Well, the powers that be tell me that I only have 30 minutes, a strict limit of 30 minutes,
and those who are here from my own congregation are probably laughing inside because they
know after 30 minutes, I’m just getting warmed up. Well with that in mind, there was
a great Puritan by the name of John Flavel, and he once said that the best way to preach
a crucified Christ is in a crucified manner, so I will try to crucify my own style to accommodate
myself to the masses this afternoon.
Well, while we do live in a time of Christless Christianity and as this conference is seeking
to diagnose that problem as well as to prescribe a cure for it, I believe very strongly that
the Reformed Christian faith is that cure to the ills of our time, and I hope that this
little book, which I will give you a brief intro to, plays a small part in that cure.
Let me say just a thing or two about Reformed Church, what it’s not and what the book
is not to be. Most people that visit a Reformed church for the first time, and it is totally
different. I didn’t grow up in a Reformed church, so I know the feeling. We look like
freaks. We are the frozen chosen. We’re cold. We’re boring. We’re lifeless. Often
times not very hospitable, not very friendly, we don’t smile that much.
Maybe if you visited a Reformed church at one point, you might have heard something
along the lines of this. You walk into church, and I greet you, say, “Hello, my name is
Danny Hyde. Welcome to the Oceanside URC.” And maybe the first question you were asked
was, “Credo or Pedo?” Maybe the first question or maybe in the midst of a conversation,
you were asked, “Pre-, Post-, or A-?” And the person gave you… you gave the person
a puzzled look. And somebody might have gone on to say, “Well, let me just make it a
little more simple to you. Are you supralapsarian or are you infralapsarian?” And that was
the end of that.
Michael Horton was one of my professors in seminary. I won’t tell you how bad he was
in his first couple of years. But he was one of my professors in seminary, and he described
that sort of attitude to a visitor to a Reformed church as the cage phase. Have you heard that
slogan before, the cage phase? The cage phase is basically the guy or the girl, mostly the
guy, young guy with spiky hair and a goatee who becomes Reformed and is so excited about
it that you have to put him in a cage for a year just to calm him down and to tame him
a little bit. Well, the book is not trying to be that kind of a guy, that kind of a person.
It’s not meant to be that cage phase, but to welcome unbelievers and disillusioned,
dissatisfied evangelicals, those who are searching for the truth, in a very understandable, as
well as a very hospitable way.
Well, I want to think a little bit about that, give you some of the… the contours, the
background of this little book by thinking about the idea of assurance. And I’ll come
back to why I mention assurance in just a moment. It was a great 17th century Catholic
apologist, polemicist, Robert Bellarmine, who said that the greatest heresy of the Protestant
religion was the assurance of salvation. He said that because, of course, in the Medieval
church and in the Reformation, the people were amidst a Christendom sort of society.
Everyone lived within and under the umbrella of the church and were looking for some assurance
that the Creator actually spoke and speaks to the creature, and the pious Catholic looking
for assurance that he would not spend eternity in the flames of hell. The Protestants, of
course, gave assurance in the midst of that, the assurance that we can know that we belong
to the Lord Jesus Christ, body, soul, life, and in death.
Well, we live in a time different than that, of course. We don’t live under a Christendom
model. We don’t have a church in every corner with a great spire, where everyone’s a member
of the local parish congregation. But we do live in a time that is one in which there
is great excitement about the Christian faith, the Reformed faith. Dr. Jones was also one
of my professors, and he always thoroughly disillusions and depresses when he gives a
lecture. It is a very difficult time in which we live. But you might have seen the Time
magazine article last year, “The Ten Ideas that Are Changing the World,” and number
three was Calvinism. We live in a time in which there are many who are seeking, who
are searching, who are looking for assurance, looking for answers, and that answer is found
in the Reformed faith.
We do live in a post-everything sort of culture. Everyone seems to be in our time and place
different than the Medieval and the Reformation period where Bellarmine did say that assurance
was the height of the Protestant heresy. We don’t live in that sort of a time of assurance,
but people are looking for assurance not for their own particular personal angst necessarily,
but really larger questions of, how can we know anything is true, how can we find anything
with roots and stability? People are looking for community and looking for assurance of
that.
One illustration of that is an article that was recently written by a theologian at Creighton
University, Russell Reno, and he just gave a brief little explanation of the phenomenon
of tattoos. He said tattoos used to be, of course, the great symbol of rebellion and
independence, but that tattoos nowadays have become the opposite of that. Really it’s
a symbol of belonging, belonging to something bigger than oneself and larger than my own
particular personality.
We can give people the Reformation. We can say to people as the great hymn writer said,
“I was once lost but am now found, was blind but now see.”
Well, what is this little book all about? Well, first of all, just speaking of that
idea of assurance, the Reformed faith seeks to give the assurance of our history. It was
Lewis, C. S. Lewis, who described us as a chronologically arrogant people. His time,
of course, he said that in the mid-twentieth century. It can’t be any truer than today.
We’re slaves to sound bites. We’re slaves to the tyranny of news cycles, which so sadly
have a cycle of a girl who’s gone missing, and only to be trumped by the next celebrity
and his or her faux pas. We are in it for the minute, and we are here for the now, and
what have you done for me lately. The Reformed faith though is a faith that is rooted in
history, that is rooted in the Old and the New Testaments, the people of God, rooted
with the Catholic Christians of the first few centuries, the Reformation and that great
revival of religion in the 16th century. So this little book seeks to give a sense of
that, that as I open up to give something of a history of our churches, our roots, our
foundation, the basis of why we exist, and upon what we stand. We can say very confidently
as believers in the Reformation that we have roots that are dug down very deep, and call
upon family and friends and neighbors who are looking for something greater than themselves
to find it in Christ, the gospel, and in the church.
Well, secondly, the Reformed faith seeks to give, and this little book seeks to give the
assurance of our theology, not just history for history’s sake but the substance of
what is found in that great movement of history in the Reformation. Tomorrow, I want you to
think, for those of you who are in Reformed churches or those of you who are in churches
that are becoming maybe more and more Reformed in its theology, stop and think about the
person who walks into the doors of wherever you might meet, and especially anyone who
might be there for the first time. Put yourself in their shoes. What are they going to hear
today? What are they going to see? How is it going to be different? What are they going
to experience that may not be anything close to what they’re used to? How can we communicate
this great faith, this pearl of great price to those who are there right in front of us?
No doubt many of us have the same and a similar story to my own, a person who once walked
into a Reformed church without a clue. I was baptized Roman Catholic. I was in Sunday School
in Calvary Chapel. I was converted in the Four Square Church. I was educated in the
Assemblies of God. I youth pastored a non-denominational, charismatic church. I wasn’t Lutheran or
Episcopal. I think I was everything else. But no doubt many of our stories have something
of that, everything other than Reformed. And we’ve come to embrace these things, and
those people who are coming need to hear that. You don’t need to go in a cage. You need
to be yourself, and you need to be inviting.
Well, the assurance of our theology, it really is bound up, of course, in the gospel of justification
sola fide. And I can gist my own story to say that as I was languishing as a youth pastor
and as a student in college in a Pentecostal environment, seeing the same people come down
to the altar in chapel week, upon week, upon week. My teammates on my basketball team in
college, none of them lived anything close to a Christian life. It was finally they were
freed from the shackles of parents. All this drove me to find and to seek something other
than what I was used to. In God’s amazing providence, I had a Pentecostal minister who
was a professor of mine who started to hand me books by C. H. Spurgeon, who gave me books
by Luther and Calvin, and pointed me to Westminster Seminary to find what I was looking for. People
are looking for what we have, and that… and what we do have in terms of our theology
is the gospel, justification.
You see, our assurance doesn’t come as my own experience does testify and yours might
testify, we can’t find our assurance in the emotions of ourselves and the churches
in which we may have been in. I certainly didn’t find it in the emotionalism of Pentecostalism
or in the works righteousness of my mother’s faith in the Roman Catholic Church. I didn’t
find it in my intellectual seeking as I searched other religions and attended mosques and Buddhist
temples, Jewish synagogues, and even nothing at all.
But the assurance came in these wonderful words. Maybe you’ve heard them as well.
“What is justification? Justification is an act of God’s free grace unto sinners,
in which He pardoneth all our sins, accepteth, and accounteth their persons righteous in
His sight, not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but only for the perfect
obedience and full satisfaction of Christ by God imputed to them and received by faith
alone.” The Westminster Larger Catechism, Q&A 70. I can remember like it was yesterday,
the professor that I had was leading me towards the Reformation, wrote those words upon the
whiteboard in class one day. I’d never heard of a catechism, never heard of Westminster,
never really thought much about justification. I saw it in my King James Bible, but never
really put two and two together. So he wrote those words there. I found what I was looking
for, assurance. God Himself imputes His own Son’s righteous merit to me a worthy…
unworthy poor, lifeless sinner. The middle of this little book seeks to give something
of that passion for the gospel, that wonderful assurance that the gospel alone can bring.
Well, a person walks into a Reformed church or a church that is a Reformational type of
church, what are they going to see when they walk into those doors? Well, for sure they’re
not going to see smells and bells of Rome. They’re not going to see all the emotionalism
of other churches that we might be so familiar with. But they’re going to see something
completely different, but something that is wonderful, the assurance of what we find in
Reformed worship, what we describe as our liturgy, in which God speaks to us through
His Word as the minister calls the people of God into His presence. The people of God
respond in singing. God speaks in His law. We confess our sins. God speaks in a declaration
of pardon and absolution, and we respond in confession of our faith of Apostles’ Creed,
as an example. God’s speaks in the Word. We sing. God speaks in the sacraments in a
visible way. We give ourselves in our offerings and in our fellowship to Him. It seems lifeless.
It seems cold. It seems boring. But we find in that liturgy and that worship the practical
assurance that God Himself meets with sinners, that He has lowered Himself, stooped Himself
into our shoes, into our level to meet and to greet and to fellowship with us.
I don’t think I’ve ever told Mike Horton this if he’s hearing this right now. But
his congregation was the first Reformed church which I ever walked into. I had a Sunday off
from teaching my youth group and traveled to, as they met then in Placentia, California,
and I walked into a church, and I never had in my entire life held a hymnal. As the minister,
Dr. Riddlebarger announced the hymn, we opened it up. I flipped around. I think I had the
book upside down maybe, never read a musical note in my entire life, didn’t know when
to stand and when to sit, when to do this or when to do that. But what it was, was heaven.
It was heaven on earth, not because of the excitement or the buzz or the personality,
but because of the Word of God. I’d never sat in a service where the Word was read at
length, and the sermon was a lengthy exposition of that Word. I never sang Psalms and hymns
that focused upon the Word, God and His glory in Christ, receive the sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper in a very simple way, simply gave our offerings and fellowshipped and greeted each
other in the Lord.
Reformed worship is a strange, strange world, but yet it’s a world in which we find a
meeting with our most amazing and gracious Triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And it’s an idea that’s not thought of much these days, worship and the means of
grace as we call them, preaching and the Lord’s Supper and baptism. But these earthly means
paper and ink and words and ears and tangible things like water, bread, and wine, that God
Himself uses, through which to communicate His grace. Well, Reformed churches also seek
to give not merely an assurance of our history and our roots, not only our theology and our
assurance for our conscience, seeking in our liturgy, our worship, in terms of how we experience
God, but also gives us an assurance of our piety, our Christian life, our reverence response
to God and His grace.
Maybe you’ve walked into a Christian bookstore lately and no doubt you’ve seen the so-called
Christian doctrine section was about a half of a shelf. What are the rest of the shelves
filled with? Christian living, right? And what does that Christian living consist of?
Well, there are books on Christian dieting. There are women’s issues, and there are
men’s issues, and teen issues, and books on how to get over the issues that you have,
and then how to get over those issues, and to live a triumphant here and now life. Well,
the Reformed faith is – sorry to burst any bubbles or any grand ideas or dreams – the
Reformed faith doesn’t offer that.
Dr. Godfrey, one of my professors at seminary, one of colleagues in the ministry, says to
us often that a good Reformed Christian life is to feel a sense of guilt all the time,
and a good Reformed sermon should make you leave the sanctuary feeling just a little
bit guilty. Well, why is that? Well, it’s because the Christian life is hard. The Christian
life is difficult. It’s filled with trials and temptations and that besetting sin, the
body of death that clings to us with its claws in our backs. But you see, what the Reformers
did in their creeds, their catechisms, their confessions was not only to focus on a revival
of the gospel. Speaking of my own church’s catechism, The Heidelberg Catechism, most
of the material deals with the Christian life. The third section of our catechism, there’s
guilt, there’s grace, there’s gratitude, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer,
how we are to thankfully give ourselves to God for His amazing grace.
The Reformed faith is not merely a religion of head knowledge. It’s not merely that
we show up on Sunday morning, that we plug in our USB, and we have a download of information.
As one of my mentors, Joel Beeke says, the Reformed faith is a religion of head and heart
and hands. It’s a life that is wonderfully described by the two grand and opening questions
of the two great Reformation catechisms. The Heidelberg Catechism: What is your only comfort
in life and in death? That I with body and soul, in life and in death, am not my own,
but belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. I belong to Him. And as Paul would say in
Romans 6, we belong to Him as bond slaves, servants of God, giving ourselves to Him unto
obedience. The Westminster Shorter Catechism, of course even in a much more shorter way
says: What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him
forever. We exist as Reformed believers, we believe so strongly, we exist as clay. God
is the one who molds us for His own good pleasure.
And people walk into a Reformed church, they feel beat down. They do feel depressed, defeated,
ashamed of their sins. We get to say to them, and I hope this little book says this to them,
we get to say to them that God makes dead people alive, and He raises us up from the
ash heap of sin. He puts our feet upon a rock from the miry clay, and He gives us His Spirit
that we might live with joy and gratitude, knowing our sins, but yet knowing the wonder
of grace.
The faith of our fathers is one of roots and stability and history. The great Puritan William
Perkins described… he once wrote a treatise describing what was the Reformation all about,
and he described himself as a Reformed Catholic. That’s what we are. We, our faith is the
catholic faith, our faith is the Christian faith, he says. Calvin’s own liturgy was
called the Form and Manner of Prayer According to the Custom of the Ancient Church.
Rome says, “We’ve had the mass for 2,000 years.” And the Reformers tongue in cheek
with a little snide remark… a snide look on their face said, “We’ve had the Psalms
for 3,000 years.” We’ve been singing these songs for 3,000 years. Our forefathers in
Israel sang them. The early church sang them. We sing them. We have roots. We have assurance
of salvation, assurance of doctrine of theology, of grace, of justification, and assurance
that we find in our worship, in our liturgy as we lift our souls to God alone, and in
our lives as we give ourselves as that piece of clay for God to mold.
And so I pray as we go our separate ways, this little book will be a small part of equipping
many believers to communicate the great truth of that wonderful hymn, to believers, unbelievers,
pilgrims, outcasts, strangers, and aliens who walk through our churches’ doors, “I
once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Amen.