Word of Salvation – Vol. 25 No. 37 – July 1979

 

Lord’s Day 13

 

Sermon by Rev. W. F. Van Brussel on Lord’s Day 13

Scripture Reading: Psalm 2 & 1John 5: 1-5 & 18-21

Psalter Hymnal: 409, 194, 171:1,2 & 3, 221, 386

 

With the Lord’s Day 13 our Catechism continues discussing the NAMES of our Mediator. The Names, JESUS and CHRIST have been looked at. In passing also even the name, CHRISTIAN, although that seemed a little out of place under the heading, “OUR DELIVERANCE”. And now the Catechism proceeds to turn to the Names, GOD’S ONLY BEGOTTEN SON and OUR LORD.

Every Bible Reader knows that God has lots of children, and all sorts of children, too. There may even be some pretty rare characters among them, at least according to our taste and way of thinking. There may be some that we might not think fit for that privileged condition of being children in the family of God.

God’s family room is crowded all right. Yet, it is never overcrowded. There is plenty of room. And what seems even more important – there is plenty of attention for every single one of them.

It is a refreshing thought, in particular in our day, as we are not too happy about the fact that the number of children of God is decreasing proportionally rather than increasing, that the total figure of God’s children in the Bible is compared with the number of sand-grains on the beach, or the number of the stars of heaven. We have no way of counting these, have we?

It is a sobering thought indeed that these pictures hold for God’s family. It might do us a world of good at times to go to the beach for that purpose only. Did you ever let a handful of sand go through your fingers with that thought in mind? Do you ever go outside at night not only to watch a beautiful sky full of stars, but to pause with the thought that the LORD God told Abraham to come out of his tent at night and to look up to the stars and try to number them?

Just imagine that you go to the beach, or to your backyard at night simply to look up and to be re-assured of the fact that the LORD God has always meant business with His love for sinners! We certainly need this kind of re-assurance at times. The great man of God, Elijah, needed it one day when he thought that he was the only one left who would take the LORD God seriously in his day and age.

Do we not believe that the Christ of God is busy, right now, preparing places in the spacious home with its many mansions for all the children of God to live in for ever and ever? For one day, we do not exactly know when, all the children of God of all ages, will come home with God to live with Him in the Kingdom of their exalted Lord and Saviour.

Now all these children of God, except One, are adopted children. God’s adoption laws are widely open for children of all races, colours, nationalities, sexes, ranks, tongues, you name it. . . . ! For we read in the Word of God, our Bible, that TO ALL WHO RECEIVE HIM, i.e. Jesus Christ, GOD GIVES THE RIGHT TO BECOME CHILDREN OF GOD.

But amidst all these many children, God has one very special Child. That One is in a class all by Himself. He is God’s NATURAL Son, His ETERNAL Son, the ONLY BEGOTTEN One. This is the Son Who towers head and shoulders above all the rest of God’s children, His adopted children.

He is one with all the others, and all the others are one with Him. Yet there is a vast difference. It is just about the same as it is with the Father’s relationship with the children.

You know, the children are all allowed to say, OUR FATHER to Him, but they have to add these few words, WHO ART IN HEAVEN. Our Father for sure, but different all right. Close to us and yet high above us, far beyond us, on a completely different level.

Even so, the Son is One of us; Man among men.

Yet He is the ETERNAL, NATURAL Son of God. As there is a difference between Creator and creatures, between God and men and also between sinners and the Perfect One, so there is a terrific difference and a distance between the ONLY BEGOTTEN Son and all the ADOPTED sons and daughters of God.

Yet, they are REAL sons and daughters of God, no doubt. The only begotten One, the eternal Son, is the One Who opened the door to let all the adopted children in. He Himself was that door. He knew what He was doing and He never regretted it, although we shall never be able to understand that. It even says about Him in Heb.2:11 that HE IS NOT ASHAMED TO CALL THEM BROTHERS!

(What about saying this together right now: God’s only begotten, eternal Son is NOT ASHAMED to call US His brothers and sisters…!)

Is that not a beautiful thing to believe and to say aloud?

Yet, Jesus Christ is God’s very special Son, HIS DELIGHT, as Prov.8:30 has it. He is the REFLECTION, the radiance, OF GOD’S GLORY, Heb.1:3. The Father sees Himself back in His Son.

ONLY BEGOTTEN, what does that mean?

It means, UNIQUE, the one and only. This little word, UNIQUE, does not even exhaust the meaning of ONLY BEGOTTEN. It also means, BORN IN A UNIQUE WAY. Born in a way altogether different from the way you and I and our children were born. Among men we shall never find a person who has been a father all his life. All human fathers remember the day when they became fathers. Not so God.

He has been Father as from eternity, because the Son is eternal as the Father is eternal. God has never been singular. He has always been plural. Never I, always WE. God has never known loneliness, we might say. Or has He?

Well, we know that it happened once, that the Son said to the Father, MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME? Was not our Saviour utterly lonely, then and there? But was not the Father lonely then as well? A loneliness different from the way we learn to know it, but it was a kind of loneliness, and a very bad kind for that matter.

But this is the Gospel isn’t it? FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON for it! We’ll never be able to establish what THIS giving really has meant, and done, to Him. That goes entirely beyond what we can understand, or even begin to comprehend.

As compared with Jesus Christ, the only begotten of God, we can only be called FOUNDLINGS, as somebody indeed has done. Now foundlings, of course, are such unfortunate children as have parents who do not take responsibility for them.

In a way this is how it is with children in Christian homes. For Christian parents realise, don’t they, that they cannot bring up their children exactly the way they should. That is why they charge them to the account of SOMEONE ELSE on the day of their baptism. That is where God ADOPTS them openly, where He lays His hand on them and says: These children are Mine!

For that reason Christian children have nothing to complain about. They have no reason whatsoever to feel ashamed about having been adopted. It makes a lot of difference, you see, who it is that adopts you. GOD adopted us. And when He Adopts, He does it in such a splendid way that we shall never be made to feel it, that we are children ONLY BY ADOPTION. Oh no, for Him there is no difference whatsoever between CHRIST and the CHRISTIAN (remember what we said earlier about whether it was the appropriate place to talk about the Christian under this heading here?) No difference in this sense that He would never favour His only begotten Son AT THE EXPENSE OF the adopted children. No way!

It is absolutely terrific and ideal to be a member in the family of God. All the children are really made to feel welcome. Just think for a moment about this beautiful prayer which Jesus prayed on behalf of ALL His brothers and sisters in JOHN 17:24, FATHER, I WANT THOSE YOU HAVE GIVEN ME TO BE WITH ME WHERE I AM, AND TO SEE MY GLORY, THE GLORY YOU HAVE GIVEN ME BEFORE THE CREATION OF THE WORLD!

Jesus Christ, our Brother, has given us according to JOHN 17:22 glory that the Father has given Him, THAT THEY MAY BE ONE AS WE ARE ONE.

Oh of course, there is, there MUST be, a big difference between the Son of God and us, the adopted children of God. We have been adopted BY GRACE. There was no merit whatsoever on our part. It is only an unspeakable miracle that you and I and many others are children of God. Yet once we ARE children of God, we are treated as God’s children all the way!

As we now turn to the last Name mentioned in the Creed, OUR LORD, we do not really make such a big jump as it sounds. Yes, it sounds that way when we speak about Jesus Christ, our big Brother the one moment and Jesus Christ, OUR LORD, the next.

What we have in mind here is this: Our Lord Jesus knows exactly — and that not from hearsay — what it means to be a servant. There will never be a servant of Jesus Christ who would be able to state what servants usually feel inclined to say about their masters, “Oh yes, but he has no clue about what we are going through. He has no idea what it is like to be a servant!”

For has there ever been one single person who could claim that he has been a servant the way the Lord Jesus Christ has been one? Is this not the very reason why He can always sympathise with us in our particular conditions of hardship, because He has gone through all our miseries Himself? And that in a much deeper and more thoroughgoing way than anybody else? Was it not due to His acting as a Servant, THE SERVANT OF THE LORD’, as Isaiah would call Him, that He was able to open the door of the Father’s Home and let you and me and many other sinners in? Is it not because He has worked as a Slave Himself, that He has been enabled to release us from our slavery and make us children of God and co-heirs with Himself?

He will never forget what it has cost Him to purchase us. He has paid the incredible price of His own precious blood for it. But that is the reason, then, too, why AS LORD He will make sure that nobody snatches any of us out of His hand.

This is what Answer 34 stresses so well: He has set us free from sin and the tyranny of the devil, and has bought us, body and soul, not with gold or silver (as Peter wrote), but with His precious blood, TO BE HIS VERY OWN.

It is because He is our Lord that there is, that there can be, PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS. That believers can keep it up! That people such as you and I, weak in themselves, can be Christians for keeps. Our Saviour is OUR LORD at the same time. We are for ever safe in His arms, in His hands.

But, of course, the other side of this picture is: Are you and I happy about that? Are we happy to have Him for our Lord? In other words, are we ready to accept His right to rule in our lives? Are we keen to acknowledge His rule, even when He exercises this through the authority of parents who can, and who do, make mistakes; of teachers whom we cannot always appreciate; of ministers who can be impatient; of judges who might seem partial at times; of governments that do not do what we feel they should do in a certain situation?

We most certainly need the Holy Spirit for this. NO ONE CAN SAY, JESUS IS LORD, EXCEPT BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. It is also through the Holy Spirit that we must learn to live as members of one and the same family together with all other people who love the Lord Jesus as their Saviour and Lord, no matter how much they differ from us in a great many things!

Let us always keep in mind that this, OUR LORD, was the One Who spoke the words, and practised them as well: NOW THAT I, YOUR LORD AND TEACHER, HAVE WASHED YOUR FEET, YOU ALSO SHOULD WASH ONE ANOTHERS’ FEET. This Lord did certainly not lord it over us, when He was among us on earth. HE CAME NOT TO BE SERVED, BUT TO SERVE! And by doing so, He made it abundantly clear how much He indeed WAS LORD of, and over, all.

He BECAME Lord in a strange way. (Of course He was Lord from eternity in one sense, viz. as Son of God; yet He became LORD, we could say, as God-man, by accomplishing His great ministry of atonement here on earth) He BECAME Lord by defeating all His enemies, sin, death, the devil, hell. He set us free from the stranglehold of all those evil powers. By doing this, He made us not only His brothers and sisters, BUT HIS POSSESSION! We belong to Him. He is our LORD and our GOD, as Thomas discovered eventually.

We know that, because He became our Lord, the devil is for ever fighting a losing battle. Yet, the devil does not plan to give up. Although his cause is lost, he keeps up his counterattacks. And for us, let’s admit and realise it, he still is far too strong. He still can do, and does do an awful lot of unnecessary harm. And we cannot win!

But our Lord has won and we, who believe in Him, are His own!

Let us only live that way, as people who were made by God, people delivered by God, people preserved by God through faith in Jesus Christ, GOD’S ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, OUR LORD!

Amen.