This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 5, 1993.

This morning, we begin our reading in the Epistle of Jude, the Epistle of Jude, beginning at verse 1, and reading through verse 4. Here are the words of God. and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called, Mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied. When I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

For there are certain men who crept in unaware, who were reporable or gained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. And I’m turning to Matthew 16. One more reading of this very important text, beginning at the thirteenth verse. Matthew 16, verse 13.

When Jesus came into the co-successory of Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I am? They said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He said unto them, Whom say ye that I am?

And Simon Peter answered instead, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And Jesus answered instead again, Blessed art thou, Simon Bartholomew, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against me. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bond on her shalt thou defend, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on her shalt thou loose in heaven.

Then charge he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was the Jesus of God.” From that time forth began Jesus to show him, his disciples, how it must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and prophets. And he killed, and he raped in the immature days. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Jesus, Get thee behind me, Satan, and lower the fence under me. For Thou savest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him be nigh on himself, and take up his cloth, and follow me.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. But what is a man’s profit? If he shall gain the whole world, And what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? The Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father and his angels, and then he shall reward every man according to his worth.”

Dear Lord, keep us from thinking merely of ourselves. Instead, Lord, help us to so that our thoughts will be for your church throughout the world, fed this day with your Word, and that with us. Lord, we ask also that we would keep in mind those whom you are calling to yourself. O Lord, may it be this day that many shall come and fall down before You, and acknowledge that there is one true God, Bhagavad-gita, that Jesus Christ hath come into the world to save sinners, and that they being awakened by the Spirit, are confessing their sins and expressing their faith in the Savior, whose name is exalted above the heavens. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Amen.

It may have occurred to you, especially those of you who are still with one family, especially with children, that you are not sitting in an ordinary Presbyterian church this morning. There is a sign outside. Maybe you’ve read this line from time to time. He’s identified this church as Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Or you might look at your bulletin. You will find at the bottom of the front of the bulletin the name of the church in large letters. Once more, Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

So this congregation is distinguished from other Presbyterian Bibles. This is a congregation of a denomination known as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And if you have been baptized into this Church, although you are still quite young and maybe don’t understand much about the distinction between Churches, the fact remains you are an Orthodox Presbyterian. But what does it mean to be an Orthodox Presbyterian? First of all, let’s think together about this word, Presbyterian. You are a Presbyterian because you belong to a church that traces its roots to the middle of the 16th century. Now, don’t panic.

That’s about 450 years ago. You’re part of a church that traces its roots to the middle of the 16th century to a city in Geneva, Switzerland, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland, to the leading churchman in that city at that time, a man by the name of John Calvin, a Frenchman. Calvin, along with others, was at that time rediscovering the wonders of biblical Christianity. Those wonders had almost been lost from sight. That’s for a very long time.

Calvin, along with others at that time, set in motion within the Church forces in keeping with their basic commitment to the oneness, the singleness of the Bible’s message, from the first book, Genesis, to the last, Revelation. The oneness of that biblical message that the all-powerful God, Father, Son, and Holy in a single plan to bring to glory his chosen ones. Those who followed Calvin understood this single plan at the heart of the Bible’s message to be best described by the word covenant. in which God had committed himself, had bound himself to save his elect through the sacrifice of his son and his son’s atoning death. Now, the implication of this view of the Bible message worked themselves out in what would be called the five points of Calvinism. Now, Calvin didn’t come up with these five points himself. Rather, later, about fifty years after Calvin had died, in Poland, the Calvinists there had constructed these five points in answer to those who were, in fact, denying them.

Now, subsequently, some clever people provided T.O.P.S. with an acronym to help us remember these five points. An acronym is a word that’s been constructed from other words. First letter. First letter taken from another word to construct other words to construct a single word in order to communicate. The acronym that was chosen was the word tulip, T-U-L-I-P. And each letter of that word gives to us an essential doctrine of the Calvinist system. First, the letter T. That letter stands for total depravity. And here we are given the calvus or the presbyterian doctrine of humanity.

All humanity, having been created good, has been lost in sin and to depravity, totally affected. That is, affected in every aspect of their being because of their sin. in conjunction with their relationship with their birth parents and their needs. Now, though depravity doesn’t teach us that we are as sinful as we might seem, it merely teaches us that we have been affected in every aspect of our personality by sin, thus making us incapable of ourselves to put ourselves in right relationships with God. This leads us down to the second letter, the letter U. Remember?

This letter stands for Unconditional Election, and here we have set before us the doctrine of God the Father, as He has chosen us to salvation apart from any condition in us. We’re totally depraved, we’re unfit, there’s nothing in us that can be commended to God. So God doesn’t look upon us, to find something attractive in us, as the ground for His saving of us. Rather, the reason for His saving of us is found in Him and in Him alone. He has chosen us out of His love and mercy.

This leads us to the third letter, L, which stands for Limited Atonement, and here we have the Presbyterian doctrine of the Son of God, and it concerns Him in His death. The word atonement refers to his death and the payment in it he made for sinners.

But we must understand, you see, that the Presbyterian doctrine of Christ’s death is that Christ’s death really saved. It doesn’t merely provide an opportunity for salvation, as some teach. Rather, it actually, really saves, so that not one drop of Christ’s blood is shed in vain. Thus you see that the Presbyterian doctrine of the atonement teaches us that Christ’s death is limited. limited with regard to the extent Christ died for His elect and for His elect alone. And His death truly and really saves them.

This brings us to the fourth letter, the letter I. This letter stands for irresistible grace, and here we are face-to-face with the Presbyterian doctrine of the Holy Spirit, at least in part. As the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, all-powerfully applies to God’s elect the grace of Christ’s death. If God determines to save us We shall indeed be saved, there being no power, not even our own will, that can thwart the purpose of God and His intention. Finally, the letter P, which stands for the perseverance of the saints, is the doctrine of the future and of the Church’s certain glory. Those rocks of glory have been preserved by God. not one of God’s own is lost.

This, then, is the Presbyterian position as far as its basic doctrines are concerned. The overarching all-powerfulness or sovereignty of God sets, at the center of the Bible’s story, the covenant, a bond between God and his people. And it works out along the lines of these five points, which we have just enumerated.

So, doctrinally now, we understand a little bit better what this word Vesicterian means. But Calvin was interested more than the Bible’s doctrine of salvation, how in fact we are saved by God’s sovereign workings. We owe Calvin much for his grasp of the Bible’s view of the Church and its governance, this also being a dimension of what it means for us to be called Presbyterians. You see, the word Presbyterian essentially relates to the way in which the Church is governed. The word Presbyterian means elder, and refers to the fact that as a Presbyterian Church, we are governed by elders.

Now, this congregation has six elements. It has two ministers, myself and Dan Knox, who is presently serving in Washington, and four ruling elders, whom you know—Mr. Gidley, Mr. Hardesty, Mr. Yonch, and Mr. Stark. We have a representative form of government. The elders are themselves representatives.

Christ is represented in them, to the people, as Christ himself exercises his rule in their midst. There is also the fact that in a certain sense, They play the role of representative as they function within the courts of the Church, representatives of the congregation and of other assemblies. But persecutorianism is essentially representative in its form of government.

That means that we are not a congregational democracy. Neither are we a priorogical episcopacy in which the rule is vested with one religion. As to the nature of the elder’s rule, it is important to understand that that rule is spiritual, moral, and churchly. It does not carry with it the authority of the state. The Church does not wield the sword in the interest of carrying out its discipline.

You might excommunicate the heretic, but you don’t execute one. This means that the Church and state are separate authorities, and we owe a great deal to Calvin in this respect, even though in subsequent years it was very difficult working out the particulars of Calvin’s insight. The Church and the state are separate authorities, each with their own properties of discipline. Calvin was particularly concerned in his time that the state not intrude upon the Church at Geneva to force the Church to do things discipline-wise that it would not otherwise do. that we should keep in mind as Calvin scholars, and eventually as they were worked out under the Calvinist and Presbyterian system.

This means that the Church does not, should not, rule the state. That sets us apart in our estimations for what Rome holds. Well, regardless of what Rome is presently saying for the purpose of politics, it still maintains the original commitment that it had, namely that the state is under the Church, and the supreme ruler on earth, be it politically or religious, is the Pope. Period. At the same time, Calvin was saying this, the state should not, must not, rule the Church. That was the conclusion to which the Anglicans came. That is why, to this present day, the Queen of England is still the titular head of the Church of England. The state rules the Church. In Calvin’s view, the faith and the Church are separate.

The one institution, though ordained of God, is temporal, the other is eternal. As things have turned out in the sin-incursed world, these two are perpetually, it seems, standing in tension to each other. Now, I have to admit at this point, in order to make plain the present predicament into which many have come, that many Calvinists have borrowed trouble for themselves when they have failed to recognize the inherent tension that exists between the Church and the faith, and endeavored to apply to our present situation the Old Testament system of life in which the Church and the state were in effect one. That Old Testament system was a preview of the eternal kingdom, when all redeemed would dwell under God’s perfect government. But many Calvinists presently make the mistake of trying to translate the temporal into the eternal, thus making the state the extension of the Church. even though this provision is incorrect. At the same time, the Church must maintain a witness in this world, as she herself remains the witness in this world to the eternal state and to the Kingdom of God, she being a manifestation of that Kingdom in the present time.

Now, I have given you here an overview of the Presbyterian tradition, doctrine and government. But, as I said at the beginning, we are not just Presbyterians, we are Orthodox Presbyterians. So, what does the word Orthodox mean? For us to call ourselves Orthodox means that we consider ourselves to be holding fast to the historic position of Presbyterianism while others default.

Hopefully, without pride or vanity, we are contending that we are straight-thinking when it comes to our doctrine in our Presbyterian confession. that plays on the word orthodox. Some of you have been to the orthodontist. An orthodontist straightens teeth. An orthodoxist straightens doctrines. And we are the orthodoxist Presbyterian Church. For us then to be orthodox, with straight thinking in our doctrine, means, of course, that we stand over against those who are unorthodox, those that become crooked in their doctrine and are no longer true to their confession.

Matthew 16 is not a bad passage to look at to see how the division in Presbyterianism between the Orthodox and the unorthodox came about. Look at verse 28, the last verse of the chapter. Here Jesus says, Truly I say to you, there are some who are standing here who shall not face death until they see the Son of Man coming to be his King. Now I think that it is obvious to all of us sitting here today that this is no simple text. However, it has become the distinction of the unorthodox, the distinction of the liberals, to make it a simple text.

The habit of mine was, at the turn of the century, to look at this text and to say that Jesus has only one thing in mind, and can have only one thing in mind, namely, the end of the world. But then, these unorthodox people, who, I might add, were with him for all of the Presbyterian Church at that time, would go on to say that this is evidence that either the early Church, or Jesus, or both, believed that in their time the world would shortly end. But of course, as we know, the world didn’t end. Those standing there that day, the disciples, did not see the end of the world before they faced the death. Which means, in the estimation of those who are unorthodox, those who are liberal, those that Jesus, and for the early Church, but most definitely this text, are wrong, are in error. There is no getting around it, they said.

Here is testimony from the text, even from the lips of Jesus himself, that amounts to an error. Do you see what is going to happen from this point on? If applied to Jesus specifically, this means that Jesus now must be reassessed. He must be seen as a fallible man, if not a deluded Jewish teacher with somewhat grand illusions about himself and about the immediate future. Now, that happens to be Albert Schweitzer’s point of view. But when this is applied to the Bible, it means, of course, that we must now surrender the doctrine of biblical infallibility, because there is a mistake here, an error.

The end did not come. The program of the unorthodox, therefore, became one in which they had to reinvent Jesus and the Bible. so as to preserve their religious value when stripped of their infallibility, their primitive supernaturalism, and their estimations of the future. A whole new Jesus, a whole new Bible. Do you understand now why In the midst of the battles that took place in the earlier part of the century, James’ Reformation said, we are not here dealing with an average form of Christianity, we’re dealing with another religion altogether. This isn’t Christianity at all. It is something else.

Now, although we don’t have time this morning to go into a detailed exposition of Matthew 16.28, let me say that there was an Orthodox Presbyterian by the name of Matthew Stonehouse who didn’t shy away from affirming that this text has in it a reference to the future and to the end of the world. But he also noted that this text must be understood, complex as it is, as a reference to the immediate coming of the Spirit, in whom the soul of man would make his impression undoubtedly upon his own for the constitution of his church, which would be, in fact, the manifestation of his kingdom in the world. It was for the sake of not giving up on a text like Matthew 16, 28, and countless others like those texts that speak about a virgin birth, about miracles performed by this Jesus of Nazareth. Texts that speak about His vicarious death upon a cross in which He was a substitute for others. texts that speak about his literal bodily resurrection. It was for the sake of not giving up on texts like these that the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was founded.

And unorthodoxy overran the Presbyterian Church in the early part of this century. and says, among other things, that the historical Jesus is either unknowable, or mistaken, or a man of his times, or must be understood as a social reformer and nothing else, suggesting him and the Bible to its conviction that the supernatural is impossible.

It can’t happen. Not only doesn’t it happen, it can’t happen. If you miss that point, you will always misunderstand liberalism and modernism and unorthodoxy. It cannot happen. There is no such God as the Bible describes. There is no such Jesus as the Bible describes. There is no such person. We must invent a new God, a new Jesus. For only the natural is true.

Today, President Manchin, founder of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and others objected to this line of thought. and declared themselves for the Scriptures, the infallible Word of God, and for the Lord of Glory, Jesus Christ, presented there, when the alternative was to become unorthodox Presbyterians.

They remained orthodox Presbyterians, and so must we. Let’s do it. Our God, again teach us, well, lessons to come from. And if you have given us mercy, And if you have provided us a shelter in this church for this time, we give you thanks. But Father, we would not boast in ourselves, but in the truth. We would boast in the gospel. We would boast, O Lord, in the full range of that message and in the full counsel of our God. and asking to forgive us if we, then, have become fat and complacent in our Orthodox Presbyterianism. O Lord, may your grace work in us so that we are helpful to others, recognizing ourselves as a servant church Be pleased to use us so this testimony to your infallible word and the matchless perfections of your Son may be maintained in part by us, as it is also by many others throughout the world.

And give us a heart that is loving towards those who stand with us. though they are a part of another denomination, that we may have a common voice in this terrible day of apostasy. It may not merely be a matter of tolerating those other denominations and communities. May we love them, and may they love us.

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.