Word of Salvation – Vol.51 No.20 – May 2007

 

Right with God?

A Sermon by Rev Sjirk Bajema

on Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 23

Scripture Reading:  Matthew 22:1-14

 

Congregation in our Lord Jesus Christ.

At the end of Lords’ Day 22 of the Heidelberg Catechism, we have come to the end of the exposition of the Apostles’ Creed. Through some sixteen Lord’s Days, themselves divided up into thirty-six Questions & Answers, the Catechism explains this summary of what the Bible teaches us about the triune God.

But having that, and after many Sundays of declaring that Creed, of what benefit is it to you? Question 59 challenges us very bluntly: “What good does it do to you, however, to believe all this?”

Could it possibly be that after having recited or sung the Creed, and particularly after having it explained in the Catechism, we still cannot see the relevance of it? Do we have to feel sorry for you? Because what else can we feel for that person who every week confesses the words of the Creed, and who hears what it means, and yet does not realise what it’s about?

Mind you, there will be times when our concentration lapses, and so we don’t pay attention the way we should. That happens, doesn’t it? But to be completely ignorant? To not know what Jesus has done for you? That cannot be for the true believer!

Instead, the true believer recognises in this Creed, and its explanation, the words of Answer 59. For, “In Christ I am right with God and heir to life everlasting.”

Congregation, we have been given an amazing gift! This is no ordinary gift – it’s no material, earthly present, which lasts at the most for the years that we live here. Rather, this gift makes me, as a believer, “heir to life everlasting.” You are going to inherit eternal life!

Now, if you were to ask someone on the street whether or not they would like to live forever, obviously you would get a very clear answer. Of course they would want to live forever! “Don’t you?” they would ask back.

Isn’t this what modern medical research is so busy with, trying to make us live longer and better! And you can’t get much better than living forever.

But there is a condition to this eternal life. And here we come to the first point. It asks… WHAT DO WE NEED?

Here Lord’s Day 23 opens up what is needed to receive the gift of eternal life. And it is simple. In the words of Answer 59 what you need is that you are right with God. And what you need to be right with God is true faith in Christ. And what you need is also the gift!

Now, that sends our logic spinning! How can the gift be also something that’s expected of us? Is it a gift to me, or is it expected of me? In getting to the heart of this we find the wonderful richness of the Gospel.

See what Jesus taught.

Take, for example, that story we heard earlier of the great Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22:1-14. As a result of the invited guests declining their invitations, the Master had told his servants in verse 9, “Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.” So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find – both good and bad. Soon the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the Master came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who wasn’t wearing a wedding gown. Although the invitation to the wedding was a kind gift, there was still an obligation involved.

Mind you, that thing needed was also provided by the Master so that all would be dressed the same, whether rich or poor, and all would be clean. Still – you had to wear it! And that wedding guest had refused to wear the gown!

Take now the gift of being made right with God. This is a gift made possible through the doing and dying of our Lord Jesus Christ. Still, this gift needs to be made our own. In order for us to have eternal life we need to be made right with God.

That’s why Question 60 asks, “How are you right with God?” And so the first line of Answer 60 responds, “Only by true faith in Jesus Christ.”

How do we claim this gift? What is it that enables us to share in life everlasting? True faith – that is what you need. We must have a believing heart. In the words of John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”

The Master’s wrath lay upon that unwilling guest at the banquet. He wasn’t meant to be there! And yet, we, as members of Christ’s precious Body are meant to be here. We have been made right with God. We are wearing those wedding gowns. In the words of Revelation 19:14, we are dressed in fine linen, white and clean. And that cleanness and rightness before God is certainly not of ourselves; it’s all of God’s amazing grace!

Here we can think of the Philippian jailer in Acts 16. There we read in Acts 16:16-34 of how, after a severe earthquake, the jailer was about to kill himself, because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But in verse 28 we read that Paul shouts out, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”

Naturally, the jailer is shocked. And he falls, trembling, before Paul and Silas. Then he and his family come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s filled with joy because they have been led into the faith that made them right with God. He would never be scared that way again! But how did this gift come about?

So we come to our second point… HOW DID IT COME? Here we come to the beautiful words of the rest of Answer 60. And in breaking up this Answer, we see, in the first place, our complete unworthiness of this gift. As we confess, “Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments and of never having kept any of them, and even though I am still inclined toward all evil…”

Can you sense the reality of these words? There is no one good! We have all fallen short of the glory of God. Oh, yes, there was that one special exception. But he was the God-man!

We, however, are only human beings living in bodies, and in a world, which constantly reminds us of our sinfulness. Our inevitable end was to be forever without God! Forever in that place of utter confusion, complete darkness, and the deepest bitterest despair.

There will be no justice there – no kind of order or control. And definitely no love! This is where we should have been going ever since Adam broke that covenant with God in Paradise. Because of sin, man was driven out of the Garden, and made to work the ground from which he had been created. Our own wrong has cut us off from God.

And we would still be cut off, doomed to be lost forever, if God Himself had not intervened for us. That’s why, in picking up where we stopped with Answer 60, we read, “nevertheless, without my deserving it at all, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me.”

This is the good news of the Gospel! We have been made right with God. The gift has become ours. Indeed, it is “as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner!” It is “as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ had been obedient for me.”

Dear friends, your whole position before the Mighty God has been radically changed. No longer is there that death sentence hanging over your head! The fear has gone!

And how is all this made mine? Which way could possibly bring me this eternal treasure?

Congregation, the end of Answer 60 says it very simply: “All I need to do is to accept this gift of God with a believing heart.” We’re pointed again to the true faith we need in Jesus Christ. This was the answer given to the Philippian jailer, as he pleaded in Acts 16:30, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” For he was told, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved – you and your household” (16:31).

Of course, as we consider the Jailer’s question, we can see already how much the Spirit had been at work in bringing him to this point. And the same applies to us. Before we commit ourselves to faith in God, He’s already been at work. He called us by His Word and Spirit; He caused our hearts to be born again – to be regenerated. And God has caused us to be converted – to be turned around – to be able to see the situation as it really is.

It’s only through our Lord that we see these words of the Catechism to be ever so true. For once we see the reality of our situation, once we see what it is God has done, then we cry to Him for mercy. In the words of the hymn we sing:

“Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress; Helpless, look to Thee for grace;

Foul I to the fountain fly; Wash me Saviour, or I die.”

Wasn’t this indeed the situation for the apostle Paul? He was brought to that place where everything he thought he had was completely stripped away. There, on that Damascus road, he was forcibly made to realise that nothing he did could make him right with God.

He had tried to do it himself. He had been the zealous Pharisee, even to the extent of persecuting the early Christians so that he could earn favour with God. Yet, like each one of us, he was totally sinful. There’s nothing we can do that can please God.

When Paul was converted he realised that he did not have a righteousness of his own that came by keeping the law. Instead, he had a righteousness that came through faith in Christ. So he could write, with real conviction, to the Philippians in chapter 3 verse 7, “whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.” This justification by faith alone is a dominant theme in Paul’s letters. For to be justified means to stand right before God.

And so we come to our third point: Because, I SEE IT NOW! We realise what this gift is. No more questions – only the most irrefutable fact of all! I SEE IT NOW!

Amongst his writings, it is in the letter to the Romans that Paul especially shows this. Romans 3:21-25 draws it altogether. It says, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”

Beautiful words! We begin to see here what makes up our gift. For if the gift is being made right with God, we cannot go past the work of Christ. It’s for Christ’s sake that we are made right with God.

It’s not for tradition’s sake that we end our prayers in His Name. It is because His sacrifice places them before His Father. You believe that?

As that well-used courtroom illustration describes it: We are in the dock, waiting for the guilty verdict. The evidence presented by the prosecution has been overwhelming! There’s no doubt about it! Every single part of our lives is tainted with guilt! All our lives we have rebelled against all that is good. There’s only place we deserve to go!

But, then, just as we’re about to be sentenced, someone steps in front of us. What’s this? Haven’t we realised the judgment was absolutely right? Who is the one daring to stop it?

Congregation, he is the One who is none less than our Saviour, Jesus Christ. He pleads our case. He argues with the Judge – His Heavenly Father. He points to the atoning sacrifice that He’s made on our behalf. “Father,” He cries, “this one is mine! For this stained and blotted person I poured out my own life’s blood! I died for him, for her.” Suddenly it’s all so different! I SEE IT NOW!

The Judge cannot see it any other way now. The evidence is clear. The punishment has been paid. Indeed, it is “as if I had never sinned, nor been a sinner.” There’s no record against us. Nothing stands between us and God.

It is through faith that this being right with God becomes ours. Faith is the “hand” which reaches out and takes Christ. Faith is the “channel” through which we receive Christ as our very own.

Brother and sisters, young people, no one can be saved without faith in Jesus Christ. But we must also see that this faith is in Christ alone. Faith without Christ has no merit. It cannot make us right with God. The Reformers and countless other believers throughout church history prove this.

And this is what Answer 61 has to leave us with. Christ alone! “Only [his] satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness make me right with God.”

Often we hear among Christians that the answer to our problems is that we need more faith. If we have more our difficulties will be gone, they say. And if we pray harder and longer there’s no problems. How foolish! Faith doesn’t save us. Our prayers have no credit. What we do deserves no merit.

The example of Paul proves that. And so does the life of Martin Luther. For Luther tried everything that the Roman Catholic church taught he needed to do in order to be right with God. He starved himself until his belly-button touched his backbone. He outdid all the other monks in his attempt to gain peace with God. He confessed even the most insignificant things in great detail.

Yet it was as he studied the Book of Romans and realised, by God’s Spirit, that it’s God’s justifying grace you need, that he was brought face-to-face with Jesus Christ. Then he knew – nothing he could bring, simply to God’s grace in Jesus could he cling!

But, have you seen this? Yes, you, the person sitting right in front of me in the pew! Has God’s Spirit worked in you the recognition that it’s nothing you’ve done that’s made you right with God?

Can you say that? Now, together with Paul in Ephesians 2 verses 4 and 5, do you believe, “It’s because of his grace to me, that God, who is rich in mercy, made me alive with Christ even when I was dead in my transgressions. It’s by grace I have been saved!”

Can you? Will your life sing the song that the Name of Jesus means ‘Saviour’? For then – brother, sister, young person – the Apostles’ Creed will be everything that it was ever meant to be. And what a wonderful confession of God’s love it is!

Amen.

PRAYER:

Let’s pray…

Dearest Lord Jesus, how we are humbled again by all that you do. While we were helpless, sinking in our sin, you reached out and saved us. As we stood condemned in the Divine Dock, you bore the judgment.

O Lord, receive our grateful thanks. And Lord, by your Spirit, help us to live out our thanks, today, tomorrow, and for as many days as you give us.

Amen.