Caleb’s Baptism (1c)

Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?

Answer

That I with body and soul, both in life and death, (a) am not my own, (b) but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; (c) who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, (d) and delivered me from all the power of the devil; (e) and so preserves me (f) that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; (g) yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, (h) and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, (i) and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him. (j)

Caleb,

In the previous post we began to look at the consequences (privileges) that accrue to us because we are owned by God. We left off with the idea that when God owns someone He never un-owns. God never loses what He has claimed as His own.

John 6:39 And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

John 10:28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

As we continue to consider the consequences and privileges of being owned by God as ratified by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to pay for ours we see not only are we delivered from the power of the devil, and not only are we preserved to the end of our days in God’s keep, but we also see that God’s providence (His governance over all that happens in life) directs our steps and accounts for our paths taken. God’s providential care (His governing oversight) includes minutia such as your hair count.

Matt.10:30 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered

Of course God’s providential care (governing oversight) is over all His creation. The Sparrow does not fall apart from God’s Providence. The Lily’s grow according to God’s providence.

However, for those who belong to Him His care and oversight is the care and oversight of a Benevolent Father, while His providential care and oversight for those not claimed by Him is that of a condemning Judge. Some vessels have been made for wrath.

Next the Catechism teaches that God has a purpose in all of His providential oversight (governing care) over His people. We are to embrace the fact that whatever comes into our lives as God’s people is something ordained by our governing God for the furtherance of His intent to keep us owned in His salvation. This informs us that all that comes into our lives in the course of our everyday living is something sent by God to further the course of His and our salvation.

As being owned by God because He has benevolently provided for us Christ as our legal representation, we can now know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Two more privileges come to us as a result of being friends with God because of the spilled blood of Christ.

First, we are told that God sends His Holy Spirit to work in us an assurance that, because we are owned by Christ, we have eternal life now. There was a time in history when Christians found it hard to accept the fact that they were owned by Christ. They struggled with the reality of their sinfulness to the point they found it hard to believe that they had eternal life. Christians typically don’t struggle with this so much in the 21st century since we are more inclined to believe in a God who owes us forgiveness then believing in a God who is severe against our sinfulness. However, there are still those who find it hard to believe that they really have eternal life and so one of the benefits of being owned by Christ is that we are given His Holy Spirit as one who guarantees the eternal life we have now and the eternal life that is to come.

Eph.1:13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, 14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

Rom.8:16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God

The final benefit (consequence / privilege) mentioned in being owned by God, atoned for by Christ, and sealed permanently unto God by the Holy Spirit (notice the Trinitarian character of the first question) is that we live in terms of His authority and of who He is. Because we are owned by God the inevitable consequence is that we will live in light of His light, we will, in a ever increasing epistemologically self conscious fashion, live and move and have our being in Him, and we will live in terms of His law and testimonies. God has not redeemed us so that we might live in defiance of His character but He has redeemed us for particular works that God has prepared from eternity past for us (Ephesians 2:10).

Rom.8:14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

In order to simplify as much as possible,

I. ) Where do we find Comfort (Strength)?

A.) In the fact that we are not our own
B.) In the fact that we are owned by God in our complete totality

II.) How is it that we are owned by God?

A.) Because Jesus Christ spilled His blood
B.) Such a substitutionary death satisfies the Father’s just wrath against sin

III.) What are the consequences of being owned by God?

A.) The Devil has no hold upon me
B.) I am preserved to the very end by God who loves me and call me the apple of His eye.
C.) God’s providential (governing) care as a Father orders all my life
D.) All things that come into my life are serving the purpose of seeing me kept by God
E.) I am granted assurance that I really do have eternal life
F.) I am equipped so that my ongoing life story is a telling of the Greatness of my Lord Christ

Allow me to close that the consequences (benefits / privileges) of being owned by Christ should yield to us great confidence. What have we to fear? If all this is true that we have looked at, if it really is the case that God is for us, who can be against us? If all this is true why would you or I ever fear anyone or anything but God?

Tomorrow, we will look at Question #2

Turning The Heidelberg Into Poetry

Recently the Church I serve has taken to making its own bulletin after years of buying the bulletin covers from some company. One thing that I did not like about the old bulletins is that they often had poetry on the back that had really bad theology in the poetry. Plus, I was noticing that often people in the Church would cut out the poetry from the bulletin and stick it on their refrigerators. So, on the bulletins we are now making ourselves I am putting my own poetry. I don’t suggest that the quality of my poetry is any better than the quality of the poetry that was on the pre-bought bulletins but I am hopeful that the theology is better.

Heidelberg Catechism

Question 103

What doth God require in the fourth commandment?

Answer. First, that the ministry of the gospel and the schools be maintained; and that I, especially on the sabbath, that is, on the day of rest, diligently frequent the church of God, to hear his word, to use the sacraments, publicly to call upon the Lord, and contribute to the relief of the poor, as becomes a christian. Secondly, that all the days of my life I cease from my evil works, and yield myself to the Lord, to work by his Holy Spirit in me: and thus begin in this life the eternal sabbath.

O Glorious day of festive rest
In all the week the day that’s best
Day of Fellowship with God’s Clan
Day to hear God’s grace to man

Day to taste the wine and grain
Forgiveness swallowed, life proclaimed
God’s people join their voice to pray
And bring their alms on this Holy Day

The Lord’s day has a tale to spin
That I’ve given up my practiced sin
And by the Spirit I am blessed
To work the work that reveals I rest

Martin & McAtee On Worldview Thinking On The Eclectic Level

Some quotes from IWU legendary Dr. Glenn Martin,

“Most College and University faculty members operate at a third level (of worldview thinking). The eclectic level of application. They make eclectic selection from the packages which have already been marketed, which they then present to their students.”

Implications

1.) The fact that the selection is being made in an eclectic fashion indicates that these faculty members are seldom, if ever, epistemologically self conscious. They are operating with borrowed capital from another person’s worldview and having acquired it much the same way a person might acquire a suit, or a pair of shoes, (they purchased it from somebody else) they have little understanding of what went into putting the worldview together. John Maynard Keynes captures something of what I am aiming at here when he said,

“Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

2.) If the students, to whom the faculty present their second-hand worldviews, do embrace the worldview the faculty is teaching, just as the faculty member received it from his professor, they are now likewise eclectic worldview thinkers to the third generation. The worldview, like the aforementioned suit, is a hand-me-down to another generation. All the faults and contradictions that were originally present in the Worldview as it was originally marketed remain unobserved.

It is important to realize in this conversation that at the end of the day the world of worldview possibilities can be reduced to two should all worldviews be boiled down to their essentials and examined on a presuppositional basis.

Sabbath Observations

Sabbath keeping among Reformed people has been a important component of being Reformed. The Puritan Matthew Henry wrote “The stream of all religion runs either deep or shallow, according as the banks of the sabbath are kept up or neglected.”

Introduction of Sabbath into World History was revolutionary.

It is true that the Scriptures give us God resting in Genesis but there is no explicit record of a Sabbath rest being entered into by God’s people prior to their deliverance from Egypt. Any idea of a regular weekly rest finds its roots in Biblical revelation wherever it is found. The origin of the Sabbath is specifically cited as Mosaic by Nehemiah 9:14)

14 “So You made known to them Your holy sabbath,
And laid down for them commandments, statutes and law,
Through Your servant Moses. (See also Ez. 20:10-26)

Remember, Israel was a slave people who would have been tasked to work 24-7 for their masters. Once they are delivered and given victory the strict abiding prohibition to work on the Sabbath would have been a continual reminder, woven into the rhythm of their existence, of the salvation and liberty that was wrought for them by God.

**Sabbath Communicated God’s Providence and God’s Deliverance of Israel From Unending Labor

Unlike all the other peoples of the Earth, Israel alone was dedicated, as a religious principle, to this regular rhythmic rest that proclaimed God’s providence and their liberty from unending labor.

Isaiah 56:2 / Ex. 31:13-17 teaches that the keeping of Sabbath signified loyalty to the Lord and His covenant.

This was so important to their identity and existence that violation of the Sabbath rest was treason to Israel. To violate the Sabbath was to deny God’s providence. Such a violation was punishable by death.

(Numbers 15:32-36, [concerning the Sabbath — Ex. 20:8-11, 23:12, 31:13-17, 34:21, 35:2-3, Dt. 5:12-15, Lev. 19:3, 30, 26:2)

We must keep in mind that the whole thrust of the Sabbath was both to communicate God’s providence and Israel’s deliverance from unremitting slave work. The Sabbath was Liberty. This fact is what makes old objections about how having to keep Sabbath was an infringement upon a people’s liberty. The whole idea is that the Sabbath idea communicated the idea of Liberty. Jesus brought this front and center again when He reminded His listeners that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The Sabbath allowed for works of mercy and necessity.

When Israel failed to keep Sabbath this failure was a part of their failure to forsake the idolatry they had adopted in Egypt (Ez. 20:5-11) and resulted in their return to captivity. By their constant Idolatry and refusal to honor God’s Sabbath they were communicating their continual Spiritual enslavement and so God returned them to a physical captivity to Babylon to match their spiritual captivity.

** Sabbath Communicated God’s Transcendence & Discontinuity W/ Man

Definition Transcendence — 1. Surpassing others; preeminent or supreme.
2. Being above and independent of the material universe.

God, being Transcendent, is separate from and beyond His creation and so He gives His people a day that is separate from the rest of the week.

Thus, true worship involves a separation from the natural processes of living one finds during the rest of the week. The fact that God gives regular rest and worship that is distinct communicates His discontinuity as Creator from man the creature.

To be sure the faith must be applied in daily life but the source of our faith can not be found in daily life. God is Transcendent.

What might we say then?

True religion, true faith in the God of the Bible involves

1.) A Sabbath that communicates a ceasing from our thinking that we are the cause of our own progress by means of the dint of our work or by natural cause and effect processes and requires that we look to God as a person who, in His providence, provides for His people. Now, this is not to say that the Sabbath teaches laziness. It most certainly does not for the resting of one in seven necessitates the working of 6 in seven. But the Sabbath teaches us that God’s providence ultimately accounts for blessing.

Man’s destiny is not a work of man or the result of natural processes or the working out of some kind of historical cause and effect operating in a closed universe History. Man’s destiny is the consequence of God’s ordination and fore-ordination. When we regularly rest, per God’s command, we communicate that we believe in a personal extra-mundane God who cares and saves His people by His work.

2.) From our confidence in God, as communicated in our resting and worshiping we then live the rest of our lives in terms of God’s revelation. God’s providence gives us rest but it also affords for us how we are to live and move and have our being for our daily living.

So, when we deny the idea of a weekly rest it is at the same time a denial of God and of His Providence. When we deny God’s regular weekly rest we are communicating, knowingly or unknowingly, a rejection of God’s transcendence and consequently we take that idea of the transcendence of God and we place in the created order. (We immanentize it.) Transcendence never goes away but is lodged somewhere else. In the times we live in, in the culture in which we live, that which typically gets the Transcendence of God that has been surrendered, in part by our refusal to honor His Transcendence by honoring the Sabbath is the State. The State becomes Transcendent and is given the prerogatives of God. And like the Pharaoh’s of old the State’s ultimate goal is to give no rest.

The Welfare state is merely the segue unto to the slave state

George Orwell’s Animal Farm — Boxer the Horse — “I will work harder.”

Again we say then that the Sabbath is a reminder of God’s sovereignty, of His role as creator, redeemer, sustainer, and judge. We can rest because God rules.

As an aside we should mention that this Lord’s Day resting that compels us to remember that God rules should deliver us from thinking that man in any sense rules or governs the affairs of History. It is true that conspiracies exist dedicated to rule over the affairs of men, whether those conspiracies are local or global. Elite men do have their plans of social engineering the masses. But the keeping of the Sabbath has us preaching to ourselves that we have no need to fear those conspiracies because we belong to the God who sits and heaven and laughs at those who conspire against His Sovereign providential rule. In the end even the conspiracies of men serve the purposes of our Sovereign God. An insightful glimpse into the meaning of the Sabbath can tell us all that.

*** Just as Israel Rested In God’s Victory Over Egypt, So we Rest in Christ’s Victory Over The Kingdom Of Darkness

We must understand that we can rest because the victory has been accomplished. And when we then arise to work the other 6 days we work not to accomplish an uncertain victory but only to manifest the Victory that has already been accomplished for us in Christ.

The Sabbaths of the OT, and the “rest” given in the promised land, were only foreshadowings of the victory and rest to be given in Christ.

Hebrews 4 is the definitive passage regarding Jesus as our Sabbath rest. The writer to the Hebrews exhorts his readers to “enter in” to the Sabbath rest provided by Christ. After three chapters of telling them that Jesus is superior to the angels and that He is our Apostle and High Priest, he pleads with them to not harden their hearts against Him, as their fathers hardened their hearts against Jehovah in the wilderness. Because of their unbelief, God denied that generation access to the holy land, saying, “They shall not enter into My rest” (Hebrews 3:11). In the same way, the writer to the Hebrews begs them—and us—not to make the same mistake by rejecting God’s Sabbath rest in Jesus Christ. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience” (Hebrews 4:9-11).

When considering Christ as our perfect Sabbath rest it is interesting to consider the word “Liturgy.” Liturgy originally literally meant “public work.” The Christian Liturgy, the Christian public work, is the perfect law keeping, propitiatory death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ and then man’s faith and obedience in light of that. This is captured in the very Liturgy we practice here on the Sabbath.

So what might we say in terms of Application?

1.) The Sabbath forces us to ask ourselves if we really believe in the God of the Bible.

Doctrines like God’s Transcendence or the importance to embrace the truth of how God as Creator is distinct from the creature sometimes seem rather abstract but when we consider the Sabbath we begin to realize how important these doctrines are. The Sabbath teaches us about the Character of God. It is not primarily about what we can or can not do on this day. It is primarily about the Character of God.

2.) As the Sabbath points to Christ we must ask ourselves if we are resting in Christ for our all. Is our rest and work a manifestation of our gratitude for a full and free delivery or are we insecure in our deliverance and so work in order to put God in our debt? The good news of the Sabbath is that God has delivered us from our guilt ridden inspired works.

3.) Do we see both our work and our rest in terms of God’s victory? Our work, whatever it is, is not primarily about us but about God manifesting His already accomplished Victory through the work and rest He has called us to. The Sabbath reminds us of the set-apartness of the Christian’s life vis-a-vis the pagan.

Caleb’s Baptism — Question 1 (b)

Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?

Answer

That I with body and soul, both in life and death, (a) am not my own, (b) but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; (c) who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, (d) and delivered me from all the power of the devil; (e) and so preserves me (f) that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; (g) yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, (h) and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, (i) and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him. (j)

Caleb,

In the previous post we looked at the idea that we gain comfort (Lit. with strength) in the truth that we are not our own, but in the totality of our being and in the full circumference of our life, we belong to Jesus Christ who is the sovereign King over all reality.

In your Baptism, God brands you as one whom He owns. Because we bear that mark of Baptism we can, in times of trials and discouragements, remember our Baptism as a means of bringing back to our consciousness that are owned by Christ. More about Baptism in later posts.

In this post we want to concentrate on how it is we are owned. The catechism will go into this in great depth in later questions and answers. Remember with these first two questions what we have is a introduction. As such we will not go into more depth later.

We are owned, the Catechism teaches (as it is faithful to Scripture) because our faithful Savior bore the penalty that was rightfully mine. Jesus Christ satisfied for my sins.

1.) Satisfaction for human sin was needed in order to quench the just wrath of God against sin and sinners. Without one who stood in our place as a substitute satisfaction for human sin and sinners those who were sinners must themselves satisfy the wrath of God against sin. God required such satisfaction against sin because He promised that the soul that sinneth shall surely die. If God were to not visit satisfaction upon sin God would be found to be a liar.

2.) The satisfaction for sin was in the spilled blood of Christ. His spilled blood was the satisfaction that God required to quench His wrath. Scripture teaches, “without the shedding of blood there is no remission (forgiving) of sin.”

3.) Our sins have been fully satisfied for. This means that there is no longer any sin — past, present, or future, that God will condemn me for in terms of eternal punishment.

Tit.2:14 “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.”

1 Pet.1:18 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; 1 Pet.1:19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:

Now the consequence of this satisfying of God’s wrath is that you are delivered from all the power of the devil. Notice the movement here. He have gone from being under the authority (power) of the devil to being owned by God. Every person you meet Caleb, is either owned by God or is under the power of the devil. For Christians, the devil is a paper tiger. He has no authority over us. We need not fear his braying or his blowhard character.

Heb.2:14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;

1 John 3:8 He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

Another consequence is that the Christian is preserved by God.

John 6:39 And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

John 10:28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

We can have strength, in part, because we have security in knowing that God will never leave us nor forsake us. We live and move in terms of a confidence that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

So, In order to simplify as much as possible,

I. ) Where do we find Comfort (Strength)?

A.) In the fact that we are not our own
B.) In the fact that we are owned by God in our complete totality

II.) How is it that we are owned by God?

A.) Because Jesus Christ spilled His blood
B.) Such a substitutionary death satisfies the Father’s just wrath against sin

III.) What are the consequences of being owned by God?

A.) The Devil has no hold upon me
B.) I am preserved to the very end by God who loves me and call me the apple of His eye.

We will pick up more of the consequences of being owned by God in the next post.