REFORMED CHURCH, BELLVILLE: SUNDAY 15 DECEMBER 2002: EVENING SERVICE

REFORMED CHURCH, BELLVILLE: SUNDAY 15 DECEMBER 2002: EVENING SERVICE

Our help is in the Name of the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
Beloved, grace and peace be to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, through the mighty working of God the Holy Spirit.
AMEN.
Psalm of praise: 25:1,9.
Prayer.
Psalm 51:1,3.

Scripture reading: 2 Corinthians 3.
Scripture text: 2 Corinthians 3:2,3

You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

The church is a letter written by God for all to read.

Long, long ago the Lord promised that He would be, for certain people, their God. In their turn, these persons would be God's people. The Lord also stated that He would write His law in the hearts of those people. This we read i.a. in Jeremiah 31:33.

Now an epistle is addressed to a church of the Lord in the New Testament in which the same is stated:

...written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

We shall consider this passage with respect to three matters:

1.    Why is mention made here of letters?
2.    Are we, too, such letters?
3.    What about the celebration of the Last Supper, Baptism, and Confession of Faith?

1.    Why is mention made here of letters?

Look at chapter 1, verse 1. There Paul writes that he is an apostle of Jesus Christ.

An apostle is one who has been sent on a mission.
When we read the word "apostle" in the Bible we have in mind only the apostles of the Lord.

However, you must remember that the people of that time spoke Greek, and they frequently used the term apostle.
To them it did not signify only people sent by the Lord Jesus to proclaim the gospel.
Anybody sent forth by a body bearing authority was called an apostle.

For that reason the apostles were required to carry with them letters from the various congregations identifying them and attesting to their apostleship, life and doctrine.

These letters they were required to present to the congregations they visited.
Today such letters are known as testimonials.

There was a great problem concerning the position of the apostle Paul, for he was also an apostle when the Sanhedrin sent him forth to persecute the Christians.

He now had to show clearly that he was no longer an apostle of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.
He was now an apostle of Jesus Christ.

These testimonials were a security measure introduced by the various congregations to ensure that false or heretical preachers did not visit them to proclaim all manner of heresies.

Just think of what happened in the churches of Galatia after the arrival of the false preachers.
Those people were in fact also apostles, but false apostles, because they were sent by the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem to undermine the Christian faith.

This usage was applicable not only to apostles who had to identify themselves to the various congregations they visited.

It was applicable also to members of congregations who moved from one congregation to another.

An example in the Bible is the letter to Philemon, in which it is written that the slave Onesimus had been converted to the Christian faith, that he would be leaving Paul and his group, and that he was now entrusted to the care of the congregation who met in Philemon's home.
That is the origin of our procedure of giving a member of a congregation a testimonial attesting to his life and doctrine when he moves to another congregation.

Now consider carefully what the letter deals with:

In the letter it is stated - as in the epistle to Philemon - that the person who is the subject of the letter is a sincere servant of the Lord.
His life testifies to this.

In our text the Lord writes that His church is such a testimonial.

They (the church) are a letter written by Himself, and the entire world can read that this church serves him sincerely.
The Lord wrote in their hearts that they were His, and their lives proclaimed to the outside world the message of their hearts.

2. Are we, too, such letters?

If we want to know whether we are such letters of the Lord, we must surely know what is written in such a letter.

Let us begin by looking again at Jeremiah 31:33, because the Lord states there what He wrote in our hearts. Then there are two matters of great importance:

The first is that the law of the Lord is written there.
The second is that He is our God, and that we are His people.

Can you hear that the Lord is here speaking of the covenant? These are the same words with which the Lord established His covenant with Abraham.

The covenant of God is written in our hearts.
But it is now somewhat different from what it was in the Old Testament, because then it was the covenant of works alone - the Ten Commandments.
2 Corinthians 3:3 reveals that we are letters of Christ, written by the Spirit of the living God.
The covenant of grace of the New Testament is thus written in our hearts.

The covenant of grace became a reality for us when the Lord Jesus died for us on the cross.

This was not simply a crucifixion and nothing more.
He died for specific persons: For example, He stated in His prayer that, of those whom the Father had given Him, not one had been lost.
He directed everything accomplished by His crucifixion to the benefit of those whom the Father had given Him.

We could speak at length concerning His mention of those whom You have given Me, but, to summarize briefly the Biblical information on the matter, we can say this refers to those whom the Lord had chosen, the elect.

Ephesians 1:4 states very clearly that the elect were sanctified in Christ before the foundation of the world.
It is in the hearts of these people that God writes His covenant.
He does so because they have all been reconciled with Him in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The death of the Lord Jesus Christ came about so that nothing and nobody could nullify or destroy the covenant which God established with these people.

They belong to God for ever.
If the Lord says that He wrote in our hearts that He is our God and that we are His people, then you must know that it is written there with the blood of Jesus Christ.

The Spirit of the living God is the Writer. God is everywhere present and ever-living; the words "...the living God" are used to emphasize this attribute.

Indeed, we also confess that He will nevermore depart from us with His Spirit.
He is our living God who leads us and reigns over us as His people.
This is accomplished through the working and omnipresence of God the Holy Spirit.
That is why it is written in verse 3 that the concept was not written in our hearts with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God.

The regenerative and comforting/supportive working of the Holy Spirit cannot be separated in one's mind from the cross.

Even before the crucifixion the Lord Jesus promised that He would send us another Comforter/Helper, Who would guide us to know the truth.
This Comforter/Helper is the Holy Spirit, Who was poured out over the church of the New Testament.
The working of the Holy Spirit includes guiding us to know the truth - and therefore also in obedience.
Set this beside the passage we have read together: to be letters of God for all to read (verse 2).

Do you listen to God when He admonishes you? Or do you stubbornly harden your heart to persist obdurately in sin, even when you know well that you are doing wrong?

We are here concerned with our adequacy in respect of faith.
Adequacy in faith is not attained by our own powers - this is stated clearly in verse 5: Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.

That is the matter at issue here: The congregation (and each and every member of the congregation) must be a letter of God to be read by all.

Someone who is a letter of God is one who provides testimony of God's grace and love.
It is one who confesses fearlessly his dependence upon the Lord, and who lives in firm confidence in Almighty God.
It is one who shows his worship of the Lord so openly and freely that all know his honesty from his way of life, and who lets all realize that he manifests the image of Jesus Christ.

3. What about the celebration of the Last Supper, Baptism, and Confession of Faith?

Why have we adults made confession of our faith?

Because God, Who elected us, wrote His covenant of grace in our hearts.
And because the Spirit of the living God continues to maintain the process of conversion and regeneration in the hearts of all of us, until we attain such a degree of maturity in our faith that we are able to confess our faith before the Lord.
On such occasions the members of the church of the Lord are witnesses to the confession of faith by these people before the living God.

In this manner the work of God's grace proceeds. And thereby He brings all of us who are redeemed in Christ together in the oneness of redemption - and therefore, ipso facto, also in the oneness of our faith and confession.

For exactly the same reason the Lord administers baptism to the children within the covenant.

Baptism is the sign that the one baptized is cleansed (washed clean) of sin.
That is why the Lord inducts His elect into His church by baptism.
If they have been cleansed of their sin, where else would they belong but in the church of the Lord?
This is the visible sign that the Lord has written His covenant in the hearts of those who have been baptized.

That is also why we as a congregation regularly celebrate the Lord's Supper.

We are God's redeemed children through Jesus Christ.
But we are children who are exposed to many kinds of miseries.
This conflict in our lives has the result that our faith and our daily lives are frequently unsatisfactory.

But this does not alter the truth of God's statement that we must be His letters in this world. What are we to do in this situation?

God now calls us to the celebration of the Lord's Supper, where He once again strengthens our faith.
This strengthening of our faith consists in the Lord's revelation to us once more that Jesus Christ died for the complete atonement of our sins.
Let me put the same matter in other words, so that it fits in with our text: God reveals to us again that we share in the covenant of grace.

Through the blood of Jesus Christ the full power of the covenant is bestowed upon us in the forgiveness of sins and in the resurrection to eternal life.

But then we must know that the effectiveness of the celebration of the Lord's Supper and of Baptism and of the Confession goes out of the church building with us.

It is not an event which remains behind - it lives with and in us.
We cannot merely be redeemed, and then nothing further happens.
We must live like a letter which is to be read by all, and in which it is written: Look at my life:

The Lord is my God!
and I am of His people!
What the Lord has written in my heart, I practise with all my being - in complete obedience.

AMEN.

Closing prayer.

Closing Psalm: 9:1,7,9.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.

Rev. Dr. M.J. du Plessis
Reformed Church, Bellville.
15 December 2002.
Scripture quoted from NASB.