Grace Reformed Church of Leduc

We are now broadcasting our sermons on iTunes. Click here to listen and/or to subscribe.

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We wish to extend a warm, brotherly welcome to the Redeemer Reformation Church (Regina), the first URCNA congregation in Saskatchewan. Redeemer was provisionally accepted into our federation by Classis in January, and hopes to be formally received by Synod this July. Their pastor elect, Brian Cochran, will be ordained and installed Friday, March 14.

Click here to explore Redeemer’s website.

I am working on some new posts for the church blog, but while you wait I thought I would share something a little different that I just wrote. Once in awhile I like to write poetry, particularly with a religious ‘flavour’. Enjoy.

TETZEL ‘REBORN’

As soon as the Spirit, in the heart, makes Christ king
From the lost man blindness flings

As soon as the sinner to God’s mercy clings
To his home a justified verdict brings

As soon as the confession of Christ he sings
The believer from his unpaid debt springs

(referencing 1 Corinthians 12:3, Luke 18:14 & Romans 10:9-11 respectively)

On Sunday September 13 we will begin a new sermon series on the book of Judges (an ‘interlude’ to our Luke series). The following is a paper I have written in preparation for the series. Enjoy.

THE BOOK OF JUDGES: Sermon Series Preparation

The book of Judges covers a period of approximately three hundred years(1), which begins at the death of Joshua (1:1) and ends somewhere during the service of Samuel the prophet(2) or, more specifically, at the commencement of the age of the monarchy.

This time was one of chaos and disruption in the life of Israel. God’s covenant people have been safely led to the promised land but they had no king. The promises of God to their forefathers seemed distant and unfulfilled for they had not yet taken full possession of Canaan since numerous of their enemies still lived there. As a result the false gods of those nations seduced many Israelites into blatant idolatry. Indeed we are told that the enemy nations were left in the land to “test” God’s people (3:1-4).

If you read this book carefully you will note that there is a repeated cycle(3) in each period of the different judges:

1. Sin (on the part of God’s people; cf. 2:11-13)
2. Judgment (against God’s people as they are plundered and persecuted by foreigners; cf. 2:14-15)
3. Deliverance (at the hand of various judges & usually prompted by the cries of the people for salvation; cf. 2:16-18) and then the cycle starts again (cf. 2:19).

This is why the refrain that “every man did what was right in his own eyes” is frequently cited throughout the book. We see the disastrous results of a lack of godly leadership and a lackluster pursuit of pure devotion to the LORD. Indeed the depth of sin revealed in this book has prompted one author to write that “perhaps no book in the Bible witnesses so clearly to our human frailty”.

The only reason Israel is not totally wiped off the face of the earth (as those nations around them were) was because God remembered his promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He had sworn that there would always be a people and a land in which to serve Him. So God delivers the Israelites time and time again though they only deserve a final and full judgment. The judges that God sends, therefore, should not be viewed so much as arbitrators or those who apply the divine law to the situation at hand, but saviors and of God’s people.

So the failure of Israel to obey God’s laws highlights man’s inability to serve Him as He desires and the absolute need for divine grace. We must then look for someone who always obeyed his Father’s will and thus saves us from our iniquities. (Matthew 3:15 & Matthew 1:21) Jesus is truly the Deliverer that Israel needed; one who does not fail to rescue and save us from the condemnation, bondage and corruption of sin.

Finally, we should point out that our position in this world is not much different than Israel at this time. We too are surrounded by those who don’t serve God. Thus we are challenged to live holy lives in an unholy culture as strangers and pilgrims, being witnesses to God’s holiness and righteousness in this present evil age. (cf. 1 Peter 1:1, 2:9-12; 4:1-4)

2. Jewish tradition teaches that Samuel was the author of the book.

3. In their “Introduction to the Old Testament” Raymond Dillard and Tremper Longman call this a “downward spiral” indicating that the cycle demonstrates a greater apostasy over time for the sin’full’ nation. This is not only expressed in her sins as a people but in the gradual degeneracy of her judges, culminating in (the stories of) Samson.

Just a quick note to let you know that I, once again, am uploading audio sermons to our ‘Sermons’ page.

All of our sermons will be archived at our podbean.com site, here.

Enjoy!

This Sunday morning we will be looking at Luke 9:57-62 which are Jesus’ words of warning and correction to those who would follow Him.

Of the three encounters  in this text it is, perhaps, the second that is the most unsettling. For Jesus’ reply, at first glance, is terribly insensitive. He calls someone to “Follow Me” and the man requests that he be allowed to go and bury his father. Jesus responds: “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”

Now of this dialogue we may mention a qualifying factor that mitigates the supposed offense. Jesus knew the hearts of men (see Luke 5:22, 6:8). It is apparent that since the answer or statement to each man was different our Lord was aware of the challenge each one needed to hear in order to procure the right response. This also indicates that these commands or instructions are not necessarily to be heeded in every situation (though we would maintain that by way of personal application it is the principle is what matters).

In this case we see that the man has his priorities backwards: First let me bury my father, he says. But Jesus commands loyalty and devotion to God first. (Matthew 22:37-38) Let this man understand that his desire itself is not wrong as it  reflects the heart and goal of the fifth commandment, namely that one honour their father and mother, but rather it is in the wrong order.

Rather he must see his sin in failing to keep God’s law and thus see his need for a Saviour, namely Christ Himself. Following Jesus means recognizing the need for our Lord to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die, which has been noted five times now in the ninth chapter (vs. 21-22, 31, 44, 51 & 53). Christ obeyed and died so that those who trust in Him might be saved. This is the wonderful and encouraging good news to our disobedience to the first and greatest commandment.

But there is more. We should also see the foolishness of the gospel as indicated by Jesus words: “let the dead bury their own dead”. If someone has passed on, what can we do for them? According to the modern world we may remember them in our hearts, or if we remember them they are never really dead. But this is just wishful thinking. A funeral is not a celebration of a life but a reminder of death, a mortal enemy. (1 Corinthians 15:26)

R.C.H. Lenski in his commentary on this passage notes:

“the harshness [of Jesus’ words] fades except for the sentimentality of the worldly-minded who are great on odorous flowers and meaningless words for the dead while they blink at the harsh reality of death itself and of that which is worse, spiritual death and damnation.”

(emphasis mine)

So the foolishness of the gospel says that it is better to proclaim the truth of Christ (or in Jesus’ words “preach the kingdom of God”) than deal with or talk about the dead. This is not to say that we may not cherish our loved ones or think about them from time to time. But this is to boldly believe that what ultimately matters is Christ, what matters is His kingdom, and so let the whole earth be silent in their mourning and remembrance of the dead until they worship and glorify Him as the conqueror of death and the grave.

Let us then as believers remember His resurrection and what it has done in our lives: it made us alive! (Romans 6:4; Ephesians 2:5; Colossians 3:1) And those who are alive will testify of the King and His kingdom in all that they say and do.

Is the (abbreviated) title of a new book by Rev. Danny Hyde, pastor of the Oceanside United Reformed Church. The full title is In Living Color: Images of Christ and the Means of Grace. The caption reads:

While man has universally and perpetually desired the visual in his relationship with God, God has given his people the Word and sacraments as manifestations of his presence until Christ comes again, visibly and corporeally in living color. This is the classic Reformed exegesis of Scripture as expressed in its confessions

If you click on the link it will take you to amazon.com from where you may order the book. It may also be ordered through Reformed Fellowship.

Here are the endorsements:

Danny Hyde has written an excellent piece on a very misunderstood subject. Through effective combination of biblical, theological, and confessional discussions, he has presented the Reformed view of the second commandment winsomely and attractively. He helpfully emphasizes not the negative prohibition of making images of God but the positive facts that God has revealed himself now so generously in Word and Sacrament and will one day reveal himself visibly in the most perfect and authentic way.
—David VanDrunen, Robert B. Strimple Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics, Westminster Seminary California

In these pages, Danny Hyde argues with great clarity against all images of Jesus as man-made media. He shows that all such images are abominated in Scripture and roundly rejected by the Reformed confessional heritage without exception. Hyde goes on to argue, however, that God does provide us with His “media”—the preaching of His Word and the administration of His sacraments.
—Joel R. Beeke, President, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary

Enjoy!

The blog has turned into a website (of sorts). Our new address is now http://graceleduc.org/ If you follow a link to the old address  or type in the old address it will be forwarded to the one above.

Also the site now ‘begins’ at the ‘Welcome’ page instead of at the blog posts.

And in case you are wondering where all those lovely posts I have written went to, the posts are still there (here) appearing under a new page called ‘Blog’. In fact you are probably looking at the new page right now so why are you fretting so?

If you have comments, suggestions, or apoplectic rants about the new look please share them with me through our contact page or my Facebook account.

Enjoy.

Rev. Wes Bredenhof of the Langley Canadian Reformed Church lets us know what we can do to ensure that the next generation will not worship with us.

1.  Gripe and complain about the church endlessly.  Make sure that your children hear your complaining.  Never, ever say anything positive about the church and certainly never pray for the church and for the pastors, elders, and deacons.

2.  Become a oncer.  Communicate to your children that you don’t need the ministry of the Word and sacraments and they don’t really need it either.  You’ve heard it all before anyway.  Make it clear that God’s call to worship doesn’t apply to your family.

3.  Frequent other (especially non-Reformed) churches.  Tell them that the differences are not all that great and we all basically believe the same things anyway — except these other churches have far more joy.   Also, be sure to get your children involved in the activities of other churches wherever you can.  It will be good for them to broaden their horizons.

4.  Make church attendance optional.  If they don’t feel like going to church, don’t make it sound like going to church is like going to school or to the dentist.  If they don’t want to, you shouldn’t make them.  It has to be a matter of the heart.  Tell them that they have to want to go.

5.  Similarly, make catechism attendance optional.  If they don’t feel like going, certainly don’t make them.  Here too, it has to be from the heart.  Whatever you do, don’t support the efforts of your pastor to catechize your children.  Don’t check to make sure they’re memorizing the catechism, don’t check to see if they’re doing their homework, and don’t bother making sure they’re prepared for class.

6.  Do not sing from the Book of Praise [ed. I would add the 'Psalter Hymnal'] in your home.  You do not want to communicate to your children that you actually appreciate the Psalms and Hymns of the church.  You do not want them to embrace these songs and actually think that there may be some value to them.

7.  Deliberately move far enough away from the church so that meaningful involvement in the life of the church becomes impossible.  Do not take any opportunity to move closer.

8.  Do not teach your children about the importance of giving your first fruits to the Lord.  Never speak to your children about financial contributions to the church.  Be sure to set them an example by never or rarely giving yourself.  If you do give something, make sure that it’s something from what’s left over and do it grudgingly.  Say things like, “Well, we have a little extra this month, maybe we can give something to the church to get the elders off our back.”

9.  Do not send them to the Christian school the other children from the congregation attend.  Instead, send them to a school where they will learn about the “catholicity” of the faith.  Or, send them to a public school so they can be Davids and Daniels for the Lord.  If you homeschool them, make sure they develop closer bonds with other homeschoolers than with the people in your own church.

10.  Say nothing about their friends or about potential marriage partners.  When it comes to friends, encourage them to look for friends to whom they can be a light and a witness — they should have as many unbelievers for friends as possible.  When it comes to marriage partners, tell them, “The only thing that matters is that he/she loves the Lord.”

In short, do everything you can to communicate that the church is merely a human organization or a club where you can come and go as you please.  Make it clear that the church is not your spiritual mother (Gal. 4:26), not the body of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23), not the bride for which Christ died and which he loves (Eph. 5:25), and definitely not the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15).

See the whole post here.

I haven’t put anything on this blog lately. Thus I might be inspired to write a post about laziness or apathy. But since I don’t want those qualities attributed to me I will write about the preciousness of words instead.

“Silence Is Golden” sang one band in the 60’s. Though it appears that they were lamenting some kind of love triangle the verity of that statement by itself is very profound. For, in a sense, words only have meaning against their counterpoint, silence. Without (some) voluntary silence our words would be an endless chatter and indistinguishable from each other.

Indeed sometimes silence is preferred to words, such as when parents want their children to be quiet in the presence of guests, or when prayer is offered to God. Some people, we think, just talk too much and end up putting their foot in their mouths. If they would only learn the value of listening (silence) then they might see that we don’t always need to hear their opinion about everything. Hence the proverb “Speech is silver, silence is golden”.

We can only imagine the silence of eternity. What was being said when we were not there? (we are self-centered creatures after all). All men are lost in the awesomeness, if not coldness, of the question of eternity. Whether we believe it was some divine Creator or impersonal force(s) someone or something always WAS. So before we WERE, there WAS. The supposed (please forgive my lack of faith here) Big Bang  must have made a lot of noise (if the rules of ’space’ do not apply to the time before the creation or arrival of the universe). But this explosion (?) has no meaning to it: it just WAS.

Out of this meaningless cosmos we have arrived with our millions of years of evolution to the point of being able to speak intelligibly with one another (even to the extent that each language carries the potential to be understood or translated into any other language known to man – presumably because they all originate from a common source). But our chatter has been understood to merely be a higher form of that of the animals who are our relatives of one kind or another. After all they communicate too, don’t they? Well I suppose they do, they were made to do so like us.

The problem is that if our speech is merely a product of random forces (even if seemingly intelligent and purposeful) they ultimately have no meaning in light of something that just happened for no reason whatsoever, that just WAS. The meaning we ascribe to our words and thoughts then is just apparent and not real.

But then we have to face the reality of anarchy, at least as far as communication goes. Consider the law of non-contradiction which states that something cannot be something and not the opposite of that something at the same time and in the same way. A cannot be not A when it is A. Or, to make it simple, a dog cannot be a dog and not a dog at the same time. If a dog is no longer a dog then don’t call it a dog. Call it something else. Like a whale or an apple or whatever it has become.

Now is that law, as some have pointed out, merely a convention? Something we have invented in our minds? Something that does not really exist? It certainly should be if there if everything just IS (depending on what ‘IS’ is). Hmmm…. and well I suppose if that is the case then this whole post would have no meaning at all or could mean the opposite of what I had intended it to be. Maybe the title of this post, ‘precious words’, means ‘not precious words’ or maybe it even means ‘coffee grounds are a really great dessert when they are added to banana peels’. I am not saying that, and I hope you don’t try it (though who am I to judge you if you really like that sort of thing?). In fact perhaps me saying that ‘I am not saying that’ could be me saying that I am saying that and well, you get the picture (or postcard).

For some reason, though, some people would get really angry if we had the courage to ascribe to them the opposite of what they said (or whatever meaning we might want to give it). Imagine the consternation of our evolutionist friends if after they gave a rousing speech on the the veracity of Darwin’s theory of evolution and a condemnation of the dim-wittedness of creationist sympathizers, we said “Cool! You totally agree with me!” They would undoubtedly reply “No I don’t! Didn’t you listen to anything I said?” And we say “Wow you really have changed your views, haven’t you? So when are you going to start coming to Bible study?” Reply: “Grrr…”

Or maybe I am hauled before the Human Rights tribunal for some violation of hate crime legislation (we won’t give an example of a target group here because they might be offended and have me indicted for said offense). The tribunal says to me “Why did you speak against ‘x’ in this fashion?” I reply: “Hey, so you think I SHOULD speak out against ‘x’ with greater vehemence?” Reply: “No, please listen to me. Actually you need to stop speaking out against ‘x’” I say: “Cool so now you are going to start paying me to speak against ‘x’ and also impose legislation upon the nation through your arbitrary standards of right and wrong to oppress ‘x’ because you deny an ultimate reality in favour of random processes of the brain that exude themselves in such a fashion that they now create these laws under whose tyrannical shadow we all must live? Reply: “Uhhhm?!”

And if it all just WAS/IS it would probably be better to be silent instead of babbling on as we do every day (maybe).

It seems to me then, that at this point I should propose an alternative; one that I will leave to the reader to decide whether or not it makes more sense (although in reality if this alternative is true they have no choice but to believe it for all words to the contrary are a suppressing of truth – Romans 1:18).

In the beginning was God. (Genesis 1:1) If there was silence in eternity past it was because God willed it. In the midst of this silence then God spoke and it WAS. The reality that God wanted appeared by His words. A personal being who IS, WAS, and always WILL BE good in all that He does and says. And He made man in His image. (Genesis 1:26-27) So He did not make him and her like the rest of His creation. He did not speak them into existence but formed him out of the dust of the ground. (2:7). He WAS because God made Him be.He has meaning because God made him that way.

And because God created him in His image, man spoke too. Though he could not speak anything into existence, because he is still a creature, as God’s likeness man could name things and thus be like God. He named the animals and he even named his wife (though we labour here to say that his wife had more meaning to him than the creatures that appeared before him). And when we look at it from this perspective we see the preciousness of words, or better that words (and meaning itself) are a gift from God.

For even God and man could talk, they could speak together. Precious words flowed between the Creator and His creature. They could understand each other, and man could obey the words of God.

But someone else spoke too. It was another creature. He spoke lies and persuaded man to believe in his lies. His lies through man’s fall brought death and misery into the world. Now when man speaks he does so according to the lies that he believed. (Genesis 3; Romans 3:13-14)

Yet God was not willing that that would be the final word. No, He said that He would put enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. Indeed the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. (Genesis 3:15). He said it would happen, in fact He guaranteed it.

So He spoke to His people (Israel) of old through His appointed prophets guiding them through His Spirit in order that the people might know that He was sending a Saviour. (2 Peter 1:21)  Though man could say nothing to convince God to stop Him from judging Him for His sins, though he couldn’t take God to court (Job 9:32) and defend himself, some said that God would provide. (Genesis 22:8)

Indeed God spoke to us though we didn’t want God to speak to us anymore. He sent the WORD (His Son) into the world (John 1:1&14) so that all who would with the heart and mouth confess Him would be saved (Romans 10:8-13) from the judgment to come. This Word saves because He was silent before His accusers and opened not His mouth (Isaiah 53:7). He did not defend Himself but went to His death. Yes Heaven was silent too; no words were given in response to His statement “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” as He suffered and died on the cross (Matthew 27:46) Forsaken that we might live forever, before the presence of our God, our Lord and Saviour because the Word took the penalty due to believers for their sin.

Those who are saved now, by God’s Spirit, are “swift to hear, slow to speak”. (James 1:19) They understand and follow the command that their “speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt” (Colossians 4:6); that lies and deceit are to be repalced with the words of the gospel: the good news, the good words, the good speech of God’s grace and mercy to fallen man.

But maybe you don’t agree. Maybe you don’t believe. But before you say anything, think: is what you are going to say mean something? anything? If not, why say anything at all?

“But the LORD is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him.” (Habakkuk 2:20)