Sermon, Lord’s Day Morning, October 9, 2005.

Scripture: 1 John 1 – 2:2

Confession: Lord’s Day 13, Heidelberg Catechism

33. Q. Why is He called God’s only begotten Son, since we also are children of God?

1. Because Christ alone is the eternal, natural Son of God¹; but we are children of God by adoption, through grace, for Christ’s sake².

34. Q. Why do you call Him Our Lord?

A. Because He has redeemed us, body and soul, from all our sins, not with gold or silver, but with His precious blood, and has delivered us from all the power of the devil, and has made us His own possession¹.

I want to present the Word of your God to you this morning as we confess it in Lord’s Day 13 of our Heidelberg Catechism as the Word that announces your adoption and your redemption, and then certifies it through the sacrament of Holy Communion.

This is the testimony of God, that through his Son he has adopted you, as members and families, as his children, through the redemption worked by Christ, and he verifies, seals, applies, makes personal that adoption through the Lord’s Supper, that just as John testifies, so you may be able to say, “That which we have seen and heard, our hands have handled, and our tongue has tasted, even eternal life, which was with the Father and manifested to us, so we have fellowship with God at his table through the body and blood of his Son.”

My theme is: Adopted and Redeemed.

I would first review our adoption papers, the Bible, the Word of God.

Second, I would review our redemption papers, the Word and work of our God that has brought us into the possession of Jesus Christ, now our Lord.

Third, I would direct you to the sacrament, that through the bread and wine, through the real body and blood of Christ, God signs, seals, and delivers to you your adoption and redemption papers.

First then, our adoption papers.

I don’t think we have trouble understanding what adoption means. Parents adopt a child who is not naturally theirs. They adopt someone who was born of another father and mother. They take a baby or child and make it their own child. It was not theirs naturally, but they made it theirs.

Adoption then is not something children do. I cannot make myself adopted. A baby or child cannot get themselves adopted into another family. There is no work, no pleading, there are no tears, no achievements I can put forth to cause someone to adopt me. It must be the act and desire of someone else entirely.

We then understand that we are not naturally children of God. We are, as Christ said to our fathers many years ago, children of our father the devil, and what we do, our works, instead of gaining us favor with God, continually show that we work the works of him who is from below, Satan himself.

Our adoption papers then, the Bible itself, gives us some pretty plain facts about our natural origins. We are born, as our baptism form says, children of wrath. The Bible leaves us no doubt whatsoever about our nature, our natural family, our birth parents. Our adoption papers clearly show the historical evidence of our natural parentage. We have the history of Adam and Eve, the history of the brothers of Joseph, the history of our fathers in Egypt, serving false gods, the history of Israel in Canaan falling away constantly, all to show us, as the prophets constantly reminded Israel, that their father was a Canaanite, and their mother a Hitite.

This then God calls you to believe, not relying on the illusion that you have Abraham for your father, but believing Christ when he says that you naturally have the devil for your father. Covenant people often have trouble with that. Do you?

But these same adoption papers, not merely relating the fact of our adoption, relate the act of our adoption. They relate the acts of our God adopting us. They relate the act of God finding Adam and Eve in the garden, the act of God coming to our father Abraham in Ur, the act of God adopting Israel out of Egypt, the act of God adopting Israel again and again out of bondage, the act of God taking them from Babylon.

These adoption papers relate the acts of God through Christ in the New Testament, making those who were no people, now people of God, those who had received no mercy, making them those who had received mercy. These adoption papers relate the acts of the apostles, coming into Ephesus and Corinth, into Samaria and Cyprus, calling, adopting Jews and Gentiles, barbarians and pagans, bond and free, into the family of God, making them sons and daughters of the most high God, through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This gospel proclaimed that although we all were conceived and born in sin, all children of sin and Satan, there was one who was from eternity the natural Son of God. There was one who was born without sin, the very Son of God himself, spotless, innocent. There was one who became man, that as the eternal, natural Son of God, through his work he might bring many sons to glory.

These are your adoption papers, declaring to you your natural parents, and declaring to you your adoption through Jesus Christ into the family of God. These are the papers that God preserved against all the rage of your natural parents. This is the Bible that has survived burning and banishment, confiscation and shredding. This is the Word delivered to you, recording the fact and the act, God’s announcement and God’s work in Christ to adopt you.

Second, our redemption papers.

The Lord brought about our adoption through the process of redemption, the work of redeeming us.

Redemption is easy to understand. To redeem someone is to purchase them, to buy them. To be redeemed means that someone was a slave, owned by someone else, and then bought from that person. Redemption is a change of ownership.

If you were a slave, owned by a master, you would have no means of buying your freedom, you could not buy yourself, for you had no power to do it. You could only wait and hope that someone would buy you free, that someone would pay the price to free you from your cruel master, and make you belong to someone who loved you and cared about you.

Again, in this Word of God, he not only announces to you that he has redeemed you, he shows how he does it and did it. In other words, we not only have the fact, we have the act. God not only sets a proposition before us, he relates to us the history of his work of redemption.

From the beginning to the end of the Bible, this glorious document of redemption, God tells us of his work to redeem his people, to redeem you. He tells us of the animals whose blood he shed to clothe our parents Adam and Eve. He tells of the ram who redeemed our father Isaac from death on the altar at Mount Moriah. He tells of the lamb slain whose blood redeemed our fathers from the slavery of Egypt and from the ownership of Pharaoh. He tells us of his redeeming love, who bought our fathers back time and again from the dominion of Canaanites, Hititites, Amorites, Edomites, Moabites, Philistines, Assyrians, and Babylonians. All these acts of God demonstrate in a living way his love and his power, releasing his people from their slavery to the heathen, and bringing them back again into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.

This is our redemption paper. This is the document that tells us of one who came to fight against our cruel master Satan, and deliver us from the bondage of sin and death. This document tells us of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who, without our aid, without our cooperation, without our efforts, indeed against even our evil desire to remain slaves of sin, conquered sin and death for us, freeing us from its dominion, and bringing u
s into his own possession.

This is our redemption paper, showing us the joy of the Gentile and the Jew, of men and women, of those whom the gospel of Christ’s redemptive act brought freedom, purchased them to be his own. So when we say, “I belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who has fully satisfied for all my sins and delivered me from all the power of the devil,” we sing the same song that came from the lips of millions before us, from India to Ethiopia, from Argentina to the Yukon.

These are our redemption papers. These are our adoption papers.

But do I know it is for me? Did God adopt me? Did God redeem me? Do I belong to Jesus Christ? Is he really my owner, my master?

Ah, my friend, what child of God has not had these doubts batter him? Who of us has not wondered, Am I really a child of God? Who of us has not heard the voice of Satan in our ears, saying, You? You a child of God? You still sin, you still follow my directions so often. Do you really believe that God loves somebody like you? Do you really think that he would actually call you one of his children? How can you be sure? You say you believe, but don’t you doubt so often?

Don’t you hear a voice in your ear saying, If you are really one of God’s children, why do you have so many troubles? Why does your heart want to sin so often? Why do you find following Christ so hard?

Let me ask you a question now. Does God want you to doubt? Does God want you to think that because of your failings, because of your fears, because he brings trials and sufferings into your life, does he want to convince you that you are not really one of his children? How do you really know that these adoption and redemption papers have your name on them? How do you really know that this adoption and this redemption is real, and that it is really yours?

Third then, signed, sealed, and delivered.

This is the way God confirms, assures us. It is not doubt that pleases God, but faith. This gracious powerful Savior not only generates this faith, but when it is small, just a baby faith, barely able to wiggle fingers and toes, he feeds it, nourishes it, cuddles it with love that it may grow strong.

Jesus does not pinch out a smoking flax, or toss out a bruised reed.

How do we know it’s real? If you were adopted into a family and later wanted to know if it was real, what would your adoptive parents do? They would take out the certificate, and on that certificate you would see that it had been processed through the courts, and was sealed by the courts, and they would put it in your hands.

How did God in Christ sign and seal our adoption and redemption papers? He signed and sealed them in his own blood in our own flesh and blood on the tree of the cross. He took himself, the sign and the seal of God’s redeeming and adopting work in our flesh, into the court room of heaven itself. He presented himself to the Father for us, and the Father said to him, “Here, sit at my right hand. You are my beloved Son. I have given you the heathen—you and me brother—for your inheritance. Bring them to glory.”

So the Spirit of Christ himself bears witness with our spirit that we are sons of God. How does the Spirit bear witness? Christ sent his Spirit upon the apostles, those apostles anointed their successors, and those successors, the elders among you, Christ has commissioned, anointed to say to you, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life, that Word, the Word of your adoption and redemption, these papers, made flesh, we give to you.” Take eat, take drink, remember and believe, that this body and blood of Christ, the eternal natural Son of God, the power of God, is the sign and seal of your adoption, the sign and seal of your redemption.

We deliver them, at the command of Christ, and these elders are saying, to you and in delivering them to you, we deliver them to your family. For the promise is to you and through you and your faith to your children, that this God, this Christ, the sign and the seal of your adoption and redemption, is yours.

These are the official papers of your adoption and redemption. And this table of fellowship, this table with the body and blood of Christ, this bread and this wine, is the signature of the Son of God, and the seal of heaven that you are the beloved children of God. Amen.

Sermon Lord’s Day Morning, October 2, 2005.

Scripture: Psalm 133

Confession: Lord’s Day 12, Heidelberg Catechism

31. Q. Why is He called Christ, that is, Anointed?

A. Because His is ordained of God the Father, and anointed with the Holy Spirit¹, to be our chief Prophet and Teacher², who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption³; and our only High Priest⁴, who by the one sacrifice of His body has redeemed us⁵, and makes continual intercession for us with the Father⁶; and our eternal King, who governs us by His Word and Spirit, and defends and preserves us in the salvation obtained for us⁷.

32. Q. But why are you called a Christian¹?

A. Because I am a member of Christ by faith², and thus a partaker of His anointing³, that I may confess His Name⁴, present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulness to Him⁵, and with a free and good conscience fight against sin and the devil in this life⁶, and hereafter reign with Him eternally over all creatures⁷.

The Psalm I read to you is a poem, a song about Christ and the Christian, about Jesus our Lord and priest and his body, about how we relate to him through the work of God.

It is no accident that Christ, the Word, brings us a large portion of divine revelation, of the revelation of himself to us in poetry. For although in this scientific age of definitions that we think need to be so precise, poetry expresses the reality of things in a way scientific prose never gets close to.

Consider this: you want to describe your darling. What will you say? Will you say this? She is five feet, six inches tall, she weighs 122 pounds, 83% water, the remaining 17% compounded of phosphorus, calcium, potash, carbon, with trace amounts of boron and cadmium. She has a digestive system consisting of an esophagus, stomach, duodenum, 35 feet of small intestine, and a large intestine of two feet. Her gall bladder is green. But that’s enough.

Let’s try something else, a poem, a song—

Behold, you are fair, my love!

Behold you are fair!

You have dove’s eyes behind your veil.

Your hair is like a flock of goats, going down from Mount Gilead.

Your teeth are like a flock of shorn sheep which have come up from the washing,

Every one of which bears twins, and none is barren among them.

Your lips are like a strand of scarlet, and your mouth is lovely.

Your temples behind your veil are like a piece of pomegranate.

O my love, you are as beautiful as Tirzah,

Lovely as Jerusalem,

Awesome as an army with banners.

Psalm 133 is a poem, a beautiful poem about Christ and the church, Christ and the Christian.

The word Christ, as you well know from our confession, means anointed. He is God’s anointed. My theme this morning is God’s Anointed and You.

First, why Jesus is called Christ.

Second, why you are called a Christian.

Why Jesus is called Christ

Christ is our English sounding of the New Testament Greek word, Christos, and that word simply means, Anointed One. The Hebrew word, used for example in Psalm 2, is Messiah, and means the same thing, that is Anointed One.

Christ then, is not a name, but a title, just like the word president. We say, George W. Bush, president, just as we say, Jesus, Christ, or Jesus, the Christ. It is a title describing his office, just as the word president describes an office.

Just as Psalm 133 implies that the anointing oil that came upon the head of Aaron was poured out upon him by God using the hand of Moses, and just as the dew came from the heights of Mount Hermon to descend upon the mountains of Zion, so God anointed Jesus.

No man, says Hebrews, takes this honor to himself but he is appointed and anointed to his office by someone else. No one anoints themselves. No one crowns themselves. No one gives themselves an office. God took Moses and through him anointed brother Aaron to be priest. Through Moses God promised that he would take one of our brothers and make him king. God took David from among his brothers and anointed him king. God promised through Moses that he would raise up a prophet like Moses from among the brothers. God promised that he would raise up a priest from among the brothers. This prophet, this priest, and this king was Jesus Christ. He was, as we confess in the Heidelberg, ordained by God the Father, and anointed by the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus the Christ, God fully restored man to his created offices of prophet, priest, and king. In Jesus, the Son of Man, God brought these offices back together again as he originally placed them upon Adam. Remember what we confessed about Adam before the fall? “God created man good, and after his own image, that is in true (this refers to the prophet) righteousness (as king) and holiness (as priest), that he might rightly know God his Creator (as a prophet), heartily love him (as a priest), and live with him in eternal blessedness to praise and glorify him (as a king).” So in Christ God restored fallen man back to his original glorious image of God, prophet, priest, and king.

You need to remember that the name Jesus was not uncommon name to given to children in Israel. We come across that name in the Old Testament in its Hebrew form, Joshua, twice. But the title Christ was special, for this was the promised one, and this, you will remember was the title for which he was crucified. “Tell me,” said the high priest at Jesus’ trial, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” “I am,” said Jesus. “This is blasphemy,” said the high priest, “Let him be crucified.”

Let us examine the meaning and significance of this title, for if we are Christians our calling is to follow this Christ and to fulfill these same offices. What is a prophet, a priest, and a king? Again, just as Jesus did with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and during the forty days between his resurrection and ascension, opening up to them the revelation of himself in the Old Testament, so we too, without Christ revealing himself in the Old Testament we will neither understand Christ or ourselves as Christians.

Prophets, priests, and kings in the Old Testament. First we come to the prophets. Moses was a great prophet. God came to him in the desert at Mount Horeb and revealed to Moses his Word of redemption for his people in Egypt. Moses took that Word and brought it to Israel in their misery and slavery, and through that Word brought redemption to our fathers.

So, says our confession, Jesus is our chief prophet and teacher, who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption. So you see that Moses was this shadow of the prophet that was to come. Moses brought this counsel and will of God revealed to him, to Israel concerning their redemption. Jesus Christ comes from the Father, telling his people that he spoke no things but what he heard of his Father. We confess then, that he reveals the secret counsel and will of God concerning that which Old Testament prophets saw at a distance, that which angels long to look into, Christ has revealed to us. The great redeeming plan and work of God for our salvation. Christ is the revelation of God’s redemption, for Christ is the Word of God himself, the Word made flesh, and the flesh that in his life and in his death on the cross fully secured our salvation. A prophet does two things, listens to God speak, and then speaks those words to God’s people

Jesus is the Christ, our only high priest. What was a priest? This is the second office we come to in the Old Testament, as Moses the prophet by the direction of God, poured the
anointing oil on the head of Aaron, appointing him to the office of priest. What was the function of a priest? What did priests do? Where did they work? Let us remember now, that this is not just a matter of curiosity for us from the pages of the Old Testament, but these are the words spoken by the Spirit of Christ so that we might understand who he is, so that he might reveal himself to us in the Old Testament.

What did priests do and where did they work? They worked in the temple of course. What did they do in the temple? They took the offerings of God’s people, the sacrifices, and presented them to God on the altar. The Lord our God gives us many and wonderful descriptions of the many different kinds of offerings they brought. All those offerings picture in such beautiful ways the offering that Jesus was going to bring as the Christ, the great high priest.

So we can say that the priests in the Old Testament represented the people in their service to God. The priests carried the names of Israel on their shoulders and on their breastplate before the Lord. So we confess that when Jesus came, Jesus the Christ, the great priest, he took himself, and offered himself as all the sacrifices of the Old Testament brought into one, for us, before God. Hebrews connects this so wonderfully, and it is a book that all lovers of Jesus the great Priest really delight to read. Jesus is the great Priest who not only offered himself, but also as we confess, makes continual intercession for us before his Father. Jesus the Christ always carries our names on his shoulders, and on his breastplate, near his heart, to the Father for us. Our priest does two things, brings his own sacrifice before God, and brings our names before God in intercession.

Christ, our prophet, our priest, and our king. What did Old Testament kings do? David is the wonderful picture God gave our fathers, and gives us, of the work of a king. A king also did two things. David first fought many battles against all the enemies of God’s people, protecting them, freeing them from their enemies. The David gained a kingdom. Then the king rules his kingdom, his subjects, and brings them into the liberty of the law of God.

So Christ our king, through his power as the Son of God, as a righteous man, came to grips with all the power of Satan, battled against him, battled against sin, against the judgment and wrath of God against us, against the demon of death itself, and won the victory. Following that victory, he brought to us the perfect will of God, ruling us by his Word and Spirit, leading us into the green pastures and the quiet waters of perfect fellowship with the Father, as he so lovingly explained in John 14 – 16, through obedience to his commandments.

Jesus, the one ordained by God the Father, and anointed by the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet and teacher, who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption (by the way, some time you ought to think about those words that our fathers confessed and we confess today—“the secret counsel and will of God.” Through the Spirit and Word we do have access to the secret will of God. This echoes the apostle in 1 Corinthians 2:9,10, where he said these beautiful words, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed them to us through his Spirit.”)

“Our chief prophet and teacher, our only high priest, who by the one sacrifice of his body has redeemed us, and makes continual intercession for us with the Father, and our eternal king, who governs us by his word and Spirit, and defends and preserves us in the salvation obtained for us.”

Second, why you are called a Christian?

Psalm 133 tells us that the anointing oil that was poured on the head of Aaron went all the way down his beard, down his garments, and all the way to the hem of that robe. When God through Moses poured the anointing oil on the head of this priest Aaron, it flowed down his head, over his beard, and spread all over his clothes, right down to the hem of his robe. The oil God poured on the head flowed down to the body.

The same Psalm tells us that the refreshing dew from Hermon, descended upon the mountains of Zion. It was just as God said to our fathers in the wilderness, “You shall be to me a nation of priests, a holy people.”

You will notice that God did not ask his people for volunteers to become priests; for volunteers to become his people. He took them for himself. He called them, redeemed them, and appointed them to office, calling them to be faithful in the fulfillment of that office.

When we ask the question, “Why are you called a Christian?” we need to understand from the Old Testament and from the New that this is both a present reality and a continuing work of God. When God took Israel out of Egypt they were a nation of slaves, and they carried with them all kinds of rubbish and baggage. But he said, “You are my people.” Then he said, “You shall be my people.” And then he said, “I will make you my people.”

This won’t be too hard to understand if we just take a small example. One of our brothers went into the Army just recently. When he was sworn in he went from being a civilian to being a soldier in one moment of time. So he was a soldier, but you see he was made a soldier to be made a soldier. He became a soldier to be made a soldier. This is what God said to his people. This is what God said when you read some of the epistles. This describes the glorious reality of what God makes out of all of us. He took rubbish from the city of Corinth, that gutter of the Roman world, brought it together, and said to them, “Now, you have a holy calling. Don’t be like you were, but be transformed,” as he would say to the Romans. “Fulfill your calling,” as he would say to the Ephesians. Place yourself under the mighty hand of God, as he would say through James. Because God is working in you to make you what he declares you to be in Jesus Christ.

So we need to notice that our confession asks, “If you are a Christian, why are you called that?” It doesn’t ask, “If you become a Christian, what will that mean?” The question assumes, acknowledges, declares that you are a Christian. The word Christian itself tells us that it is not an office, not a calling that we take to ourselves. It is a title, a status given to us by God through Jesus the Christ. Just as every member of Aaron’s body was covered with the anointing oil, right down to his feet, so every member of the body, the church of Jesus Christ, anointed in baptism, is a Christian.

This our Heidelberg echoes the catechism of our Reformed fathers, Calvin and Bucer. They prepared catechisms that asked this question of children in the church, “My child, are you a Christian in fact as well as in name?” Answer: “Yes, I am, father.” “Why, how do you know.” And the answer they were taught to say was: “Because I was baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

But, you say, our catechism says, “I am called a Christian because I am a member of Christ by faith, and thus a partaker in his anointing.” How could I be made a Christian through baptism since I didn’t have faith then? Our catechism continues that dilemma when it talks about baptism saying, that in baptism infants are made members of the Christian church, of the body of Jesus Christ. Let’s ask another question? How was the daughter of the Canaanite woman who came to Jesus healed of her deathly illness? By the faith of her mother. She could say, “I was healed by faith.” You became a member of Christ by the faith of your father and mother believing in the grace of God tha
t the promise was not just to them but for their children, even you when you were without strength or knowledge.

What then are the responsibilities to which God calls you in Christ? For you see that you can’t escape them. You can’t say, “Well, I don’t have the responsibility to be a Christian until I decide to become a Christian.” So what are the responsibilities we have? In our confession we say that as a prophet you are to confess his name, as a priest, you are to offer yourselves as a living sacrifice of thankfulness to him, and as a king, with a free and good conscience you are to fight against sin and the devil in his life and hereafter reign with him eternally over all creatures.

Let me say here that God places two paths before you: the path of faithfulness, following your Christ, your prophet, priest, and king, or the path of your own making, following the world. Now remember, you can strive to escape this path by saying, “I’m not really a Christian, so it’s really not so serious.” That’s just like someone in the Army saying, “Well, I really don’t believe I’m a soldier, so what I do isn’t that serious.” What makes his actions serious is that he is a soldier, he has that office. And what makes it serious when you speak lies is because you do so as a prophet charged to tell the truth. When you love the world, you do so as a priest charged to love the Lord. When you choose wrong instead of right, you do so as a king, charged to battle wrong and champion the right.

Again, remembering the words of Paul telling us that one of the reasons for Old Testament history is to caution us in our walk before the Lord, we must receive instruction from God’s account of their lives. God appointed many prophets, priests, and kings from among his people Israel. Some of them were good, and others were bad. Some prophets were false prophets as Hananiah during the time of Jeremiah. They brought false news, they didn’t bring the Word of God, but a word they fashioned out of their own imagination. They brought a word of peace, peace to the wicked, and did not reveal the counsel of God at all. Hananiah brought judgment upon himself. So we too, can be false prophets or true prophets. We can speak the truth about God and man, or we can speak the lie. God gives us offices and tells us to be true to those offices.

God calls us to be true prophets, to listen carefully to his word, and to speak his word in truth, not adding to it or subtracting from it. He commissions us to speak the truth about Jesus Christ, about God, about his attitude towards sin, the full revelation of God.

Some priests in the Old Testament were false. There were priests who had the anointing oil of Aaron on their head, like Hophni and Phineas the sons of Eli. See how terrible they profaned the office of priest. Instead of leading the people in holiness, they despised and polluted the offerings of God. They did not lead God’s people into wholeness, but led them into fornication. God judged them, because he had anointed them priests, and they forsook their office.

We hear the words of Paul to the Corinthians crying out, “What are you doing, joining yourselves to Belial? What fellowship has Christ with devils?” You are priests of God. He has through Christ washed you, and says to you, “Do not become defiled, polluted with the filth of the world. Keep yourselves holy, for he has made you holy. Be holy as he is holy.” The path of faithfulness or the path of corruption.

God appointed kings from among his people. There were good ones and there were bad ones, but they were both anointed by God. Saul was anointed by God, David was anointed by God. So God says, “You’re a king, and there is the path. I have brought you the long history of Saul, as Paul would say, for your instruction, for your admonition, that you may not fall as he fell.” Saul was a king who sought glory for himself instead of the Lord. He was a king who could not wait on the Lord. He was a king who trusted in his own strength and power. He disobeyed the commands of the Lord. So the Lord said, “Now I reject you.” And he was a king who finally used his own strength in self-destruction.

God calls you to be a king like David, a man after his own heart who loved the Lord, who knew that his strength did not come from himself, but from the God of Israel. We can be true kings, loving and promoting obedience to the precepts of our God.

We have been anointed in and through Christ, and we cannot escape our calling to be true Christians, to be true prophets, priests, and kings. We should not want to escape our calling, for it is truly glorious, but only as you are united to your head Jesus Christ. And again, this is one the anomalies of Scripture, if we call them that, that when he calls the Corinthians, for example, saints, he also says that they are called to be saints. We are called Christians, we are called to be Christians. We are called to come under the power of Christ our Lord, to transform us more and more as his image as the Christ.

For truly he calls you to be united to him by a true and living faith. He has given you his Word, he has promised and promises you his Spirit. He equips you, furnishes you with every grace, all knowledge, all love, and all power to fulfill your calling.

Let me close with this little picture, trying to capture some of the essence of your offices of prophet, priest, and king, and your relation to Jesus Christ. For you must embrace him. For you see, you might say in a certain sense that in baptism he embraces you, and he embraces you that through his love and his care, you can come to the day when you can return that embrace. Then you are truly and fully united to him. There are those who fear the embrace of Christ and they back off. They are judged, not because they weren’t embraced by Christ, but because they were. So let me give you this picture.

I’ve given it in catechism so some of you will remember it. The office of prophet deals with truth, with knowledge, with what is in your head. The office of priest deals with sacrifice, with love, what you give, with what is in your heart. The office of king deals with fighting and ruling, what you do with your hands. Bring these three together then, with prophet, priest, and king we have head, heart, and hands. Through these three we are united with Christ, and in that union, bound together with and in him, we may live and faithfully perform our calling.

So here is the picture. It’s a wedding picture. It’s a picture of the groom and the bride after the minister says, “Ok, you may kiss your wife.” And the groom forgets all about her fancy clothes and they just embrace one another. How did this come about, this passionate embrace, each one seeking the other?

It started a few years earlier, when he got to know this girl, and she got to know him. First the knowledge of a lovely girl filled the mind of this young man. He got to know this girl, and she got to know him. They got to know each other more and more. This knowledge then did not remain just some academic, intellectual acquisition in their head. They didn’t speak of each other as I spoke earlier, in some scientific description. They spoke as Solomon spoke about his love. Because this knowledge went down to their heart; it made it beat faster, it gave them a little shortness of breath. They were in love, weren’t they?

Their heart started longing, but it didn’t stop there. It didn’t stop in their hearts. They had to do something. The young man had to be a king; he had to call dad, and say, “Can I bend my knees before your daughter?” So that action was taken, and to his knees that young man went, and secured the hand of his bride. That culminated in this embrace.

Jesus Christ, our prophet, priest, and king; who b
rought us the knowledge of God, the heart of God, and the hands of God nailed to the tree. Those hands have embraced us, and in that embrace he anointed us to be prophets, priests, and kings.

Our first response always has to be this, doesn’t it? “Fill my head, O Christ, with the knowledge of you. Kindle a love in my heart through that knowledge. Cause me to embrace you.” Embrace Jesus, your Christ, for in him, and in him alone you will be a faithful, growing, lovely Christian, confessing his name, offering yourself a living sacrifice, and triumphant in battle, wise in ruling. Amen.

Sermon Lord’s Day morning, September 25, 2005

Scripture: 2 Chronicles 16, Galatians 3:1-9

Confession: Lord’s Day 11

29. Q. Why is the Son of God called Jesus, that is, Savior?

A. Because He delivers us from all our sins and saves us; and because no salvation is to be sought or found in any other.

30. Q. Do such, then, believe in the only Savior Jesus who seek their salvation and welfare of saints, of themselves, or anywhere else?

A. They do not; for though they boast of Him in words, yet in deeds they deny the only Savior Jesus; for one of two things must be true: either Jesus is not a complete Savior, or they who by a true faith receive this Savior must find in Him all things necessary to their salvation.

Our confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, was written in 1562/3, at the time of the Reformation. The church needed reforming, and in particular the doctrine of salvation. The teaching of the church at that time had become a gospel of uncertainty, uncertainty because salvation largely became a matter of your own efforts to make you one of God’s children, to make you really a member of Christ. It was this threat that we identify now as coming from the Roman Catholic Church, that our fathers particularly addressed in this Lord’s Day.

So although this confession is historically conditioned, that is, it speaks to an issue especially relevant at that time, we may see that underlying this is an unchanging principle. That principle is that the whole of our salvation, from first to last, from beginning to end, and everything in between, is the work of God in Jesus Christ.

Our study of deliverance, of salvation in the Heidelberg has concentrated on the Apostles’ Creed, and having considered the first article, we now go to the second, confessing in Jesus Christ. The confession begins with his name, Jesus. Jesus is his given name, the name given to him the eighth day when he was circumcised. The angel had previously instructed Joseph to give him that name, saying, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” The name Jesus means, “Jehovah saves,” or “Jehovah Savior.”

My theme then is, Our Blessed Savior, Jesus.

Following our catechism then I have two points:

First, that Jesus gives perfect salvation. By perfect I mean, complete, whole, sufficient at every point to save, as Hebrews says, to the uttermost. A perfect salvation is one that includes everything, birth, life, job, marriage, health, and death.

Second, that our confession in Jesus as the perfect Savior, must not only be one of words, but one of deeds. Our lives must show that our salvation in Jesus is complete, that it does not need to be supplemented with either our efforts or the efforts of other men.

First, Jesus gives perfect salvation.

The name of our Savior is a precious name. “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds, in a believer’s ear.” It is “Jehovah Saves,” our help is in the name of Jehovah, who made heaven and earth. He is our salvation, and that salvation is a complete one, with nothing lacking. He is the beginning of our salvation, the middle and the end. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last.

Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name, Joshua, or Je Hoshea. The prefix “Je” stands for Jehovah, and “hoshea” means salvation.

Let’s look at this word “salvation”. Going to the New Testament for a minute, we find the word used in three tenses: past, present, and future. Listen:

1. As something that has been accomplished, that we are saved.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, (Ephesians 2:8 NKJV)

who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, (2 Timothy 1:9 NKJV)

2. As something that is going on right now, that we are being saved.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18 NKJV)

3. As something that will be completed in the future, that we will be saved.

But he who endures to the end shall be saved. (Matthew 24:13 NKJV)

Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. (Romans 5:9 NKJV)

Now lets apply that to our fathers, Israel of old. They were saved. God delivered them, redeemed them, saved them from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, from the hand of the Angel of death, from the armies of Pharaoh pursing them at the Red Sea. This was the great salvation event that defined them. God’s great act, done entirely apart from their efforts, their consent, or any help from man at all. This is the foundational event, the salvation from which all salvation in the future would come. The Lord was their God, he saved them, and made them his people, he was Jehovah Savior.

This event looked forward to the great event, the work of Jehovah Savior, Jesus, to save his people from their sins. In that event too, the Lord delivered us, redeemed us, saved us from the hand of Satan, from his own judgment for our sins. That great salvation event of Christ on the cross defines us. That great act of God, Jehovah Saving us, was done entirely apart from us, 2000 years ago, without our consent, without the consent of our fathers, without any help of man at all. In Jesus, Jehovah has become our salvation.

For our fathers, as for us, the Lord continued to be their salvation. As they journeyed through the wilderness, he saved them from fiery serpents, from thirst, from hunger, from the Amalekites that threatened them, from their own sins, from his wrath that threatened to consume them. They had been saved by grace from Egypt, and that same Lord in Christ was continuing to save them. Salvation was a present reality, based on a past reality.

They also had a salvation that was to come, just as we have one that is to come. Israel was journeying toward the promised land, to the land of rest, where their salvation in a typical sense, in a pictured sense, would be complete. The Lord was their salvation in the past, in the present journey, and would be their salvation in bringing them into possession of the promised rest.

We see here an important point that the Bible makes for us and that we must realize, and that is, that we must be careful not to fall into the error that so many fall into, and view salvation as something that is static. That we view salvation as though God saved us, and then places us, you might say, into the deep freeze, so that we are preserved there forever until the day he thaws us out to enjoy the promised land. Or that salvation is something like a beautiful vase that God puts on the shelf and leaves it there. But salvation is like Christ said about the vine. He takes you and he puts you in a vine, and you have a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. It an attachment of you to him that gives you life, and out of that life you can live. It is Paul speaking about the olive tree, taking wild olive branches, you, and grafting you onto the tree. Therefore you have a living relationship, and that relationship by grace brings forth fruit, the fruits of salvation.

So salvation is not something static, but dynamic, so that we speak, because God does, of a salvation that has been given to us—we have been saved, of a salvation that God presently gives to us as we journey through this life, and as a salvation that God will complete when Christ returns and we enter into that final p
romised rest.

Now to Asa. Asa demonstrated a beginning by faith, but a failure to continue, as Hebrews puts it, failed to hold the beginning of his confidence steadfast to the end. Asa was the son of Abijah, the son of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, the son of David. Asa was a good king. We read in chapter 13 that Asa began his reign by purging the land of idol gods and altars to false gods. He then called Judah back to the Lord and led them in the Lord’s ways. He fortified Judah against her enemies and raised a great army, 300,000 from Judah and 280,000 from Benjamin.

After he completed that great Reformation, the Lord tested him, brought him a trial, for God sent Zerah the Ethiopian with 1,000,000 men and 300 chariots to attack. Then as we come to the battle scene we hear this beautiful prayer of Asa. A prayer that was based, if you listen carefully, on the great salvation that identified them as God’s people, and called for this same God, the God of their salvation, in this moment, when they needed salvation. “Lord, it is nothing for you to help, whether with many or with those who have no power; help us, O Lord our God, for we rest on you, and in your name we go against this multitude. O Lord, you are our God, do not let man prevail against you.”

He called on the Lord as his God because this God had given himself to them, as their God in the great salvation from Egypt. So we read that the Lord struck the Ethiopians before Asa and Judah and they fled. They won a great victory, the Lord gave them a great salvation.

Again, following this victory, Asa continued his great reformation in the land of Judah. Then the Lord gave him another test, not so overwhelming as the first one, but a test nevertheless. In the 36^th year of his reign Baasha, king of Israel came out against him. But instead of presenting his petitions before the Lord as he had so wonderfully did before when Zerah came out against him, instead of relying on the God who had saved his people from Egypt, he relied on his own resources. He gathered silver and gold from his treasuries, and sent them to man, to BenHadad, king of Syria, and made an alliance with him. He looked for salvation from the threat of Baasha from BenHadad. He denied the only Savior, Jehovah. He testified that Jesus was not a complete Savior.

Again, he continued, in spite of the prophet Hanani’s warning, to find salvation in man instead of the God of his salvation, instead of Jesus. When he became severely diseased in his feet when he became older, we read that he sought the physicians and not the Lord. God doesn’t mean that we may not look for doctors, but that before we look for doctors, we look to the Lord, and we seek from him direction, provision, and guidance. And when we find that he provided us doctors and physicians and nurses, we give him thanks and we use what he has given to us. But Asa did not.

The Lord our God, Jehovah Savior, Jesus, is our salvation, past, present, and future. His work on the cross secures us as children of God, redeemed from sin and death, hell, damnation, and Satan. His work ongoing as our living king, our eternal high priest, our teaching prophet, saves us as he brings us towards the great promised rest remaining for the people of God.

This is the burden of Paul’s message to the Galatians, who began by faith, believing in the all sufficient work of Christ on the cross, but then continuing by the power of the flesh, living their lives as though religion was a Sunday thing; living their lives as though salvation was something apart from whether you had enough food for breakfast or not, or whether your child broke his leg, or whether you were being threatened by enemies. Salvation was over there, it was some kind of a “spiritual” thing.

But God is the God of the salvation of his people every day. But Jesus is a complete Savior, his salvation is perfect. By his Spirit, he has not only saved us, he is saving us in the present, bringing his perfect salvation to perfection in our own lives.

And that brings me to my second and final point, our lives must show that we believe that Jesus is a complete Savior.

The apostle Paul says the lives of our fathers were written in great detail for our instruction. The lives of our fathers were continually punctuated by disbelief in the perfection of Jesus’ salvation. After God redeemed them from the slavery of Egypt, they cried out in dismay and unbelief when they found themselves trapped by the armies of Pharaoh at the Red Sea. Following the great salvation at the Red Sea, we read that they believed. But so soon they faltered in faith, complaining that God couldn’t give them water in the wilderness, that he couldn’t set a table for them in the desert. They forsook this God at mount Sinai and made for themselves golden calves. They failed to believe in the salvation in the future, refusing to go into the promised land.

These things were written for our instruction, that believing in the great salvation God has given us in Jehovah Savior, in Jesus, we may continue to believe that he saves us in the present, and will save us to the uttermost, to the great day of final salvation, when we enter into the promised rest.

Asa’s life showed he failed to believe. His was a failure of faith, for although he first believed in the God who was the God of Israel, who had taken Israel by a great salvation from the land of Egypt, although he believed that God could and then did save him from the great army of Ethiopians, when a smaller test came, and the armies of Baasha threatened him, he turned to his own resources, and to the help of the Syrians.

We need to examine the nature of these failures so that we may not fail in a similar way. Salvation is something that we need for us on Monday; and we need on Tuesday, and we need on Wednesday as well. I have already said that they were failures of faith. Hebrews shows us how important it is to continue in the faith. Hebrews also tells us that these failures of faith were evident in disobedience. And that leads us to understand in at least one dimension, how Jesus works out our salvation in the here and now. How we actually acknowledge and experience that Jesus is not only the salvation that occurred two thousand years ago on the cross, but he is a God who saves his people in the present tense.

We’ll go back to Israel again. When Israel needed to be saved from the Midianites, what did God ask Gideon to do? He told him to break down the altar of Baal, to gather an army, to dismiss all the fearful, and then to dismiss so many there were only 300 left. So salvation for Gideon, God’s salvation for Gideon and for Israel because Gideon listened to the Word of God, and he followed the commandment of God even though it seemed to be the most foolish thing in the world to do. He was obedient, and so God worked salvation for Israel and for Gideon because he listened to the Word of God and he obeyed the Word of God.

How did Jesus bring salvation to Naaman, salvation from leprosy? He gave him an instruction, “Go wash in the Jordan seven times.” Naaman thought, as so many of the world always think, that the salvation that God presents in his Word is just too simplistic. That’s it? Just wash in the Jordan seven times? But when he did, when he obeyed the Word of the Lord, he received salvation, a present salvation.

To live by faith, to really confess that Jesus is a complete Savior, that his salvation, past, present, and future, is complete, when we need a salvation, when we need deliverance, we must ask this, “What does Jesus tell us to do?” You have his Word from Genesis to Revelation. “Lord,” we must pray, “What would you have me to do? Where will I find your salvation?” And if you are sick, says James, And “If any of you are sick,” says James, “let him call for the elders of the church.”
; Simple direction when we need salvation.

What did Jesus say to the rich young ruler? He gave him a path. He said, “What do I do to inherit eternal life, to enter into that great final salvation?” Jesus said, “You need to be saved from your attachment to your riches. Go sell all that you have, give it to the poor, and follow me.” Those were Jesus’ instructions for salvation to a child of Abraham.

What does Jesus say to his disciples, to you and to me? “Deny yourself.” Number one, you can’t save yourself in any of the circumstances of your life.

Salvation. Our confidence in the salvation God has given us in Jesus Christ on the cross, we demonstrate our faith in that salvation by believing that we find our salvation today and each day in that same Jesus Christ, following his instructions, finding salvation through his Word, by his Spirit.

So we ask ourselves when we face a problem, when we need to be saved from something, I don’t care whether it’s a bill or it’s a broken finger, or it’s a screaming child, or it’s an unfair employer, or it’s an insoluble problem in the church, where do we look? What do we say? So many times we go like Asa did. We look into our treasuries, “Do we have enough money to handle this problem?” Or we write someone, or we seek help from here or there. Not after we have sought it from the Lord, but before that. And finally when all help proves vain, when Olympia fails us, and Washington, DC fails us, and our pocketbook fails us, then, well, all we have left is to pray. And then so often the prayers are not prayers that say, “Lord show me. Give me a set of instructions, like you gave to Naaman, or like you gave to Gideon. Show me a plain path that I can walk it, and that in following you, in following what you say, I will find salvation.” So, whether we are elders, husbands or wives, citizens, employees, employers, mothers, we all have struggles, problems, and times when we need salvation. So we need in this coming week to stop a minute when we face a problem. To stop a minute when yhou are trying to deal with something, when you want a solution. Stop a minute and say, “Where do I seek salvation? Where am I going to find it? Where am I looking? Where do I look?”

Is Jesus just some kind of a religious idea there somewhere or is he a living, reigning King, and the author of our salvation, and the fountain of our salvation? We are not looking for some kind of mystical ‘me and Jesus’ experience. We are looking for the plain way, for he directs us by his Spirit to listen to his Word. He directs us and says, “You are members of my body, and I framed my body in such a way that there are a lot of different members, so that each member can supply what the other member is lacking.”

This is the salvation of Jesus, isn’t it? This is the way he has set up his church, that we might find our salvation, not in each other, but in him. In him. This is why he gives us the sacraments, so that we can again be assured, and testify that we find our salvation in the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. Every day, every week, we find it there alone. That he is the one who saves us.

Sometimes salvation is in a tough way. You might have been a member of the Corinthian church. There were members in the Corinthian church who were short of money, and the reason they were short of money was because they loaned it to another member, and that member would not pay them back. And so they started to fight, and then said, “Well, here’s the solution. We’ll go to Yakima County Superior Court and we’ll file a lawsuit and we’ll get that settled. That’ll save us.”

Paul said, “What are you doing? Isn’t there one wise man in the church, a member of Christ’s body, that you could find salvation there? Beside that, if nothing else works, just allow yourself to be defrauded. Be saved from what? Your allegiance to money.

Jesus is the complete Savior, and we must show in our lives that we believe that, that he saves us each day and every day on our journey. It is a salvation that we must experience every day. We seek it by prayer, by his Word, in among his body, because he is the one that ministers. Amen.

Afternoon Prayer

9/18/05

Lord God in Heaven,

You have given us the burdensome task of seeking out wisdom and of making sense of all that we do and all that takes place in this world. Yet even Solomon in all of his wisdom could not make sense of everything, saying, “all is vanity.” Generations come and go. Hurricanes blow, first one place, and then another and sweep all in their path away. Our lives seem to move faster and faster and events swirl around us, yet there is nothing new under the sun. There is no remembrance of former things and your people forget their covenant heritage. This nation, founded by faithful Christian men has forgotten its covenant with you. When disaster strikes we call on the almighty federal government, instead of the Almighty Creator of the Universe. We have forgotten and have drifted away. We are bewildered. How could this be? How can we as a nation return?

Controversies break out within the Reformed church and men do not deal with one another with charity and good will. Your church on this earth is riven and divided and our oneness is not an adequate testimony that you sent your son. Help us to see our fellow man as precious in your sight and our fellow church members as those resurrected in Christ and purchased with his blood.

Plagues break out in various places around the world and the threat of pandemic disease hangs over the earth. Within our own little church there are those who suffer from serious diseases. We pray that you will be merciful and heal and restore. We thank you that, knowing our weakness, you include in your word the plea of a man who said, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief!” That is our cry also, oh Lord.

Your servant Solomon saw that all the wisdom and effort that he put into building up a kingdom would be left to someone else after he died. He saw the vanity of that, for sometimes those who come after lack wisdom and misuse what has been gathered on their behalf. Indeed this was true in his case. We call upon you oh Lord to remember your covenant promises to us and to our children. Grant us wisdom to raise them and teach them in godliness so that they might live faithful and obedient lives after we pass on. Let not our lives, our work, and our cares for them be in vain. Grant them a greater measure of faithfulness that you have granted us and bless them to a thousand generations to come.

Lord, your have given us all that we need to sustain our lives and we eat in abundance. On top of all that you tell us that there is nothing better for us than that we should eat and drink and find enjoyment in our toil, which all comes from your hand. For apart from You who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases you you give wisdom and knowledge and joy. Let our joy in you show forth in a way that draws the attention of those who don’t know you so that they will ask us the reason for it. You have put eternity into every man’s heart. Let us show them the fulfillment of that in Jesus Christ. Grant us fruitfulness in your kingdom. Make us fishers of men and harvesters of grain, for the fields are ripe for the harvest.

Solomon saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun and the tears of the oppressed. Your people are oppressed and hounded severely in many nations. We pray for our brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia, in the Sudan, in Iran, and in China. Comfort them and strengthen their faith. Show us what we can do to ease their burden. Convert their oppressors and make them all bow their knees to you.

The Preacher said that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness ever there was wickedness. There is much wickedness in our courts, in the places that you ordained for righteousness, for justice. We pray for godly judges in all of our courts. We ask that you will put into the heart of President Bush the will to place such men in the courts, especially now with two vacancies on the Supreme Court. We know lord that such men find great opposition. But with you all things are possible and your turn the hearts of kings and of senators like fountains of water. Their thoughts are their own, but the words of their mouths belong to you. Cause them to vote for righteousness, even in spite of their hatred of it. We as a people do not deserve this, but we plead that you will be merciful to this nation to which we belong.

We lack wisdom; and we lack faith to see your mighty hand moving in history to bring all things to our good, that you bend all things to our salvation – to us upon whom you have poured out your love and for whom your Son has shed his blood. But you know our plight and our predicament and you have already provided for us. You have promised that if any lack wisdom he has only to ask and You who give to all men generously and without reproach will give it to him.

Heavenly Father. You who have spared not even your own son, but gave him for us, hear our prayers. Grant us healing and restoration, grant us faith, grant us wisdom to live before you in fear and reverence, to raise our children to shout praises to your name. For we ask all these things in Jesus’ name!

Amen

Lord’s Day, September 18, 2005, Morning Worship

Scripture: Psalm 139

Confession: Lord’s Day 10, Heidelberg Catechism

This morning’s sermon is about the providence of God. The word “providence” means God’s ability and actions of providing, that the Lord meets every need, he provides what his creation, his creatures, his people need.

The Psalms in many ways celebrate the providence of God. They speak of how God provides for the birds and the flowers, the grass and the cattle, and especially how God provides for his people, his children. Psalm 23 begins by confessing in the providence of God: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” “I shall not want.” I shall lack nothing, for he will provide for my every need. He makes, as we sometimes sing, he makes my needs his care.

Lord’s Day 10 of our catechism confesses in the providence of God. It was written in 1562 & 3, during the time of the great Reformation. During this time the Lord brought his Word back to his people again, and this provoked the frantic and insane fury of Satan. As Satan raged, God’s people entered a time of great persecution, and it was during this time that this confession was forged. It was hammered out in the fires of the stake and watered with the blood of the saints. From that confession then, my theme this morning is The Lord Who Cares.

First, we confess how he cares, and second we confess how we should answer that care of our Lord.

The providence of God, we confess, is because of the nature and character of God. God is omniscient, all knowing—Psalm 139 verse 2, You know my sitting down and my rising up, you understand my thoughts afar off. God is omnipresent, his presence is everywhere—verse 7,Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? And to these we may add that God is omnipotent, he is all powerful, there is nothing too hard for him, there is nothing that keeps him from caring for us. He can stop the mouths of lions, he can quench the power of the flame. Further, God is faithful, he does what he says he will do. When he promised to deliver Abraham’s children after 400 years in Egypt, he did just that. The providence of God is good and loving, he faithfully brings rain on the just and on the unjust.

How God cares.

The word “cares” has two related and very beautiful meanings as they apply to the providence of God. First of all it means to keep something, to preserve it, to take care of it. We may say, “Please take care of the house while we are gone.” Or, “Here is your little sister. Please take care of her for a while.”

Second, it means to have concern for something or somebody. We may say, “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you care about your school work?” That’s concern about something. We may also ask someone, “Do you really care about me?”

How God cares. So first of all, God takes care of us, he provides for us, giving us food and clothing, health and safety, peace and prosperity. God takes good care of his people.

Second, God cares about us. We know this because “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” We know this because the apostle said, “Cast all your care upon him, for he cares for you.”

The providence of God. God cares, God cares for his creation and about his creation. God cares for his image and about his image. God cares for his children, and about his children.

God provides for, governs, maintains, keeps all the work of his hands, his entire creation. He provides for it. He sends rain and clouds, he brings day and night, he changes the seasons, bringing winter when trees and tulips go into sleep that they may spring fresh from the earth again in the Spring.

God is faithful in his care of his creation. He loves it, he cares about it. When we consider science and science discovers all the laws of nature, these so-called laws are merely evidence that God is faithful, for it is he who insures that when you plant a tomato seed, you get tomatoes and not pine cones. It is God who makes water expand when it is frozen, contrary to most everything else which contracts with cold. Water expands, so that when lakes freeze over, the water is still liquid under the ice so fish can survive. It is by the Word of God that day and night follow one another. It is by the providential word of God that springtime and harvest, summer and winter follow one another faithfully.

God is faithful in his care of his image, for he cares about his image. God shows his care for every baby, from Siberia to Zaire is born with arms and legs, fingers and toes, and he so governs the growth of each baby, that each arm and leg grows to its proper length, and you don’t have people with one 12 inch leg and another five foot leg. God cares about his image, and that care is shown in his hatred for those who deface that image, in his law that those who destroy his image must be destroyed themselves.

God loves his image, and his care he has shown by sending his only begotten Son into this world, to be abused and defaced, to be spit on and mocked, to be punctured with thorns and nails, to have his back lacerated with scourging. All so that we, those who have defaced and made his image ugly with sin, may be restored and cured. The providence of God. God cares about his image.

The Lord who cares about his image, and when he has redeemed them, in that redemption he implants the incorruptible seed of the word, that we may have in us, in the very core of our being, in our hearts, the promise that although worms destroy this body, yet in our flesh we shall see God, we shall be raised incorruptible through that incorruptible word.

The Lord cares about his people. God promised Abraham and all his children that he would bless those who bless them, and he would curse those who cursed them. And so even though Abraham sinned by lying about his wife to Pharaoh, yet because Pharaoh touched Abraham, God brought a curse upon Pharaoh until he restored Sarah, and gave him many gifts besides. God cares for his chosen.

God says, “Do not touch my people, for if you touch them you touch the apple of my eye.” Christ said to Paul, “When you persecute my people, you persecute me.” The Lord cares for and about his people.

Does the Lord care about you? When you are lonely, when you feel lost in the crowd, do you really think that God remembers you, that he pays attention to you, that he really notices you? Listen to me a minute. I hope you read the Bible all the way through, I command you to do it. When you come to the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles, and even in Ezra and Nehemiah, you find long lists of names, names hard to pronounce, and names you may be tempted to skip. Have you ever asked yourself why did God give us so many names? Why did God write them all down? Stop and think for a minute. Didn’t Paul say in 1 Corinthians that all these things were written for our instruction? So how is God instructing us? God is telling us that he never overlooks one of his children, that he records all their names, that he never loses track of one of them. Think for a minute. Although the many people whose names are recorded in these books are long gone and forgotten, God has not forgotten one of them, he knows them all by name, and even in this world, the record of their names has continued faithfully for three thousand years and more.

The Lord cares for each one of you, he knows you by name, he records your names. For the Bible is not a book of impersonal ideas and philosophies, of spiritual thoughts and abstract doctrines, but of a creator who loves his creation, and of a Father who has through the person of his Son, adopted a people, and cares for each one of them,
from the cradle through the grave, and resurrection, numbering all the hairs of their heads, and providing, as we confess in the previous Lord’s Day, all things necessary for body and soul, as his dear children and heirs.

The providence of God, the Lord who cares.

How then should we answer this providence of God? What should be our response? The answer of our catechism is both simple and profound. We should and must be thankful in prosperity and patient in adversity.

We should be thankful in prosperity. When God led our fathers into the land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, full of houses they had not built, of vineyards and orchards they had not planted, God warned them saying, “Beware, lest when you are full, and you have prospered, that you forget the Lord your God, and say to yourself, By my strength and wisdom, by my energy and work, by my brains and brawn I have gotten all these things. But it is because the Lord loved your fathers, and because the Lord was faithful to his covenant, that you have all these good things.”

Thankful in prosperity. When people forget God in their prosperity, and credit themselves for what God has done, that they become god in their own eyes, and so often rich people believe themselves above the law. They forget God, and then deny God, and then rebel against God.

Patient in adversity. Before the Lord brought his people into the prosperity of the promised land, he brought them through the adversity of the wilderness. Were they patient? No, they complained. So the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:10, nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Patient in adversity. After the terrible catastrophes that struck Job, his wife urged him to curse God and die. But Job responded as an upright and blameless man, and said, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not evil?” “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

You know that the Lord Jesus has promised that we shall reign as kings. He will have us sit down on his throne as his Father also had him sit on his throne. But we shall ascend that throne in the same way our master did, for we are not greater than he. The way to the crown is by way of the cross.

Consider Joseph. The way to the crown was by way of the cross, by the way of adversity. When he was sold, did he rage against his brothers? Did he scream and shout? Did he blame God? No. Joseph entered the house of Potiphar as a slave, but in this adversity he remembered that he was a child of Abraham, the one whose seed God said would be a blessing to all people. So Joseph was a blessing to the house of Potiphar. Then as Joseph prospered, Satan tempted Joseph to believe that he was so big he was above the law, and could have his master’s wife. But no, Joseph refused, saying, “How can I do this great evil and sin against God?” And what did Joseph get for this faithfulness? He was thrown into the dungeon. What did Joseph do in this adversity? Did he complain? Did he become bitter against Potiphar, against the whole government system of Egypt that would throw an innocent man into prison? Did he go on a hunger strike in jail to protest this kind of treatment?

No, Joseph believed in the God who cared, and the God who preserved him even in the dungeon, so that as a seed of Abraham, even there Joseph would be a blessing. And when he brought blessing to the butler and the butler forgot him after that blessing, did Joseph again lift up his voice, bitterly complaining about the fickleness of man? No.

So the Lord raised Joseph from the dungeon to be even greater blessing. Joseph became an instrument of God’s providence, and through this seed of Abraham, blessing came upon the entire land of Egypt, and indeed many nations came to Joseph for grain, for provision, to experience the providence of God. The Lord raised Joseph from the dungeon so that through Joseph God would provide food and salvation for his sinning brothers, for his father’s entire house.

The providence of God. The Lord who cares for us and about us. That we may be thankful in prosperity and patient in adversity, remembering that all things come not by chance but by his fatherly hand, and that all creatures are so in his hand that without his will they cannot so much as move. At the same time, let us remember the purpose of this providence, that in prosperity and in adversity, the providence of God, the care of the Lord is that we can be true children of Abraham. We must be men and women, boys and girls of faith, knowing that God has chosen us for a purpose, and that purpose is to be a blessing. A blessing to all people, like Abraham, who rescued his erring nephew Lot, and all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and prayed for them.

Thankful in prosperity, and in that prosperity being a blessing to all people. Patient in adversity, knowing that even in sickness and poverty, even in pain and under persecution, the Lord uses his saints as a blessing for others. Consider, and remember, how often you have visited a sick person to bring them comfort and blessing, and when you left you felt as though you had received a much greater blessing than you brought. Remember how when you visited Mrs. Schryvers, you were so blessed by her contentedness, by her cheerful thankfulness always.

Thankful in prosperity, patient in adversity. Again, remember that even in adversity, the Lord provides that you will fulfill your mission in life, to be a blessing. Remember the apostles who gathered together after they were beaten and threatened. Did they grind their teeth in anger? Did they go out and start a revolution? Did they wave signs and go on protest marches in front of the temple? Did they send letters to Herod and Pilate?

No, instead of complaining, they made their needs known to God, they told God all about their troubles, yet at the same time did not forget that they were children of Abraham, and that they had the gospel of the seed in whom all the nations would be blessed. So they prayed, “Lord, give us boldness to proclaim the Word.” “Lord, in this adversity, continue to use us as blessing to all people, even the people who crucified your Son.”

Let me conclude by directing you to the Word of the Lord, and especially to the Psalms to understand the providence of God.

The Psalms direct our attention, so that in our prosperity, we may see each day, in the entire creation around us, in the blessings that surround us, in the love that cares for us, the good hand of our God, the faithful protection he affords his saints, and above all, the love of him who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all. The Psalmists, you will discover, could really never look anywhere, either at the heathen that raged about them, nor at the clouds that billowed over them, without seeing the providential hand of the Lord. And in adversity, the Psalmists did not lift up their voices, and go about grumbling and complaining about the injustices of life, but instead, made their needs known to their heavenly Father. And so must you.

Leave off complaining to and about others, whether it be your children or your spouse, or Governor Gregoire. Make your needs known to the Lord who cares. Leave off complaining about your car or your bills, or your shoelaces that break. Remember the Lord who cares for you and about you, and promises that all things, prosperity and adversity, are governed by the hand of the Father of your Lord Jesus Christ, all things work together for good to them that love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. And what is his purpose? Why does he work all things together for good? That through Christ, you may be a blessing. Amen.

Sermon, Lord’s Day, September 11, 2005, a.m.

Scripture: Psalm 23

Text: Psalm 23:5

Psalm 23 is a poem, a song expressing the great comfort and joy of David in the care of his Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is or should be one of our favorite songs. It is a short Psalm, and one that we often have our children memorize, and one that we should have memorized as well. We call that “learning by heart.” That’s a wonderful expression, “learning by heart.” For then the truth of God’s promises are hidden away in our hearts. “Your Word have I hid in my heart.”

David expresses that child-like faith in the care of his Lord, through all the trials and temptations of life. So David, as he struggled with his own doubts and fears, as he faced the treachery of his friends, the hatred of his own king, the stress of his refugee life, the continuing hostility of Israel’s enemies, the Edomites, Philistines, Moabites, and Syrians, found comfort and strength in the table his Good Shepherd had set for him. “Come aside,” said his Shepherd, “sit down a while, and be refreshed.”

And so your Shepherd, the one who has laid down his life for you his sheep, says to you this morning. “Come aside, sit down a while, and feast at the table I have prepared. It is for you, and I myself will serve you, while your enemies gaze with envy from every side.”

The Lord’s Table.

First, he prepares it.

Second, he prepares it for me.

Third, he serves me in the presence of my enemies.

“You prepare a table before me.”

The world, and we ourselves at times, look for assurance in ourselves. We try to convince ourselves that we can do things, that we have the strength and knowledge to accomplish our goals. The world sees the solution to our problems in raising our self-esteem, in convincing ourselves that if only we set our minds, nothing is impossible. And the world is full of the wrecked lives of those who built their future on the assumption that they could do anything they wanted to do.

We don’t and we can’t prepare our own table. We cannot create our own peace. We cannot calm our own fears. We cannot conquer our enemies. We cannot solve our own problems. We cannot bring peace to our souls. We cannot, as Christ said, by thinking add one inch to our height.

We are children, and the table we come to is not a table we have prepared. The table of life, the table of this day, the Lord’s Table, is a table he has prepared for us. To come to his table means that we have to abandon all the tables we have prepared for ourselves. To come to the Lord’s Table means that we have given up trying to pick ourselves up and see that the Lord must pick us up. To come to the Lord’s table means that we see that our nourishment must come from outside of ourselves. To come to the Lord’s Table means that we recognize just as the Lord causes the wheat to grow for bread and the grapes to grow for wine, so without his life-giving power we will starve.

We are children, and he has prepared a table for us. We need to see what kind of a table this is. On our tables we set the good things of this earth, the best of everything the gardens and fields of this world have to offer, we set before our children. Yet this table is different. The food of this table, did not come from this world. God went outside of creation itself to place food on this table. This food does not come from the field, not from the flocks or herds, not from the seas or the air. For this food the Lord reached outside of his entire creation. For this food, as Christ told the Jews, is from heaven itself.

For this food, the Lord God reached into his own heart. He took his only begotten Son, the Son of his eternal love, his beloved Son. He brought that beloved Son into this world from heaven, and prepared this meal on the slaughter house of Golgatha, that place of the skull. Yet, that meal was not yet complete, for although the body of his Son was slain, broken, that body went through three days further preparation, that it might rise, a living, life-giving body.

This is the food, this is the table, the table furnished from heaven itself, the body and the blood of the eternal Son of God, slain, and risen, presented to you and to me on this table for our life. So as we come to this table, the Lord calls us to turn our backs on the tables of our own making, on the tables the world prepares of corruptible things, and feast on the risen, incorruptible, immortal body of the Son of God.

“You prepare a table before me…”

Second, this table is for me, for you.

“You prepare a table before me…” How could David say this? What do I mean? When you look in the Bible you will find that when people have meals together they are showing that they accept each other, that they belong together, and that meal, where together they eat and drink, means a oneness, a fellowship, a harmony, a bond.

How could David say that God was showing oneness, a bond with this man, this sinner? How could David have the presumption to say that God himself prepared a table for him? Did David look into himself to find that assurance? Did David look at his life and find that he was so holy, so perfect, so righteous that this thrice holy God, would prepare a table of fellowship and love for him? Who was he, anyway? Just as he said later, “Who am I, O Lord, my God, that you should make such wonderful promises to me? But you have spoken, O Lord, and your words are true. And because you have spoken, I your servant have taken your words and believe them.”

David did not look into himself, nor into his own life, but he looked to the faithful word of his God. He looked to the word of the prophet Samuel who anointed him to be king. He looked to the oath of the Lord made to his father Abraham.

Where do you look, my friends? Look to your own homes, fathers. When your children gather around your table, where should they look for assurance that they belong there? Do you expect them to evaluate the worthiness of their own lives to find assurance that they belong at that table? What does it take? It’s simple, isn’t it? What you expect in your children is the simple faith and obedience that hears the call, “Time for dinner,” and then comes. How do your children know that they are your children? Because you have told them. When they come, you don’t find it a huge expression of faith, but instead just a simple faith, an ordinary faith, a child-like faith that believes what dad says. How do you children know that you have prepared a table for them? They hear you call, they come, and there is the table, set before them. There is their seat. It’s that simple.

Where do you look, my friends? Look to your home, this church. Look to this table. You are here. The table is here. It is set, the bread and the wine are here. And you too have a place in this banqueting hall of the Lord God. How do you know you are one of his children and that he invites you to sit down here? How do you know he has prepared it for you? How does Christ tell you? Do you not know that he has appointed waiters, those who serve at this table? Do you not know that he has appointed elders in this his house to seat you at the table? Do you not know that he has given them the authority to seat you here? What more could you ask? Are you not hungry? Do you not desire this food from heaven? This feast of joy and gladness is for you. You may say, “You have prepared a table before me.”

I’ve been studying a book on the history of Dutch Reformed Covenant theology in South Africa. There was time there when coming to the table of the Lord was a terrible, hard experience. They came to believe that before coming to t
he table, you needed years and years to know how great your sins and miseries were. After ten, fifteen, or twenty years, maybe, just maybe, you might know how great they were. Let me show you a little contrast.

Would you ever find a greater and more horrible group of sinners than those who had crucified Christ our Lord? Would you ever find a sermon more convicting than Peter’s on Pentecost Sunday? How many years after that Sunday did those sinners find peace? Let me read a verse from Acts 2. Verse 41, “Then those who gladly received his word were baptized.” Gladly; years later or minutes later? What else could be expected? Peter preached the gospel, and the word gospel means good news. For those people, those terrible sinners, the good news chased away the bad news as quickly as the light chases away the darkness when you flick on the switch. Then verse 46, “So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart.”

“You prepare a table before me.” The Lord has prepared it for you, and he expects you to receive this as good news, gladly, and eat this bread and drink this wine with gladness and simplicity of heart.

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

Oh, how this table infuriates the enemies of the church, the enemies of God’s people. How Saul hated the favor the Lord showed to David. How Saul hated that the Lord had withdrawn his Holy Spirit from Saul and given that Spirit to David. How Saul hated the grace and strength, the courage and righteousness the Lord had given to David.

And later, when the gospel came to the Gentiles, in the book of Acts we constantly read of the joy that immediately came to the Gentiles who believed the gospel, how the hearts of the Jews who rejected that gospel were filled with fury.

The world today hates you, and particularly hates you as you eat this meal prepared by the Lord for you, publicly in this worship service, before the face of the world. They taunt and say to you, don’t they, “Do you people think you are holier than we are or something? What is this, that you think that God himself, your holy God, actually says that you are his children?” And we must answer them and our answers will infuriate them even more. “Yes, we are holier than you are. We are holy with the holiness of the only begotten Son of God, whom you hate, whom you slew on a cross, but God raised up for our justification. Yes, we are the saints, the holy ones of the most high God. And this meal testifies to our holiness, for in giving his Son to us, the Almighty has given us his own righteousness and holiness, and through Christ we are without spot, holy and beautiful in the sight of this holy God.”

“In the presence of my enemies.” Christ said, “They hated me, they will hate you.” Do we really experience the hatred of the world? Do we find ourselves as David did, persecuted and hated? Do we find ourselves as the apostles did, hounded and persecuted, defamed and hated? If not, have we perhaps forgotten that our Lord has sent us out as sheep in the midst of wolves? If not, have we perhaps forgotten that we have an offensive mission in this world, to bring every thing into captivity to Jesus Christ? Have we perhaps forgotten that we preach another King, one Jesus, and that it is our mission too, to turn the world upside down?

“In the presence of my enemies.” Our enemies are not only those outside of us, but those enemies that rage against our souls. We may have enemies of doubt and despair. Whether we are little children, or gray haired we may have fears and doubts about tomorrow. We may, like David, cry out in anguish at times, “Has the Lord clean forgotten his mercies?” When we have sickness and diseases, when things go wrong, one thing after another, when it seems that everything is against us, are these not enemies? It is in the face of these enemies, that the Lord has prepared this table before us. It is in the face of these enemies, the enemies of loneliness, of fear, of uncertainty, the enemies of our own past failures, those failures that tell us that we will never amount to anything at all, that the Lord commends his love to us.

“In the presence of my enemies,” the Lord says again, Nothing, shall separate you from my love. This table says again, “God is for us. And if God is for us, who and what can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: For your sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors thorough him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This is the day that the Lord has made. This is the house that the Lord has made. This is the Lord who has brought you into this his house of wine. This is the table he has prepared for you with the food from heaven. This is for you. This is the table prepared for you in the presence of your enemies, that in the face of fears and taunts, in the face of your own conscience that accuses you, you may taste of the Christ whose love has justified you, and seated you at his table as his beloved child. Amen.

When faced with the hurricane, the winds, the rains, and the flooding that struck New Orleans, and the gulf coast of Louisiana and Mississippi the unbeliever looks at the Christian and asks, “What kind of God do you have to let these things happen?” And if the unbeliever knows this Christian is a Calvinist, he really gets upset and asks, “What kind of a God do you have who does things like this?”

The Christian himself must face this question too, “How do I explain what God has done?” How does this fit into the scheme of things? What is the reason that these calamities come upon us? Should I just say, “Well, with all the gambling casinos strung along the Gulf coast, it’s no wonder God brought judgment.” Should I say, “Our God is a God of vengeance and wrath, and this is a taste of the devastation the Lord will bring to New Orleans, this Sodom of the South?”

The insurance companies call these hurricanes “acts of God.” That phrase distinguishes these events from others. If a hurricane strikes, a tree blows down, and kills your neighbor, the insurance company says it was an act of God. If you take a bread knife and sink it into your neighbor’s chest under his fifth rib, we call it an act of man, murder. If you lock your brother in your basement for five weeks without food and water and he dies of starvation, we call it an act of man, murder.

The question here is one that David faced, “Into whose hands would I rather fall; into the hands of God or into the hands of man?” David had no hesitation, for he answered quickly, both for himself and for his people, “Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

Whose Hand?

First we ask, Into God’s hand or into man’s hand?

Second, having looked at both and recognizing that in falling into the hand of God, one falls into a hand of great mercy, what then shall we do? What shall we do as church, and as churches in North America? What shall we as churches proclaim to the world regarding such events as we have seen this past week?

First, into God’s hand or into man’s hand?

The dilemma David found himself in was one of his own making. David had sent Joab and other officers into all the land of Israel to take a census. This appears to have happened near the end of David’s reign. By that time David had conquered all his enemies, and peace reigned throughout Israel. Every man rejoiced under his own vine and his own fig tree. David apparently wanted to see exactly how great his kingdom was, how many people the nation of Israel actually had.

It seems as though David’s heart was lifted up in pride, that he would use this census number to boast of the glory of his kingdom. But when the census was over and the number brought to David, we read that David’s heart condemned him. So it is that although the Lord allows his dear people to follow the ways of their own heart at times, he also brings that heart to see its own folly of their own ways. So David’s heart condemned him and he confessed his sin. Gad the prophet brought the message of the Lord to David, and offered him a choice of three things. Seven years of famine, three months of fleeing from his enemies, or three days of plague in the land?

That difficult choice brought the words of our text from David. “I am in great distress. Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man.” So when faced with the dilemma, with the choice of falling into the hand of man or into the hand of God, David chose to fall into the hand of the Lord, for, said David, “his mercies are great.”

I have chosen this text because of the great calamity that the Lord brought upon the Gulf States in this hurricane. This hurricane came directly from the hand of God. What I want to do for a few minutes this morning is to show you, to compare for you, the difference between falling into the hand of man and falling into the hand of God. To do that I want to recount some of the great calamities that happened during the last century, the 20^th century; the catastrophes that came from the hand of God and the catastrophes that came from the hand of man, to see that the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel, but the mercies of the Lord are great.

The 20^th century began with a feeling of optimism and hope in the United States. Because of the advances in industry, science, and medicine, because of the wonderful teaching of Darwin, the hope of man was for progress, ever onward and ever upward. But, and now I quote from a book by George Grant, “What they did not know was that dark and malignant seeds were already germinating just beneath the surface of the new century’s soil. Josef Stalin was a twenty-one-year-old seminary student in Tiflis, a pious and serene community at the crossroads of Georgia and Ukraine. Benito Mussolini was a seventeen-year-old student teacher in the quiet suburbs of Milan. Adolf Hitler was an eleven-year-old aspiring art student in the quaint upper Austrian village of Brannan. And Margaret Sanger was a twenty-year-old out-of-sorts nursing school dropout in White Plains, New York. Who could have ever guessed on that ebulliently auspicious New Year’s Day that those four youngsters would, over the span of the next century, spill more innocent blood than all the murderers, warlords, and tyrants of past history combined? Who could have ever guessed that those four youngsters would together ensure that the hopes and dreams and aspirations of the twentieth century would be smothered under the weight of holocaust, genocide, and carnage?” End of quote.

Before I continue with the hand of man during the twentieth century, let me recount some of the calamities wrought by the hand of God during that century. The figures I give you are approximate, but will give you a pretty good picture. I’ll recount what we call “natural disasters,” earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and typhoons, floods, and epidemics.

Earthquakes. The death tolls in these earthquakes include those brought by tsunamis and mudslides. Italy 1908, 100,000 dead. China 1920, 200,000 dead. Japan 1923, 142,807 dead. China, 1927, 200,000 dead. China, 1976, 655,237 dead. The total figure from the hand of God in major earthquakes in the 20^th century: 1,298,000.

Volcanoes: There were nine volcanic eruptions that brought a significant number of fatalities during the 20^th century, and the total deaths were 45,000.

Huricanes: In the United States the thirty deadliest hurricanes during the 20^th century brought about 15,000 deaths. That includes the first one in 1900 in Galveston, Texas, that caused the death of 8,000 people. Japan 1959, 5000 dead. Bangladesh 1970, 300-500,000 dead. Philippines 1991, 6000 dead. Bangladesh again, 1991, 138,000. Caribbean, 1998, 11,000 dead. Total deaths from typhoons and hurricanes in the 20^th century, about 575,000.

Major floods: China, 1909, 1 million, 1928, 3 million, 1931, 3,700,000, 1959, 2 million. Iran, 1954, 10,000. Vietnam, 1971, 100,000. Total flood victims in the 20^th century, 9,700,000.

Epidemics, pandemics. At the end of World War I, the Spanish flu spread throughout the world, and from 1918-1919, about 20,000,000 people died in that pandemic.

In the 20^th century then, about 31,618,000 people died from what we usually term acts of God.

Now I want to turn to the tender mercies of man during the 20^th century.

1910-20 the Mexican Revolution, 1,000,000 were killed.

1914-1918, World War I, 8,500,000 military and civilian deaths.

1915, Armenia, the Turkish government&
#x2019;s genocide killed about 1,500,000 Christian Armenians.

1931-35, the campaigns of Mao Tse Dong, killed 700,000 in China.

1932-33, Stalin set about to forcibly collectivize the Ukraine and starved 7 to 10 million farmers to death.

1939-45, World War II, 56,000,000 military and civilian deaths.

1949, China, Mao Tse Dong killed 3,000,000 Chinese.

1950-53, Korean War, 2,800,000 military and civilian deaths.

1958-1962, Mao’s Great Leap Forward in China, 38,000,000 peasants killed or starved to death.

1959-1995, tribal warfare and genocide in Rwanda and Burundi, 1,350,000 slaughtered.

1962-1992, war and revolution Ethiopia, 1,400,000 dead.

1966-1970, Nigeria, tribal warfare, 1,000,000 dead.

1966-1976, China, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, 15,000,000 killed.

1971, war between Pakistan and Bangladesh, 1,250,000 killed.

1976-1979, Cambodia, the terror of Pol Pot, 2,000,000 Cambodians hacked to death.

1980, revolution in Mozambique, 1,000,000 dead.

1980-88, war between Iran and Iraq, 1,000,000 killed.

1979-2000, Afghanistan, 1,800,000 dead.

1983 – present in Sudan, 1,900,000 dead.

Total murders from the hand of man in the 20^th century in very round figures: 147,900,000. And if we add to that another epidemic that came from the hand of man, a self-administered epidemic, AIDS, we see that from 1981 to the present, 20,000,000 more could be added to that 147 million figure.

The hand of God in earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, and floods during the 20^th century, brought about the death of 11,000,000 people compared to 147,000,000 by the hand of man. If we add 20 million from the flu epidemic we get 31,000,000 from the hand of God. If we add the 20 million from AIDS to the figure of man’s hand, we get 167,000,000. We will cry, will we not, with David, “Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

Let me conclude this point by returning to George Grant’s book, titled, “Killer Angel,” and to Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Margaret Sanger at the beginning of the 20^th century:

“As the champion of the proletariat, Stalin saw to the slaughter of at least fifteen million Russian and Ukrainian kulaks. As the popularly acclaimed Il Duce, Mussolini massacred as many as four million Ethiopians, two million Eritreans, and a million Serbs, Croats, and Albanians. As the wildly lionized Fuehrer, Hitler exterminated more than six million Jews, two million Slavs, and a million Poles. As the founder of Planned Parenthood and the impassioned heroine of various feminist causes celebres, Sanger was responsible for the brutal elimination of more than thirty million children in the United States and as many as two and a half billion worldwide.” End of quote.

“Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man.” I trust you are convinced.

What then remains for us to do? We need to follow David to see our duty as church and churches in this world.

David went to the mountain, confident of the mercy of the Lord, and there offered the one sacrifice that caused the Lord to draw back his hand of judgment. This was the place where Abraham offered Isaac, and this was the place where Solomon later built the temple of the Lord.

The great message of the Lord in this world has ever been and is today this one simple phrase: Repent and believe in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.

We already know, do we not, that times of prosperity when, just as David, we are tempted to lift up ourselves in pride, that we are to see again as Paul so eloquently told us in Romans 2, “Do you not know, O man, that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?”

So, as the Lord gives us opportunity to participate in relief and comfort to the victims of hurricane Katrina, we and all Christ’s churches, must not neglect the great message. “Behold the severity and goodness of God.”

This is the day of grace. Listen up America! Look and compare, the mercies of God to the mercies of man. You have fallen into the hand of God. He has not even begun to deal with you according to your sins and iniquities. Look at the multitude of iniquities piled up by that sin-sick city, New Orleans. Look at the Gulf, horribly diseased with the paralyzing leprosy of casinos up and down the coast. Look at ourselves, still engaged in this horrible business of killing our children, burning them in the arms of Molech, pulling them limb from limb out of the wombs of their mothers. Look at ourselves before we bemoan $5 gas, still wallowing in homosexual perversions, killing ourselves, and cutting off our future.

This is the day of grace. This is the day of God’s mercies. This is the day when God calls the church in America, as he called David, to come to the mountain, to Mount Moriah, and there return to the place of the temple, and to the sacrifice that was laid there many years ago. Not the sacrifice of David, but the sacrifice of David’s son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

David, as you see from 2 Samuel 24, set up an altar there, and when the smoke of that sacrifice ascended, the Angel of Destruction put up his sword into its sheath and the plague was stopped. The Lord’s hand was withdrawn, and his mercies prevailed.

This is the message, the message of that sacrifice. This is the message that must be proclaimed faithfully and fearlessly in the pulpits of this land. This is the message of the mercies of the Lord, calling men and women, boys and girls, back to the Mountain, the mountain of the Lord’s house, the temple, the church of Jesus Christ.

This is the message, “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” This is the message. Turn from your sins and idolatries.

Repent. Repent of your Allah’s and your Molech’s. Repent of your religion of toleration, the toleration of evil. Repent of your idol worship. Repent of your pleasure seeking. Repent of your adulteries, your fornications, your pornography, your stealing, your Sabbath desecration. Look and see, that you are up to your elbows in the blood of innocents, slaughtering babies, hiding their torture from your eyes. Repent of sending your daughters, wives, and mothers into the battlefields. Repent of setting the United States up as the Savior of the world. Tear down your fancy Hollywood extravaganza’s masquerading as worship services to the Holy God. Erect once again churches built around the bloody sacrifice of the only begotten Son of God, for the only final and eternal mercy of God comes through his one act in history that totally withheld mercy, his sacrifice of Christ on the cross. And yet through that one act, in which Christ received no mercy, sinners the world over, have received mercy for time and for eternity.

In a time when the hand of God strikes the land, we need to tell people to fill the churches once again. But before that, we need to tell the churches of this land, here is the message, “Judgment begins at the house of God.” If we have made the house of God into a house of man, what kind of mercy do we expect? If the churches of our land are glorified houses of man, what hope for mercy have the terrified sinners we gather in? Will they find mercy in the house of man? The tender mercies of man are cruel. The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting to those who fear him.

Repent of seeking mercy at the hand of man. Washington DC is not the place to turn. The mercies of the Federal government are the mercies of man, do you want the tender mercies of 20 >th century man? Have you not seen, has it not been told you? This is the task of the church, to tell. This is your task, you, who have known the mercies of the Lord in Jesus Christ. If you have not, you have nothing to tell. But if, like David, you have been brought to repeat his words, “Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

This then is how the Lord directs us to respond to this great calamity, to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. We must turn to the God who smote us, first as church and families, saying with the prophet of old, “Let us return to the Lord, for he has hit us hard, but he will bind us up, and after three days will raise us up.” We must turn to the God who bound his Son on the altar there at Moriah, opening up a stream of mercies that flows to all peoples.

We must call for the churches of this land to repent, that they again may provide true sanctuary for those whom the Lord in his mercy calls to repentance through this hurricane. We must call for this land to repent, to turn away from the vain help of Federal aid and grants, to turn away from their dependence upon the cruel mercies of man, so horribly demonstrated in the 20^th century, and turn to the living God. We must call for this land to repent of her sorceries, her gambling, her idolatries, her constant spilling of innocent blood, her homosexual and lesbian filth, and turn to the God who mercifully holds back the full extent of his wrath. Today is the day of the mercies of the Lord. Amen.

By Michael Casbon

Our Father, who art in Heaven:

We thank you heavenly Father that you condescend to let us call you Father. Unless you had forced open our eyes and overcome our self-imposed blindness we would not even know you. You are Holy and cannot abide sin, yet you have forgiven us, saved us, put you name upon us, and call us beloved. You have made us your people. You have given us your word by the mouths of your prophets and apostles, in order that we might know you. You have revealed yourself to us in the Word Incarnate, your Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And being our Father, you comfort us as a father comforts his little ones, so that nothing can touch us that you have not ordained for our own good.

Hallowed by thy name:

Creatures of indescribable beauty and fearsome strength surround your throne day and night crying Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God almighty. The heavens declare your glory; And the firmament shows your handiwork. All the earth shall be filled with your glory and every knee shall bow down before you. When you drew your people Israel out of Egypt you put up a veil between them and yourself because you are holy and they would be consumed in your presence. Only the high priest was allowed into your most holy presence. But now through Jesus, our high priest, we are brought near to you, even into the holy of holies. You have washed us and we have been made clean. You have washed us in the very blood of your beloved Son so that we may appear before you. You have raised us up into your courts to worship and praise you. We pray oh Lord that you would not let us take this privilege lightly. Help us to come before you with reverence and awe. Grant us the joy of our salvation – make us joyful that even now we are brought into your holy presence. Accept our gifts of praise and thanksgiving. Teach us to worship you as living sacrifices, serving one another as your Son has served us.

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done on Earth as it is in Heaven

You have made us your kings and priests. Help us to rule wisely, according to your law, over all that you have put into our hands. Teach us your law and your precepts so that we may meditate upon them and know how they apply in our lives in everything that we do. Strengthen us in your Spirit to rule over our minds, our emotions, our wills, and our bodies. Make us able ambassadors of your kingdom to the kingdoms of this earth in all the realms that you have placed us; in our homes, our neighbourhoods, at little league and soccer, at our work places, in the civil realm, and in every situation in which you have placed your servants. Give us the kind of authority in the world that you gave your servant Daniel. Manifest your present rule over the earth and draw praise from the mouths of every earthly ruler even as you drew it from the mouth of Nebuchadnezzar. We acknowledge that your will is done on earth and that nothing is done that is not according to your will. Convert the nations so that they consciously do according to your will with rejoicing. To that end, we pray for your church in communist China. Strengthen your people in the midst of their persecution even as you destroy the foundations of the communist government. Create a very high regard for your people in China amongst their countrymen and especially amongst their oppressors. Convert the very policemen who arrest, imprison, and torture the men, women, and children who carry your holy name. We also call upon you to tear down and utterly destroy the wicked kingdom of Islam. Free those whose spirits are enslaved by it and let them see the glorious light of the gospel and the salvation from to bondage sin that it proclaims.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

You who clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, grant us faith. You tell us not to worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ "For after all these things the godless seek. For you know that we need all these things. Help us to seek first your kingdom and your righteousness, for we know that all these these things shall be added to us. Forgive us our doubts and fears as we face the ever present uncertainty of tomorrow. For truly there is no uncertainty, there is only the surety of your love for us and your promise to provide for all of our physical needs. We pray especially for the medical needs of your saints within this body. Grant Mrs.Van Dyken healing from her surgery. Remove any vestige of cancer from her body. Bless the work of the doctors you have provided to her. We also lift up before you Isaac Jo. Give wisdom to his doctors and parents as they consider his treatment this coming week. Allow the radiation to do its work but restrain it from doing any future harm. Give Mrs. Van Dyken, her husband, Isaac, his parents, and their families the peace that passes all human understanding, the peace that comes from trusting in you.

Forgive Us Our Trespasses as We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us

You have graciously pronounced the absolution of our sins this morning through your servant Rev. Van Dyken. We pray for repentant hearts and tender conciounses that are informed by your word. Cause us to walk humbly before you, knowing our weaknesses and ever willing to forgive that of others. Strengthen our resolve to repay evil with good. Teach us to love one another so that we will bear with one another. For slights and offenses are inevitable and the closer we draw together as a body the more we grind upon one another. Do not allow bitterness to take root among any within this church, nor within the federation that we belong to. Give us such charity toward one another that it testifies to your presence among us and proclaims to the world that you truly sent your Son to die for us.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation, But Deliver Us From Evil

You know every one of us. You know our inmost thoughts. You know oh Lord our weaknesses and those things that Satan would use to drag us away from you. Give strength where we need it. If we are proud humble us. If we are bitter or angry make us to be at peace with our neighbor. If we rebel against those you put in authority over us grant us humble submission to them. If we succumb to depression restore your joy to us. If we are tempted in our flesh give us strength and resolve to abhor and flee from idolatry. Whatever our weakness, when we are tried show us the way out that you have promised to provide.

And when we fail to take hold of that escape and fall into sin, forgive us and raise us up again. Sanctify us as we make our way through this life. Give us faithful parents, spouses, friends, and elders to come along side of us and to counsel, exhort, admonish, and even rebuke us when we need it.

For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory Forever and Ever

Our gracious heavenly Father. We can only bring these petitions to you because you rule and nothing can contest that rule. We bring our prayers to you with utter confidence that you who created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them can bring all these things to pass. And more than that we know that your disposition toward us is kindly, like a father who pities his children. We know this because you did not even spare your own Son, but gave his very life for us to wash us and cleanse and heal us. Send us away from here in the blessed knowledge of your great mercy and love toward us. Make us a worthy bride for your Son and prepare us in this life for an eternity with you. May all that you do in and through us add to your glory, this day and forever more.

Amen

Yea so be it Lord! We rejoice to say, “let your will be done”, for we pray these things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so let all your people say…Amen!

Morning Sermon, Lord’s Day, August 21, 2005

Scripture: Revelation 1

Text: Revelation 1:5b, 6

To both Old and New Testament churches, the Lord continually called his people to remember their identity, to live worthy of their calling. To Israel the Lord said, You are a holy people, I have separated you from all the peoples of the earth, to be my own treasure, my own peculiar people. To Ephesus the Lord said, I beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. To the Corinthians God said, Come out from among them and be separate. Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, for what fellowship can there be between the temple of God and the temple of demons.

Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has called and separated a people to himself, and urges them, commands them to live worthy of their calling, to be children of a holy, righteous God. All this is only possible through the one who is our Savior and our King, Jesus Christ. This is the Savior and King who ministers to us each Lord’s Day, bringing us into conformity to his blessed image. And to this Christ the apostle John sings this hymn of praise in our text:

To him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

But this is not merely a hymn to sing, but a hymn to practice, to live.

My theme then is: A Hymn of Praise to Practice.

1. To him who loved and washed us.
2. To him who anointed us.
3. Living to glorify him.

First then, to him who loved and washed us.

Who is this “us?” Verse 4 tells us plainly, “John, to the seven churches which are in Asia:” John, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, is addressing these words to the seven churches. Later we see that Christ addresses a separate letter addressing the needs of each of the churches, and indeed we see that some of those churches were in sad shape. But these words are meant for all the seven churches. Seven is the number of covenant fullness, and therefore we may understand this to mean that the Spirit is speaking to all the churches of the New Testament era. These words are the words of Christ through the Spirit to us today then.

When God speaks to the church, he speaks to every member of that church, to men and women, to old and young, to parents and children. That was true when he spoke to Israel of old and that was true when he spoke to the New Testament churches through the letters of the apostles. So then, if we are to take the words of God literally, if we are to believe that he means what he says, then we believe that he is talking to every one of us here this morning when he says, “To him who loved us and washed us.”

These verbs, “loved” and “washed” are in the past tense, they speak of something that Christ has done. Just as God said to Israel that he loved them, and they could each and all of them look back to the wonderful redemption he gave them from Egypt, so we can look back to the cross, to the suffering and death of Christ, and see that he loved us, for he gave his life for us. And just as God directed Israel back to their baptism passage through the Red Sea and the rolling away of their reproach through their circumcision at Gilgal, so God directs us back to our baptism as the evidence, as God’s personal seal and sign of his love and washing, applied to us, to our persons, to our lives.

Again, John doesn’t speak here of whether we have believed or accepted this wonderful work of Christ, but just calls us to praise him, and to confess with John in him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.

This then is the identity we carry. This is not an identity that we have gained for ourselves by anything we have done, but an identity given to us through the love and blood of Christ. This is not an identity we gain, but an identity we accept, and in which Christ calls us to rejoice.

This is who you are, a people loved and washed by Christ. This is what sets you apart from a world in rebellion and sin. This is what says who you are, “I am a member of the church, the people, loved by Christ.” This is what says who you are, “I am a member of the church, of the people, washed by the blood of Christ.”

Is this what we hold dearest and best? We sometimes appreciate and cherish the honors and love of others, of the world, of schools and universities, of businesses and governments, of friends and relatives, of our husbands, wives, and children. But should not this love of Christ be our most cherished possession? Should it not fill us with wonder and joy? Does it? Should we not walk through life with this little secret smile, this peace of heart that makes the world ask us what is our secret?

This is the identity we carry, loved by Christ, and washed from our sins by his blood. Do we live as those cleansed from our sins? If you had to put on a beautiful white wedding dress when you got up in the morning, knowing that at evening you would walk down the aisle to your bridegroom, wouldn’t you be so very careful to keep that dress clean? Wouldn’t there be many things you wouldn’t do for fear of staining that dress? Wouldn’t there be many places you wouldn’t think of going because of the dust or mud or grease that might mess up your dress?

Isn’t this what our wonderful Form for the Baptism of Infants says. Baptism is the doctrine of water. The principle parts of the doctrine of holy baptism are these three. First, we are born dirty, children of wrath. Second, the Father adopts us as his children, the Son washes us from our sins, and the Holy Spirit is promised to keep us clean. Third, as those washed, we are commanded to keep from sin and walk in holiness. Simple, yet profound.

God told Israel, I have separated you from the abominations of the heathen, do not pollute yourselves with them, you are a holy people to the Lord your God. God told the New Testament church through Peter, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. (1 Peter 1) Through Paul, God warned those who were washed saying, “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. You are children of light. Walk in the light.” (Ephesians 5) God warned through Peter, saying, that as we have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (2 Peter 1:4), so we should grow in love, for, said Peter, “he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.” (2 Peter 1:9)

“To him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.” This our identity—Christ loved us. This is our condition—Christ has washed us from our sins in his own blood.

Second, Christ has made us kings and priests to his God and Father.

Again, and let me stress this, Christ through John is speaking to the whole church, to each and everyone of you here this morning. Christ has made you kings and priests to his God and Father. These wonderful positions are not something you have gained by your knowledge, by your application, or by your skills. These are positions that Christ has conferred upon you, has given you. He has appointed you to these positions. You are kings and priests.

As you know our Savior has a title, and that title is Christ. Christ means “anointed one,” and as we confess the Scriptures, he was anointed to be our chief prophet, our only high priest, and our eternal king. Jesus is our head and we are his body. Jesus is the Christ, and we are Christians. He has anointed us. Christians are defined by their title, those who are anointed by Ch
rist. Christians are not first of all identified as those who believe, as those who have faith, but as those who are chosen, those whom Christ has anointed. This is the anointing oil Psalm 133 speaks about, running down from the head of Christ, down on to his body.

We will not really understand this anointing, this statement of Revelation unless we are familiar with the Old Testament. What is a king, what is a priest? These are the offices Christ has given to us, and these are the offices we are to fulfill. These are the offices to which your children have been appointed and anointed, and these are the offices parents must train their children to fulfill.

Christ has anointed us all as kings, and as kings, we serve for God or against God. Christ has anointed us all as priests, and we serve God in his temple, or we serve the world in the temple of demons. So the matter of office is not our choice but Christ’s who anointed us. The matter of fulfilling that office is our choice, for we will do it faithfully or unfaithfully.

What then pertains to these offices? Surely there is no function, no job, no position in all the world that we may have that is more important than these offices? Surely, although we may study in school, prepare ourselves for jobs in the world, although we may gain advanced degrees in business management, in aeronautical engineering, in political science, there are no positions more important than the ones given us by the King of kings, by our Savior. How much of the continuing education we strive for is directed towards better fulfillment of these offices? How much of the education of our children is focused on equipping them to knowledgably and faithfully fulfill the functions of these offices?

Again, the Lord directs our study back to the Old Testament. What is a king? What are the duties of a king? What are the responsibilities of a king? What does it mean to be a king to God? What is a priest? What are the duties of a priest? Where does a priest serve? How does a priest serve to the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ? These are more important questions than, “What does a policeman do? What does a housewife do? What does a farmer do?” For we will all have different callings, yet all have one calling in common, above all the others, and that is the calling to be kings and priests to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is a wonderful fact the Old Testament teaches us about these offices, and that is that never in the Old Testament was one person allowed to be both king and priest. Uzziah tried, but suffered leprosy because of it. Only at the beginning and then toward the end of the Old Testament, did God promise that there would be one who would be both king and priest. At the beginning God introduced Abraham to Melchizedek, who was both king of Salem, and priest of the Most High God. In Psalm 110 David saw his son both as king, and as a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Then towards the end of the Old Testament era, the prophet Zechariah chapter 6, God told him to make a crown of silver and gold, and put it on the head of Joshua the high priest, saying, "Then speak to him, saying, `Thus says the LORD of hosts, saying: "Behold, the Man whose name is the BRANCH! From His place He shall branch out, And He shall build the temple of the LORD; Yes, He shall build the temple of the LORD. He shall bear the glory, And shall sit and rule on His throne; So He shall be a priest on His throne, And the counsel of peace shall be between them both."’ (Zechariah 6:12-13)

This honor has Christ, the anointed one, and this honor Christ confers on Christians, anointed ones. He has made us kings and priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Let me apply these offices then in my last point,

Living to glorify him.

These words of our text, let me remind you, are addressed to Christ. To him who loved us, washed us, appointed us, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

Let us live then, in faith, believing and showing to each other and to the world, that we are loved by Christ. Let us deal with one another, look at one another, speak to each other, treat one another, at home and in the church, as those who are the beloved of Christ. We must love those who Christ loves. This is the reason for our love. If we love him who begot, said the apostle John in his first epistle, we will also love those who are begotten by him. His love is a wonderful jealous love. His anger is aroused against those who ill-treat those whom he loves. Be careful how you look at and speak to your brothers and sisters.

Let us live then, glorifying Christ by remembering that we have been washed from our old sins, that we are to reckon ourselves, as Paul says in Romans 6, dead to sins. Let us remember the blood that was shed to separate us from the pollutions of this world, and not, as the apostle Peter says, return to those pollutions, as a dog returns to its vomit, or as a sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire. You have been separated from the filth of the world. Be separate; live separately.

Let us live then as kings. If we look at that king who was a man after God’s own heart, we will find the pattern, the pattern of his Son Jesus Christ, and our pattern.

David was a humble king, a dependent king. David was a praying, praising king. But there are three main areas of activity for kings, and they are these: fighting, ruling, and building. We are to fight the good fight of faith, for there are enemies enough, enemies within, our own hearts sometimes like Ahithophel, betraying us. There are enemies without, and God knows there is not shortage of enemies out there in the world. We are kings and our duty is to fight, remembering that this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith in the Christ who has appointed us and equips us.

We are to rule. We are to bring our own bodies into subjection, our hands, eyes, feet, minds, and hearts. We are to rule, govern the things God has given us, whether it is our computer or our appetite, bringing all things into subjection to the rule of Christ. We are kings, we are not to be slaves, slaves of others, or slaves of our own passions.

We are to build. We are, like David, to have the desire to build a house for the great name of our God. We are to have the crying longing that God would make his dwelling here, and that he would use us to build a house for his name. David gathered material for that house. We are to gather material for that house, living stones, from this valley, from the work place, from the ends of the earth.

Christ has made us kings, kings to fight and conquer, to rule, and to build. We glorify Christ as we fight with the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. We glorify Christ as we rule, reading and treasuring up in our hearts, as did David, the law of the Lord. We are to build, as we like David, receive the plans for that building from the Spirit of Christ, from the Word of God.

Christ has made us kings and priests. You are priests, and your children are priests. There are many wonderful things God teaches us about priests. Priests wore wonderful clothes, for beauty and glory, says the Bible. Priests, above all, served the Lord in the temple. Priests brought offerings, wonderful offerings, offerings for sin, but also offerings for peace, for the wonderful fragrance of incense to ascend to God’s throne.

We just had the elders over from family visitation, and they read to us from Romans 12, that wonderful passage that begins beseeching us by the mercies of God to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. This is what our great high Priest, Jesus Christ did, gave his body a living sacrifice, holy, pure, acceptable to God. This is the great High Priest who calls you to present your bodies, to sacrifice yourself on the altar of service to God and to his people.

Priests we
re always concerned to be clean, to be undefiled, to be holy, for God had separated them, consecrated them. You are priests. You children are priests. Sin defiles, pollutes. Are you conscious, do you remember that you are priests? Do you know how you should live?

Priests are compassionate, understanding of the weaknesses of others. Hebrews 5 says, a priest can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness. Hebrews 4 says we have a High Priest, Jesus Christ, who can sympathize with our weaknesses. Are you a priest who sympathizes with the sins and weaknesses of others, or are you harsh and condemning? A priest has the law of kindness on his lips, full of sympathy, patient, and intercessory. A priest prays for others.

Do you pray for others? We need, perhaps as priests, to sit down at our table and write down a list of those who need our prayers. That list would include everybody we know, wouldn’t it? For we all need the prayers of priests for us, prayers that ascend to that great high Priest, and are then presented as sweet incense before the throne of his God and Father. Children, make this your first written assignment in school this September, writing down a list of people Christ would have you pray for.

This then is the hymn the beloved apostle John has given us to sing to Christ, not only in words, but also in deeds. The song of our life, a life loved by the Son of God, a body, a life washed from our sins by his precious blood. This is our calling, for he has anointed us to be kings, conquering, ruling, building. This is our vocation, for he has anointed us to be priests, separated from this vile world, dedicated to the service of God, sacrificing our lives, the law of kindness in our mouth, and the offering of our prayers for the saints in our hands. This is the Christ who promises us every grace to fulfill our calling.

You then may look forward to join the elders and fall down before the Lamb, singing the new song of Revelation 5 to him, “You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for you were slain, and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God, and we shall reign on the earth.” Amen

As the Lord our God brings his third commandment to our attention this morning, we must be impressed by the fact that he holds his name as something very precious and guards it with great jealousy. We confess in our catechism that there is no sin greater or more provoking to him than the profaning of his name and that he has issued the sentence of death to those who break this commandment.

God passed that sentence upon Jesus Christ instead of us. And now we have the great blessing of our Savior Jesus Christ, for it is by his hand that God delivers this commandment to us. God has commanded us to honor and revere his name because he has given that name to us. By nature we carry and use that name in dishonor and bring shame upon it. But God, in his great mercy and because he will have his name glorified and honored, sent his Son, that through his great humiliation, God’s name has been truly glorified and honored. It is through Christ then, and through Christ alone, that we can keep this commandment. It is because Christ has honored the name of the Father, and honored it for us, in our name, as our substitute, that we honor it. And it is through the Spirit of Christ, it is through being in Christ, that we can honor the name of our God.

The way God ordained that Christ should take his precious name out of the dishonor we gave it through out sins, was the way of humiliation. Christ humbled himself, and in humbling himself, rescued, retrieved, brought up the name of God into honor and glory. It is in that mind, that mind of Christ, that humility of mind too, that God urges us to have, that we can truly keep this commandment, to honor the name of our God.

My theme then is, THE HUMBLE HONOR THE NAME.

A name given us. God, by creating us in his image, by taking us into covenant with himself to be our God, God has given us this name. What have we done to it?

A name honored by Christ. Jesus Christ came as the very image of the Father, full of grace and truth. Christ fully revealed the Father, and in doing this, he honored, glorified, and exalted the name of God. Jesus Christ came in the flesh, and in the glory of his work to bring honor to the name of God, did it for us, in our name, for our account.

A name we honor in Christ. If we understand what we are by nature, if we understand that we profane and dishonor the name of God in ourselves, we will realize and believe that it is only in Christ, only as we are in him and he in us, that we can bring honor to the name of our God. d

First then, a name given us.

First of all we say that God has given us his name because he has created us, created man, in his own image. God created man in his likeness. God created man, and in the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Luke 3, the gospel traces the ancestry of Jesus back to Adam. Verse 38 reads, "the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

God says then that in creating Adam in his likeness, Adam was the son of God. God created Adam and Eve as his children. Children then bear the name of their Father. It is not a matter of choice, it is a matter of God’s ordinance. Originally in Adam all mankind were created as children of God, bearing, carrying the name of their Father, the name of God with them all the time. As Adam, and as all men in Adam carry the name of God, as live, they either bring honor or dishonor to that name.

You see, keeping or breaking the third commandment is more than just the way we speak about the name of God, it is more than just how we use the name of God in our conversation. It is how we live. For whether we eat or drink, whether we sleep or wake, whether we speak or not, in all our thoughts, words, and actions, we always do so as those who were originally called children of God.

So on the one hand it is a marvelous and wonderful truth that we can carry all around the world to every race and culture, that we, with them, were all originally created, made by God in his own image, and called by his own name, we were all children of God. But it is also a truth, at once terrible and horrible to contemplate that we have dishonored, profaned, abused, and drug that name into the deepest infamy and shame.

How have we done that? We have done that in Adam, for he became a disobedient child of God. He rebelled against God. He refused to be image of God. He turned aside from truth and righteousness, and followed Satan into sin and rebellion.

So all Adam’s children, you and I too, continue to be an image. We reflect someone. We show something about God. Our lives, our words, our actions, our thoughts, all are a continuing display of who God is. What do we say about God in our lives? For us, and for all men everywhere we have only two choices. We can show the truth about God or we can show a lie about God. What do we do? What have we done in Adam? We have chosen to ally ourselves with Satan, the father of lies. We have chosen to join ourselves to one whose every purpose is to destroy what God has made. We have chosen to covenant with Satan who would smear the glory of God with shame.

Therefore, when we lie we are saying that God is a liar. When we hate, we are telling the world that God hates. When we are lazy, we show that God is lazy. When we are perverted, we are showing that God is perverted. When we sin we are telling, displaying that God sins. When we worship the work of our hands, we are showing that God is not supreme, but is only a god among various gods. When we worship God anyway we choose, we are showing that God doesn’t care how he is worshipped. When we kill our neighbor, we are showing that God hates the work of his hands, that he hates his own image, that he hates himself.

This is a terrible truth. But this is a fact that we must face if we are to realize how we can possibly honor the name of God. We must first realize that we have hopelessly dishonored that name, and that by nature we continue to do so. We must realize that there is no way out, except that God arouse himself to a pitch of jealousy for the honor of his own name. And such were the cries of the prophets of God’s people in time past.

For we must also realize, that when God came to our fathers, and made covenant with them, he gave back to them the great and holy name that they had in Adam cast aside. He said to them, I am the Lord your God. He gave them his name again. He called them his son, his first born. They were called the people of God. But even as his restored people, even as a special people, called out of this world to show forth the excellencies of his name, they profaned his name with their abominations. And God complained that even when he sent them out of his land, the land of promise, that where ever they went, they profaned his name.

So what hope was there? How could our fathers, how can we possibly reverse this disgraceful record, these lives of dishonor to the name of God? Would there be a hope in a Moses? No, for Moses failed to bring glory to God through his disobedience in striking the rock. Would there be hope in a David? No, for God said that David’s sin with Bathsheba and Uriah caused the enemies of God to profane his name. What hope? No hope in man, not even the best of the men that God chose to bring into covenant with him.

So what did God do? God aroused himself. When there was no man, said the prophets, God girded himself, and in the passion of his jealousy for his the holiness of his own name, his own right arm brought salvation and honor to himself. When there was no man, God himself girded himself in our flesh and blood, that in us, in our bones and blood, God in us, the very image of God, the fulness of God in the flesh, God would honor his name, glorify it.

Second, then, a name honored by Christ.

Our wonderful, gracious, merciful, loving Father in heaven, in all the pages of Scripture directs our attention to himself in the person of his Son Jesus Christ. From Genesis to Malachi, through the time of Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, the judges, Saul, David, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all the kings and prophets, through prosperity and adversity, through times of reformation and times of revolution, through chastisement and captivity, God was directing the attention and longing of his people toward the time when he himself would come down. God was focusing their attention on himself, who would bring honor, glory and praise to his great and holy name. God was directing their attention to the promise that in the seed of Abraham the great blessing of restored image of God, the great blessing of honoring, praising, and glorifying the name of God would be restored to his people.

Our Savior Jesus Christ, son of God and son of man, through his words and through his works, poured glory and honor, praise and beauty into the name of the Lord.

How did Jesus Christ honor and glorify the name of the Lord? By submission, by obedience, by doing the will of God. In the volume of the book it is written of me, I come to do thy will O God. By showing and saying that his meat and his drink, his very life, was to obey his father in heaven. He came to fulfill all the word of God. He came to obey all the commandments of God. He came and submitted himself to his father and mother, even though they were sinners.

He honored God by showing the very character and nature of God. He honored the name of God by the great mercy he showed to the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb. He honored the name of God by raising the dead, by giving life to those in death. He honored the name of God by his zeal for the house of God, driving out the moneychangers. He honored the name of God by his revealing the way of the Lord, by explaining the commandments of the Lord, by showing the way of blessing and obedience. He honored the name of God by speaking the truth about God, about man.

He honored the name of God by his submission, by showing God’s great love for his own image. For God so loved the world, God so loved mankind because God loved himself, loved what he had made, and would not allow his own image to remain defaced, marred with sin, smeared with the filth of sin, but loved it so much that he sent his own self, his own son to restore that image. It was that love for his name, for his glory, which we, his image, his children had polluted, that caused our Savior to humble himself to death, even the shameful death of the cross.

He honored the name of God, he loved the name of the Father so much, he loved the image of the Father, even though that image was so marred, so disfigured, that he gave himself in death to restore that image. He gave himself in a perfect sacrifice of love and devotion to God, to the image of God in man, that through his death, all the pollution, all the defacing scars and ugliness of sin he wiped away from that image. In the blood of Christ, the image of God is cleansed, restored, beautified, brought back to its luster again.

All this Christ did, humbling himself to the death of the cross, that the name of God might receive glory and honor, not just in an abstract sense, but in our own flesh and blood, in man the image of God.

Third then, the name of God is a name we honor in Christ.

First, it is necessary that we and all men see, that the only way we can possibly honor the name of God is through Jesus Christ our Lord. There is no other way. There is no possible way we can wipe out the dishonor and disgrace we have brought to the name of God through our sins and by our sinful nature. It is only because the Son of God came into our flesh and blood, and in that flesh and blood wiped away all that disgrace and shame, and in that flesh and blood brought honor, glory and praise to the name of God, that we can be called God-honoring children of God once again.

It is only when we are in Christ, only when his flesh and blood is in our flesh and blood, only when by faith his life is our life, his death is our death, his honoring of the Father is our honoring of the Father, that we can be called real, blessed, praising children of God.

It is only when Christ is our substitute, when he is our mediator, when he is in us and we in him that we can possibly have any assurance that we honor the name of God, that we keep this third commandment. It is only when Christ’s work is our work, when Christ’s submission is our submission, when Christ’s humility is our humility, when Christ’s death is our death, when Christ’s resurrection is our resurrection, that we can stand before God as those who honor his holy and blessed name.

This, then is the critical question for you and for me. Are we in Christ? Is Christ in us? Have we received this Christ by faith? Do we believe that God sent his Son into the world to bring us into a position where we honor and glorify this great and holy name of God? Do you believe that there is no other way to keep this commandment than through the person and work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God come in the flesh? Do you believe that there is no other way to be called God honoring children of God than through this first-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth?

So how can we, as restored children of God, as those who through Christ have been brought back as image of God, as sons and daughters of the holy God, bearing his name, how can we honor the name of God?

Let’s just say there is a first way and a second way and that they are both tied together. The first way we honor the name of God is by confessing the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, come in the flesh. The first way is that we cheerfully, and humbly confess that by nature we dishonor rather than honor the name of God. The first way is that we say that all our righteousness is of God through Jesus Christ. The first way is that we make it clear to everyone that we are sons of God through the Son of God and only through him. The first way is that we make it clear that we would never be true and holy sons and daughters of God without the work of Jesus Christ in our place, for our account, in our name. He did it for us. His holiness is our holiness. His honoring and glorifying the name of God has been written down for our account. Do you believe this? Do you confess this, not just on Sunday in the church, but on every day of the week?

Second, do you live in Christ? Does Christ live in you? Are you bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh, and are you governed by the same Spirit who dwells in Christ the head and in us his body? To live a life as restored children of God, honoring and praising the name of God, keeping this third commandment, you must, as Philippians says, let this mind be in your which was also in Christ Jesus. What mind was that? The mind of humility and submission. You must have the mind of Christ, and it is only through the Spirit that you can have the mind of Christ.

How does that Spirit lead you? That Spirit convicts you of sin, and having convicted you of sin, makes you humble. You cannot speak of yourself, for you recognize that in Adam, and in your own words, thoughts, and actions, you have brought dishonor to the name of God. You are humble because you are ashamed of yourself. You are humble because you will only glory in Christ, your Savior.

You are humble because you recognize with Paul that in your flesh dwells no good thing, that although the will to honor God is present, the ability is lacking. You are humble and will be humble because without Christ you can do nothing, can bring no honor to the name of God. You are humble because you recognize that God promises to take up his abode in the heart that is contrite and lowly before him. You are humb
le because you believe that those who humble themselves before this great name, God will exalt, even as he exalted the name of our blessed Savior Jesus Christ.

The Humble Honor the Name of God.

Humble because although God created us as his children, bearing his name, we have, instead of glorifying it, brought it into shame. Humble because even though God came again to us through our fathers and gave them his name in a glorious covenant of grace, yet they, we, profaned it throughout the world.

Humble, because the glorious Son of God, humbled himself, lowered himself, clothed himself with our flesh and blood, humbled himself to the shameful death of the cross, that he might restore glory and honor to the name of our God on our account, in our name.

Humble, because it is only as we live and move in Christ, only as we are united to him by a t rue faith, only as we are governed and motivated by his Word through his Spirit, that our lives can begin to bring the glory and praise, the honor and blessing, that his glorious name deserves.

Yet even today our God has given us his name, the name of Christ. Yet even today God has given us a new song, a song we may sing today and sing when Christ returns in perfection

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain

To receive power and riches and wisdom,

And strength and honor and glory and blessing.

Blessing and honor and glory and power

Be to him to sits on the throne,

And to the Lamb, forever and ever. Amen.