort, to replace the biblical gospel of justification. by faith, the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ, which includes as part of its essential, central pillar, the wonderful truth of our justification by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, apart from works of the law.

    Now, some scholars, often of a more liberal bent, will perhaps look at these verses and say, well, this is just Paul having sort of a temper tantrum. He’s kind of, you know, he’s kind of hot and bothered by the fact that these teachers are not teaching in line with what he thinks should be the correct view of the gospel. He lets them have it. But friends, no, this is not an unfortunate emotional outburst on the part of the man, Paul. No dear ones, this anathema is a Holy Spirit inspired curse which has the official divine authority of the Lord Jesus Christ himself backing it up. For here, Saint Paul writes these words not as a private individual, but he writes in his capacity as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, this is Jesus saying through Paul, if anyone whoever he or she may be, if anyone, whatever their position, even an angel from heaven, even an apostle himself, if anyone should distort and pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.

    Of course, we know that God is absolutely sovereign. We know that he will indeed preserve his people from unrepentantly and persistently distorting or perverting the gospel of Christ. But at the same time, God’s sovereign preservation of his people does not negate our responsibility. Now you may say, well, why does the Holy Spirit through Paul, why is the Holy Spirit so extremely, why this extreme length? penalty for perverting the gospel of Jesus Christ. Understand, beloved, the reason that God the Holy Spirit includes this divine curse upon those who preach a false gospel in the scriptures is actually motivated by God’s love for sinners. See, those who proclaim false gospels, those who preach something other than the gospel of Jesus Christ are helping to lead lost souls astray from Christ and from the salvation that he offers.

    Preaching a false gospel is spiritual murder. It is murdering souls by leading them away from Christ and leading them to put their faith in something other than Christ, whether it be themselves, their works, their free will, The saints, they might say, well, Jesus is part of that, but you’ve got to have Jesus plus. Jesus plus theology means no Jesus at all in the end. Jesus will be the full and only Savior, or He is no Savior at all. He will not share His Saviorhood with you or with anyone else. And this is why God’s Word is so stern against those those who would distort and destroy the biblical gospel. In closing, my friends, God takes the integrity of the biblical gospel with dead seriousness, and so should we as his church. Let us as a church and as individual Christians do what Jude commands us to do and earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

    And let us do so even in the midst of our anti-doctrinal, hyper-emotional, therapeutic age. We live in an age where it’s very difficult to stand up for truth, absolute, unchanging truth. But the word of God does not change, and the biblical gospel does not change. Let us stand firmly on it. And let us also be warned against false teachers who pervert and distort the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I’m going to do, in closing, what many preachers would suggest, many homileticians and preaching professors would say, but I’m going to do it anyways. I’m going to name some false teachers that you should be warned about. Because one of the biggest false teachings out there in the Christian world today is the prosperity and claim it gospel. And there are preachers on TV, on the radio, and so forth, who are loading their pockets with the gifts and monies given by gullible people, preaching this false gospel, this idea that God wants you to be blessed and rich and so forth, healthy and wealthy.

    And if you’re sick, or if you have problems financially, there must be something wrong with your faith. I think of folks like Kenneth Copeland. Kenneth Copeland and his wife own a huge mansion. They have, I believe, several private jets, a few yachts on hand. Kenneth Copeland’s going to hell unless he repents of his false gospel. May God have mercy on his soul. He is leading so many astray. But what amazes me as I watch this man, watch clips of this man preaching, is how do people fall for this demon-possessed false teacher? But he’s out there. Don’t you dare give assent to the likes of a Kenneth Copeland. Or you think of someone a little more milquetoast, like John F. Kennedy, who I believe is a false teacher. I think of Scott Hahn. Scott Hahn, any of you familiar with Scott Hahn?

    He used to be a Presbyterian. He was a Presbyterian minister. The biblical gospel of justification by faith alone to join the Roman Catholic. I think he was in his 20s when he wrote an autobiography, Rome’s Sweet Home. Imagine how arrogant and narcissistic you would have to be to write an autobiography in your 20s. But what does he say? What does he preach? Rome’s false gospel of justification by faith plus human merit. And many other examples could be given. The cults like Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and so forth. Now friends, we should have compassion. on those who are led astray by these false religions and cultists and false teachers. But we must stand firm, not only for the biblical gospel, but against those who would lead gullible souls astray. And so in closing, make sure, dear listener, that you believe and embrace the biblical gospel.

    Trust in Christ alone for your salvation, and you will be saved. And stand fast for the faith, once for all, delivered to the saints. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, there go I but for the grace of God. We thank you, Lord, for the truth of the gospel, this good news that we are fully and freely forgiven, not by our works, not by our worthiness, but by Christ, his works and merits and sacrifice alone. Lord, we in the church are so easily led astray There are so many voices in our time that would lead the church away from this biblical gospel. We pray that you would give us grace as individual Christians and as the church to stand firm for the faith once for all delivered to the saints and for the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ.

    We thank you for the blessings of your grace to us given to us in Christ. We pray that you would be glorified now and cause your word that we’ve heard today. to find a lodging place in our souls. We ask these things in Jesus name and all of God’s people said, Amen. As we close our time in worship, let’s rise and we’ll see nothing less. 459

    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.

  • The Doctrine of Scripture Alone

    The Doctrine of Scripture Alone

    About this sermon

    Protestant means to protest Roman doctrine as well as being “pro” foundational truths.

    1. The origin of Holy Scripture: It is “breathed out” by God (v. 16).
    2. The profitability of Holy Scripture (v. 16b).
    3. The sufficiency of Holy Scripture (v. 17).

    More sermons from 2 Timothy · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. My sermon text today taken from Paul’s second letter to Timothy, 2nd Timothy, chapter three, verses 10 through 17. We take a little break from our foundations series where we’re considering foundations of the of our most holy faith with the Apostles Creed as our guideline, a Bible based study in that. But as Reformation Day is approaching and we’re in this season where we remember that mighty move of God. through Martin Luther and Calvin and other reformers, we consider one of the important doctrines, one of the foundational doctrines of the Protestant Reformation, the doctrine of Scripture alone. So let us hear God’s word. Second Timothy, chapter three, verses 10 through 17. Paul writes to Timothy, you, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra, which persecutions I endured.

    Yet from them all, the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse. deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God’s blessing upon the preaching of his word.

    Gracious Lord and Father in heaven, We beseech you to open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word. We pray that by the illuminating power of your spirit, you would help us to understand and grasp that which the spirit is speaking to us in this portion of your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible word. We thank you for the scriptures. They are indeed a light into our feet, a lamp into our feet, a light into our path and a guide to our way. We ask, Heavenly Father, that as we consider this passage of scripture, that your word would find a lodging place in our souls and grant me the grace to speak forth your word with clarity and power and with the assistance of your spirit. We pray these things in Jesus name and all of God’s people said, Amen.

    Congregation, you may be seated. Well, friends, as you can see from your bulletin and your sermon outline, if you’re following along, the title of my sermon this morning is The Doctrine of Scripture Alone. And four key words that the children, children of all ages, can listen for if you find that helpful. The words scripture, authority, inspiration and sufficiency. Well, dear ones, we in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, we are Protestant Christians. And as a church, we are a, in spite of our church’s name, which includes the word Orthodox, in spite of that, we are a Protestant church. What exactly does it mean to be a Protestant? Think about the term itself. Obviously, the term itself conveys the idea of protesting against something. The Protestant reformers and their followers indeed protested against various corrupt and unbiblical doctrines and practices that were found in the medieval Roman Catholic Church.

    Practices such as the doctrine of the mass, indulgences, relics, and so forth. But friends, the term Protestant can actually be a misleading term because it can give the impression that Protestants are only against something. We are Protestants. So the question is, what are you protesting? What are you against? And certainly we are against certain things. But Protestantism not only stands against the false teachings and practices of Rome, of the Roman Church, although it certainly does that. More importantly, Protestantism, historic, biblically grounded Protestantism, also stands for some very important things. It stands for the pure truth of God’s word, and it stands for the biblical gospel. The good news of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, apart from works of the law. The foundational truths of the Protestant Reformation are the solas or the onlys of the Reformation, and they include sola scriptura, or scripture alone, They include also sola fide, faith alone, sola gratia, grace alone, solus Christus, Christ alone, and soli deo gloria, to God alone be the glory.

    Well, friends, this Lord’s Day morning, I want to have us consider the biblical basis for the historic Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. Now, when we come to the issue of Scripture alone or Sola Scriptura versus Scripture plus something else, whatever that something else may be, whether that be holy tradition or religious experience or alleged new revelations of the Spirit or current cultural views on things, whatever it might be, This issue between Scripture alone versus Scripture plus something else. What is it at heart? Well, it’s an issue that arises out of such questions as, what is our ultimate religious authority? And where can we find God’s clear word revelation? What is the ultimate standard, not only in our private Christian lives, but also the ultimate and final final standard for Christ’s church? Now, friends, historically, the Roman Catholic Church has answered these questions by basically saying that, well, the ultimate authority is sacred scripture and holy tradition, as infallibly interpreted by the magisterium of the church headed by the pope in Rome.

    That is viewed by them as the final authority. So it’s typical to think of the differences as, you know, scripture alone versus scripture plus tradition. But actually, when you take the Roman view to its logical end, what you end up with ultimately is what has been called sola ecclesia, in other words, the church alone. Because after all, in the Roman view of things, it is the church that decides what is and what is not God’s word. It is the church that decides what is and what is not authoritative holy tradition. It is the church and the church alone which defines what are dogmas binding upon the consciences of the faithful. So that is the Roman view, whereas historically Protestant churches, whether they be Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican Baptist, or what have you, have affirmed that the Bible alone is the only infallible rule of faith and practice in Christ’s church.

    And so when there are issues of doctrine or issues of ethics in the church, the final standard that we go to and appeal to is nothing less than God’s inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. We go to the Bibles. But friends, here’s where, if you’ve ever had a conversation with an educated Roman Catholic, with a Roman Catholic who knows their faith well and knows their reasons for believing their views, educated Roman Catholics and Catholic apologists will often challenge the Protestant view of sola scriptura, or scripture alone, by claiming that the Bible nowhere teaches it. If you’re ever in a conversation with a Roman Catholic who knows what their church teaches, and there are some of those out there, they will often say, well, where does the Bible teach sola scriptura? You’re kind of reading that into the Bible, they would say.

    The Bible itself doesn’t teach sola scriptura. How would you answer that objection? How would you interact with someone who is bringing that claim to you? And it is a claim that has convinced some folks to swim the Tiber, to join Rome, some from the Protestant fold. Well, friends, as I hope to show today, passages such as the one that we are considering today clearly imply the truth which we Protestants call sola scriptura. Now, as we approach this text of scripture, I need to give credit where credit is due. In my preparations of this sermon, I need to credit Dr. James White’s excellent little book entitled Scripture Alone, exploring the Bible’s accuracy, authority, and authenticity. I use that resource for the basic outline of my sermon points. It’s not the only resource I consulted, but I found Dr.

    White’s book on this subject very helpful. So I just want to give credit where credit is due. Let’s consider the context of our passage for today. Second Timothy is a very significant portion of scripture, a very significant letter of Paul’s. Paul wrote Second Timothy to Timothy, his son in the faith, towards the end of Paul’s life. In fact, Second Timothy is Paul’s last epistle before his martyrdom. at least his last canonical epistle that we are aware of, before he was martyred. And Paul writes to Timothy, his son in the faith. Paul had actually mentored Timothy as a gospel minister. And so here is Paul writing to his intern, if you will, the one that he had mentored, in order to encourage Timothy. And why did Timothy need encouragement? Timothy, we get the impression from the scriptures that Timothy had somewhat of a timid personality.

    So Paul had to encourage him not to be timid, but to be bold in the Lord. And at this particular time, Timothy was facing a very serious pastoral challenge. Timothy was serving as a pastor in the church of Ephesus, a church which at the time was facing many problems from false teachers. So Paul writes to encourage Timothy to stand fast for the faith against these false teachers. He is encouraging Timothy in his pastoral ministry. Now. Again, it’s always important when we study the scriptures and interpret them to understand their context. And in the context of this passage, in the first nine verses of chapter three, what Paul does is he describes the character, the tactics, and the attacks of these false teachers. In fact, let me just read the first nine verses of 2 Timothy chapter three.

    Paul writes to Timothy, he says, But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.” Again, as Paul writes this, he very likely has in the background of his mind these false teachers that threatened the church where Timothy had pastoral oversight. And Paul says, he goes on to say, avoid such people, for among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

    Just as Janice and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth. Men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.” So, friends, these are the kinds of folks that Timothy is having to contend with and deal with. Well, then in v. 10-15, Paul goes on to encourage Timothy, as I said, to stay faithful in spite of opposition and persecution. He says in v. 10, you, however, you, Timothy, You have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra, which persecutions I endured yet from them all. The Lord rescued me here again.

    Paul is speaking. Paul, as the mentor of Timothy, is speaking to Timothy, reminding Timothy of his of his modeling of a faithful life in Christ in his apostolic ministry. Again, Paul did not. Obviously, he’s not claiming to be sinless, but he’s saying, Timothy, you know me, you’ve you’ve observed my life. You’ve seen all of these aspects of my ministry. And he’s trying to encourage his son in the faith. to follow his example insofar as he followed Christ’s example. And then he goes on to say in verse 12, Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Again, this is a general statement. This does not mean that if you are not at this moment suffering overt persecution, then you must be ungodly or something of that sort. But if you study church history and even if you look at the the church today, throughout the world, the norm for Christ’s church throughout the ages of church history, the norm for the faithful church of Christ has been suffering persecution for the sake of the gospel.

    And he goes on to say that all who would live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being Again, he probably has in the background of his mind these false teachers that Timothy is having to contend with. But then again, he brings this encouragement. Look at verse 14. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it. From whom did he learn? From whom did Timothy learn his faith? Considering from whom you learned it, Timothy must continue in the sound doctrine that he had learned. Let’s go back and look at chapter one, verse five, very briefly. Chapter one, verse five, Paul says to Timothy, I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice.

    And now I am sure dwells in you. These godly women in his life, a godly grandmother, a godly mother. Apparently, Timothy’s father was a pagan, an unbeliever. But nonetheless, Timothy learned the faith from his mother, Eunice, his grandmother, Lois. And as it goes on to say in our passage for today in verse 15, Paul reminds Timothy that from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings or the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation. by faith, through faith in Christ Jesus. Now, let me ask you, at this particular point in time in redemptive history, what are the sacred writings at this point in redemptive history? This would refer to the Old Testament. At this point in time, the New Testament scriptures were not completed. They were in the process of being written.

    And so, even the Old Testament scriptures are sufficient and able to make us wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Why? Because all of Scripture centers on Christ, points to Christ. The Old Testament prepares us for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus, and the New Testament reveals Christ. But in any case, Timothy had been acquainted with the scriptures from his childhood as he had been taught the scriptures from his godly grandmother and godly mother. Notice, by the way, the function of these scriptures. What is their function? Their function is to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. The scriptures are primarily concerned with making us wise unto salvation, not serving as chicken soup for our souls or serving as marching orders in culture wars, but serving. spiritual function of making us wise for salvation in Christ Jesus.

    And then getting to the specifics of our passage for today, he goes on to say these familiar but glorious words, all scripture is breathed out by God. Some of your translations say inspired, but breathed out is actually, as we’ll see, more literal and correct. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. Now, this brings me to the first point of application I want to make today. Let us, first of all, brothers and sisters, consider the origin of Holy Scripture. Its origin is that it is breathed out by God. The origin of Holy Scripture. It is breathed out by God. breathed out by God. What’s breathed out by God? How many of the scriptures are breathed out by God? Just the parts of scripture that that we resonate with or that we like or that we enjoy.

    I mean, you know, there are certain portions of scripture that to be honest, there’s certain portions of scripture that I appreciate and enjoy reading more than other portions of scripture. It’s all God’s word. But, you know, I love Paul, for example. I love the Gospels. I love the Psalms. But there’s a whole lot of other books of the Bible. Remember, the Bible is not just a book. It’s a collection of divinely inspired or breathed out books. But how many scriptures are inspired or breathed out? It says all or every scripture is God-breathed. In the Greek, that word for God-breathed is the word Theopneustos. Theos means God, pneuma means spirit or breath, and that’s why God breathed is probably the more accurate, it is the more accurate translation. When you think of inspiration, inspiration sometimes carries with it the idea of God putting something into the scriptures or breathing into the scriptures.

    But actually, the scriptures are not breathed in by God, but breathed out by God. This points to their origin. This speaks to the divine origin of scripture, though the scriptures were obviously and clearly penned by men. God sovereignly overruled their writing in such a way that they wrote precisely what God wanted them to write. Again, this is not the so-called mechanical or dictation theory, but that the Holy Spirit organically and supernaturally guided the writers of Scripture so that they wrote precisely what God wanted them to write. The ultimate divine author of Scripture and thus the originator of Scripture is God himself, not the men that he used. Although, again, the scriptures were penned by men. The great theologian, Presbyterian theologian, Dr. B.B. Warfield, the great defender of the inerrancy and authority of Holy Scripture, writes this about the Greek term theopneustos.

    He says, it does not express a breathing into the scriptures by God. What it affirms is that the scriptures owe their origin to an activity of God, the Holy Ghost, and are in the highest and truest sense, his creation. It is on this foundation of divine origin that all the high attributes of scripture are built. And then Dr. James White says this about the scriptures. He says they are not first and foremost in a primary sense human in their origination. He goes on to say a solid view of the Bible begins with the recognition that God is its principal author, the origin and source of its very essence. This book that you hold in your hands, this is not man’s word, although men were employed by God in writing it. This is ultimately God’s word.

    It was breathed out by God. The contents of this book were breathed out by God. Dear ones, What does this have to do with Sola Scriptura or scripture alone? Well, friends. The Bible’s function as the only infallible rule for faith and practice in Christ’s Church, the primary and highest and final standard to which we as God’s people are to appeal. In other words, the truth of Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone, necessarily arises out of the fact that the Bible has its origin in supernatural, divine inspiration, in God’s activity of breathing out His Word. Why should we Protestants believe in Scripture alone? Well, first of all, because the Bible alone has been breathed out by Almighty God as His inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. Do you believe, dear listener, in the Bible’s divine origin? There’s plenty of internal evidence supporting that.

    Hundreds of times the Scriptures say things like, thus saith the Lord, or this is what the Lord says. And the New Testament scriptures acknowledge Jesus himself, acknowledge the final authority of the scriptures. And in the New Testament, the New Testament authors were aware of speaking under divine inspiration. So do you believe in the Bible’s divine origin? If you do not believe in the Bible’s divine origin, you’re not going to have a clear understanding of Scripture, and you don’t understand the purpose of the Scriptures. It comes from God, and it is for the people of God, and it is the very truth of God. But not only does Paul encourage Timothy by reminding him of the origin of Holy Scripture, next, He points out the profitability of Holy Scripture, not in terms of financial profit, but in terms of spiritual profit.

    He goes on to say in verse 16, he says, all Scripture is breathed out by God. That’s the origin of Scripture. It comes from God. It is breathed out by God. And it is what? Profitable. Profitable for what? For teaching, for reproof. for correction and for training in righteousness. Now, Paul says that all or every scripture is profitable, profitable. That term profitable could also be translated as valuable, useful or beneficial. What is God’s word profitable, useful, valuable, beneficial for? Well, the first thing that is listed is for reproof. When you think of the term reprove or reproof, what comes to mind? My suspicion is that for many folks, something cruel and hard and harsh comes to mind. This is a term that, yes, correction sometimes needs to be sharp and direct and blunt. But again, to quote from Dr.

    White, he says that the scriptures are for reproof, that is for reproving slash refuting, can refer either to refuting false concepts slash teachings or to rebuking sinful actions slash attitudes. It probably carries with it both ideas, as both are the responsibilities of those who minister in the church. Paul is writing this to a fellow pastor. Paul, obviously, is more than just a pastor. He’s an apostle. But he’s writing to this man of God, giving him instructions. And he’s saying, look, the scriptures are profitable for reproof. And reproving means correcting false teachings and correcting false living as well. And that brings me to the next statement. He says it is sufficient or rather sorry, profitable for reproof for correction. Again, to quote from Dr. White, he says, for correction is found throughout Paul’s letters, wherein he rebukes false living and false activity on the part of believers.

    Sound doctrine and sound living go hand in hand. An error in one normally leads to an error in the other. And Paul’s speaking to the element of fault or error also speaks to the restoration of the one being corrected. You see, in the scriptures, reproof and correction are, while they may be blunt and direct at times, The motivation is not to crush people. The motivation is not to knock people down. The motivation is to come alongside an erring brother or sister and to help them get back onto the straight and narrow path. The ultimate goal is restoration for the glory of Christ and for the good of his church. But not only does it have these, if you will, these negative functions of reproving and correcting, and not only is it profitable for those negative activities, but also for training in righteousness.

    Training could also be translated as instruction or discipline. Again, to quote from Dr. White, he says, training in righteousness follows for those who are learning to lay aside the old ways of the flesh and to walk in newness of life. He quotes, he references Romans 6, 4. Hence, the entirety of the Christian ministry in life finds its origin, its foundation, its lifeblood in that which is God-breathed. Dear friends, The spiritual value and profitability of the Bible is a natural outgrowth of its divine origin as God breathed scripture. The Bible as the word of God is the unique and ultimate source of spiritual profit, ultimately because the Bible reveals the Lord Jesus Christ and the full and free salvation that Christ offers to us sinners in the gospel, a salvation which we receive by faith in Christ. and Christ alone.

    Again, going back to what Paul said at the end of verse 15, the scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. You don’t need the scriptures plus something else to lead you to faith in Christ. The spirit of faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ, we are told in the scriptures. The Bible is also spiritually valuable and profitable because it shows the Christian believer how to grow in discipleship and how to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord. In other words, it is profitable for teaching, reproving, correcting and training in righteousness, as we’re told in verse 16. We not only need instruction in our sin and instruction in how to be saved, we also need instruction in how to live out the implications of our faith, how to live as disciples, as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

    And the scriptures are sufficient for that as well. While the spiritual value and profitableness of Holy Scripture are not in and of themselves proof of the truth of Scripture alone, They are certainly consistent with this truth. In other words, think about it, friends, if the Bible is indeed God breathed scripture, and it is and therefore of supreme spiritual value and profitableness, which, again, it is. We would naturally expect it to function as our only infallible rule of Christian faith and Christian living, just as biblically Protestant sola scriptura teaches. Dear listener, again, do you see the spiritual value and profitableness of the Holy Scriptures? Of course, Pastor, I believe the Bible is God’s word. Very good. Make sure it doesn’t stay on your shelf collecting dust. Be in the word. Be in the word. So we’ve seen the divine origin of Holy Scripture.

    We’ve considered the spiritual profitableness of Holy Scripture. It is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, training or instruction in righteousness. But then we see in verse 17, the sufficiency of Holy Scripture, the sufficiency of Holy Scripture. All Scripture is breathed out by God. and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Now, in the context of this passage, This particular verse is a crowning evidence that supports the biblically Protestant doctrine of scripture alone. So think about it. If scripture is completely sufficient to thoroughly equip the man of God for every good work, as this passage clearly teaches, then why would scripture need to be supplemented by other sources of religious authority as additional rules of faith and practice? Now, Paul says that it is sufficient to equip whom?

    Well, he mentions in particular the man of God. And by the term man of God, he’s not speaking generically of believers in general, at least not in this context. He’s thinking of church leaders in particular, men of God like Timothy. However, that doesn’t mean that this only applies in the case of those who are in positions of Christian leadership in the church. Christian ministers like Timothy are in view in particular. But the scriptures, if the scriptures are sufficient to equip ministers, to equip those who are called to shepherd the flock of God, if the scriptures are sufficient to equip them for every good work, then certainly they are sufficient to equip all other believers as well. But this raises the question, OK, so, pastor, the scriptures are sufficient to equip the man of God that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

    And by inference that that applies to all believers, the scriptures are sufficient for all of us in our particular callings and vocations. But the question is, what about these other authorities? Well, you know, we’re an Orthodox Presbyterian church. We have a catechism. We have creeds and confessions. We we believe in in ministers and assemblies of the church. This solus scriptura scripture alone mean that we can ignore all that other stuff, that that other stuff is is not significant or important. Well, it’s important to understand, friends, that the Apostle Paul in this passage is not advocating and historic Protestantism has never advocated an unbiblical hyper individualism, such as the solo scriptura distortion of the Protestant view, which completely rejects the historic creeds and confessions and councils of the church, and which advocates a completely isolated, just me and my Bible in my prayer closet, mindset which reads scripture in isolation from the historic church.

    Let me just say, in many, today, in many Christians’ minds, the idea of scripture alone is often misinterpreted to mean, oh, The Bible alone, this alone is the Word of God, which is true. This alone is the only infallible rule for faith and practice. Yes, that’s true. Well, that means I don’t need the church. That means I don’t need teachers and pastors and theologians. And that means that I can just, you know, it’s me and my Bible and the Holy Spirit in my prayer closet. That’s all I need. You know, that’s not what Sola Scriptura means. We need to understand, brothers and sisters, that Paul is not denying the existence of other God-ordained but subordinate or secondary authorities like the organized church and its ordained ministers and elders. However, because the Bible is God-breathed, it alone is infallible and ultimate in its authority.

    It is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. Bible based creeds and confessions and church councils that are faithful to the scriptures lawfully ordained church officers. These are fallible and subordinate authorities but real authorities nonetheless. But but they are fallible and subordinate. They are subject to the correction and guidance of Holy Scripture, and thus they are authoritative only insofar as they conform to the teachings of God’s word. And so the scriptures come from God, the scriptures are spiritually profitable, and the scriptures are sufficient. Therefore, sola scriptura, scripture alone, the Protestant, the correct understanding of the Protestant view, not unbiblical, hyper-individualistic solo scriptura, but sola scriptura is supported by the Word of God, contrary to what some of our Roman Catholic friends would contend. But I would have us closed by considering, too, with regards to the secondary authorities that I’ve mentioned, I’d have you turn to the back of your Psalter hymnal to our confession of faith, the back of this Trinity Psalter hymnal.

    Look at Confession of Faith, chapter 31, sections 3 and 2. We’re going to read them in that order. Confession of Faith, chapter 31. This is page 938 in the back of your Psalter hymnal. This is the chapter of synods and councils. Let me first of all read section 3. Section 3 says this. All synods or councils since the apostles times, whether general, general or particular, may err and many have erred. Therefore, they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help in both. You see the distinction? They are aids and helps to faith and practice, but they are not the rule of faith and practice because as Luther discovered in the Protestant Reformation, as Luther discovered, synods and councils did err at times. And they are not to be made, therefore, a rule for faith and practice.

    But going back to section two, we read this. What is the purpose of those synods and councils? And we just had an assembly in the last two days here at Grace Church, a presbytery assembly. It says it belongeth to synods and councils ministerially. which means in a servant role, to minister is to serve. It belongeth to synods and councils ministerially to determine controversies of faith and cases of conscience, to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God and government of his church, to receive complaints in cases of maladministration and authoritatively to determine the same, which decrees and determinations, notice this phrase, if consonant to the word of God, are to be received with reverence and submission, not only for their agreement with the word, but also for the power whereby they are made as being an ordinance of God appointed thereunto in his word.

    The Bible itself teaches us that God has given a government and officers to his church. So you can’t hold to solo scriptura and ignore the church while at the same time saying that I just follow the Bible. Well, the Bible itself talks about elders and deacons and a church structure and councils and things of that sort. And so, friends, again, the Bible and the Bible alone is the word of God. The Bible and the Bible alone is the only infallible rule for faith and practice. And that’s why the Bible can be studied corporately and collectively by the Church of Jesus Christ. And that’s why we can learn from past ages of faithful ministers and elders and theologians that God has raised up to study the scriptures and to help lead the people of God to a deeper understanding of His Word.

    May we, brothers and sisters, may we ground our faith in Scripture. May we live in the Scriptures, both as individual believers and as a covenant community. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You and praise You for this precious gift, the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures. We would pray, Heavenly Father, that You would help us, Lord, to trust in your word, to hunger and thirst, to know your word and to be grounded in the scriptures. And we pray that by your spirit, that your word would bear much spiritual fruit in our hearts and lives and in this congregation of your people. We pray these things in Jesus name and all of God’s people said, Amen. Let’s close our time of worship today by rising and we’ll sing as our closing hymn, 171, A Word of God Incarnate, 171.

    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.

  • The Means of Grace and Spiritual Growth

    The Means of Grace and Spiritual Growth

    About this sermon

    1. The first and most important key to spiritual growth as a follower of Christ is the apostles’ teaching.
    2. Another important key to Christian growth is the Christian fellowship of Christ’s church.
    3. A third important key to spiritual growth in Christ is the breaking of bread.
    4. Another vital key to spiritual growth is prayer.

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    Sermon transcript

    Amen. Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. The sermon text today, this morning, is Acts 2, verses 36 through 42. Acts 2, verses 36 through 42. I’m gonna read through verse 47 to fill out the context a bit. Remember, this is Peter’s Pentecost sermon. And Peter ends his sermon with these words in verse 36. Hear the word of God. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promises for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

    And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3000 souls and they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

    The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God’s blessing upon the proclamation of His Word. Heavenly Father, we pray that by Your Spirit You would feed our souls, illuminate us, strengthen us, encourage us, bless us, and ground us and more and more securely in Christ, our Lord and Savior. Be with us now and grant me, your unworthy servant, the grace to declare your word with clarity and power this day. In Jesus’ name we pray and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. As you can see in your bulletin, the title of my sermon today is The Means of Grace and Spiritual Growth. And children, there’s four key words to listen for today. One of those key words is the word key. Another word is growth, word, and prayer.

    Well, dear ones, there is a saying out there that goes something like this. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. Those of us who are getting along in our years come to realize that. The older you get, the more you realize, wow, there’s just so much I don’t know. The truth is that life is a nonstop education. And even if you were able to read all of the books in all of the world, you would only begin to scratch the surface in terms of all that there is to know about this immense universe in which we live. Now God’s word, the Bible, tells us that we are creatures and that God is our creator. As creatures, we are finite, limited, but God is infinite. One of the implications of this truth is the fact that God’s knowledge is infinite and unlimited and inexhaustible, whereas our knowledge is finite and limited.

    And while the Bible teaches that we can learn all that we need to know about God and about God’s truth by the study of his all-sufficient word, the Bible, since we are creatures, we can never gain a totally exhaustive knowledge of God, our creator. For example, consider what God says through the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah chapter 55, verses eight and nine, if you’d like to turn there very briefly, Isaiah 55, verses eight and nine. The Lord through Isaiah says these words. He says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Now, of course, God spoke this through Isaiah in the context of calling the unfaithful Israelites to repentance and by promising to abundantly pardon those who return to the Lord.

    But the general idea expressed in those verses can be applied beyond the issues of repentance and of God’s forgiving mercy. They can be applied to God in general, that his ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts. His thoughts and ways are transcendent. Now, because God is infinite and because there is so much to learn about him, we should all seek to grow spiritually in the knowledge and in the love of God, no matter what our age may be. See, learning and education isn’t just for children in school. You’re a listener no matter what your age may be, and no matter how many years you may have been a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. The truth is that none of us have arrived yet at a perfect knowledge of God or a perfect love for God.

    And therefore, we all have the responsibility to grow spiritually. In my sermon for this morning, I want to have us explore a passage of God’s Word that sets before us some of the important keys to genuine spiritual growth, some of these keys which we like to call the means of grace. Now as the scriptural basis for my message today, I read to you from that account of what happened to the early Christians on the day of Pentecost, that momentous event of redemptive history when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church. There was the sound as of a mighty rushing wind and the Holy Spirit filled the disciples who had been gathered together in Jerusalem. The noise of this miraculous event drew a crowd of people who were wondering what on earth was going on.

    Then the apostle Peter addressed the crowd and explained to them that this mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit was in fact a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. And Peter proclaimed to them the gospel message about Jesus, whom he proclaimed to be the Messiah or Christ, God’s chosen and anointed one, the one who died on the cross, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and who poured out the Holy Spirit upon his church from heaven. Verse 36 is the climax of Peter’s Pentecost sermon as he proclaims, let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now how does the crowd react? when Peter, under the work of the Holy Spirit, under the anointing and inspiration of the Spirit, confronts them with their sin in rejecting and crucifying the Lord Jesus.

    Well, when the crowd heard this, many in the crowd felt convicted for their sins, and they wanted to know what they should do. For some of them, it finally dawned on them that we’ve murdered the Messiah. What are we to do? Look at verse 37. It says, now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? The implication seems to be, what hope is there for us? We’ve rejected and crucified the Messiah. But then Peter gives them marvelous good news. Peter tells them that there is hope. He tells them they need to repent and be baptized. Look at verses 38 and 39. Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

    The same Holy Spirit that has been poured out upon the apostles would be poured out upon you as well. And then he goes on to say in verse 39, for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. The response to Peter’s sermon was the envy of all preachers. It was overwhelming. And that day, about 3,000 converts were added to the church through repentance and baptism. I’d love to have a preacher sermon like that. Look at verse 40, it says, about 3,000 souls. And by the way, as an aside, I believe this is what Jesus was referring to when he said to Peter, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church. Jesus built his church on Peter’s proclamation and confession of the Lord Jesus Christ and the beginning of that foundation That church and its new covenant expression happens here on the day of Pentecost.

    But what happens next? After these folks are brought to repentance and faith in Christ and are baptized, receive the sign and seal of baptism, what happens next? Did they just say to themselves, well, that was a wonderful experience, but now I gotta get back to my usual routine. I’m glad that’s over with, glad I got that taken care of. Now that I’ve believed the gospel and become a Christian, I’ve arrived, so I can just go back to living my own life as I please. Is that what they do? No, notice what verse 42 tells us about these new converts. It says, and they devoted themselves, to what? To four things. They have devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. They devoted themselves. In other words, they realized that they were just novices in the Christian faith. and that they had a lot of growing and learning to do spiritually.

    And therefore they devoted themselves to doing those things that would help them to grow spiritually. We would say in our theological understanding, our reformed theological understanding, that they devoted themselves to diligently using the God-ordained means of grace. And what were those means of grace? Well, they devoted themselves, we are told, to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers. These are the four keys to spiritual growth that I want to have us focus on in this sermon. as I will seek to explain briefly what these four keys to Christian growth are and how they apply to us today. And if you’re following along in your sermon outline, this is the first point, and we’ll spend the rest of our time here in verse 42. Notice that the first and most important key to spiritual growth as a follower of Christ is the apostles’ teaching.

    The first and most important key to spiritual growth as a follower of Jesus Christ is the apostles’ teaching. Now, you might respond by saying, well, Pastor, it was easy for them to devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching. After all, the apostles were still alive back then. What was an apostle? An apostle was one, at least in the technical sense of that term, the word apostle can be used sometimes in a more general sense to mean a messenger, but in its specific sense as it’s being used here, the apostles were those whom Christ had appointed to be witnesses of his resurrection. and whom Christ had given authority, divine authority, to speak the gospel and to perform miracles in his name and by his power. Now, do we have apostles around today like that? Of course not.

    The apostles all died in the first century. So how can we today devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching? Well, where is the Apostle’s teaching found today, brothers and sisters? Today, the Apostle’s teaching is given to us in this book. It is given to us in completed written form in the New Testament canonical scriptures. And I would also say in the Old Testament scriptures as well, viewed from a new covenant perspective, the perspective of their fulfillment in Christ and the new covenant. So how do we devote ourselves to the Apostle’s teaching today? How do you do that today? Well, you must seek to get to know your Bible. The Bible is not just a lucky charm. It’s not a book that you are meant to keep on your shelf collecting dust that makes you look good, or a book that you carry around a church but never crack open.

    Get to know your Bible. Read your Bible, or if you prefer, have it read to you. on a regular basis. Remember as we’re told in Romans chapter 10, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. If we want to grow spiritually in the knowledge and love of Jesus, then we must devote ourselves to reading and studying and meditating upon God’s word, and we must sit under the faithful preaching and teaching of God’s word. For it is in the scriptures that we find the fullness of the apostolic teaching. So we don’t need the apostles to be alive today in order to devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching. Instead, all we need to do is devote ourselves to this book, to reading and studying it, and seeking to believe it, embrace it, and live out its implications in our lives.

    And so they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, but what next did they devote themselves to? It goes on to say, they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship. Another important key to Christian growth is the Christian fellowship of Christ’s church. This is the second point on your outline. Another important key, rather, to Christian growth is the Christian fellowship of Christ’s church. If we are Christians, those who know and trust and confess the Lord Jesus Christ as our very own Lord and Savior, then we should desire to be around other Christians who share a like precious faith with us. After all, our fellow believers are our spiritual brothers and sisters. We, in the body of Christ, we are the forever family of God. We are brothers and sisters in the family of God.

    And if we want to bear the family resemblance, we would do well to spend time with the members of God’s family, the church. Now, what does that term fellowship here indicate? Well, in this particular verse, the term fellowship may be referring especially to the kind of Christian fellowship that is expressed and manifested when believers gather together in church to worship the Lord together. And so in that sense, being here today is devoting ourselves to the Christian fellowship. And you know, of course there are more informal senses that we enjoy fellowship with one another. We have our fellowship meal once a month on the first Lord’s Day of every month and that’s a wonderful time of fellowship and reconnecting and building community with one another. But again, the point here is that God never intended his children to be isolated from one another.

    He never intended his children to be Lone Ranger Christians. Christians need, not just, it’s not optional. We Christians need the fellowship of other Christians. So let us try to find Christian fellowship wherever possible, and let us not absent ourselves from the worship assemblies and the fellowship of the church. I’m reminded of what the author of Hebrews, that epistle of warning, says in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 and 25, where we read these words. And let us, notice the emphasis on us, not you, let us do what? Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day, meaning the judgment day, drawing near. So they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to the fellowship.

    What is the next thing that’s mentioned? Well the third important key to spiritual growth in Christ is the breaking of bread. The third important key to spiritual growth is the breaking of bread. Now some folks, some commentators believe that this means sharing meals together with other believers, common meals. Sharing meals again with fellow Christians can certainly be an encouraging and edifying thing and I would encourage such practice of hospitality. But friends, I tend to agree with those commentators and scholars who view the terminology of breaking of bread as referring to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. It’s very important, my friends, that we Christians receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper on a regular basis, especially since our Lord Jesus intended that sacrament to be an encouragement to the faith of his people. As we scour the pages of the New Testament, we see that celebrating communion or the Lord’s Supper together was a high priority in the life of the early apostolic church.

    It wasn’t viewed as an optional tack-on at the end of the service. It was viewed as something that was essential to the life of the church. receiving the encouragement and the blessing that comes from partaking of the Lord’s Supper together is very important, vitally important to our spiritual growth in the knowledge and love of the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact that Jesus instituted this holy sacrament on the very night in which he was betrayed underscores the importance of the Lord’s Supper to our spiritual growth and well-being. So let us not despise or neglect the Holy Supper. Let us not regard the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper as optional. It’s not. It’s vitally important to our discipleship. So they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread. What’s the final vital key to spiritual growth that is mentioned?

    Well, another vital key to spiritual growth is prayer. What is prayer? Children, what is prayer? Prayer is simply, at heart, talking to God. I like how our Shorter Catechism describes prayer. If you wanna turn the back of your psalter hymnal to Shorter Catechism question and answer 98. Question and answer number 98. So on page 975 in the back of your psalter hymnal. The question is, what is prayer? The Bible-based answer to that question is this, and you’re welcome to recite along if you wish. Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God for things agreeable to His will in the name of Christ with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgment of His mercies. That is a whole sermon or couple sermons in that answer. There’s so much packed in there. Prayer is precious.

    Christian prayer is talking to God. And the biblical pattern of prayer, as I think I pointed out on the last Lord’s Day, the typical biblical pattern of prayer is that we pray to the Father through the mediation of the Son and with the aid and help of the Holy Spirit. But it, of course, is appropriate and certainly legitimate to pray to any and all three persons of the Holy Trinity, since all three persons are fully 100% God. But Christian prayer, in its specific pattern in the New Testament, is talking to God through the mediation of His divine Son, Jesus Christ. Believer, if you want to grow spiritually, then you must keep the lines of communication open between yourself and your Heavenly Father. He wants you to talk to Him. And you might say, well, I’m not very sophisticated.

    I don’t know what to say. God’s not interested in fancy speech. He’s interested in your heart. So talk to him the way that you would talk to anyone. But of course, he’s God. He’s not a creature. So talk to him reverently. But talk to him confidently. Praise Him for who He is. Thank Him for His blessings. Confess your sins to Him. And by faith in Christ, receive His gift of forgiveness, for His mercies are new every morning. And not only does He forgive our sins once, He continues to grant us His fatherly forgiveness each and every day. Tell Him your troubles. Cast your cares upon Him. Share with Him your deepest hopes, your deepest desires, your deepest pains, your deepest joys. Don’t just talk to him in your formal ritual prayers. Though there’s nothing wrong with written prayers, for example, the Bible’s full of them.

    You ever read the book of Psalms? The Bible’s full of written prayers. Nothing wrong with using a formal prayer as long as it’s biblically based and as long as you pray it from the heart, but don’t just use formal prayers. Talk to him throughout the day in your own words. Yes, talk to him reverently, realizing that he is your creator. He is your Father in heaven, but also talk to Him confidently, realizing that He is a personal God who cares deeply for the needs of His believing children. He is your Father in heaven, but He is your Father in heaven. And if you know Christ as your Lord and Savior, as we discussed in our morning instruction class this morning, the adult instruction class, we are His beloved children. Now I want you to notice that in this passage it says they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.

    There’s a definite article there probably indicating the well-known prayers. This indicates praying together. There’s a corporate focus, a corporate context to this statement. So while certainly private prayer and prayer in the context of families is important, so especially is prayer together with your brothers and sisters in Christ. In conclusion, my friends, there are four things that we should do if we want to grow spiritually. Number one, read and study God’s word and sit under the faithful preaching and teaching of that word. Number two, be actively involved in the Christian fellowship of Christ’s church. Number three, when possible, receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper with a heart of faith and repentance. Make that a priority to be present whenever the Lord’s Supper is administered in the church. And finally, pray throughout the day, both privately in the context of your family and with your brothers and sisters in church.

    However, let me close by reminding us that these spiritual disciplines will only truly benefit us if we have a personal saving relationship with Jesus Christ as our very own Lord and Savior. Dear friends, Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for sin. He rose from the dead, and He calls all people everywhere to repent. And through the gospel, He commands you and me to repent of sin and to trust in Him for our salvation. Have you come to Christ? Is He your Lord and Savior? God, by His word, calls you to come to Jesus today. Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Reject Him, though, and you will abide under the wrath of God. Let that not happen. By the grace of God, may you turn to Christ in true faith and repentance.

    Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, sovereign and eternal God, we thank you and praise you that you not only give us new life in Christ, but you give us these means of grace by which we can grow. in the knowledge and love of the Lord Jesus. We pray that you would grant us, each and every one of us, a desire to use these spiritual keys to spiritual growth in our lives. And we pray that you would make us diligent in them and help us to grow in grace. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. We close our worship service today by rising and singing together, my faith has found a resting place. Is Jesus your resting place? May your faith be in Him. Let’s rise and sing 436, my faith has found a resting place.

    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.

  • Foundations of Faith: Our Trinitarian Confession

    Foundations of Faith: Our Trinitarian Confession

    About this sermon

    Judaism, Islam, and Unitarian sects also confess one God, and the Trinity sets the Christian faith apart. The risen Christ receives all authority in heaven and on earth, and he commands his church to baptize the nations into the one name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The triune God is at work in creation, providence, and salvation, and Christian worship and prayer rise to the Father through the Son by the Spirit. Baptism places believers under the authority and covenant protection of the triune God.

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    Sermon transcript

    The Gospel of Matthew, at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew chapter 28, verses 16 through 20, a passage that is typically referred to as the Great Commission. Remember the setting, Jesus has risen from the dead, but this is before his ascension into heaven, and our Lord addresses his disciples in Galilee. Hear the word of God. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

    And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. 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. Heavenly Father, we do ask that by your Holy Spirit, you would once again open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word. We pray that you would encourage us, that you would feed our souls, that you would challenge us. If necessary, rebuke us, Lord. We pray that we might be strengthened by what we hear today, and we ask that you would set a guard over my lips, that I might speak only that which is faithful to your Holy Word. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said.

    Amen. You may be seated. Well, dear ones, the title of my sermon this morning is Foundations of Faith, Our Trinitarian Confession. And if you’re following along in your sermon outline, I would again direct your attention to a number of words that you can be listening for in the sermon, if that helps you follow along. I especially wanna highlight the words trinity, monotheism, salvation, and foundation. Well, dear ones, as many of you know, I recently began a new sermon series in which we are reviewing the biblical foundations of our holy Christian faith, a series in which we are being guided by the Bible-based affirmations of that classical ecumenical creed of the historic Christian church known as the Apostles’ Creed. And it’s called the Apostles’ Creed not because it was penned by the apostles, it is an ancient creed, a baptismal creed, but it is a creed that nevertheless reflects the teachings of the apostles that are revealed to us in the New Testament scriptures, and hence it is called the Apostles’ Creed.

    And it’s important for us periodically from time to time to go back and review the basics of our faith and to remind ourselves again, what is it that I believe? Why do I believe it? And why are these things important to me as a Christian and to us as a Christian church? Now, friends, on the last Lord’s Day, we consider the very first affirmation of the Apostles’ Creed, namely the affirmation, I believe in God. And we grounded and based that affirmation upon a very foundational text of Scripture, namely Genesis 1, verses 1-3. You’re all familiar with Genesis 1-1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, as I pointed out on the last Lord’s Day, Absolutely nothing is more foundational, more fundamental, more central to our holy Christian faith than the existence of the true and living God who is revealed to us in the pages of His inspired Word, the Bible.

    Based on our study of that Genesis passage last week, we saw that the true and living God is an eternal being. He is beyond time, space, or matter. He’s transcendent, so He’s eternal, that He is a self-existent being, and also that He is a necessary being. We learned on the last Lord’s Day that without the true and living God revealed in Holy Scripture, there would be nothing else. And without God, there is no sound basis for human logic or reason, since God himself is the necessary prerequisite or precondition for all human intelligibility. Human logic is and must be grounded upon the divine logos. the divine living word who is Christ himself, the word made flesh. And so again, we consider the importance of the existence of the true and living God. However, friends, as you probably know, historic biblical Christianity is not the only faith system out there that acknowledges the existence of one true God.

    That is to say, Christianity is not the only religion out there in the world, the only faith system that can be described as affirming what has been called ethical monotheism. Certainly traditional and orthodox Judaism, traditionalist Islam and other Unitarian sects and religions also affirm and believe in only one God, thereby affirming the principle of ethical monotheism. But dear ones, the difference between historic Christianity and these other systems of ethical monotheism is of course what? The doctrine of the Trinity. Beloved, as Christians, we are not mere theists or mere monotheists, we are rather Trinitarian monotheists. Yes, we are monotheists, we believe in only one true God, but we are Trinitarian monotheists as opposed to being Unitarian monotheists. And that’s incredibly important. to our faith. In fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is so foundational to our faith that even this brief, bare-bones creed known to us today as the Apostles’ Creed is arranged in a three-fold division that affirms the three persons of the Holy Trinity and the biblical truths that are typically connected with each of these persons.

    In other words, the way that the Apostles’ Creed, which is this very basic, bare-bones creed, the way the creed is structured is in accordance with the three persons of the Trinity. And so, for example, the first division of the Apostles’ Creed is headed by the statement or affirmation, I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. There’s the first person of the Holy Trinity, God the Father. The second division is headed, of course, by The affirmation, I believe in what? I believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, our Lord. There’s the eternal second person of the Trinity, the eternal son of God. And of course, the third division is headed by the affirmation, I believe in the Holy Spirit, referencing the third person of the Holy Trinity. Dear ones, what this means is that not only is the God in whom we believe and who we confess an eternal being, not only is He a self-existent being, not only is He a necessary being, He is also unavoidably a Trinitarian or triune being.

    In fact, from the standpoint of God’s Holy Word, Any so-called monotheistic God who is not also the triune God revealed in the pages of scripture is not actually the true and living God. The God of Unitarian monotheism, in whatever form that Unitarian monotheism takes, is not the same God that we worship. Well, but Pastor, the Trinity wasn’t revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures. Are you saying that, well, actually the Trinity is revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures? It’s revealed in seed form. It is there by implication. The details of the doctrine of the Trinity are, of course, expressed more directly and explicitly in the New Testament Scriptures, and it’s more understandable now to God’s people with the coming of Christ. But the Trinity is throughout the Scriptures in both Old Testament and New Testament. Now, just by way of review before we dive into our text for today, what do we mean when we talk about the Trinity?

    What is the Trinity? Well, the Trinity is the affirmation, the doctrine that says that there is only one true God. We are not tritheists. We do not worship three gods. There’s not one God who’s divided up into three different parts. Each person of the Trinity is fully A 100% God shares fully in the one divine being or essence. But this one eternal God exists eternally in three co-equal, co-eternal persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And it’s when we make a definition like this or express this definition that many scratch their heads and say, that’s confusing. And to which I say, duh, yeah, it is confusing because we’re talking about the infinite God. We cannot fully comprehend or wrap our brains around this truth, but we believe it because God’s word reveals it.

    I like how our larger catechism, our Westminster larger catechism defines the Trinity. The question is, question nine, how many persons are there in the Godhead? The Bible-based answer of our larger catechism is this. There be three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one true eternal God, the same in substance, which is an old-fashioned way of saying essence or being, the same in substance, equal in power and glory, although distinguished by their personal properties. So there is one true and living God who exists eternally in three divine, co-equal, co-eternal persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, as we dive into our text for today, the first thing I want to point out is that the truth of the Trinity is foundational to the church’s faith and mission in the world.

    The truth of the Trinity is absolutely foundational to the church’s faith and mission in the world. Now our passage for this morning is Matthew’s record of our Lord’s so-called Great Commission. In other words, our resurrected Lord Jesus’ marching orders to his church, the divine commission which defines the church’s mission and calling in this present age of redemptive history, this age between our Lord’s first advent and his future glorious second advent. Jesus is telling us what we as the church are to be about the business of doing while we await His second coming. In this passage, that is what He’s instructing us in. Let me just point out, it’s not our Lord’s main purpose in this passage to give us a detailed teachings on the doctrine of the Trinity or what have you, but nevertheless, the foundational centrality of the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed here in Christ’s great commission by the fact that the covenant sign of initiation into the church, the covenant sign of initiation into Christ’s community of discipleship, for that is what the church is.

    What is that? Sign of initiation, it is baptism into the triune name of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Notice again what Jesus says to his disciples. He says in verse 19, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, all ethnic group, ethne, ethne is the Greek, make disciples of all nations. baptizing them in the name, notice it’s not the names, plural, but the singular name. There’s one God, one being, the name of the Father and of the Son. and of the Holy Spirit. Now again, let’s remember the setting and context of this passage. This is post-resurrection but pre-ascension. Christ has been raised from the dead, the tomb is empty, Jesus is alive from the dead, and he’s already appeared a number of times to his apostles and to others as well.

    And he now appears to the 11 and perhaps to some others as well in Galilee. Look at verse 16, it says, now the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. Why did they go to Galilee? Well, they went to Galilee because the angel at the Lord’s empty tomb had told them that they would see Jesus in Galilee. If you go back to verse seven here in Matthew 28, At the scene of the empty tomb, the angel says, then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead and behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. See, I have told you. So that’s why they head to Galilee. And it is perhaps here at Galilee that Jesus not only appears to these 11 disciples, but perhaps this was also the scene, the occasion where Jesus appeared to more than 500 of his broader group of followers at once.

    The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, I believe verse eight, says that after Jesus rose from the dead, of course he appeared to his apostles on numerous occasions, over a period of 40 days, but on one occasion, he appeared as the resurrected Lord in his resurrection body. He appeared to more than 500 of his followers at one time. And when Paul wrote that statement in 1 Corinthians 15, at that particular time, most of these eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus were still alive, though some had died, Paul says. But there were multiple eyewitnesses to the resurrected. Lord Jesus Christ, and so perhaps this was the occasion where that occurred. But be that as it may, the 11 disciples go to Galilee, they go to this mountain to which Jesus directed them, and it says in verse 17, when they saw him, they worshiped him.

    They worshiped him. But then Matthew adds an interesting side note. But some doubted. Now the scholars have a field day trying to decide who are the some that doubted. Is he saying that some of these 11 who had already probably seen Jesus a number of times in terms of post-resurrection appearances, that some of them doubted? Or is Matthew referencing some of the broader disciples of Jesus who may have also been present, initially doubting because perhaps they didn’t know, is this really Jesus or not? Perhaps they doubted at first because they weren’t close enough to see him clearly. But however we may understand this statement that some doubted, it’s a very honest statement. You see, what’s important about this this statement is that it’s a detail that helps to support the historical trustworthiness of this account.

    Think about it, if Matthew’s gospel indeed, if the gospel accounts are mere religious propaganda and mythology as the skeptics and the atheists and the critical rationalist Bible scholars would have us believe, then certainly details like this that might throw, make the disciples appear in a bad light, certainly Matthew wouldn’t want to include such details. But the fact that Matthew includes this potentially negative assessment of the 11 disciples or other disciples of Jesus on that occasion shows that Matthew is interested not in promoting propaganda, but in telling the truth. And how true to human nature is this? How true to human nature is this? It is true to our fallen nature to have sinful doubt even when the truth of God and even when the Son of God is staring you in the face. And so, I think again, this is testimony, this statement is testimony to Matthew’s honesty and to the Spirit’s inspiration of this passage.

    But then again, it goes on in verse 18. It says, Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Now let’s pause there. Ask yourself the question, didn’t Jesus as the eternal Son of God, the divine Son of God, didn’t he already have all authority in heaven and on earth? Why then does he speak of the Father giving him all authority in heaven and on earth at this particular occasion? Well, we need to understand that yes, in his divine nature, Jesus has always had all authority in heaven and on earth. But Jesus in his incarnation is the God-man, the Word made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us. the theanthropos, as the theologians call it. So in his post-resurrection state, there are no longer any limitations upon our Lord’s exercise of his universal divine authority.

    Remember that during his earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus chose to limit the exercise of some of his divine attributes on many occasions, but now with his post-resurrection state, all authority has been given to him as the God-man, as the mediator, as the Messiah. And so, though Jesus as the divine Son of God is indeed equal with the Father with respect to his deity, yet as the God-man, he submits to the Father and in a sense is given his authority by the Father. And what this means, brothers and sisters, is that Jesus as the Messiah, as the God-man, reigns over the entire universe. All authority has been given in heaven and on earth to him. Jesus rules the furthest galaxies, the furthest stars, and he rules at the microscopic level down to the smallest microscopic particle. all authority has been given to him by the Father.

    And then verse 19, we have this commission. Jesus says, look, I’m able to give this commission, I’m able, I have the authority to order and command my church, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, teaching them, and so forth. Dr. William Hendrickson points out that this literally in the original says, having gone therefore make disciples. The imperative in this passage is to make disciples. And that is the central focus of the mission that the resurrected Lord Jesus assigns to his church. What are we to be about the business of doing? Are we to be about the business of changing political laws or being culture warriors or social justice warriors? No. Our business as a church is to be about the business of making disciples. That is what we are commanded to do.

    The other participles in this commission, the participles going, baptizing, and teaching, simply describe different aspects in the process of disciple making. And these participles do have an imperatival force to them. You know, he’s not just saying, well, as you go along, make disciples and baptize. He’s saying, go, make disciples, baptize, teach. There’s an imperatival force to all of this. But all of this should raise the question in your mind, okay, okay, we’re supposed to go make disciples. What is a disciple? Well, children, many of you are disciples with respect to your education. Raise your hand if you’re a student. A disciple is basically a pupil, a learner, a student. And if you are a disciple of Jesus, that means you have been enrolled in the school of Christ. You learn of Jesus so that you may live for Jesus.

    You learn about Jesus so that you may, in faith, be a follower of the Lord Jesus. So a disciple is essentially a pupil, a learner. Through baptism and conversion, we are enrolled as students in the school of Christ, the church where we learn how to be followers of Jesus. And what is the extent of this commission? Well, Jesus says, make disciples of all nations. The Greek word is taethne. Ethne is the word from which we derive the word ethnic. And the nations here does not merely mean political entities. When we think of nations today, we tend to think of, well, there’s Brazil, there’s Australia, there’s China, there’s Spain, there’s South Africa, and what have you. But no, what Jesus means is all people groups. Here in our nation, the United States of America, there are multiple ethnic groups, multiple nations within our political entity known as the United States.

    So this encompasses all people groups, not just all political entities. It includes Gentiles as well as Jews in fulfillment of God’s covenant promises to Abraham. as expressed in passages like Genesis 12.3 and 17.5. You see, friends, with the resurrection of Christ and his ascension into heaven to the reign at the right hand of God the Father, God’s covenant promise to Abraham that all the nations would be blessed in him, that promise would begin to be fulfilled on a worldwide scale. And the past 2,000 years of church history is demonstration of that fact. Now in the Old Testament there was a sort of a narrowing of God’s saving grace. The narrowing of God’s saving grace and covenant mercies in Old Covenant times and under the Mosaic administration when grace was mostly limited to the Jews, that was ultimately to be in service to the eventual expansion of the covenant to all nations with the coming of Jesus the Messiah and with his call to the church to take the gospel to all the nations.

    No longer was the Savior’s mission to be limited to the lost sheep of the house of Israel as it was during his earthly ministry. As Matthew himself records, I believe in Matthew 10, Jesus says, I must go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. That’s what his focus was during his earthly ministry. But now with the resurrection from the dead, the gospel is to go to the nations, to the Gentiles. The Gentiles too were to hear the glad tidings of great joy. And that’s why we’re here today. because we by grace have heard the glad tidings of great joy. So we are to make disciples, but how are disciples to be made? Well, we are told in verses 19 through 20, Jesus mentions baptizing them in the name of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

    Disciples are made through two means, by means of baptism and teaching. Another way of saying this is through the word and sacrament ministry of the church. Baptism, of course, is the covenant sign of initiation into the covenant of grace. Trinitarian baptism is a sign and seal of being brought under the authority and lordship and protection of the triune God. And what is to be taught to these who are being discipled, to disciples, the baptized? What is to be taught? Jesus says, teaching them to observe Some of the things that I have commanded you? No, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Not just teaching a few essentials, but teaching the whole counsel of God, in other words. Disciples of Jesus are to be taught to observe all that I have commanded you, as Jesus says.

    Here our Lord Jesus speaks. The argument can be made that Matthew is presenting the risen Lord Jesus here as the new and final Moses. I mean, think about it. Moses was the mediator of the old covenant, and he was the great prophet of the old covenant. But Jesus is, of course, the mediator of a new and better covenant, and he is the ultimate prophet with a capital P, the ultimate prophet, priest, and king, for he is the Messiah. And just as the first Moses received the law from God on Mount Sinai, so here the Lord Jesus Christ issues forth his commandments from this unnamed mountain in Galilee. And so Jesus says, teach them to observe all that I have commanded you. The church is to teach disciples of Jesus all that he has commanded. And that means it is to teach both law and gospel.

    And the goal of discipleship is not just faith in Christ, although that’s absolutely foundational and essential, but to teach practical obedience that springs from such faith. In some, my friends, the mission of Christ’s church is to make disciples of Jesus who will trust and obey. But again, friends, notice that all of this assumes a Trinitarian framework. Now, we have here the Great Commission, but we also have here the Great Comfort. After Jesus gives this worldwide commission to his church to make disciples of all the nations, to baptize them in the name of the triune God, to teach them to observe all that he has commanded, how can they do this? How can we in the church ever accomplish this calling, this commission that Christ has given to us? Jesus says, and behold, I am with you always. to the end of the age.

    This is the great comfort behind the Great Commission. It’s interesting in Matthew’s Gospel at the beginning of this Gospel account, Matthew explains that the virgin birth and incarnation of Christ means that Jesus is Emmanuel, which he explains in Matthew 1, verse 23, Emmanuel means God with us. Jesus is God with us. He came to us to dwell in our midst, and that’s the ultimate fulfillment of the covenant of grace, that God would come to dwell in love and friendship with his people. But you might think, wait a minute, isn’t Jesus getting ready to go back to heaven? How can Jesus say, I’m with you always to the end of the age? Friends, even though the resurrected Lord Jesus would soon ascend into heaven and no longer be present with His church in the sense of His physical, bodily, incarnate presence, nonetheless, Jesus promised that He would always be present with His church even to the end of the age.

    How would that be possible? Well, this, of course, as we know from the rest of Scripture, this is made possible by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Again, notice the Trinitarian implications the pouring out of the spirit at Pentecost, and that should comfort and courage and embolden our Lord’s church. Christ does dwell among his church through his spirit, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. So friends, by good and necessary inference, this passage demonstrates that the truth of the Trinity is foundational to the church’s faith and mission in this world. Let me ask you, dear Christian, is the truth of the Trinity foundational to your confession of faith? Well, I wanna share just a few more things with you before we wrap things up. This was the main point of my sermon today, but I wanna take us to a couple other scriptures as well.

    I want us to next consider that the mighty works of the triune God in creation, providence, and salvation also show the doctrine of the Trinity to be foundational to our faith. It’s easy to see the doctrine of the Trinity here in the baptismal formula of Matthew’s account of our Lord’s Great Commission, where Jesus very explicitly says, baptize them in the one divine name, the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But the united testimony of Scripture shows that the Scriptures themselves are Trinitarian. You see, Scripture, let’s consider first of all God’s works of creation and providence. God’s works of creation and providence are presented in Scripture as being Trinitarian works. Scripture presents God the Father creating through the divine agency of God the Son and by the presence and action of God the Holy Spirit.

    We touched upon that a little bit on the last Lord’s Day when we consider Genesis 1, verses one through three. I pointed out from that passage that The name for God that is used there in that passage, Elohim, Elohim is actually a plural. and the reason it’s not translated as God’s is because the verb to create is in the singular, and so it’s a plural of majesty, which certainly is compatible with the Trinitarian doctrine, but we also see reference in Genesis 1, verse 2, to the spirit of God, and then in verse 3, God says, let there be light, and so forth. God creates by means of his divine creative word, And that ultimately points us to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we see that all three persons of the Holy Trinity are involved in the creation of the world.

    This is affirmed by the Apostle John in his prologue, John 1, 1-3, in the beginning was the Word, that’s Jesus, that’s the divine Logos, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, face to face with God the Father, and the Word was God, Jesus is fully divine. All things were made through Him. Without Him, nothing was made that was made. Again, Jesus is presented as the divine agent of creation. And in Colossians 1, verses 15 through 17, you can look this up later if you wish, but in that passage, Christ is presented not only as the divine agent of creation, but as the preeminent Lord who providentially sustains all creation, preventing it from falling into chaos and disintegration. Children, have you ever wondered why is it that the universe holds together?

    Why is it that when you get up in the morning, you don’t all of a sudden just disappear? Why is it that there is an order to creation? The Bible says it’s because Jesus is holding it all together. If the Lord Jesus were to remove his hand of providence from the world, from the universe, everything would disintegrate immediately, instantly. Everything would go out of existence, poof. all would collapse into chaos. It is only the sovereign hand of the Lord Jesus, the Father through the Son and by the Spirit, moment by moment, sustains the universe. And this is affirmed in other passages like Hebrews 1, verses one to three. Let me just briefly read that passage. Hebrews 1, verses one to three. The author of Hebrews writes, long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.

    But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. The son is involved as the divine agent of creation, the father creates through the son. And then look at verse three. He, Christ, is the radiance of the glory of God, and the exact imprint of his nature, which is another way of saying Jesus is fully 100% God, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. Christ upholds the universe by the word of his power. Again, Christ is presented as the divine agent of creation and the providential Lord who upholds the universe by the word of his power. In other words, friends, God’s works of creation and providence are Trinitarian works. And this shows the importance of the truth of God as a triune being.

    But not only are God’s works of creation and providence Trinitarian works. Hallelujah, God’s work of salvation is also a Trinitarian work. You see, when it comes to creation in Providence, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit work together in perfect harmony with one another. And so the Father creates through the Son and by the agency of the Spirit. The Father sustains all things through the work of the Son and by the Spirit. There’s no contradiction among the persons of the Trinity. The same is true in our salvation. According to the United Witness of Holy Scripture, just as all three persons of the Trinity work in perfect harmony in the works of creation and providence, so all three persons of the Trinity work in perfect harmony when it comes to human salvation. The United Testimony of God’s Word is that God the Father decreed and planned our salvation in eternity past, if we can speak of. and eternity past.

    God the Son accomplished our salvation when He became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ and died on the cross for our sins. And God the Holy Spirit applies to us in due time the finished work of Christ. In other words, God the Father chose us, God the Son redeemed us, and God the Holy Spirit regenerated and sanctifies us. This glorious, marvelous working together of the persons of the Trinity in our salvation is marvelously brought out by the Apostle Paul in passages like Ephesians 1, that glorious opening. doxology, this divinely inspired run-on sentence, I believe in the Greek, that verses 3 through, I believe, verse 14 are one sentence in the Greek, because Paul is so excited in expressing these glorious truths, but notice how all three persons of the Trinity work together for our salvation.

    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, God the Father, chose us in him, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, there’s the election, there’s the Father’s work, 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, in Christ, we have redemption through His blood. So the Father has chosen us, predestined us. We have redemption through the blood of Christ, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us in all wisdom and insight and so forth.

    And then you skip down. to the latter part of this opening section of Ephesians, where he talks about our eternal inheritance. Verse 11, 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. Notice verse 13, in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with, what? or whom you 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. Isn’t this glorious? What this means, brother, sister in Christ, is that all three persons of the omnipotent triune God are working harmoniously together for your eternal salvation.

    Oh, be comforted, believer. Be comforted in knowing that your eternal salvation has been planned secured and sealed by your sovereign triune God. If you are repentant for your sins and are trusting Christ alone for your salvation, it is because God is at work in you both to will and to do according to his good pleasure. Take comfort in that. All three persons of the Godhead are working in harmony for your eternal salvation. And remember, if God is for us, God, the eternal, sovereign, omnipotent, triune God, if this God is for you, what’s the conclusion? Who can be against you? Praise be to God. I wanna close very briefly with four implications of our Trinitarian confession. First of all, God’s revelation in Scripture is Trinitarian. The Father reveals himself through the Son and by the Holy Spirit.

    God’s word, we are told, is breathed out, theopneustos, all scripture is theopneustos, breathed out by God. And in the scriptures, the breath of God and the spirit of God are closely associated. And that breathed out word, that written word of God, reveals Jesus, the living word. All of scripture is Trinitarian. God’s revelation in scripture is Trinitarian. Secondly, Christian prayer and worship are Trinitarian. If you go to a so-called Christian worship service and Jesus is never mentioned or hardly mentioned at all and there’s no implicit reference to the Trinity, you might as well have gone to a Jewish synagogue service or a Unitarian service. True Christian worship, true Christian prayer is Trinitarian at heart, at base. In the New Testament scriptures, God’s people typically pray to the Father through the Son and with the aid and help of the Holy Spirit.

    That’s not to say that it’s wrong to pray directly to Jesus or directly to the Holy Spirit, but the typical pattern of prayer is to pray to the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit. Thirdly, the church’s missionary and evangelistic labors are Trinitarian. We saw that in our passage for today, where the goal of discipleship is to get baptized converts baptized in the triune name to learn under the authority and covenantal protection of the triune God. And finally, as disciples of Jesus, our baptism relates us covenantally to all three persons of the Trinity. As our passage for today tells us, Jesus says, baptizing them in or into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We have been baptized into the one divine name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

    What that means, brothers and sisters, is that we have been brought under the authority, lordship, and covenantal protection of our great and sovereign triune God. So let us trust Him. Let us worship Him. Let us live for Him. And let us confess Him to a world filled with idolatry and false gods, a world that desperately needs to know Him in the glory and the graciousness of His sovereign triune being. Amen. Let us pray. Lord and Father in heaven, we give you thanks and praise for your son Jesus and for the presence of your spirit. We praise you, oh God, for your triune majesty. We ask that you would help us to see the practical implications of these truths and help us to worship and serve you accordingly. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen.

    Let’s rise as we respond to what we’ve heard. Let’s rise and we’ll sing together. Hymn number 467, Cast Down, O God, the Idols. 467.

    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.

  • Foundations of Faith: ‘I Believe in God’

    Foundations of Faith: ‘I Believe in God’

    About this sermon

    The Apostles’ Creed begins, ‘I believe in God,’ and everything depends on which God that means. The God of American civil religion is a spare tire for emergencies, while the God of Scripture is holy, sovereign, and triune. ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ shows that God is eternal, self-existent, and needs nothing outside himself. God has revealed himself supremely in Jesus Christ, and knowing him through Christ is eternal life.

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    Sermon transcript

    of God’s Word. This morning officially begins a new sermon series which is going to be guided by the Apostles’ Creed but based in the Scriptures. This is a series entitled Foundations of Faith. And the title of my sermon this morning is Foundations of Faith, I Believe in God, Our sermon text today is Genesis 1, verses one through three. We’ll be focusing especially on verse one, but let us hear God’s holy word from this book of beginnings, Genesis 1, verses one through three. Here with reverence and awe, the word of our God. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light.” The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.

    Let’s pray for God’s blessing upon the preaching of His Word. Heavenly Father, indeed, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the Holy Scriptures. They are indeed a lamp unto our feet, a light into our path. a guide to our way. We ask that by your Holy Spirit, the seed of your word would indeed find a lodging place in our souls and bear much spiritual fruit in our hearts and lives. We pray that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear that which the Spirit is speaking to us and teaching us in this portion of your inerrant word. And we pray, Lord, that once again that you would set a guard over my lips, that I might speak only that which is faithful to your word, and edifying to your people, and glorifying to your holy name.

    In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. If you’re following along in your sermon outline, you’ll notice that there are a number of key words you can be listening for in my sermon today if that helps you to follow along. The words God, believe, eternal, self-existent, necessary, and creation. Well dear brothers and sisters in Christ, there is nothing more foundational, nothing more fundamental, nothing more central to our holy Christian faith than the truth of God’s existence. And while it is true that militant atheism seems to be on the rise in recent decades in our increasingly secular and even post-Christian context here in the United States of America, at the same time, it is my understanding that even today, in 2023, a significant majority of Americans, whether they be religious or secular, continue to profess belief in the existence of God.

    If you were to take an informal survey, walk down the streets here in Sewickley and ask people, well, do you believe in God? You might get a few folks saying, well, no, I don’t, you know, I’m an atheist or I don’t believe in God. But my suspicion is that many would say, well, yeah, I believe in God. The phrase, in God we trust, continues to remain on our currency. One nation, under God, continues to remain as an affirmation in our pledge of allegiance. At many patriotic events, the popular song, God Bless America, continues to be sung, and often sung with vigor and deep feeling. And of course, the typical ending of political speeches given by our political leaders of both parties continues to be the typical benedictory statement, may God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America, or something along those lines.

    But friends, all of this should raise in our minds an important question. The question, what do most people mean when they say, I believe in God? Indeed, dear friends, what do you and I, what do we mean when we say, I believe in God? Which God or divine being do we believe in? We might like to say in God we trust, but in which God do we trust? For example, do we believe in and trust in a lowest common denominator deity, the so-called non-sectarian God of American civil religion and patriotism? The spare tire God that we can turn to in times of national crisis and national emergency, but who can be safely ignored most other times. A nationalistic God who sort of serves as a mascot for our political and nationalistic causes and aims. Is that the kind of God that we believe in?

    Or do we, in fact, believe and trust in the holy, sovereign, triune God, the true and living God who is revealed to us in the pages of His Word, the Bible, the God who is confessed historically and internationally in the Orthodox creeds of the historic Christian church, such as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed? Friends, as we kick off this sermon series on the foundations of our faith, which will be guided by the affirmations that are found in the Apostles’ Creed, we consider today the first affirmation of that creed, which is, and I’m sure you’re welcome to recite it along with me if you wish, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And in particular, we’re gonna focus today on the very first statement of this first affirmation, which is, I believe in God.

    And friends, what better portion of God’s word to turn to as the basis for this foundational affirmation than the very opening verses of that biblical book, which is foundational for every other book that follows it in Holy Scripture, namely the book of Genesis. The book of Genesis is an incredibly important and foundational portion of scripture. The book of Genesis has rightly been called the book of beginnings. And it’s interesting to note that Genesis actually opens up in chapter 1, verse 1, with the Hebrew word bereshith, a word which itself means beginning or in the beginning. Friends, Genesis as a whole, of course, is focused on introducing us to the covenant history of Israel, the history of how Israel came to be. In other words, the particular focus of Genesis is on introducing the story of Israel.

    But in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, the foundational chapters of Genesis, the story of Israel is set within its broader cosmic context. as the inspired author, who I believe to be Moses, the prophet, gives us the big picture background leading up to God’s covenant with the patriarch Abraham, which is recorded in Genesis chapter 12. And so friends, the creation account at the beginning of this opening section of Genesis introduces us to the story behind the story of Israel, namely the story of God’s creation of the universe. and his sovereign formation of the earth as a very good habitable dwelling place for his image bearers, mankind, male and female, Adam and Eve and their descendants. Thus our passage for this Lord’s Day morning introduces us to the glorious being of the true and living triune God, the God in whom we trust.

    And this passage also introduces us to His mighty works of creation. Indeed, our passage for today implies and supports our foundational Christian belief in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. that foundational belief with which we and all Orthodox Christians throughout the world confess in that ancient ecumenical creed known as the Apostles’ Creed. So what do we learn from our passage for this Lord’s Day morning? Well, there’s many things that we can learn from this passage, but I want to focus on three important lessons that we learn about God from this passage of Holy Scripture. First of all, we learn here, beloved, that the true and living God is an eternal being. The true and living God is an eternal being. That’s the first main point in your sermon outline. To say that God is eternal is to say that he is beyond time.

    He transcends time. Indeed, he transcends time, space, and matter. He is the transcendent, eternal one. Our shorter catechism in its Bible-based answer to question number four, the question, what is God, states that God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Friends, the Bible’s teaching that the true and living God is infinite and eternal is clearly implied by the opening words here in Genesis 1, verse 1. The words, in the beginning, God. You see, in the beginning God, this opening statement implies and necessitates that God existed before the beginning, before the existence of time, space, and matter, and that he himself transcends the limitations of time, space, and matter. God was there even from before the beginning, and thus, as Moses opens up this wonderful portion of scripture, and indeed all of scripture, in the beginning, God.

    But this opening statement, in the beginning, implies an important question. One of the keys to being a well-informed and discerning Bible reader is to learn how to ask good questions of what you’re reading. And so I would encourage you when you’re studying the scriptures, when you’re reading the scriptures, to have perhaps a writing pad beside you. I mean, I know that’s old school. You can use your computer or your phone or whatever else you may choose to use to take notes. But however you do it, if you’re reading a passage of scripture, especially one that’s unfamiliar or difficult, then write down questions. What does this mean? To whom was this passage written? How would the original readers have understood this passage? And so forth. Well, one important question that ought to rise in our minds as we read these words in the beginning is the question, in the beginning of what?

    In the beginning of what? And that’s actually the Bible exegetes and scholars actually have some different views on what is being spoken of here. You see, the question arises, is the divinely inspired author or editor here speaking of an absolute beginning of creation ex nihilo, as the theologians call it? In other words, is this talking about God creating all things out of nothing, simply by his sovereign word of power? Is that what verse one and this reference to the beginning, is that what that’s speaking of? Or is this particular text speaking about the beginning of a creation process where God sovereignly acts to bring order and purpose and to assign functions to material that he has already brought into being and which is laid out for us in these six creation days that follow this opening statement.

    In other words, Does the statement in the beginning have in view an initial instantaneous act of absolute creation out of nothing? Is this referring to what we might call the biblical Big Bang, if you will, that act of divine creation whereby God brought space, time, and matter themselves into being? or is the beginning here meant as sort of a summary statement that has in view the entire creation process as revealed in the six creation days that follow here in Genesis chapter one. Well, friends, this is not an exegetical issue where conservatives and liberal theologians and scholars are at odds. Even Bible-believing evangelical and reform scholars differ on how to answer these kinds of interpretive questions. Now, let us say hypothetically that the beginning here, the word beginning represents a summary of the entire six-day creation process.

    And the view that says the beginning represents this summary seems to be reflected in some of the more contemporary translations that are out there. For example, if you look at the Good News translation, the Good News Bible, it is translated in the beginning when God created the universe. Contemporary Roman Catholic translation, the New American Bible, translates it similarly. It says, in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth. Now in this view, Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 does not seem to be speaking about an absolute beginning, but about the beginning of a process which is described again in the rest of the chapter, in which case the reference here to the beginning is a summary of God’s works of creation during the six creation days. Now, some folks might get nervous with that view.

    Some might object to this summary view by asking the question, well, if the summary view is correct, doesn’t that undermine the doctrine of God creating all things out of nothing? Doesn’t it deny or undermine creation ex nihilo? And friends, the answer to that question, if you take the summary view, in my view, no, it does not in any way take away from the truth of creation ex nihilo. For even if this verse does not directly teach the doctrine of creation out of nothing, it most certainly assumes and implies it. Furthermore, there are numerous other passages of Holy Scripture that clearly teach or clearly imply the doctrine of creation out of nothing, or in the Latin, creation ex nihilo. Let’s take a look at a few of those verses. Let’s turn, for example, to the passage from the book of Psalms that I read in opening up our worship service today.

    Let’s look particularly at Psalm 33, verse six. In Psalm 33, verse six, we read these words. It says, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth, all their host. This clearly teaches or implies creation out of nothing, that God, by his sovereign creative word, brought the heavens into being, and by the breath of his mouth, that imagery of God, God’s speech, his divine creative speech, bringing the heavens into being. Or consider, for example, Hebrews 11 verse three, which is arguably one of the clearest statements of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo in all of scripture, in Hebrews 11 verse 3 we read these words, it says, by faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God so that, listen here, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

    In other words, God didn’t need preexistent stuff in order to create the universe. For God, by his sovereign creative word, brought all that stuff into being. Or consider what is said in Revelation chapter four, verse 11. This is the final, as we compare scripture with scripture, this is the final passage of that comparison that we’re gonna look at at this point. Here, as we see a picture of heavenly worship, The following is said of God. Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created. Again, all of these biblical passages teach or at the very least strongly imply the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, that God created all things out of nothing. He simply spoke the word and all things instantaneously, time, space, and matter instantaneously came into being.

    So even if, getting back to our passage for today, even if you take the summary view that the beginning is referring to everything that follows here in chapter one rather than the absolute creation view, the summary view does not undermine the truth of creation ex nihilo. But friends, I find myself leaning toward the view that the beginning in view here is the absolute beginning, when God instantaneously, by a supernatural divine fiat, spoke the universe into being by His sovereign, creative word. And the reason that I hold this view and would commend it to you is that when we compare Scripture with Scripture, it seems that the New Testament apostolic writers, such as, for example, the Apostle John, understood the beginning to be an absolute beginning. John himself lifts the language here from Genesis and speaks of the absolute beginning in John chapter one, verses one to three.

    Let me just read that very familiar passage and remind us of what John’s prologue says in the opening verses of John chapter one. John writes, in the beginning, where have you heard those words before? from Genesis 1 verse 1. In the beginning was the word. It’s clear that in John’s writing, the beginning he refers to is not the beginning of the six day creation process, but the beginning, the absolute beginning. In the beginning was the word. That’s Jesus, that’s the eternal Christ, the divine Logos. In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. all things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. That is to say the Lord Jesus Christ is the divine agent and mediator of creation itself.

    And so again, as we ask the question, the beginning of what? This is speaking of an absolute beginning. Now what are some lessons that we can learn from this? We can learn many lessons from this, but I would commend a couple of applications to you, brothers and sisters. First of all, when you really dig down and think about it carefully, ultimately there are only two possibilities. Either the universe itself is eternal and uncreated, or God alone is eternal and brought the universe into existence into existence at a point in time in the past. The idea, however, and of course, if you’re an atheist, you have to believe in the eternality of the universe. I remember when I was in college I took an astronomy class and the particular professor that I had in that class was talking about the Big Bang Theory, which it’s my understanding is the typical accepted view in the scientific community today, and he was talking about how according to the Big Bang theory, all that we see, the universe exploded into being from an infinitesimally small point at some point in the past, usually billions of years in the past, that the universe exploded into being.

    And the question was asked, well, where did that explosion come from? And one theory that is out there is that there has been an eternal series, an infinite series of big bangs followed by big crunches. The idea being that, yes, the universe explodes into being, but then eventually, after billions and billions and billions of years, it wears out and then it falls back into itself and it crunches. So there’s been an infinite series of big bangs and big crunches. But that really raises, that just pushes the question back, the question of where did the first big bang come from, if this was the case? So you either have an eternal creation, an eternal universe, even if that eternal universe involves an infinite series of big bangs and big crunches, or you have an eternal God who at some point in the past sovereignly brings this universe into being.

    But friends, the idea that the universe is eternal not only contradicts biblical and theological truth, of course, not only does it contradict logic, But it is also my understanding that it is contrary to contemporary science. For most scientists today, like I said, believe that the universe had a beginning at some point in time, that there was a Big Bang. Now we don’t base our faith on current scientific theories, which are often ever-changing, but friends, these are the ultimate two options. You either have an eternal universe or an eternal God. Of course, the Bible teaches us, God’s word teaches us that he is eternal. But that often raises the question. And children are wonderful in raising good questions. Out of the mouths of babes and infants, God has ordained praise and oftentimes our children ask very perceptive questions.

    And have you ever heard your child, if you have children, ask the question, well, mom or dad, if God created everything, What comes next? Who created God? And of course, more cynical individuals, cynical adults like atheists and skeptics love to throw that question out there to believers to try to stump us and say, well, you say God created everything. Well, who created God? And the answer to that question, my friends, is that God, by definition, has always been. To suggest that the eternal, uncreated God needed to be created is to limit God in the way that we creatures are limited, as if God is, like us, a creature bound by time or space or matter. But no, my friends, God, by definition, is the uncreated creator. Any so-called God that needs a creator himself is not the God of Scripture.

    The God of Scripture is the eternal one, the transcendent one, the great I am, the self-existent one. Oh, children, think about how great our God must be, so great that He has always been. Children, this is the amazing thing about the God that we worship, the true and living God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He has always been. And you might say, well, pastor, I don’t know how to understand that. How do I wrap my brain around that? A God who never had a beginning and will never have an end? A God who indeed is beyond time? How do I wrap my brain around that? And the answer is you can’t, because you and I are finite, limited creatures. God is infinite and eternal. And what that means, brothers and sisters, and children of God.

    What that means for you and for me is that the God who has always been and always will be will always be there for us. He is ever present with us and he has loved us in Christ with an everlasting love. So the true and living God is an eternal being. We learn next that the true and living God is a self-existent being, which is to say God does not depend upon anyone or anything outside of himself to come into being or to remain inexistent. in existence. He is the self-existent one. We are told in this passage, in the beginning, God. Now the Hebrew word for the name God is the plural word Elohim. The singular would be El, the plural word is Elohim. This is the generic name for God. It’s the name of God which stresses God as the creator and the sovereign Lord over all.

    Whereas the name Yahweh often translated in English versions as Lord in all capital letters. Whenever you see that in your Old Testament, you read the word capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. That’s the English translators telling you that they are translating the Hebrew name for God Yahweh. And Yahweh is the name of God that speaks of God in His special covenant relationship with Israel, His redeemed people. But the name Elohim is a more generic name for God. It has in view God as the great creator and Lord over all. And one of the major lessons of the creation account here in Genesis 1 as a whole is that Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, is Elohim, the creator of all. The God of Israel was not some kind of nationalistic tribal deity, some kind of mascot for ancient Israel.

    The true and living God, the Yahweh, the God of Israel, the redeeming covenant God of Israel was the creator of the universe, is the creator of the heavens and the earth. It’s also interesting, as I mentioned, to note that the word Elohim is in the plural. And you might say, well, then why isn’t it translated, in the beginning, gods created the heavens and the earth? In fact, in other contexts in the scriptures, this word Elohim can sometimes refer to multiple gods, the false gods and idols of the nations. However, we know that it is to be understood singularly here in this passage, because in the context of this passage, The word clearly refers to the one true God, since the verb create here is in the singular, which indicates that this God, Elohim, is being presented as one divine being.

    Well then why does Moses, under the Spirit’s inspiration, give him the name Elohim, this plural name? Well, most scholars believe that this is a plural of majesty. It’s not just in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It’s as if he’s saying in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God, the majestic one. And so it’s a plural of majesty. What are some of the lessons that we learn here? Well, first of all, beloved, as I’ve already mentioned, in the beginning God implies that God, Elohim, existed even before the beginning, which itself implies that the God we worship, the God we love, the God we confess and trust in is self-existent. He depends upon no one outside of himself. In the words of our beloved Westminster Confession of Faith in chapter two, section two, That section says this, God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself, and is alone in and unto himself all sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them.

    Now, think about that. That is so different from the many sentimental ideas about God that are out there in our culture today, especially the idea, and maybe you’ve heard this expressed by some Christian preachers or teachers, the idea that, well, the reason God created us is because God was all alone by himself. He got lonely, he wanted fellowship, so he created us. Well, what does that imply? That implies that God needs someone or something outside of himself. But no, friends, God did not create us because he was lonely or because he somehow needed us. God has perfect fellowship within his own triune being. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally in love with each other, in eternal communion and community with one another within the one divine being. God does not need us. God certainly loves us.

    He cares about us in Christ. but he doesn’t need us. He needs only himself. He has no needs outside of himself because he is self-sufficient, self-sufficient. Again, he loves us, but he doesn’t need us, for he is the self-existent, self-sufficient one. He is the great I am. And that’s a very humbling truth. We live in a very narcissistic culture, very self-centered culture, with the idea that God exists for our benefit rather than we existing for His glory. It’s very humbling to realize, yes, God loves you, but He does not need you. That’s very humbling. Another truth that we learn in this passage has to do with the doctrine of the Trinity. Now while this passage does not directly or explicitly teach the doctrine of the Trinity in its fully developed form, New Testament form, in this passage there are hints of a trinity of divine persons within the one divine being.

    And I’ve already mentioned one of those hints and that is the name Elohim, God. As I mentioned, this is a plural of majesty, but this plural of majesty is certainly compatible with the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine that there are three divine persons within the one Godhead, that the one true and living God exists eternally in three co-equal, co-eternal persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. So there’s the plural of majesty, which is used for God’s name. We also, in verse two, we read of the Spirit of God. It says in verse two, the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the what? The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Again, today we would, under the new covenant, we understand this to be and would identify this as the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity.

    Another observation that supports the implicit Trinitarianism of our passage is that throughout this creation account, God uses his creative word, his let there be, in order to create and fashion and form. In John 1, verse 1, Christ is revealed as the eternal divine Word, the divine Logos through whom God the Father created all things. So this reference to creation by the divine creative Word points to Jesus, the eternal living Word. And therefore, friends, The Genesis account contains the doctrine of the Trinity in its Old Testament seed form. Again, it’s not fully revealed here. That would have been very confusing for the ancient Israelites. The thing that they were confronted in day in and day out was polytheism. Their Gentile nations worshipped multiple gods. It would have been very confusing to the ancient Israelites if God had revealed to them the truth of the Trinity in its New Testament fully developed form.

    They needed to be reminded of monotheism, that there is only one true God. But nevertheless, the Trinity is here, at least in implicit Old Testament seed form. So friends, the true and living God, the God whom we worship, the God whom we confess, the God whom we serve, He is an eternal being. He is a self-existent being. But finally, the true and living God is a necessary being. The true and living God is a necessary being. One of the things that scholars have noted about the creation account in Genesis 1 is that in this account, Moses does not begin Genesis by trying to prove the existence of God. We might wish that he had, you know, some moderns might wish that, well, why doesn’t Moses give us evidence and proof for the existence of God?

    Rather, Genesis assumes or presupposes God’s existence. While the creation account in Genesis 1 does involve argumentation, it implicitly argues against polytheistic idolatry and it implicitly refutes the pagan creation stories that had saturated the ancient Near East and had undergirded the religious beliefs and practices of ancient Israel’s pagan Gentile neighbors. In other words, there is an anti-pagan, anti-polytheistic polemic going on in a very sophisticated way here in Genesis chapter one. Nevertheless, the inspired author or editor of this biblical creation account does not seek to offer any fancy philosophical or logical proofs of God’s existence. But that’s not a deficiency, actually, when you really think about it. If you think about it, this actually makes sense. After all, as the great Christian apologist, defender of the faith, Dr. Cornelius Van Til reminded us, the existence of the triune God of Holy Scripture is the necessary precondition of all intelligibility, which is a fancy way of saying that God is the foundation of all rationality, all intelligible communication. all logic and therefore all proof.

    The reason that the universe makes sense, the reason that it is orderly, the reason that science can study the creation and make sense of it is because its creator is the divine logos, the eternal living divine logos. Our ability as creatures, image bearers of God to use reason and logic is grounded in the reality of the divine eternal logos. And so friends, another way of putting this is to say that without God’s existence, nothing else would exist including the laws of logic or the human capacity for rationality. If there is no God, the question should be raised, then why is there anything at all? In fact, if you’re ever in a conversation with a skeptic or an atheist, and you’re talking about the existence of God, ask your dialogue partner, well, why do you think there is something rather than nothing?

    How do you explain, how do you explain the universe in which we live? The true and living triune God himself is the absolutely necessary being for without him nothing else is, nothing else can be. The ultimate reason that we are beloved is because he, Elohim, the great I am, he is. He is and therefore you and I are. So we confess together as the basic foundation of our faith, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Should we continue to believe in God? Absolutely, yes. We should believe in God. If we profess to be Christians, then we can confess without hesitation, without embarrassment, and with full conviction of mind and heart that we indeed believe in and trust in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. However, let us remember that the God in whom we believe, the God whom we seek to serve, the God whom we confess to a lost and dying world is none other than the true and living triune God revealed in the pages of His Word, the Bible.

    And dear listener, the only way that you and I can truly know this true and living God, this God revealed in Holy Scripture, is by knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as your very own Savior and Lord. For it is in Jesus Christ that God has revealed Himself supremely. Do you know Christ? Is He your Savior? As we close our time in the word today, I would leave you with these words from our Lord’s high priestly prayer recorded in John chapter 17. In John 17 verse three, the Lord Jesus says to his father, he says, and this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Dear listener, God, out of love for sinners like me and you, sent his son, Jesus Christ, to become incarnate, to come to this earth, to take upon himself our humanity, to go to the cross, to die on the cross as a penalty for sin, to take the punishment for our sins.

    And he was buried, and on the third day, he physically and bodily rose from the dead, proving that the Father has accepted his sacrifice. He ascended into heaven, he reigns at the Father’s right hand, and one day he will return to judge the living and the dead. And God’s word says that God commands all men everywhere, all people everywhere are commanded to repent, to have a change of mind and heart, to turn from sin to the true and living God, and to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. Dear listener, God in the gospel calls upon you to repent and believe the good news. Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. And believing upon him, your conviction and belief about the existence of God will be deepened and strengthened. Believe upon the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved.

    Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and we praise you, Lord God. that you indeed exist, that you are the great I am, that you are infinite, eternal, unchanging, that you created us and all things for your glory. We ask, O Lord, that you would deepen our sense of reverence and awe for the greatness of your divine being and that by your Holy Spirit you would cause us to walk in holy fear and reverence before you, trusting in you, rejoicing in you all the days of our life and serving you in the daily callings and vocations that you have called us to. We pray all of these things, Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. As we close our time together, let’s rise and sing together hymn 213, Glory Be to God the Father, 213.

    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.

  • We Confess: The Biblical Basis for Creeds

    We Confess: The Biblical Basis for Creeds

    About this sermon

    Some Christians reject creeds and say, ‘No creed but Christ.’ Creeds summarize what the church believes, and they serve worship, discipleship, and witness. The Bible itself contains creedal statements, like the hymn of 1 Timothy 3:16: ‘He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit.’ The church is the pillar and support of the truth, and because Scripture is clear, God’s people can summarize its message faithfully.

    More sermons from 1 Timothy · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Standing for the reading of God’s Word, my sermon text today is taken from 1 Timothy, Paul’s first letter to Timothy, his son in the faith. 1 Timothy 3, verses 14-16. Dear ones, this is the Word of God. Let us hear it with reverence and awe. I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. Dear ones, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.

    Let us pray. Heavenly Father, by your spirit, we ask that you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word this day. Feed our souls, encourage us, challenge us, bless us, uplift us, Lord God, and we ask that you would be exalted and glorified in our lives. Grant, oh Lord, that we would be transformed by the renewing of our minds through the word this day. In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. Well, dear friends, today begins a new sermon series that is being guided by the Apostles’ Creed, but it’s a Bible-based series that will explore the various doctrines of faith that are summarized in that great Bible-based creed of the church, the Apostles’ Creed. But today we consider the biblical basis for creeds themselves.

    And so the title of my sermon is We Confess. the biblical basis for creeds. And if you’re following along in your sermon outline, I’d especially like to draw the attention of the children to the four key words to be listening for in my sermon today. The words creed, believe, truth, and witness. Well, dear ones, what is a creed? How might we define a creed? Well the English word creed comes from the Latin word credo which means I believe. So a creed is basically a short summary statement or a public confession of what an individual or an organization such as a church body for example believes. One definition of a creed which I came across this past week defines a creed as, quote, a formal statement of Christian beliefs, especially the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed.

    Goes on to define a creed as, quote, a set of beliefs or aims which guide someone’s actions. Now in the church historically, the creeds, such creeds and creedal statements have often been used for a number of purposes in the life of the church. For example, creeds can have a liturgical use, which means that they can be used in public worship as a way for the congregation to corporately reaffirm its faith as an act of worship in the presence of Almighty God. So it can have a liturgical or worship-oriented use. Creeds can also be used for purposes of discipleship, as a way of educating, instructing, and grounding believers, especially younger or newer believers, in the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. In addition, Bible-based creeds can have a witness-bearing and evangelistic function as well, as they bear official testimony to those outside of the church of what the Christian church believes, confesses, and proclaims.

    However friends, as many of you are probably aware, not all Christians and not all professedly Christian churches are favorable to creeds and confessions. Some churches are indifferent about the matter of creeds and confessions, some are more suspicious But in fact, in certain segments of Christianity today, there is an attitude of outright hostility toward the use of creeds and confessions in the life of the church. For example, some Protestant and Evangelical Christians seem to believe that using creeds is way too Catholic. After all, they would say, since the Bible is God’s word, and is the only word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice, why would we need creeds and confessions? I mean, isn’t the Bible enough? This seems to be the sentiment behind that statement or assertion, and perhaps you’ve heard this before, no creed but what?

    No creed but Christ. And the extended statement goes, no creed but Christ, no book but the Bible. One particular anti-creed author by the name of Thomas W. Phillips, who wrote a book called The Church of Christ in the 1940s, expressed this anti-creedal perspective as follows, and I quote him. Mr. Phillips writes, human creeds are objectionable under any and all circumstances. First, because the Christian scriptures are complete. Second, if a creed contains more than the Scriptures, it is not right and is therefore objectionable. Third, if a creed contains less than the Scriptures, it is not right and is therefore objectionable. Fourth, if a creed differs in any respect from Scripture, it is not right and is objectionable. And fifth, If a creed is precisely like the scriptures, it is not needed, for we have the scriptures.

    Therefore, under any and all circumstances, creeds are objectionable. So that’s a very strong anti-credal statement. It’s a statement that, at least on the surface, might seem to be watertight, but as I hope to show, it’s actually not watertight. Now friends, we in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church agree with Mr. Phillips in his assertion that the Scriptures are complete, though we strongly disagree with some of the inferences that he draws from that position. You see, as a Protestant church, we hold to the biblical Protestant principle of sola scriptura, which means Scripture alone. This means that we believe that the Bible and the Bible alone is the word of God. Indeed, the Bible is God’s complete word and therefore is the only infallible rule for Christian faith and Christian practice. The Bible teaches us infallibly what we are to believe about God and what duty God requires of us as his creatures.

    But if we believe the Bible is complete and that it is the final standard for Christ’s Church, then why is it that we use uninspired, man-made creeds, confessions, and catechisms? Well, dear ones, from our passage for today, I hope to demonstrate that the Bible itself supports the legitimacy of using faithful, Bible-based, though man-made creeds and confessions, not of course to replace or to supplement or to add to the Bible, nor in any way to be an equal authority in the church along with the Bible, but rather as summaries and echoes of Bible truth. And so let’s dive into our text for today, and I would first of all point out, beloved, that the church’s calling as a pillar and buttress of the truth supports the legitimacy of creeds and confessions. This is the first point in your sermon outline.

    The church’s calling as a pillar and buttress of the truth supports the legitimacy of creeds and confessions. Now, let me just set this passage in its context. 1 Timothy is often referred to as a pastoral epistle. You see, most of Paul’s letters or epistles were written to local churches, but unlike most of the epistles penned by the Apostle Paul, the pastoral epistles, which include 1 and 2 Timothy along with Titus, were written to individuals rather than to local churches. 1 Timothy was written to a young man named Timothy who was trained by Paul to be a pastor. Timothy is described as Paul’s son in the faith, the one whom Paul had trained for the gospel ministry. As Paul makes it clear to Timothy in this passage, the focus of this letter that he’s writing to Timothy is on how one ought to behave in the household of God.

    Look at verse 15. He says, he says, I want you to know how one ought to behave in the household of God. In other words, friends, Paul’s focus is on proper behavior within the household of God, namely within the church. Now, verse 16 of our passage for today is likely an early Christological creed or creedal hymn, and it is in the text of this creedal hymn that Paul speaks of Christ as the one who was manifested in the faith, in the flesh. As it says in verse 16, great indeed we confess is the mystery of godliness, he or as some ancient texts write, God was manifested in the flesh. It’s clearly speaking of Christ as the one, the God who was manifested in the flesh. So this speaks of our Lord’s incarnation, when the eternal Son of God took upon himself our humanity, when the Word became flesh and came to dwell in our midst.

    Now, with all of this in mind, what is the context of our passage for today? Well, in the first part of chapter 3 and verses 1 to 13, Paul had been describing the qualifications of men who would serve in the church offices of overseer and deacon. The word overseer could also be translated as bishop, the Greek word is episkopon, and the word deacon comes from the Greek word diakonos. As it says back in chapter 3, verse 2, therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, and so forth, laying out the qualifications for one who would serve as a bishop or overseer in the church. And then skipping down to verse 8, he says deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, and so forth. Now, you may wonder, well, why are you pointing this out?

    What’s so important about this? Well, it’s important because it instructs us that the church that Paul has in view here is what we might call the visible, organized church. In this context, in the context of this passage, the church of the living God that Paul refers to in verse 15 is clearly referring, primarily at least, to what has been called the visible organized church, or sometimes called the institutional church. So our passage for today is then followed in the early verses of chapter 4 by a prediction and warning about the apostasy from the faith that the Holy Spirit says will take place in later times or latter days, as it says in chapter 4, verse 1. Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons and so forth.

    Now however we are meant to understand these later times, the point here my friends is that the visible organized church of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and local congregations of the visible church must continue to be a pillar and buttress for the truth. That is part of our calling. That is part of our mission. We have a mission of holding up and bearing faithful witness to the truth about who Jesus is and what he has done for us and for our salvation. That is our function. That is our calling as a church to be the pillar and buttress of the truth. And as an example of the gospel truth that the church is to hold up and to which it is to bear faithful witness, in verse 16 Paul quotes from what many scholars believe to be an early Christian creed or creedal hymn.

    Perhaps one that had been familiar to Timothy and to the church in Ephesus where Timothy labored. So Paul incorporates into scripture itself one of these creeds that was commonly used in the early apostolic church, at least in that region. And the reason that the scholars believe that this is a quotation from an early creed or creedal hymn, it has to do with the literary structure and the poetic style and all of this supports the conclusion that it is indeed a creed or creedal hymn that Paul has chosen to incorporate in this letter to Timothy. Now let’s go through these verses verse by verse. In verse 14, Paul says, I hope to come to you soon Paul had planned and intended to go and meet with Timothy to visit him so that he might have face-to-face fellowship with Timothy.

    But then he gives his purpose statement at the end of verse 14 and into verse 15. He says, but I am writing these things to you, that’s the purpose statement, this is why he’s writing 1 Timothy, I’m writing these things to you that if I delay, if I’m providentially hindered from coming and visiting you, Timothy, If I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God. Now, how does Paul describe the church here in verse 15? He describes the church as the household, the oikos of God. And this reminds us, this language reminds us, dear friends, that we as Christ’s church, we are the family of God. We are brothers and sisters together in union with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Paul also describes the church as a pillar and buttress or support.

    We are a pillar and buttress of gospel truth. The word pillar, the word is Greek, is stulos in the Greek. Pillar means a visible witness. A building with large pillars is visible for a long way off. The temple in the Old Testament had two gigantic pillars in front of it. And so we have this imagery of holding up and being a public witness to the truth of the gospel. The word buttress in the Greek is hedreoma. It means an enduring support. The church is to support, bear witness to, hold up the truth of the gospel. And so what this implies, beloved, what these images highlight is the church’s calling to hold up before the world a visible witness for the gospel of Jesus Christ and therefore against false teaching. And in verse 16, Paul indicates that God’s church is called to confess openly the good news about Jesus.

    As Paul writes in verse 16, great indeed what? Great indeed we confess. Notice he doesn’t say great indeed I confess. He says great indeed we, we in the church, we together as the church confess could be translated by common consent. The Greek word for confess here is the word homologoumenos. This word is found only here in the New Testament, and it may be translated by common agreement or confessedly, and it indicates truth that is affirmed together by the church corporate. And what does the church together confess before a watching world? Paul describes it as the mystery of godliness. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. The Greek word is musterion. Now what does Paul mean by this mystery of godliness? Well, when the New Testament, especially Paul, speaks of the gospel as a mystery, it means that which had previously been hidden but is now made known through the coming of Christ.

    Our Old Testament brothers and sisters who lived before the coming of Christ, yes, there was enough gospel truth in the ceremonial law and in the sacrifices to point their faith to the promised Messiah yet to come. But they didn’t know his name and they didn’t know all the details. They hadn’t pieced together all of the parts of this mystery. So there were many things hidden from them, though there was enough gospel truth to lead them to faith in the promised Messiah. But nonetheless, now with the coming of Christ, that which had previously been hidden is now open, and it is to be openly confessed, openly declared. One Bible commentator describes or explains this phrase, mystery of godliness, with these words. He says, the phrase means the revealed secret of true piety. In other words, the secret that produces piety in people.

    That secret, as the following words indicate, is none other than Jesus Christ. His incarnation in all its aspects, particularly his saving work, is the source of genuine piety. Right faith and right living, in other words, are meant to go together. The one is meant to be a source of and to produce the other. So in other words, the gospel message centered on the incarnate person and saving work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that is the mystery of godliness. And that is the mystery that this quotation from this early creed or creedal hymn brings forth or displays. as Paul quotes from it in verse 16. He was manifested in the flesh. This is talking about Christ becoming a man, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, vindicated by the Spirit. Well, we’re told in Romans 1 that the Spirit raised Christ from the dead.

    Seen by angels, angels were present, not only at the birth of Christ, but also after his resurrection. Proclaimed among the nations, this speaks of the Gentile mission as the gospel goes out into the nations. Believed on in the world, taken up in glory, this speaks of Christ’s ascension and exaltation at the Father’s right hand. Now what does all of this have to do with creeds and confessions, bringing that back to our topic under consideration as we consider that topic, bringing this portion of God’s Word to bear upon the topic. Well, dear ones, the church has been commissioned by Christ to be the pillar and buttress of the truth, to hold up and bear witness to the good news about Jesus Christ. And the church does that, as Jesus commands us to in Matthew 28, by going and making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Trinity, teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded for us to observe.

    And how is this done? Well, this is done not merely by reading and quoting scripture verbatim, and that’s it. No, the church also makes disciples and is the pillar and support of the truth by summarizing and explaining scriptural truth. This is why God has raised up preachers and teachers and theologians in his church. Christ, the ascended Christ has gifted certain individuals in his church to be pastors and teachers and theologians, giving them gifts to teach, and it is my job as a pastor and your preacher, not just to get up here and quote scripture verbatim, that’s part of what is done, and that’s very important and edifying to read the scriptures in public, but it’s also my commission to explain with my own uninspired words, to explain the scriptures. and to apply the scriptures. Our passage for today also shows us that one of the ways that the church can do this, to hold up the truth, is by composing written summary statements of gospel truth, such as this creedal hymn that we see in verse 16.

    And that brings me to my next main point. Friends, various creed-like statements of faith are incorporated into the text of the Bible itself, and this also supports the legitimacy of creeds and confessions. Various creed-like statements of faith are incorporated into the text of the Bible itself, which also supports the legitimacy of creeds and confessions in the life of the church. Again, notice this creed, In verse 16, He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. But our text for today is not the only place in the Bible that incorporates creed-like or creedal statements. Other passages would include passages such as Deuteronomy 26, verses 5 through 9, which I read earlier in the service. That’s sort of an old covenant confession of faith that was to be recited as an act of worship before the Lord when you presented the firstfruits in the promised land.

    We also think of, you might also think of 1 Corinthians 15 verses three through eight, where Paul summarizes the basics of the gospel. For I declare to you what I also received. Paul received this by tradition, by that which is handed on to him, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and so forth. Many scholars believe that that statement in 1 Corinthians 15 reflects, again, the incorporation of an early Christian creed into the apostles’ writings. Or we think of Philippians 2, verses 5 through 11, which again we read together earlier in the service as part of our responsive reading. Many biblical scholars believe that that also incorporates an early Christian creed into the text of the scriptures itself.

    So what are some of the lessons that we learn from this? Well, first of all, friends, Just a couple points of application. If the Bible itself incorporates creedal statements, then how can it be, to use the words of Mr. Phillips, whom I quoted earlier, how can it be objectionable under any and all circumstances for the church to use creeds and confessions in its life? The anti-credal position is unbiblical because the Bible itself contains creeds and creed-like statements. if in the church’s teaching office. And remember, the church has been commissioned not just to proclaim the gospel, not just to quote verbatim from scripture, but to explain the scriptures and declare the scriptures to the nations. And the church does that through its evangelists, preachers, and teachers, and witnesses who go out and share Christ. And if you’ve ever had opportunity to share the gospel with an unbeliever, Do you just, when an unbeliever asks you, well, what is the Christian gospel, or what do you believe, do you simply quote scripture verbatim?

    Well, I imagine you might do some of that, that’s important, to bring the word of God to bear in such a witnessing situation. But I imagine that you also explain the gospel and what you believe about the gospel. You confess, you give your creed, your credo, in your own words. Do you have the gift of inspiration? Can you speak only the words of God? No, we don’t have the apostolic gift of inspiration, but we can explain faithfully with our own fallible words. We can explain faithfully to others the infallible scriptures using words, using our own words. So if in the church’s teaching office it is legitimate for preachers and teachers and theologians in the church to use their own uninspired words to explain and to summarize Bible truth, whether they explain or summarize that orally or in writing, if that’s legitimate, then why would it be wrong for the church to compose biblically faithful though uninspired creeds and confessions for use in the church?

    Indeed friends, by the logic of opponents, of the opponents of creeds such as Mr. Phillips, who by the way wrote a whole 350 page book explaining his understanding of the scriptures and the gospel, if it’s legitimate to do that then why wouldn’t it be legitimate to use uninspired speech to explain what we believe the Bible teaches in the form of creeds and confessions? By the logic of the anti-credalists, the only thing that should be done when preaching and explaining the gospel is to quote the scriptures verbatim and nothing else. After all, to use any other words would be to add to the word of God by that kind of logic. And so friends, In fact, when they use their own uninspired words to teach their anti-credal position, ironically, they’re offering to us their own creed in the place of the church’s historic creeds.

    And go back to that assertion, no creed but Christ. Did you notice that itself is a creed? To say, I don’t believe in any creed, I just believe in Christ. Well, when you say, I believe, that’s your creed, your credo. You’ve just contradicted yourself. A more contemporary form goes like this. Deeds, not creeds, right? which I have issues with that particular statement, many issues, but one issue I have with it is that it is a creed about deeds. It is giving your creed about deeds. And this brings me to some concluding thoughts on this subject. First of all, brothers and sisters, creeds are unavoidable. Everyone, all of us have a creed of one sort or another. Dr. Carl Truman, in his book, The Credal Imperative, writes the following. I think this is very insightful. He says, Christians are not divided between those who have creeds and confessions and those who do not.

    Rather, they are divided between those who have public creeds and confessions that are written down and exist as public documents subject to public scrutiny, evaluation, and critique, and those who have private creeds and confessions that are often improvised, unwritten, and thus not open to public scrutiny, not susceptible to evaluation, and crucially and ironically, not therefore subject to testing by scripture to see whether they are true. So we all have a creed. It’s either a written down public creed that is shared with your brothers and sisters in the fellowship of the church, or it’s a private creed but we all have a creed, creeds are unavoidable. A second concluding thought I would offer to you about this subject. Brothers and sisters, Bible-based creeds and confessions are not only unavoidable, they are protective. They are protective in the sense that they can aid the church in guarding the church against innovative theological fads, false teachings, and even heresies.

    And they can help the church to protect and pass on to future generations the corpus of biblical orthodoxy. The sound words of the faith are to be passed on from generation to generation. Now certainly not all anti-credal Christians are guilty of heresy or false teachings or of promoting innovative fads, theological fads. But nevertheless, it is often heretical groups and false teachers who oppose the historic creeds of the church. Just to give you a couple examples, think of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Maybe you’ve had those friendly neighborhood Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on your door. Well, the Jehovah’s Witnesses would claim to believe in Sola Scriptura. The Bible alone is our authority, they would say. In fact, it’s my understanding that in terms of their official doctrines, their doctrine of scripture is pretty much the same as our own.

    They believe in the inspiration, authority, and inerrancy, and infallibility of Holy Scripture. They affirm that, and yet, they are a cult group because they deny the Trinity. They deny the deity of Christ. They teach a system of salvation by works and not by grace through faith alone, and so forth. And they’re very anti-credal. They oppose the historic creeds and confessions of the church. That’s just one example. the historic creeds and confessions can alert us to heretical groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Or we think of the Churches of Christ. The gentleman that I quoted from earlier in the service, the anti-credal gentleman, Mr. Thomas Phillips, is part of the Restorationist movement. And out of that movement came the Churches of Christ and the Christian churches, these non-denominational denominations, if you will. Now, in terms of the Restorationist movement, they have some aberrant views, and one of their aberrant views is their teaching that believers’ baptism by immersion is a condition of salvation.

    And so, if you’ve only been baptized as a baby, doesn’t matter if you’re repentant, doesn’t matter if you have faith in Christ, doesn’t matter if you’re trusting Jesus alone for your salvation. If you have not been dunked, you’re outside the kingdom. That’s the kind of aberrant false gospel teaching that we might find among those who reject the historic creeds and confessions of the church. The bottom line, and this is my final takeaway or point of application, creeds are biblical. Bible-based creeds do not contradict the principle of Scripture alone. Instead, my friends, they are the natural outworking of our belief in the inspiration, completeness, and basic clarity of the Bible. You see, friends, it’s because the Bible is God’s infallible Word and therefore is clear in its basic message, it’s because of this clarity of scripture that the teachings of scripture are capable of being studied and understood, not just by isolated individuals, but by a community of interpretation, by the church.

    It’s interesting that confessions of faith represent what the church corporate, how they’ve read the scriptures. The Bible says in Psalm 119, thy word is a what? A lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. There are difficult parts of the Bible, but in its basic message, the Bible is clear to all of those who are open by the grace of God, open to its message. And that is why The people of God historically have been able to study the scriptures together and come up with these confessions of their common Christian faith, such as the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, or more complex statements such as the Westminster Confession of Faith. Again, it is because the Bible is clear and is God’s word. that its basic message is capable of being understood and summarized in creedal and confessional documents.

    So let me ask you in closing, dear listener, what do you believe? What is your credo? and who are you trusting for your salvation? Do you believe in and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ who is revealed in this creedal hymn recorded by Paul under the inspiration of the Spirit here in 1 Timothy 3.16? He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. He’s been believed upon throughout the world. Do you believe upon him? Do you receive and rest upon him and him alone as your Lord and Savior as he is offered to you in the gospel? May God in his grace grant you the grace to turn from your sins to Jesus Christ today. And God’s word promises that if you believe upon him, you will not perish, but have everlasting life.

    Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you. for your blessings. We thank you for your word. It is indeed our soul and final authority for faith and practice, but we also thank you for raising up wise and godly pastors and theologians in your church. who have blazed the trail before us, who have studied the scriptures. We stand on the shoulders of giants, theological giants. Help us, Lord, to appreciate and learn from them, and help us to compare what they have written and given to us with the scriptures. Grant that we would all be good Bereans, students of your word, and deepen and strengthen our faith. We pray all of these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. Before we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together, let’s rise for our closing hymn of faith, 277, Before the Throne of God Above.

    We’ll sing together 277.

    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.

  • Abiding in Christ the Vine

    Abiding in Christ the Vine

    About this sermon

    Jesus is the true vine, the faithful Israel, and his Father is the vinedresser. Every branch that abides in him bears fruit, and apart from him his people can do nothing. The fruit of the Spirit comes through faith and never by human effort, and the Father prunes his people so that they bear more. Judas was a branch connected outwardly to Christ that never abided in him, so every hearer must truly rest in Christ.

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    Sermon transcript

    Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. My sermon text this morning. is from the gospel of John, John chapter 15. I’ll read verses one through 17, although we’ll be focusing more on the opening verses of this passage, but let us hear God’s holy word. Our Lord Jesus giving this private instruction to his disciples as recorded in John’s gospel, John chapter 15, verses one through 17. The Lord Jesus says, I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

    I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples. As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

    This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends. For all that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you. so that you will love one another. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

    Let’s pray for God’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you and praise you that you have spoken your word of grace to us in the gospel. We thank you for giving us the holy scriptures. They are indeed a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path, a guide upon our way. We ask that by your spirit you would take this word today and cause your word to take deep root in our hearts. We pray that this would be spiritual food to us today. We pray that you would be present in the preaching of your word by your Holy Spirit. We ask that you would grant me the grace to speak forth your word. with clarity and assistance by your spirit and in the power of your grace.

    And we ask that Jesus would be exalted and present in the proclamation of your word this day. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. Dear friends, as you can see, the title of my sermon this morning is Abiding in Christ the Vine. And there’s only three key words for the children to be listening for today. Vine, branch, and abide. Well, my dear Christian friends, I look out at all of you this morning as a congregation of God’s people, and I see a wide variety of ages represented today, from young children all the way to seasoned saints. everything in between. And that is a wonderful thing, because we serve a multi-generational God, indeed an eternal God, who promises to administer His covenant of grace in the line of successive generations, all the way until our Lord will return at His glorious second advent.

    Well, friends, just as we are all at different stages of growth and different places in our life journey when it comes to our physical lives, we are all likewise at different stages of spiritual growth and development in our walk with Christ, as our Savior progressively sanctifies us and as we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But wherever we might happen to be in our faith journey with Jesus Christ, whether we be relatively new converts to Christ, as Paul describes babes in Christ, or whether we be believers who have been in the Lord and in his church for decades, or whether we are somewhere in between, wherever we happen to be, in our faith journey. It can be helpful and wise for us as followers of Jesus to review periodically the basic foundational doctrines of our common Christian faith.

    After all, our faith and life in Christ must be grounded in and nourished by the doctrines of faith that are revealed in the Word of God. And so since this is the case, it is my intention to begin a mini-series of sermons entitled Foundations of the Faith, a sermon series that will be guided by that classic Bible-based creed of the church known to us today as the Apostles’ Creed. But the text of my sermons will not be the Apostles’ Creed as such. This sermon series, while it will be more topical in nature, will seek to ground every sermon in a careful exposition of a variety of passages from God’s inerrant, infallible Word, the Bible. But friends, before we begin, this New Foundations series, I thought as an appropriate segue into that series that it would be good for us to consider a passage which reminds us of the absolute necessity of having a vital living union and abiding faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

    You see, friends, while the basic doctrines of our faith are indeed vitally important for us to understand if we’re going to grow and mature spiritually and have our minds transformed and renewed by the Word of God, at the same time, without a living, abiding, saving union with the resurrected, living Lord Jesus Christ, these foundational doctrines, while absolutely true and grounded in God’s Word, will not do us any spiritual good. doesn’t do any spiritual good to you or to me, to no sound doctrine, if that doctrine doesn’t get into our souls. and nourish and nurture our life in Christ. And so, let us direct our attention, beloved, to our passage for today. Again, a passage taken from John chapter 15. Now, as we consider this passage for today, this passage reminds us that Jesus and his disciples lived in an agricultural and pastoral setting.

    In fact, their world was very different from the 21st century world in which we live today. But you know, you don’t have to be a farmer, you don’t have to be an expert in agriculture to understand that a branch cannot live on its own. Whether you’re talking about a branch on a tree or a shoot from a vine, these things cannot live detached from the vine or from the source, the root of their life. These things have to be organically connected through a living union to the source of their life and nourishment. Otherwise, not only will such a branch not produce its leaves or fruit, but it will wilt, it will wither, it will die. As many of you no doubt know from personal experience, if you’ve ever chopped down your own Christmas tree and put it up in your home, you know that if you cut down a tree and put it up in your home as a Christmas tree during the Christmas season, even if you make a fresh cut, and even if you stand it up in a basin of water and continue to add water over time, what is eventually gonna happen to that tree?

    Well, that tree will eventually dry out and completely die. The reason being that it has been severed from the root, which had sustained its life. Well, in a similar way, if you cut off a branch from a grapevine, it will not produce any fruits, any grapes, because you have severed it from the source of its ability to produce fruit. And so Jesus uses this very familiar image of a vine and its branches to illustrate the relationship that he sustains to his professing followers. But in doing so, he makes an important distinction. He makes an important distinction between those branches, that is to say, those professing disciples who abide in him on the one hand, and those who do not abide in him. The key point that our Lord Jesus teaches us in this allegory is that we who claim to be followers of Christ must abide in Christ in order that we may bear spiritual fruit.

    Spiritual fruit is not the result of human achievement or human works or human merits. Spiritual fruit is the result of abiding in Christ by the grace of God, being nourished from union and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. By abiding in Christ, by doing so, we glorify God the Father and so prove to be Christ’s disciples as we bear fruit as a result of that abiding in Christ. Well, our text for this Lord’s Day morning includes the very last of our Lord’s I Am sayings as recorded in the Gospel of John. Jesus’ I Am sayings not only assert our Lord’s full deity. After all, one of God’s names in the Old Testament was I Am. So when Jesus says, I am the vine, when he says, I am the door, when he says, I am, he is making an implicit claim to being God.

    But these I Am sayings also illustrate, from slightly different angles, Christ’s relationship with his people and with the world in general. Now, with all of this in mind, let’s approach our text for today and consider what we can learn from it. And first of all, it’s important for us to understand that this passage gives us a picture of the vital spiritual union that exists between our Lord Jesus Christ and we, his redeemed people. This is the first main point in your sermon outline, if you’re taking notes. Understand that this passage gives us a picture of the vital spiritual union that exists between our Lord Jesus Christ and his redeemed people. Jesus says in verse 1 of this passage, I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit and so forth.

    My friends, the importance of this subject, of our union with Christ, can hardly be underestimated. It is so important, or overestimated. It is of supreme importance. You see, union with Christ means the application of Christ’s objective work of salvation in history to us personally. The Holy Spirit is the one who applies the saving work of Christ to God’s people by giving them the gift of saving faith and so uniting them to Christ. It doesn’t do any good for Christ to die for our sins, for example. that we might be forgiven of those sins if that saving work doesn’t get applied to us personally. And the scriptures teach us that we receive that gift of forgiveness and salvation and eternal life by faith, by trust in Christ and Christ alone as Lord and Savior. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us the grace to repent and believe in Christ for our salvation.

    And so the Holy Spirit is the key to applying that saving redemptive work of Christ done outside of us in objective space-time history to us personally. Another important clarification to understand as we approach this text, Jesus speaks about our union with him. He is the vine, we are the branches. This is a saving spiritual union that is being spoken of. But this saving union that we believers have with Christ does not in any way destroy the personal distinction between Christ and the Christian. That is to say, in the language of Cornelius Van Til, the creator-creature distinction is not destroyed by this union with Christ. It is not that when we become one with Christ that we somehow become divinized, that we become little gods. Now, Peter, the apostle, I believe in his second epistle, talks about partaking of the divine nature, but that’s sort of Peter’s way of talking about our sanctification, not that we literally become divine, but that we are renewed after the image of the divine nature.

    Well, with that in mind, in our passage for today, Christ, as I said, is presented how? He is presented in verse one as the true vine. And how are we, his professing disciples, how are we described? We are described as the branches. As again, verse one, I am the true vine. And then if you skip down to verse five, Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Now let’s first of all consider what it means for Jesus to be the true or it could be translated the genuine vine. What does it mean for Jesus to be the true vine? And Bible scholars kind of debate this and dispute this. One view is that Jesus means that he is the true vine in the sense that he is the true vine symbolized by the fruit of the vine that we partake of in the cup of the Lord’s Supper.

    In the historical context of this passage, this is indeed a possible way of understanding this since Jesus had just instituted the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper on this night in which he was betrayed. And also since in Luke 22, verse 18, Jesus had described the cup of the Last Supper as the fruit of the what? The fruit of the vine. So Jesus has just instituted the Lord’s Supper, he’s talked about the fruit of the vine, and then he says, I am the true vine. And if that’s what he’s pointing to, then what he is saying is that unlike the wine served at the Last Supper, which was just a symbol, Jesus is the true or genuine vine to which the fruit of the vine in the Lord’s Supper points to. That is the point. the blood of the new covenant that he shed for us and that we partake of that through faith union with him.

    We partake of the benefits of that. So again, this is one way of understanding Christ’s claim to be the true vine. Another view is that Jesus as the true vine is the true Israel. You may have picked this up during the worship service. We sang a psalm and we also read a scripture passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah where Israel, God’s people, is described as the Lord’s vine. And in the Old Testament, Israel is indeed sometimes pictured as a vine. And just to kind of reinforce that fact, would you turn with me to Psalm 80 Let me just read a few verses from Psalm 80. I know we sang this earlier, but it’s good to review it and read through it. Psalm 80 beginning at verse 8. Notice what the inspired psalmist writes.

    He says, You brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the river. Why then have you broken down its walls so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? This is speaking of God removing protection from His faithless people so that foreign adversaries come in and oppress the people of God. Verse 13, the boar from the forest ravages it and all that move in the field feed on it. Turn again, O God of hosts, look down from heaven and see, have regard for this vine. the stalk that your right hand planted, and for the son whom you made strong for yourself.

    They have turned it, burned it with fire and so forth. They’ve cut it down, may they perish at the rebuke of your face and so forth. So we see clearly in Psalm 80, for example, Israel, God’s people, are described as the Lord’s vine. Or consider Jeremiah, chapter 2, verses 20-22. Jeremiah, chapter 2, verses 20-22. Again, just to give you an overview of this briefly, that this is indeed an Old Testament theme. In Jeremiah, chapter 2, beginning at verse 20, the Holy Spirit, through Jeremiah the prophet, says this, For long ago, I broke your yoke. God is speaking to his people of how he broke their yoke. He delivered them from slavery in Egypt. For long ago, I broke your yoke and burst your bonds, but you said, I will not serve. Yes, on every high hill and under every green tree, you bowed down like a whore.

    Speaking of Israel going after foreign deities as a spiritual whoredom on their part. And then look at verse 21. Yet I planted you a what? A choice vine, holy of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine? Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, declares the Lord God. Friends, in redemptive history, the nation of Israel served at a national theocratic level. It served as a type, a foreshadowing of Christ. But it serves as a foreshadowing by way of contrast. You see, Israel failed miserably at her calling to be the Lord’s faithful choice vine. Even though God had redeemed them from slavery and even when they fell into sin, God repeatedly, over a lengthy period of time, raised up prophets to send to them and call them back to repentance and covenant fidelity, more often than not, they refused to repent.

    They broke the covenant. They came under God’s curse But Jesus Christ, the true Israel, the genuine Israel, succeeded where Israel of old had failed. Israel of old disobeyed and broke God’s covenant, earning God’s curse and exile. But Jesus Christ, the true vine, the genuine vine, the true Israel, perfectly obeyed God’s law and kept the covenant on behalf of God’s elect, thereby earning for his people, his believing people, God’s blessing and a permanent inheritance in the heavenly Canaan, the ultimate promised land. So again, getting back to the question of what does Jesus mean by calling himself the vine? Does Jesus mean that he fulfills the imagery, the symbolism of the fruit of the vine in the Lord’s Supper? Or does he mean that he is the true Israel of God, that he embodies faithful, the true faithful Israel of God?

    Well, there is a third option. It’s not an either-or choice. It’s the option that I think is probably more likely, and that is that both are true. Jesus is indeed the real vine to which the communion wine points. But he is also the faithful vine, the true Israel, unlike the faithless vine that Old Covenant Israel proved to be. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, was the true and faithful vine whose obedience makes up for all of our disobedience, and who, unlike Adam in the original covenant of works, he kept the covenant of works. Jesus kept the covenant of works perfectly. on our behalf so that we can be justified and saved by His grace and grace alone. But this salvation that is by grace alone is received only by a living, saving faith, a vital union with the Lord Jesus Christ.

    And that brings us to how this passage throws light upon the nature of true saving faith. Jesus is indeed the vine. He is the source of our salvation. He is the faithful one. who has atoned for our sins and offers a perfect everlasting righteousness to us. But how do we get connected to that atonement and receive the benefits of that righteousness of Christ? Well, again, the picture is of this true faith by which we are saved is described here by Jesus through the word abide. Jesus says in verse four, abide in me and I in you. in you. And then he gives this allegory, this illustration. He says, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine and you are the branches.

    Whoever abides in me, that is to say, whoever has faith, a living, saving faith in me, And I in him is speaking about his union with us. He it is that bears much fruit. Spiritual fruit, the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, the fruit of the spirit, the fruit, this spiritual fruit comes by faith and not by works or human effort. And so true faith is described by this word abide. Now, that’s an interesting word. abide. Jesus doesn’t say, pray a sinner’s prayer, come forward at the altar call, make a decision for Christ. True saving faith is not simply a cheap one-time decision for Christ, but rather it is a continuous resting upon, clinging to Christ and Christ alone as your only hope of salvation. It may begin with a decision, but it cannot end there.

    To abide, this word abide indicates permanence and steadfastness. So the issue is not can you remember the first time you repented and believed. Some people can. I don’t know about you folks, but I can remember that day when I was a 15-year-old, when I knelt beside my bed. It was in August of, I think, 1982. I knelt beside my bed, having read a gospel account, having read about the good news of Jesus. And I remember calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus for salvation. And I remember the peace that came over my soul as I had received Christ as my Savior. And I got up from that. that place and I went down to the kitchen and I told my mother that I had just accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And I asked her, have you ever done that?

    Became an immediate evangelist. So for me, it was a very clear cut before and after thing. But for many folks, it’s not. Many folks, especially folks that are raised in faithful Christian homes, they can’t remember a time when they haven’t repented and believed. They’ve always been repentant for their sins. They’ve always trusted and loved the Lord Jesus Christ from their youngest years because they’ve always heard about Christ. But the point is not, can you remember a time when you had some kind of conversion experience? The issue is, are you now converted? Are you now repentant? and believing and do you persevere in that repentance and faith. This is what abiding in Christ is all about. And we learn here that this true faith that abides in Christ is an active thing. This is implied by the imperative command given in verse four where Jesus says, abide in me and I in you.

    And we learn also in this passage that this true faith, this faith that abides in, clings to Christ and Christ alone, inevitably produces spiritual fruit. As Jesus says in verse two, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. And he goes on to say in verse five, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is Those are humbling words, aren’t they? Jesus says, if you’re not attached to me, if you’re not connected to me, if you have not received me as your Lord and Savior, you can do nothing of spiritual good. That doesn’t mean that unbelievers cannot do anything that is of civic virtue or righteousness.

    But we’re not just talking about external righteousness that helps other people. We’re talking about genuine works of righteousness that are pleasing to God, acceptable to God. We can’t do anything apart from union with Him. And it is only in Christ and through the Holy Spirit that we can bear this spiritual fruit. the fruit here. But what is this fruit talking about in particular? Now some have suggested that this fruit that Jesus is referring to is the fruit of evangelism. That is to say, leading people to faith in Christ. And certainly there are places in the New Testament where where spiritual fruit is arguably spoken about that way. I think when Paul talks that way and writes that way in Romans chapter one, how he wants to preach the gospel to them and share in spiritual fruit, I think he’s talking perhaps about the fruit of evangelistic labors among them.

    But in the context of this particular passage, the fruit in this context probably does not mean the fruit of evangelism, that is to say, leading people to faith in Christ. Instead, the interpretation that makes the most sense in this particular context is that fruit means the holy and obedient living which results from this saving union with Jesus Christ, the vine. And so, friends, Where there is no spiritual fruit, there is no vital connection with Christ, the true vine. Those who claim to be Christians and yet are entirely lacking in the fruit of the Holy Spirit demonstrate themselves to be unfruitful branches who do not possess true saving faith. Dear listener, what about you? Are you abiding in Christ the Vine? Have you received and rested upon Christ and Christ alone as your very own Lord and Savior?

    Are you abiding in Him? And are you bearing the fruits of being vitally connected to Christ? And by the way, one of the fruits of being in union with Christ, of being attached to Christ the Vine, is that you will have a contrite and humble spirit. If you’re a sensitive believer, and your conscience is prone to be hyperactive, then let me counsel you, brother, sister, who struggles, especially if you struggle with assurance. If your sin bothers you and you are contrite for it and grieved by it, that too is a spiritual fruit. And so do not be discouraged. The Christian life is a battle. It is a battle that, in principle, we are the victors in because Christ is victorious for us in our place, in our stead. But do not be discouraged if you continue to struggle with sin.

    There’s a sense in which the more we grow in our faith, the more we come to realize just how sinful we really are. The deeper you go into the scriptures, the deeper you go into the faith, the more you realize, wow, God is really infinitely holy and I am really wretched. As Paul says in Romans 7, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Even the apostle felt himself to be a wretched man. But this too, this is part of the fruit of abiding in Christ, the vine, because the Holy Spirit will convict you of sin and he is at work in you. So do not be discouraged, but make sure that you are connected to Christ. Don’t be arrogant in your sin. Don’t be arrogant in self-righteousness. Christ is your only hope.

    And so, let us take to heart, and this is my final point from this passage, beloved, take to heart our Lord’s sober warning. Abide in Christ the vine, lest you suffer the fate of the fruitless branch. Abide in Christ the vine, lest you suffer the fate of the fruitless branch. Now it’s interesting, Jesus talks about two types of branches here. He identifies himself as the true vine, but then in verse two he says, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes. Notice that there are similarities between the fruitful and the fruitless branches. First of all, both are described as branches, right? So, and so both are in some sense in Christ. He says, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.

    In other words, both have at least, have a close relationship to Christ, at least externally speaking. Well, how then are we to identify, or understand rather, these fruitless branches that Jesus speaks of? Well, some believers, some Christians who believe that it is possible for a true Christian, a true believer, to lose his or her faith and fall away and lose their salvation, such as our Lutheran friends, for example, or our Arminian friends, will look at passages like this and they’ll say, ah, see? You Calvinists, you are foreign people, you’re wrong. It’s possible for a true believer to fall away and lose his or her salvation. Jesus talks about branches in him that do not bear fruit and which are taken away. But I would suggest to you, brothers and sisters, not just suggest to you, I would assert to you, that these fruitless branches that Jesus refers to are not in any way to be understood as a true believer who loses his faith, falls away, and thus loses his or her salvation.

    You see, if that’s what Jesus means, if Jesus intended in this teaching to tell us that the fruitless branch represents a true believer who falls away and loses his salvation, well then Jesus would be contradicting his own teaching, even his own clear teachings elsewhere in this very gospel, the gospel of John. For in this gospel, true believers are described as those who are preserved by the Father, who are eternally secure in their salvation. And just to give you a few examples of that, turn to John 5, verse 24. Very briefly, John 5, verse 24. The Lord Jesus says this. Jesus says, truly, truly, in the Greek it’s amen, amen, meaning this is absolutely established certain truth. You need not doubt it. 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. Those who’ve heard his word, his gospel, and have believed upon him for salvation. It says they already have eternal life. If you lose eternal life, it wasn’t eternal to begin with. And he goes on to say, he does not come into judgment. Why? Because he’s already passed from a state of spiritual death into life, eternal life. Or consider what the Lord Jesus teaches in John 6, verse 39. John 6, verse 39, Jesus, it says, He says, and this is the will of Him who sent me, God the Father. What is the will of God the Father? Jesus says, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. Jesus clearly teaches that the Father has given a people to His Son.

    He has given a chosen people to his son, and it is the Father’s will that he lose none of them, but raise them up on the last day.” Or consider John 10, verses 27 and 28, as in the midst of our Lord’s teachings, a good shepherd teaching, Jesus says this in John chapter 10 verses 27 and 28. Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them, meaning I love them with a solid, stable, saving love. My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and what do they do? They follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. It’s my understanding that the Greek is very strong, as if Jesus is saying, they will never, no, not ever perish. And no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

    I am the Father. one. Those who belong to Christ, those who abide in Christ, those who believe upon Christ for their salvation are kept by the Son and by the Father and they are secure in that salvation. So if in our passage for today Jesus is teaching that true believers can disconnect themselves from Christ the vine and lose their salvation, then Jesus would be contradicting the uniform teaching of the Bible, which says that all true believers will produce some spiritual fruit of good works in their lives and are secure in their salvation. But in this passage, Jesus describes these branches as fruitless branches. So then, how are we to understand the fruitless branch? What does the fruitless branch represent? Well, the fruitless branch apparently represents the professing disciple, the professing follower of Jesus, who has a close external connection to Christ and the gospel, perhaps through church membership and participation in the outward means of grace, but who, like Judas Iscariot, lack a spiritual and saving union with the Lord Jesus Christ.

    They have an external covenantal union with Christ, but they lack that internal saving union with Christ that connects them vitally and savingly to the Lord Jesus Christ and which produces the spiritual fruit, the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. It’s interesting that earlier, before this passage, John records the betrayal of Judas Iscariot, how Judas goes out into the night and has betrayed Christ Judas had recently gone out to betray Christ. Judas Iscariot represents one of these fruitless branches. So our Lord’s warning to his disciples here is basically, and to all of us who profess to be disciples, he’s saying don’t be a fruitless branch like Judas Iscariot. And so, beloved, let us flee from the fate of the fruitless branch. What is the fate of the fruitless branch? Well, Jesus says in verse two, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he does what?

    He takes away and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. So in terms of the fruitless branch, the fruitless branch is taken away or lifted up as it could be translated. Christ takes away these fruitless branches because they do not truly belong to the vine and because they threaten the well-being of the healthy, fruitful branches. But then he goes on to say, if you skip down to verse 6, He is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” This is a picture of ultimate rejection. It is a picture of professing followers of Jesus. who nevertheless lack true saving faith in Christ, they have never been born again, they’ve never truly trusted Christ as their very own Lord and Savior, and they’re not abiding in Christ, walking in faith in Him, they are thrown away, and they are gathered up and thrown into the fire.

    The imagery of withering, this is a picture of spiritual fruitlessness. It is impossible for those who lack this saving union with Christ to do anything that is truly pleasing to God. As our Lord said in verse five, for apart from me you can do nothing. They are gathered and thrown into the fire. Again, this is a picture, a sobering picture of the final judgment. So this is the only option, if you will. These are the only possibilities. Either you, by the sovereign grace of God, abide in Christ, or if you don’t abide in Christ, that means you’ve rejected Him. You may have an intellectual belief in him like Judas did. You may even have close connections to his people, again, like Judas did. Remember, Judas was an apostle of Jesus Christ. Judas heard Christ’s teachings with his very own ears.

    Judas saw Jesus perform miracles, healing the sick and raising the dead and casting out demons and walking on the waters and multiplying the loaves and the fishes. Judas saw all of that with his very own eyes. And when the Lord sent out the twelve disciples to preach the gospel and heal in His name, Judas was one of those. Judas had been sent out to preach the gospel and perform healings by the power of Christ, and yet Judas is described in the New Testament as a son of perdition. Why? Because in his heart He didn’t really trust or love the Lord Jesus. He wanted a Savior who was gonna conquer Rome, and he wanted a position in that political kingdom, but he didn’t have a true saving faith in Christ because he wasn’t abiding in Christ.

    He was a branch, but he was not a branch that abided in Christ divine. And so, dear friends, Abide in Christ. Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. And as we turn our attention in weeks ahead to reviewing some of the great basic doctrines of our common Christian faith, let us remember that that doctrine is meant to nourish and nurture our vital union and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. Abide in Christ, and you will be saved, and you will also bear fruit. And the Father will prune you that you may bear yet more fruit. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you that Christ is the living Lord, that he is the vine, and that we are the branches. Grant that we would all, each and every one of us, be branches that abide in Christ, the true vine.

    In Jesus’ name we pray and all of God’s people said, amen. As we close our time in together, let’s rise and we’ll sing our closing hymn number 448, Union with Thee.

    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.