His Say Each Day In Every Way – by Rev. Sjirk Bajema

 

Sermon on Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 44

Scripture Reading: Philippians 3:12-4:1

 

Congregation in our Lord Jesus Christ…

This Lord’s Day is quite extensive. There is a lot here about the Tenth Commandment. But was there a particular phrase or sentence which stood out for you? Perhaps if you’ve got it open now, there’s a part that strikes you. Anything?

Did you notice something in Answer 114? In response to the question, “But can those converted to God obey these commandments perfectly?” the Answer begins, “No. In this life even the holiest have only a small beginning of this obedience.”

Did you hear that? Even the holiest! Yes, the greatest saint we have always held so high! All of us are brought down to the same level in God’s sight.

This reminds me of something that has happened to me a number of times. It goes something like this. I get a telephone call from someone who is a bit mixed up in the faith. That person goes on and on about how bad she is, and how good I must be. After all, hadn’t I been brought up in a Christian family? I had been taught all along the proper way to live.

But they have an unbelieving family. While they’ve come into the faith, they’ve also quickly lost it. Or so they say.

Now when you first hear something like that, you’re concerned for them. It’s unusual for someone to talk so drastically about how bad they are. And this person seemed genuinely sorry for their wrong.

Yet, after having it repeated some more times, it doesn’t seem quite the same anymore. By saying this all the time, they make themselves believe they don’t have to face up to what the Lord expects in His Word. Why – their backgrounds are so terrible! Other believers always have a head-start, what with their Christian upbringing and all that!

It’s actually the same cop-out as those who believe they’re holier. After all, they’ve made the grade. They don’t need God’s Law either, though not for the reason of never being able to do it. They’ve done it!

Ever since Pelagius, a broad stream of Christian teaching has optimistically denied our bondage to sin, and so declared our freedom to do good.

In the process, a two-step Christianity has arisen. Believers have been graded. There are those who are “naming and claiming” God’s Word. They are doing well. They are healthy and wealthy.

And there are those who don’t do that. At least not with enough faith anyhow! But they could do it! If only they would say or do those certain things!

Only one way

Congregation, it all misses the mark. Until believers acknowledge they are totally bad, they’ll always have an excuse to keep away from God’s Law. And that’s where the Tenth Commandment so decisively points!

In the words of the first aspect to this Lord’s Day, there is ONLY ONE WAY! There is no other way than the Lord’s way.

Answer 113 is quite succinct. Because “not even the slightest thought or desire contrary to any one of God’s commandments should ever arise in my heart.”

There’s no escape here. But, then, who would want to escape? This, after all, is real freedom. Not freed from something but freed for someone! As the Answer goes on, “Rather, with all my heart I should always hate sin and take pleasure in what is right.”

This is what every one of us must go away this night determined to do! For we’re truly thankful. And it’s through such thanksgiving that our lives become filled with thanks-living!

Here, in this Tenth Commandment, even the very thought in our minds must be right! Our minds really drive our lives.

I can order you to do something, but if your heart’s not in it, it will be done literally half-heartedly! And that’s got no heart at all! That’s just going through the motions! That’s not ONLY ONE WAY!

Psalm 139:23-24, concludes with this sole direction. For David says there, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the life everlasting.”

With that blood of Jesus poured out for me upon Calvary’s tree, is there any other way I can see? ONLY ONE WAY! It’s always been this way, and it’s certainly not going to change now!

Despite your say

And that, I add congregation, DESPITE YOUR SAY! We come to our second aspect to this teaching.

It’s not easy being a Christian. That’s not something I need to remind you of, is it brothers and sisters? You’re just about to enter another week of hard struggle living out the faith once for all delivered to the saints! ONLY ONE WAY… DESPITE YOUR SAY!

Answer 114 begins by stating “even the holiest have only a small beginning of obedience,” it still lays before us what we ought to be! For it continues, “Nevertheless, with all seriousness of purpose they – that is, Christians – do begin to live according to all, not only some, of God’s commandments.” It often seems so much against our character, it opposes what we naturally love to do, but still, it’s laid before us!

We must recognise that we’re sinners. But not so that we wallow it, like those people I mentioned earlier on. Rather, so that we desperately depend on the Lord all the more!

If there is we lack it is this urgency to be on our knees, pleading with God. Our prayer lives are so… well… optional! It’s far from the life-and-death struggle it should be. In the words of Andrew Kuyvenhoven, “though most of us do little evil, we don’t do much good.”

We would speak against those non-Christians who say that they’re alright and have never done anyone any harm and so presume they should be right for heaven, while we’re doing virtually the same thing! It’s not so much what we have done, but what we have left undone!

Boys and girls, perhaps you would be able to say to me, “Mr Preacher, I haven’t hurt anyone. Well, at least not real bad!” So, you don’t do too much evil. But can you say, “Mr Preacher, I’m always looking to help others”?

The Ten Commandments may appear to be a series of things we aren’t meant to do. Many of them begin by saying “You shall not…!” But if this is the way we show our relationship with Jesus then don’t they show us even more what we are to do?

Just as our looking forward to being with an earthly friend will see us becoming eager and prepared, doesn’t our looking to Jesus fill us with keen anticipation? And that is DESPITE YOUR SAY!

And you must be His every day

We’ve come to our third aspect. For having seen that there is ONLY ONE WAY, and that DESPITE YOUR SAY, you realise AND YOU MUST BE HIS EVERY DAY!

What we don’t have points us to Him who does have! Realising this in our daily lives makes all the difference.

Take the first part of Answer 115. As the question asks why preach the commandments when we can’t obey them anyway, we confess we preach it, “so that the longer we live the more we may come to know our sinfulness and the more eagerly look to Christ for forgiveness of sins and righteousness.” Not that we can become Jesus, but we so much want to be like Him, and to be like Him in everything!

Our point says YOU MUST BE HIS EVERYDAY, It’s a command, but the Holy Spirit also puts that desire in our hearts.

I mean, without rules we don’t know how to love. If our teenagers are told to be home by a certain time, and “Yes Mum I’ll be home by then,” but low and behold the magic hour and no Cinderella, and young man, young woman, you’re not being very loving!

That’s what we do. We don’t only go against the rules. We make a joke of it!

“Ah, Dad, it’s not so bad. Anyway it was great fun! Old so-and-so was doing this, and what’s his name did that. It was a real scream!”

You’re not really happy, though. The rule was clear enough. You were just too lazy to do it!

Yes, that’s what it was! It takes hard work to live the right way. It hurts!

John Calvin describes it this way; “The law is to the flesh like the whip to the idle and stubborn ass, to arouse it to work. Even for a spiritual man, not yet free of the weight of the flesh, the law remains the constant sting that won’t let him stand still.” (Institutes, II, vii, 12)

Congregation, it really is DESPITE YOUR SAY. For to think about what someone else would like is the hardest work! It just doesn’t come naturally!

And yet to do it makes all the difference. As we see in the struggle of David in Psalm 32. There he says in the verses 3 and 4, “While I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.” It doesn’t pay to go your own way!

But, listen, David doesn’t stop. He continues in verse 5, “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD’ – and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

The man was already a believer! But David knows he must be the Lord’s every day!

And each day – aren’t you? Isn’t there that eager looking to Christ for constant forgiveness of sins and righteousness?

You know, it’s actually quite simple. Jesus told us this very plainly in Matthew 7. For in verses 7 and 8 He says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you shall find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” The crunch is, of course, whether you are asking and seeking and knocking!

So the question facing you is this: Are you His today? Have you been before the King’s throne and sought His audience? Has there been that desperate search for how He wants you to live?

And when He gave it to you, did you receive it as such? Then you’ve met Him who says to those He loves, in Revelation 3:20, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will go in and eat with him, and he with me.”

What a glorious picture! The King of Heaven awaits! No wonder that Answer 115 concludes, “while praying to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, we may never stop striving to be renewed more and more after God’s image, until after this life we reach our goal: perfection.”

To keep looking up really puts us in the picture! In heaven’s light we truly have sight! That’s what the Holy Spirit joins us to. This is why Paul could say in Philippians 3:12, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

Having seen ONLY ONE WAY… DESPITE YOUR SAY, and that YOU MUST BE HIS EVERY DAY, we end knowing THAT’S HOW IT’S GOING TO STAY.

You see, dear friends, we become so completely involved in thanks-living that we’re constantly going His way.

It’s something you may not be aware of, but it does make such a difference to where you are. Those who love with you; those who work with you; those who play sport against you; they are shown who the Lord is. We are heaven-ward bound, and the luggage we carry clearly shows our direction.

For our treasures aren’t earthly. In a very materialistic age the things that matter for us aren’t what others are pursuing. And the last thing we’ll do is freeze our bodies in some special device in the vain hope that one day the technology will be there to keep us alive forever. Because we know we are already alive forever!

The apostle Paul showed this clearly in Philippians 3:19-21. There he draws the ultimate contrast: “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”

This is where the Ten Commandments are so beautiful for the believer. Instead of pointing to man’s inadequacy, as they do to those who don’t believe, they have become for us the way to heaven itself! And certainly not because it gives us any credit, but they draw us so much closer the more and more we live by them. Thanksgiving is thanks-living!

The Catechism calls this goal “perfection”. And who else but the perfect One, Jesus Christ Himself, to show it to us. He who was obedient to death itself!

Our prayer is to be like Him. To follow Him who prayed to His Father, “Your will be done,” because it was being done! Following Him, learning to walk again; trusting Him. Then we’re praying after Him, “Take my life and let it be Consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Take my moments and my days; Let them flow in endless praise, Let them flow in endless praise.”

Amen!

 

PRAYER:
Let’s pray… O Great and most Gracious God, We have heard again Your Word for our lives. And what a life it is! For whose life does Your Word show but He who is the Life, none other than our only Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ.

May Your Spirit stir us so that we follow hard after Him. As He has gone before so may we join with Him.

In His precious name, we pray, Amen.