Word of Salvation – Vol. 47 No. 04 – January 2002

 

The Means God Uses to Produce and Strengthen Faith

 

Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Lord’s Day 25 (Q&A 65-68 Heid Cat)

Scripture Readings: Matthew 28:18-20; Romans 10:11-17

Suggested Hymns: BoW 92; 346; 485; 113:1, 4, 5

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have been looking at God’s free grace to sinners.  He declares the sinner right with Him on the basis of Christ’s death.  This is the gospel and this is what we are called upon to believe.  Even faith is a gift from God.  If faith was something that we could master ourselves, like learning to ride a bicycle, then churches would produce faith manuals and provide training sessions.  Or if faith was something that we could give to others, like food to the hungry, then churches would advertise: come and worship here, we give the best faith.

But it doesn’t work like that.  The church, or we, cannot produce faith and therefore we cannot give it to anyone.  We do speak about passing on the faith to the next generation but then we are talking about teaching biblical doctrine to our children.  We can also show by example what it is like to believe in God.  But what we cannot do is flick a switch inside them that makes them believe and trust in God.  We would dearly love to, especially with the rebellious ones, but faith is not ours to give.  Only God can give faith.  The question that we are dealing with now is: how does God give faith?  Yes, how does faith begin to work in the heart.  Well, God uses His Word and the Sacraments.  They are the means the Lord uses to show His wonderful free grace to sinners.  The Word and the Sacraments, they are the channels, the instruments God uses.  Let us then hear the Word of God about…

THE MEANS GOD USES TO PRODUCE AND STRENGTHEN FAITH.

1.  Through the Word, God’s Spirit produces and strengthen faith.

Before the Bible was written, God revealed Himself in different ways.  There were special appearances of God, like those that Abraham received.  We call them theophanies.  Or God spoke in an audible voice, like Moses heard on Mt Sinai, where the commandments were given.  Or God performed special signs and wonders.  Or God made His purposes known in visions or direct speech to the prophets.  And through these special appearances – often dramatic and spectacular – God caused the people to believe in Him.

These special revelations of God did not happen all the time.  They occurred with Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but not every day like.  And then quite a bit with Moses and Israel during the exodus from Egypt and in the wilderness on the way to the Promised land.  In those days there was not yet a written Word of God.  But Moses was instructed by God to write Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  After Moses, God made the prophets speak and write the things He wanted to say to His people.  But mostly Israel heard from God through the Law, which were the five books of Moses, and the Prophets.  These were regularly read out to God’s covenant people.

During the time of Elijah and Elisha there were again a number of signs and wonders that God performed in order to win His people back from pagan idolatry.  But the Law and the Prophets were the main means that God’s Spirit used to produce and strengthen faith in the hearts of His covenant people.

Jesus’ ministry was full of signs and wonders.  And that’s understandable because with Jesus God revealed Himself most clearly.  In fact Jesus was God’s fullest and final revelation.  The task of the New Testament apostles and prophets who came after Jesus was to reinforce and apply all that Jesus did and taught.  God did add some new revelation to the apostles but it consisted mainly of applying Jesus’ Person and Work to the New Testament church.  When the apostles and prophets of the first century died, then the books that make up Old and New Testament became God’s Word for the church.  In Jesus God has already said everything He wants to say to us.  We base this on what is said in Hebrews 1:1-2: “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son.”

For this reason God commanded the New Testament church to go to the whole world and make disciples of all nations by teaching them to observe everything Jesus has commanded.  Only when people, wherever they live in the world, hear or read the written Word of God about Jesus, will they believe.  No one has come to a saving faith in Christ where the Scriptures have not been preached and taught.  So for all these reasons we keep on emphasising that faith only comes when the Holy Spirit produces it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel.

And yet throughout the history of the church, and still today, some people love to claim that God spoke to them in ways other than through the Scriptures.  Or they hear someone else make an extraordinary claim of how God revealed Himself to them in some special experience.  And they get all excited about that.  We have the Bible as a clear and true and infallible record of all the wonderful things that God has done in ages past, and especially what He has done in Christ.  And yet for some strange reason some people get all fired up about experiences; either their own or of others, which are subjective, vague and open to error.  God is perfectly free, of course, to use any event, or any person, to prepare the hearts of those whom He is going to call through His Word.  Some missionaries have come to peoples who have never before heard the Word of God and yet were keen to receive the gospel.

An invitation to come to church or a warm welcome given to the visit at church may be the Spirit’s way of making someone receptive to the gospel when they hear it preached to them.  Your Christian witness to an unbeliever can lead to a follow-up contact where he welcomes regular instruction of the gospel.  God’s way into the heart can be a church wedding or a church funeral, where people, who may otherwise never hear God’s Word, will hear it then.

God can use your invitation to a neighbour for a cuppa or a meal as a means to reach their hearts.  He can use loneliness to drive a person to search for God.  In fact, more often than not, it is hardship and not affluence that drives people to call out to God for help and deliverance.  Suffering, more so than health, has been used by God to have people come to know about His peace and comfort.

Of course, missionaries have also met with hostility and sometimes been killed.  Life’s trials can also make people bitter and resentful over against God.  Lack of Christian love and un-Christian behaviour by Christians can cause people to give the church a big miss.  Cruel teasing and ridicule at the Christian school can drive a person away from God.

But whatever ways God uses to prepare the heart towards a saving faith, they are merely avenues leading up to what only the preaching of the holy gospel can do.  A general interest in God is not yet saving faith.  A mere seeking or a searching for God does not save the sinner.  Christ saves sinners through faith and faith is a combination of knowledge, acceptance and trust.  In order to believe, I must know what the Bible is teaching.  Then I must accept as truth what the Bible is teaching.  And then I must personally trust that Jesus is also my Saviour and Lord.  But for God’s Spirit to begin producing faith in the heart there has to be some knowledge of what salvation in Christ is about.  It’s the preaching of the gospel that God has decided on as a means to impart that knowledge and as a persuasion to accept and trust.  And once faith has begun in the heart, like the sprouting of a small plant, then it needs the ongoing preaching and teaching of God’s Word to keep it alive and make it grow.

But we have not yet said how the Holy Spirit uses the Scriptures to produce faith in the heart.  Let’s look at a couple of examples from the Bible.  We mention Lydia first.  She was a Jewish woman and therefore worshipped God in the Old Testament way.  On the outskirts of Philippi, at a place near a river, Lydia and some other women used to come together for prayer.  Lydia and her companions had not yet heard that Jesus was the Messiah promised in the Old Testament.  Providentially, God got Paul and Silas to go to this place by the river and there Lydia and her companions heard the gospel preached to them.  The Bible says, “The Lord opened her (Lydia’s) heart to respond to Paul’s message” (Acts 16:14).

The Spirit used the preaching of Paul to touch Lydia’s heart.  As she listened she began to realise that she needed to be saved through Christ in order to be right with God.  The other women who were with her also heard the same message, but on that particular day it was only Lydia who responded to the preaching.  God’s Spirit works as He pleases.  He uses God’s Word to work faith in the heart but it remains God’s sovereign pleasure as to whom He will cause to respond and when.  Our task is simply to keep on preaching and teaching His Word.  We simply sow the seed and God will produce a harvest.

But God has given a most comforting promise to believers.  When they nurture their children in God’s ways, then He will also be the God of their children and give them His Holy Spirit.  I am talking about the wonderful covenant of grace.  But more about this when we look at the sacrament of Baptism.

The other example is the Philippian jailer.  God prepared his heart quite differently from the way He did with Lydia.  The jailer was probably a Roman and therefore had no prior knowledge of God.  Paul and Silas were brought to his prison in a terrible state.  They had been beaten and severely flogged.  The jailer was probably used to that.  He was told to guard them carefully, which he did by putting them in an inner cell and clamping their feet in the stocks.  Despite their pain and discomfort, Paul and Silas were singing hymns to God in the night but we don’t know if the jailer heard that.  The other prisoners certainly did.

Then God used a violent earthquake to wreck the jail, causing the doors of the prison to fall off their hinges and prisoners’ chains to come lose.  But none escaped.  The jailer did not know that yet and was about to commit suicide, fearing the wrath of his superiors because of criminals being on the loose.  But he heard Paul’s urgent cry not to harm himself for none of the prisoners had escaped.  The jailer was overcome.  The man he took delivery of the previous night, beaten and flogged and whom he had put in the stocks, seemed to have everything under control.  The jailer fell on his knees before Paul and Silas, trembling, and full of remorse.  He asked Paul and Silas, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30).

Did he know what he was asking?  Did he know what he had to be saved from?  Up to this moment he had not heard anything yet from the Word of God.  Maybe some bits and pieces from the singing of Paul and Silas during the night.  But somehow God had prepared the jailer’s heart through all the dramatic events of the night.  He took Paul and Silas into his house, washed their wounds, and listened to Paul and Silas speaking the Word of the Lord to him and all the others in house.  After being instructed from the Scriptures, the jailer and his family believed in God.  All were baptised and the jailer was filled with joy.

But what about Paul’s own conversion?  Whilst on his way to Damascus God struck him with a blinding light and knocked him from his horse.  Now some people will only accept a conversion as a real conversion if it is as sudden and dramatic as that of Paul.  God merely speaking through His Word and the Spirit producing faith in a gradual way as the Lord did with Timothy, who from childhood knew the Scriptures because had a Christian mother and grandmother, is apparently not good enough.  Yet in that way God converted Timothy.

In fact, Paul also knew the Scriptures since childhood.  He was a Jew.  He, too, was part of God’s covenant people.  Stopping Paul on his way to Damascus was not the first time God had contact with Paul.  It had started much earlier.  His forefathers had served God.  With a strong tradition in Judaism, Paul had become a Pharisee.  When he helped in the stoning of Stephen he thought he was serving God.  You could say that God had been preparing Paul’s heart for years even before his conversion.  But up till his experience on the road to Damascus, Paul had never understood what part Jesus played in God’s salvation of sinners.

Come to think of it, most of you who now believe and have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, became Christians like Timothy.  Many of you have or had Christian parents who told you about the Lord and read you Bible stories from when you were a toddler.  Even before you could talk or walk they took you to church.  What I am saying is that the things of God have surrounded many Christians for years.  It’s the way of the covenant.  That’s how God produced faith in you.  There are not so many people who begin to believe from the very first time they attended a church service, or the first time they read the Bible or a Christian tract.  It is usually during the follow-up instruction that the person begins to turn to Christ.

Some of you young fellows have been working on cars for years.  Maybe your Dad has a bit of workshop at home and you grew up with bits and pieces of a car all over the garage floor.  By the time you were old enough for your licence you probably knew how to take an engine apart and put it back together again.

Now the Christian home, the Christian church and the Christian school are God’s workshops where you have become familiar with the Bible and Christ.  Growing up in a home where God is prayed to and the Bible read at meal times, where you are encouraged to have your own devotions, and where everyone tries to do things the Christian way, is a wonderful environment for God to prepare your heart for a personal faith in Him.  And the same goes for the church and the Christian school you attend.  In all of that you are exposed to God’s Word.  You become familiar with it and unless you rebel against it, the Lord will produce faith in your heart.  And not only produce it, but also strengthen that faith as you continue to be around in God’s workshops, the Christian home, church and school.

2.  Also through the Sacraments, God’s Spirit strengthens faith

God’s Spirit does not use the sacraments to produce faith, we just heard He uses the Word for that.  The purpose of the sacraments is to strengthen faith.  The Roman Catholic Church has always maintained that faith enters the heart also through the sacraments.  Hence the emphasis given to the sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church is often greater than that given to the Word.  When you enter a Roman Catholic church building then you see up front, in the centre, all the trappings used for the celebration of the Mass.  The pulpit from where the Word is preached is positioned to the side somewhere.

The Reformers rejected this and maintained that the Lord wanted Word to be in the centre and therefore the pulpit from where the Word is preached should be up front and in the middle of the church building.  The table of the Lord’s Supper and the font for Baptism are given a secondary place.  The pulpit by itself, of course, means nothing.  Apart from its practical use, its value is symbolic of the Word that is preached from it.

Some churches have put the pulpit away altogether and in its place is just a lectern.  It gives the minister greater freedom to do things on the stage and walk in the aisles among the people.  All that may be fine for a lecture, a talk, or a television show.  But in a public worship service the minister’s duty is to preach the Word and let the Word of God work its power on the hearts of the people present.  A preacher’s showmanship is a poor substitute for true preaching.

Now the important thing to remember about Baptism and the Lord’s Supper is that they were given to the church to strengthen the faith of the members who are already believers.  For this reason the church must not give the sacraments to unbelievers.  The sacraments are signs and seals of what Jesus has done to save us.  Water is the sign in baptism and the bread and wine are the signs in the Lord’s Supper.  Sometimes children ask if you can use something else than water in Baptism and perhaps potato chips and soft drink in the Lord’s Supper.  Well, you can’t, really.

Water is used in Baptism because water cleans away stains and dirt from the body.  In Baptism the water is symbolic of Christ’s blood that was shed to wash away our sins.  In the Lord’s Supper the bread is symbolic of Christ being the bread of life.  As such He is our food for our spiritual life.  The wine or the grape juice is a symbol of Christ being the vine, and the Bible says that like branches must remain in the vine in order to produce fruit, so also must believers remain in Christ in order to produce good works.

But how do the sacraments also seal?  Well, they confirm what they point to.  The water points to Christ’s blood cleansing us from sin and the bread and wine point to Christ sustaining our faith with His sacrifice on the cross.  But as they do that, then at the same time the sacraments also seal those truths to us.  It’s a bit like a road sign.  You see the sign that points you in the direction of the town you want to go to.  But at the same time the sign also seals, or confirms, or guarantees that the direction you’re pointed to is indeed the right one.  The sacraments seal to you the very things that you believe about Christ.  In this way the sacraments also strengthen your faith.

Are the sacraments really necessary, seeing that they do not produce faith but only strengthen faith, which the preaching of the gospel is also doing?  Well, since we believe that we are saved by faith and not by Baptism, we do not rush in to baptise people who are dying.  But a person who has come to faith and is confined to bed because of a terminal illness, such a believer could be baptised if he or she is fully conscious and able to understand the meaning of their Baptism.  The Lord would use Baptism to strengthen their faith.

The same goes for the Lord’s Supper.  We do not believe that the Lord’s Supper takes away sins so therefore we do not go around dispensing the sacrament like a nurse does with medicine to hospital patients.  But if members of the church are unable to attend church for a prolonged period of time, then we may certainly celebrate the Lord’s Supper with them in their home or hospital and have the Lord strengthen their faith there.

But there is still the question, why do we have the sacraments, if it is really Christ who reconciles us to God?  Well, we must be obedient to Christ who commanded the church to use them.  And His purpose in giving them, in addition to strengthening our faith, is that they are so very visible.  Whilst faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Heb.11:1), the sacraments are symbols we can see, touch, eat and taste.  All who are present in the worship service can see them.  Not just the actual participants.

The sacraments are God’s visual demonstration to the whole congregation of what Christ means to believers.  For that reason we do not have private baptisms in the church with just those baptised or just the child and the parents.  And with the Lord’s Supper we do not say to all the non-participants that they can leave whilst the rest of us have the Lord’s Supper.

There is a trend these days to explain the teachings of the gospel with drama, plays and skits.  That may be fine for Sunday School lessons and evangelism but when the Lord and His people meet in the official and public worship services of the church, then we should use the means of grace the Lord Himself has given us, His Word and the sacraments.  And the sacraments are a wonderful and very visible demonstration of what Christ means to the church.  That lesson is reinforced every time the sacraments are used.

Amen.