L.D. 25
Scripture: Matthew 28:16-20; I Peter 2:1-10
This Lord's Day of our Heidelberg Catechism calls our attention to the place of preaching and sacraments in the Church. It begins, therefore, a rather lengthy section in the Catechism, in which the two ordinances of Christ, baptism and the Lord's Supper, are fully developed and explained, and which section concludes in Lord's Day 31 with the consideration of the keys of the kingdom of heaven—preaching and Christian discipline. So this section begins and ends with instruction concerning the preaching of the gospel. Today we are called to consider the God-ordained place of preaching in His Church as a means of grace, i.e., as a means through which the Holy Spirit of Christ works faith. The sacraments are considered as that which Christ has ordained to supplement the preaching and to confirm and strengthen faith in His people. Preaching, however, is the chief means of grace. In the coming weeks, after we have considered at length the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, we must return to the matter of preaching. In Lord's Day 31, however, the emphasis will then focus on the contents of the preaching. But, without doubt, the Reformed faith places great emphasis on the preaching of the gospel.
But as we proceed, it is important for us to bear in mind the progression of thought in the Catechism. We have to understand, in other words, why the preaching of the gospel is viewed with such importance. And then, looking back over that which we have considered for the past several months, we find that the Catechism has devoted its attention to essentially one subject. That subject is faith, saving faith. Faith is that life-giving bond with Christ, in Whom alone is our comfort in life and death. The consideration of faith began back in Lord's Day 7. And having brought up that matter of faith as being the only way of our salvation in Christ, the Catechism went on to explain that faith as being first of all the living bond or graft which God sovereignly establishes between His people and Christ, only of grace. That bond is established even without our knowing it. That happens at the moment of regeneration. But that faith must also come to a living and conscious expression in our own lives. And from that point of view the Catechism explained the activity of faith as including a certain knowledge and an assured confidence of all that God has revealed in Scripture as true for me personally. You will recall that then the Catechism began its treatment of the various articles of the so-called Apostles Creed, as the Creed summarizes in most simple form the content of that which is revealed in Scripture and which is the heart of that necessary spiritual knowledge of Christ. More recently, in Lord's Days 23 and 24, we were pointed to the results of a saving faith, namely, that through faith I know that I am righteous before God, and that of nothing in myself and none of my works, but solely of grace.
Now comes Lord's Day 25. And here the question is put before us: Whence comes your faith? Where does this faith in you come from and how has it become a living part of your life? And the answer is: "From the Holy Spirit, Who works faith in our hearts by the preaching of the gospel, and confirms it by the use of the sacraments." In other words, God has determined that He will use a particular means to work that faith in our hearts, i.e., to bring that faith to consciousness. That graft which unites us to Christ, that bond of faith implanted at regeneration, must also brought to a conscious activity. So the Holy Spirit waters that plant by the preaching of the gospel. And He stakes it and upholds it by the sacraments, so that by those means that faith springs forth as a mighty tree, bearing fruits unto God. Usually when we treat Lord's Day 25 we do so from the viewpoint of "The Means of Grace." Today, however, I'm going to approach this Lord's Day from a slightly different perspective, taking as my theme:
SPIRIT WROUGHT FAITH
I. NECESSARY
II. WORKED BY MEANS
III. BEARING PRECIOUS FRUITS
GOD HAS ORDAINED THAT THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL AND THE SACRAMENTS ARE THE MEANS BY WHICH THE SPIRIT WORKS AND CONFIRMS FAITH IN THE HEARTS OF HIS OWN.
That power or bond of faith which God establishes by His Spirit in the hearts of His elect must certainly come to consciousness and grow. It must grow because it is God's work. And what God works He brings to completion and perfection.
When we speak about the Spirit working faith, however, we must remember a very important distinction which I mentioned in passing in my introduction. It is critically important to a proper understanding of our salvation and of Spirit wrought faith that we remember the biblical distinction between the implanting of the seed of faith and the bringing of that seed to conscious activity. That is a biblical distinction and it is very important. Both are the work of the Holy Spirit. But they are two aspects of that wonder work of salvation — that which takes place beneath our consciousness and then that which comes to expression as an activity of our own hearts and minds. Those distinctions we usually refer to as the bond of faith and the activity of faith.
No man can come to Christ except he is born again. So Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3. That spiritual rebirth is called regeneration. Do you boys and girls know what happens at regeneration? Peter explains it in I Peter 1:23 when he says, You are born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible. The figure there is that the incorruptible seed of a new life is implanted in our hearts by the word of God. The reference, however, is not to the word preached. That cannot be, for the text says that the word "lives and abides forever." The reference, then, is to Christ, the Word, Who speaks and it is done, Who commands and it stands fast. Christ says to His Spirit, "Plant the seed." And the Spirit comes and by His own sovereign power tears out what Scripture refers to as that "stony heart of unbelief" and gives us in its place "a heart of flesh." He plants in that new heart a seed, the incorruptible seed, of a new life, of Christ's life. By the planting of that seed, He unites us with the living Christ. To put it another way, at that moment of regeneration, He grafts us into Christ with that bond of faith. But that is not by any means the end of His work.
That seed, that principle of the life of Christ is us, must crack open and sprout and develop and grow and bear precious fruit, even the fruit of good works as we considered in Lord's Day 24. "For it is impossible that those, who are implanted into Christ by a true faith, should not bring forth fruits of thankfulness." That is impossible. The seed of life with Christ cannot merely lie dormant indefinitely. It must take root and grow. It must come to activity.
How does that happen? This way: The Spirit takes that child of God in whom He has worked the implanting of that new life in Christ and brings him into connection with the Word, the preaching of the gospel. So that the Word comes like water to a dry and thirsty ground and penetrates and seed, and it sprouts. That is what is meant in Romans 10:17, right after the Apostle explains the importance of the preaching of the gospel, when he says, "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Now I'll have more to say about that in my second point. But where the Holy Spirit prepares the heart and implants the faith and then waters that seed with the Word of God, there is life and growth in obedience to God. Faith must grow. It is a divine necessity. Shall the seed that God has implanted in the heart of one of His children rot and die? Never. The Apostle expresses it this way in Philippians 1:6: "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ."
Oh yes, there may be times that our faith is dim. There may be times, such as the psalmist expresses in Psalm 77, when the Lord seems far from us in our deep affliction. But even in those times, don't forget, God is working in us, carving out in our souls a deeper need for Him. And it is through such times that our faith grows the most! There are also those terrible times when God permits one of His children to fall into such a period of drought, that it is as if that child is carried away by his own foolishness. And that child of the Church commits sins which very highly offend God and grieve His Holy Spirit and incur a deadly guilt, to use the expressions from our Canons of Dordt in the Fifth Head of Doctrine, Article 5. There are times when a child of God grievously wounds his or her own conscience and lose entirely the sense of God's favor. But as the Canons point out from Scripture, God Who is rich in mercy, does not entirely withdraw His Holy Spirit from His own elect. He will not let even one of His own perish! So that even in such falls He preserves in them the incorruptible seed of regeneration, and by His Word and Spirit, in His own time, He certainly and effectually renews them again to repentance, to a sincere and godly sorrow for their sins, that they may again find forgiveness in the blood of the Mediator, and experience the favor of a reconciled God. And through such events the Lord teaches us our need of Him, and reveals to us the power of His grace.
But that seed which is sown by the Spirit cannot mold and rot and die. It cannot. It will be watered by God, and will come forth into growth and the revelation of the life of Christ. Oh, it is true, there are also reprobate in the church institute. That Scripture also surely reveals. And in them such fruits are not seen. Because that same Word which brings the elect to faith and repentance works very differently in the reprobate. In those who are not of God, that same means which the Spirit uses to work faith in His people, He uses to harden and to provoke to even greater rebellion. The Spirit works damnation in those who are not of God. But we may be confident of this very thing, that God shall work and no man can hinder Him. That is why we avail ourselves of the means of grace. That is why we thirst for the gospel preaching and hunger for the sacraments. That is why we bring our children to Church with us and insist that they learn their catechism. Faith comes to expression and grows as the Spirit works through the means which God has appointed for that end. Growth in faith is divinely necessary. That is the way God works by the Spirit of Christ.
IN ADDITION, THERE IS A PERSONAL NECESSITY OF GROWING IN THAT SPIRIT WROUGHT FAITH.
You immediately sense, don't you, the importance of spiritual growth. When things are well with us spiritually we desire that growth too. That the Lord has not only appointed a means to work faith, but has also appointed a means to confirm faith in us, indicates that we of ourselves are weak and need strengthening. We have not perfect faith. And therefore it is a personal necessity that we grow in that faith. That doesn't change no matter what our age. You need to grow, even if you have reached the age of strength and great strength. Whether you have a rich knowledge of Scripture or are but a child, you need to grow. And the very worse thing that can happen in our spiritual life is to become lifted up in pride and to think, "I don't need this." The devil would have us reason sometimes that it is normal to be stagnant, that it is normal to have a lackadaisical attitude about the things of God. "You don't have to grow," the devil tells us. That is the lie of the great deceiver! Faith grows, or it shows that it is no faith. Faith grows under the diligent use of the means God gives for that growth.
The moment we become satisfied with what we know, and no longer have the thirst to know more and to grow spiritually, we do not know the riches of Christ and we do not receive the comfort and blessing of the gospel. Do you think perhaps that you have nothing more to learn? You can't get any more out of Catechism perhaps? You've heard sermons on that subject quite enough? The Bible is dead to you? Beloved, the moment we begin to think that way, we stand in the greatest weakness of faith that we could ever stand in; because then a seven year old child who is struggling to learn his catechism questions or who is sitting on the edge of her seat in catechism class stands stronger and knows more than we.
A child of God cannot stand still in the life of faith. He must progress. What a terrible sign when those who once appeared to stand strong in the faith no longer show themselves as growing and standing strong. That is a terrible sign. You children sometimes take a coin and you stand that coin on edge on the table and you grip that coin between the tips of your thumb and fingers, and you flip it and make it spin. As long as that coin remains spinning, it stands, doesn't it. But if that coin stops spinning, it falls flat; because it cannot stand unless it is in motion. That illustrates our faith. So long as we are in motion, so long as we are diligent and applying ourselves in the faith, we stand. But the moment we stop, we fall. There is no standing, except there is growth under the means of that Spirit wrought faith. So also when you look at the parable of the seed and the sower, in Matthew 13, you find many which bore no fruit. Though they appeared for a while, and though some even appeared to flourish for a while, they perish. They had not true faith. Only one seed remains and becomes a flourishing plant, continuing to grow and bear precious fruit. That is the one, according to the Word of the Lord, Who "heareth the word, and understandeth it." The Holy Spirit works in His people in that way.
We who are the children of God, justified by the faith that is in Christ Jesus, recognize our personal need of continual spiritual growth. That is why we are Reformed. To be of the Reformed faith is to belong to those who recognize that God is God. We are God-centered. We know that the end of all things is God's glory. And in thankfulness of heart, we long to glorify Him. That is what we desire. Isn't that true, beloved? Is it true of you? But because I find myself so weak, also in my expression of thankfulness to God, I know that I must grow in my faith. I know as a matter of my own experience what that man meant when he cried out from the depths of his soul, "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief!" Strengthen my faith! Is that your desire? Then we must remember something, a very important biblical truth.
THE HOLY SPIRIT WORKS FAITH IN OUR HEARTS BY THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL.
God has determined a means by which he is pleased to work conscious, active faith in us. That means is the preaching of the gospel. That is clearly evident from Romans 10:13-17, a passage that is often expounded when treating this subject. But that is also evident even in the passage which we read earlier, the first part of I Peter 2. In the first three verses of that chapter we are called to give hearty attention to the preaching of the Word. There ought to be in us a fervent desire for the faithful preaching of the gospel. And because that desire is stifled by our own sinfulness, we are called to lay aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings. Those whose lives are characterized by those sins will never receive a blessing under the preaching of the gospel. But the importance of that preaching is expanded upon in the next section of that chapter. There we are pointed to Christ. With hearts filled with a desire for the milk of the Word, we come. Come to whom? To Christ, upon Whom we are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
Now notice, this is true only of you who are, in the terms of this text, living stones. That you are living stones and not dead stones, makes it possible for the Apostle to speak of you as coming to Christ. For the reference is not merely to a physical coming, but to a spiritual coming with the desire to be built upon that Chief Cornerstone. Christ Himself made us come to the Word first. He said to me, "Seek ye my face, and my heart said unto him, Thy face, Lord, will I seek." But in coming to Him, we are built upon and we appropriate Him and all His benefits, through the preaching of the Word. God has bound Himself to the use of that means. It isn't merely a matter of His power, you understand. God is powerful to save and to work faith in any way He pleases. But it isn't merely a question of His power. It's a matter of His will. That applies to other things as well. God is certainly powerful to raise up plants and flowers without rain and without sunshine and without carbon dioxide. He is able to keep you healthy without you having any food or any drink. I say, God is able to do that. But He will not. He will not, because He has bound Himself to do those things through means. So God supplies us with milk, the milk of the Word. And as the newborn babe cannot survive without his necessary nourishment, you and I will not survive as members of Christ without the milk of the Word.
Unbelief despises this. In the words of I Peter 2, unbelief stumbles at the means God has given. They take offense at His Word. They have no interest in it. They reject it. They walk in disobedience to it. That same Rock, Who is Christ, and upon which the living stones are built, is a Rock which crushes those who reject His Word in unbelief. Their disobedience reveals them for what they are. They are those who "stumble at the word, being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed." That Word never returns void, but always accomplishes the purpose whereunto God sends it. And for that reason that same Word which saves and works faith also hardens and works damnation. That Word works in your heart obedience, or provokes you in your disobedience. That preaching will either testify in such a way that it pulls from you a confession of "I believe," and points you to the comfort of belonging to Christ; or that preaching will testify against you and tear you down, leaving you comfortless. And it's all of God. The world calls preaching "foolishness," because they despise the authority of that Word which comes through the mouth of a weak and human vessel. They look at the tarnished and blemished trumpet, through which the blast of sound comes from Lord's Day to Lord's Day, and refuse to look at the exalted Christ Who blows that trumpet blast. They call that preaching "foolishness." They stumble at the word, being disobedient.
But to you who believe, that preaching is the power of God unto salvation, the Word which powerfully, effectually works in you the wonder of saving faith. It is the Word which declares "the promise of the gospel, namely, that God grants us freely the remission of sin and life eternal for the sake of that one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross." That Word is the means by which the Spirit works in you the faith which lays hold of Christ, and gives you to enjoy that only comfort in life and death, that you belong to this faithful Savior.
BUT THERE IS MORE: FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT ALSO CONFIRMS OUR FAITH BY THE USE OF THE SACRAMENTS INSTITUTED BY CHRIST.
When the Holy Spirit works faith in us by the preaching of the gospel, He proceeds also to confirm that faith in us and to strengthen it. In the two holy ordinances of Christ, baptism and the Lord's Supper, those sacraments which He ordained for use in and by His Church, the Holy Spirit confirms the Word which we have heard and assures us of its application to us personally. Those sacraments were appointed by God as holy visible signs and seals to serve to this end, "that by the use thereof He may the more fully declare and seal to us the promise of the gospel."
We need not expand at length this morning upon the place of the sacraments. We are given ample opportunity to do that in the next 5 Lord's Days. But what a precious gift of God to us are those holy ordinances. In the sacraments God seals that which is preached. And a seal is a visible guarantee that something is true. So that in the sacrament God seals that faith is reckoned for righteousness. In baptism, that sign of incorporation into the covenant of grace, God seals that His covenant is with us and our children for Christ's sake. And in the Lord's Supper, the sign of our continuous life in the covenant, the Lord again guarantees that our faith is counted for righteousness and that all our sins are freely forgiven for the sake of that one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross. Oh no, the sacraments do not seal persons. That is an error that has some Reformed churches in a vise grip. The seal of the sacrament is only for the believer. The sacraments, just as does the preaching, seal the particular promise. For that reason, the sacraments also work a two-fold effect.
But for you who believe, baptism and the Lord's Supper are precious gifts of God, by which the Holy Spirit confirms and strengthens that faith that is worked in the preaching. But the preaching alone works faith. And the sacraments, for that reason, are dependent upon the preaching and inseparable from the preaching. That also we must remember. Jesus sent forth His disciples to teach and baptize, as we read in Matthew 28. Because the sacraments are seals added to the Word for the sake of confirmation, they never go beyond the Word, nor do they have any content of their own independent from the Word. But as means by which the Spirit works and confirms faith, we count these things as precious, and receive them with gratitude to God. We desire them. We diligently use them. And by them we are blessed.
WE MAY PUT IT IN TERMS OF ISAIAH 55:11, WHERE THE LORD SPEAKS: "SO SHALL MY WORD BE THAT GOETH FORTH OUT OF MY MOUTH: IT SHALL NOT RETURN UNTO ME VOID, BUT IT SHALL ACCOMPLISH THAT WHICH I PLEASE, AND IT SHALL PROSPER IN THE THING WHERETO I SENT IT."
God always and without exception accomplishes His purpose in those things that He has ordained as means for Spirit wrought faith. There is not a single time that the Word is faithfully preached, that it does not powerfully accomplish God's purpose. And in you who belong to Jesus Christ, that Word accomplishes its purpose in your salvation. Under the preaching of the gospel, the Holy Spirit works faith, a beautiful, wonderful work. It works that faith in your heart, so that the spiritual life-blood of Christ begins to pump through your whole spiritual being. And the spiritual muscles begin to flex in the fruits of faith and of love and of all good works.
THEN, BELOVED, THROUGH THAT MEANS THE ENTIRE CONGREGATION BECOMES A STRONG BODY, GLORIFYING CHRIST ITS HEAD.
Those who reject the Word show themselves outside the body. But the body itself is strengthened by the preaching of the Word and the faithful and biblical administration of the sacraments. We are no more like little children, tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. But we grow up into Christ our Head in all things.
Receive, then, the Word. Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Heed the exhortation which we read in I Peter 2:1-3: "Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious." And know what it is to be a partaker of Christ and all His benefits.
Amen
Preached: 1) Randolph PRC 3/23/97 (am)
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