This morning we pause to consider something obvious. However, often times the obvious gets missed for the very reason that it is so obvious. That reality is basis upon which the proverb that teaches “if you want to know what the water is like, don’t ask a fish,” gains its profundity.
Today we are considering the obvious from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. You remember there was a time when children were required to memorize the shorter catechism. Indeed, that was the reason that shorter catechism was created. It was expected that the children of the church would memorize this in their formative years when children spit back what is downloaded.
Something we must not miss in this exercise of memorization as done by children is that it not only taught them their undoubted catholic Christian faith, it also taught them to think systematically. That is it taught them think in such a way that they understood the relation between the individual parts and the whole. This happened because of the systematic way the catechism was laid out.
For example the Westminster shorter catechism, in its first two questions gives a kind of introduction to the subject matter of the whole work. It starts with setting forth the purpose of man (to Glorify God and enjoy Him forever) and then teaches wherein we are to learn how to do that (we are taught we are to meet our purpose via being instructed from God’s Holy Writ).
Then we turn to the question that we are examining this morning.
Q. 3. What do the Scriptures principally teach?
A. The Scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe concerning God, [a] and what duty God requires of man [b].
[a]. Gen. 1:1; John 5:39; 20:31; Rom. 10:17; II Tim. 3:15
[b]. Deut. 10:12-13; Josh. 1:8; Ps. 119:105; Mic. 6:8; II Tim. 3:16-17
Notice the logic of all this… and in noticing the logic notice how it teaches children to think systematically…. sequentially.
1.) The purpose of man answered
2.) It is Scripture wherein man learns the details of his purpose
3.) The Scripture teach man to be God centered
From here the shorter catechism spends the rest of the time expanding on the answer to question and answer three. Question 3 thus serves as the foundation upon which the whole superstructure is to be built. After Q. and A. 3, Questions from 4 to 38 deal generally with what we are to believe concerning God and after that questions 49-107 deal generally with what duties God requires of man.
Within that catechetical structure there exist respective subdivision. That is to say, both what we are to believe concerning God and what duties God requires of man continues to be broken down logically.
Now, before we get into the meat of the matter let us observe a couple of truths that we should not miss.
1.) WSC begins vertically before it goes horizontal.
Another way to say this is that in beginning with what we are to believe concerning God we see that the vertical post is primary and without the vertical post being primary the horizontal post cannot find its proper place. In other words we cannot consider what is duties God requires of man before we first consider what we are to believe concerning God. God is always prior.
The Catechizers start with what we are to believe concerning God because faith always precedes praxis. What we are to believe concerning God motivates individuals to fulfill their duties that God requires of man. If we believe wrongly about God, we will pursue duties that God does not require of man.
The texts provided by the Westminster divines teaching that we are to begin with what we are to believe concerning God are texts that demonstrate the need to presuppose God… to begin with God.
Gen. 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
John 20:31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
Notice in all of these passages the theme of knowing God. The Gen. 1:1 passage is appealed to because it demonstrates that even the Scripture begins with what to believe concerning God.
Now in continuing to apply what they are doing here we note,
2.) Our age is an age wherein men do not know how to think. As we noted the Confessions while teaching us our Christian faith teach us to be rational people who know how to think. We only emphasize this because the way we educate our children today is in compartmentalized categories that fail to demonstrate the relation between sundry truths we are teaching. A good catechism doesn’t fail in this regard. A good catechism teaches line upon line and precept upon precept. It teaches the student, quite accidentally almost, to think coherently, systematically, sequentially. Here in this Q and A what is being taught is that glorifying and enjoying God as instructed from His Word is the unifying theme that ties everything together.
This is why you have heard from this pulpit ad nauseum that theology is the Queen of the Sciences. This WSC Q. 3 reinforces that idea. We learn what we are to believe concerning God and concurrently we learn what duty God requires of man. The Latin phrase for the relation of Faith and Duty is Fidem et officium and deals with the importance of both belief and the actions that stem from that belief.
My friends, this is why we spend so much time on doctrine here. If man will only believe rightly concerning God, then duty becomes inevitable for as a man thinketh in heart, so he is. The simple truth of this WSC is why I would so often lose my mind at CRC denominational meetings. This simple truth is why I melt down praying for Reformation among our clergy corps. This simple truth is the cornerstone of my praying for you and your children. That all of us together might know what we are to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of His people.
3.) One more point of application on this specific point of what we are to believe concerning God. Realize that all of Western culture wars against this truth. It replaces what we are to believe concerning God with the priority of experiencing. Knowing God has been replaced by experiencing God but there is no experiencing God without a prior knowing of God in place in order to interpret our experiences of God should they indeed be experiences.
Many of you are young. Pursue knowing God from His Word. Read those of the past who were known for knowing God. I was greatly encouraged recently by Claire Shank sharing with me a joy in reading a particular book on knowing God that she was passing around to friends of hers. Make it your passion to know what you believe concerning God. If you do, you will be grifter proof.
Now for the second half of this question … the matter of our duty God requires of us.
Duty is an act of reverence and respect. It is what we owe to our superiors. Unfortunately, it too often can come across as required obligation. However, when duty to God is mentioned it should be observed that our duty becomes our privilege. Our duty may, at times be difficult, but duty in service to the King is always a great privilege.
One of my heroes in History, Robert E. Lee, once said of duty,
“Duty is the sublimest word in the English language. You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more. You should never wish to do less.”
I could only wish that we thought that way about duty today. I wish the modern church had this sense of duty to our triune God. I wish we were driven by a passion to do our duty, whatever the cost to ourselves.
This idea of duty was not always foreign to us. As a lad I had to memorize this phrase while a Boy Scout,
“On my honor I, Bret McAtee, will do my best to do my duty to God and my country…”
So, there you have it. We learn what we are to believe concerning God but this belief is never left barren. What we are to believe concerning God creates a sense of duty to God and that duty is revealed in Scripture.
The catechizers quote these texts in order to sustain the idea of our duty to God.
Dt. 10:12 And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, 13 To keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?
Joshua 1:8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
Psalm 119:105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
II Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
As the WSC continues the catechizers will be more specific as to our duties to God. Here they are merely liming out the general truth that man has a duty to walk in terms of God’s Law-Word. This means, of course, that we do not live with ourselves as the center of our reality. We live w/ God as the one around whom we spend our whole lives orbiting and that is revealed by treating people consistent with our love to God.
Now, if this is what the Scriptures principally teaches — what we are to believe concerning God and what duty requires of men — then this is what the Church must be principally teaching. That brings us to preaching. There is a type of preaching that exists now in Reformed churches that excels at teaching what man is to believe concerning God, but when it comes to teaching what duty God requires of man it is woefully lacking. In the last 6 months I have had phone calls from two different points in the US from people who attend what are thought to be conservative Reformed Churches and in both cases the people on the other end of the phone were telling me that all their Pastor preaches on is Justification… or in the language of the shorter catechism, all they preach on is “what man is required to believe concerning God.” There is no preaching on the duty God requires of man.
Now, there might be several reasons for that, I think, and one of them is due to the rise of Theonomy and Reconstruction theology. Theonomy has quite to the contrary preached on the duty God requires of man, and that very pointedly. Indeed, no doubt at times perhaps too pointedly. Some theonomists are like children running with scissors when it comes to the matter of our duty to God. There has arisen in the Reformed church a majority voice who is absolutely convinced that to preach on the duty God requires of man is to preach work righteousness. So, in order to avoid that the duty God requires of man has been eclipsed, and the church has become anti-nomian.
Another reason that the duty God requires of man has been eclipsed in preaching is because of the fear, on the part of clergy, of being accused of preaching a social Gospel. The social Gospel arose especially at the beginning of the 20th century. It’s emphasis was doing Christian work but it divorced that work from what is to be believed concerning God.
For example,
Rev. Lyman Abbott, a proponent of the Social Gospel, like so many advocates of the Social Gospel, in supporting prohibition, found the wine of Christ’s day devoid of intoxicating alcohol. Abbott further professed doubts about the Virgin Mary and Christ feeding the multitude of loaves and fishes.
“What interests me,” Abbott offered about the loaves and fishes, “in this incident is not the multiplication of loaves, but the spirit of consideration and helpfulness which is manifested.”
A Conservative History of the American Left — p. 124
You see the Social Gospel tried to push man’s duty but they divorced that duty from a proper belief concerning God.
We need to note that the problem with the Social Gospel was never that it expected Christianity to have an impact on society. If Christian men and women walk in terms of their duty to the God who is men and women will have an impact on society.
The problem, historically, with the Social Gospel is that it was a project of theological liberals and as such the God it was serving was not the God of the Bible and as such the impact it was pursuing was the inverse of the impact that Biblical Christianity brings.
The problem of the Social Gospel, when it spoke of what the duty God requires of men is that the Social Gospelers transferred from God to the state the ability to save. The Social Gospelers did not think rightly concerning God and so they placed salvation in the hands of the state and its ability to build utopia. However, should we think rightly concerning God we realize that it is the duty of the state to provide Godly order, and it is the duty of the Church to herald a salvation that can be found only in the magnificent Jesus Christ.
Well, when that happens a vacuum is created. Men’s innate irresponsibility, that was previously held in check by the Scriptures teaching of their duty to God is released with the result that man has only a duty to himself. When that happens man becomes what we are seeing all around us…. selfish, narcissistic, and irrational. Where man has no sense of duty to God another force moves in to occupy the duty vacuum. At first that vacuum will result in anarchy as mentioned by rampant irrational self-centeredness, but as anarchy can’t provide social order eventually when the sense of duty to God is destroyed, the State will be taken as that institution to which all duty belongs. Duty will require us to believe that in the State we live and move and have our being. Men become convinced that it is wholesome and necessary for the public good to give our sense of duty to the State.
Let us end by quoting Van Til, from his work on the 10 commandments,
Our times thus explains that right now we live in a time wherein we have to realize and embrace the sacred duty of controversy. This is implied in the very task of witness-bearing entrusted to the Church’s care. One cannot witness faithfully for Christ if one does not witness against those that oppose Christ. If the knowledge of the name of Christ is to advance, it must advance in the face of obstacles. The ‘natural man’ hates the things of God and will seek to oppose them. Only in the face of opposition can Christianity advance. It will meet opposition everywhere. How can any faithful disciple of Christ, then, expect to witness for Christ anywhere w/o testifying against the opposition to Christ?
