************ Sermon on Heidelberg Catechism Q & A 65-68 ************
Doctrine: the Word and Sacraments are the means of grace used by God to give us faith
By: Rev. Adrian Dieleman
This sermon was preached on July 22, 2001
Q & 65-68
Acts 16:11-15; Romans 10:14-17
"The Means of Grace"
I Channels of God's Grace
A Our God is so almighty. Through the Holy Spirit He is able to use anything, any event, and any person to bring His grace into people's lives. For instance, a warm welcome to a visitor at church may be, and often has been, God's gateway into a person's heart. A kind word to a hurting person may be enough to draw her in. An outstretched hand to someone poor or grieving has often been used of the Lord too. Those of you who have been so used of and by the Lord know that nothing is nicer than to be a channel of God's grace to another person.
God's Spirit also uses events and circumstances as a means of grace. He may use a wedding feast, but more often He uses a funeral; He may use a gift of money, but more often He uses the lack of money; He may use the gift of health, but more often He uses the lack of health, as a means to make Himself known as the God of hope and comfort.
B In creating faith and bringing grace we know that the Spirit usually does not strike like lighting – in just any old place. Usually, but not always, He does not bypass created relationships. For instance, most of us – like Katrina – grew up in Christian homes. There we learned from the Bible before we could read, and we were taught to pray while we were still learning how to talk. God's Spirit was using our father and mother as a channel of His grace.
Consider the Apostle Paul for a moment. As you all know, Paul had his Damascus-road conversion experience. But Paul's encounter with the Light and the Voice is not the whole story of his faith or of the Spirit's work in him: that story started much earlier on the knee of his father and the lap of his mother. Or consider Timothy. The Apostle Paul could speak of the "sincere faith" living in him – a faith which first lived in his grandmother Lois and then in his mother Eunice and now lives in young Timothy (2 Tim 1:5).
When they are asked why they believe in God, Christ, and the Bible, some people will say, "Because I was brought up that way." Just before I left one of the previous congregations I served I had the great privilege to witness a family welcome back an erring but repentant son – a son who had deeply hurt his family when he left his wife and children, his parents and siblings, his church and career, in order to live with his secretary. As the family reflected on this joyful occasion one of them said to their penitent brother, "We knew you would return to the Lord. You were brought up too good to stay away." What a blessing it is to be able to say something like this. What a blessing it is to be raised by Christian parents and grandparents, who become the channels of God's grace in our hearts and lives. This reminds us that we learn the Christian religion – like so much else – by imitation.
What I am trying to say is that faith and religion are covenantal. It goes from generation to generation, from believing father and mother, to son and daughter, to grandson and granddaughter. As we see this morning with Katrina.
C Our focus today is not on the means of grace in general. Rather, we want to spend some time focusing on the Word and the sacraments – the specific means of grace that the Lord's Spirit uses to create and strengthen faith within us.
The Word and sacraments: they are the primary means of grace used by the Spirit. It is through them that God channels His grace into our hearts and lives. Yet, we have to insist that the Word is more important than the sacraments, that it comes first. The Catechism says,
The Holy Spirit produces [faith] in our hearts
by the preaching of the holy gospel.
We don't hear the Catechism saying the same thing about the sacraments.
As for the sacraments, they do not produce faith but confirm or strengthen faith. Listen to the Catechism again:
The Holy Spirit produces [faith] in our hearts
by the preaching of the holy gospel,
and confirms it
through our use of the holy sacraments.
To be more accurate, however, we should add that for those who have faith it is NOT just the sacraments but also the Word that strengthens or encourages faith.
The administration of the sacraments confirms faith. Do you realize what this says about the sacraments? It says the sacraments must be guarded and protected by the church; it means that the sacraments are to be administered only to those who already have faith; it means that the sacraments are only for believers, for those who have a faith to be confirmed. I say this because I note with considerable alarm a trend within the Christian Reformed Church to open up the sacraments, to make them public and available to all. But the administration of the sacraments belongs only to the household of believers. The sacraments are used of and by the Lord's Spirit to strengthen or confirm the faith of believers.
The Word, by way of contrast, is for believers and unbelievers alike. The proclamation of the Word is always public, with anyone and everyone free and encouraged to sit in and listen.
We should never be ashamed to invite people to our worship services to hear the Word. And, without needing to be apologetic about it, we can tell them that the sacraments are only for those who are members of the household of faith.
D The Word and the sacraments: they are the God-ordained "means of grace" used by the Spirit to create and strengthen faith within Katrina and the rest of us. That being the case, it only follows that we must come to the place where these tools or means of the Spirit can be found. And where is that? It is the church. To gain faith and to strengthen faith we must come to God's workshop, the church of Jesus Christ, in order to expose ourselves to the Word and sacraments. It is within the church that God's children are born and nourished. We may not doubt that God can do this work to His children anywhere and at anytime. But we would be extremely reckless and downright foolish if we do not go to where He does it normally and all the time: the church.
I have mentioned this before and undoubtedly I will mention it again, but many within North America – including family of many of us here – claim faith in Jesus yet want nothing to do with His church. They fail to realize that almost always God's children are born and nourished only within the church – within the church where the Holy Spirit uses the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments to produce and strengthen faith.
II The Word
A Let's take a closer look at the Word or the "preaching of the holy gospel" as a divinely-ordained means of grace.
Our Scripture reading from Acts tells us of the conversion of a woman named Lydia. She became a Christian when "the Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message (Acts 16:14). No man, woman, or child has ever come to faith by another route: it was and always is the Spirit creating faith by means of the Word. It certainly is the case with Katrina this morning.
B We see this same thought expressed in Romans 10. In verses 14 & 15 we see a most beautiful sequence: God appoints, picks, chooses, and sends certain people as messengers; these authorized and appointed messengers preach the Good News of the Gospel; this message is heard by people, some of whom believe what they have heard; and these believers then call upon God's holy name in prayer. Listen to these verses:
(Rom 10:14-15) How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? (15) And how can they preach unless they are sent? ... (17) Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
What the Apostle asks comes down to this: "How can men have faith if they don't hear the Gospel preached?" The answer is, "They can't!" People cannot have faith unless they hear the Gospel preached.
A few years ago a weekly British magazine called the "Glass Window" published this provocative letter:
"Dear Sir: It seems ministers feel their sermons are very important and spend a great deal of time preparing them. I have been attending church quite regularly for 30 years and I have probably heard 3,000 of them. To my consternation, I discovered I cannot remember a single sermon. I wonder if a minister's time might be more profitably spent on something else?"
For weeks a storm of editorial responses ensued ... finally ended by this letter:
"Dear Sir: I have been married for 30 years. During that time I have eaten 32,850 meals--mostly my wife's cooking. Suddenly I have discovered I cannot remember the menu of a single meal. And yet ... I have the distinct impression that without them, I would have starved to death long ago."
Something mysterious and beautiful happens when we place ourselves under the preaching of the Word: the Spirit produces and confirms our faith. And, without that preaching our faith would surely wither away and die.
C This has three immediate implications. First of all, preachers must realize that God's people come for worship not to hear opinions or stories or to be entertained but to hear the Holy Gospel. Preachers must make sure that they preach the Word for there is no other way that anyone can come to faith. If preachers don't preach the Gospel some people might be hindered in coming to a saving faith. What a scary and terrifying thought. So laid upon me – and all preachers – is the very important responsibility of preaching the Gospel, the Good News,
that our entire salvation
rests on Christ's one sacrifice for us on the
cross.
The second implication is that God's people must put themselves under the preaching of the Word. They must attend worship services. If people stay away from church, where they can hear the Gospel preached, they are turning their backs on what the Spirit uses to produce and confirm faith.
The third implication concerns witnessing, evangelism, and missions. We must go out and witness and evangelize and engage in missions. We must invite friends, neighbors, and acquaintances to church for only this way can God's chosen ones be led to faith. Don't forget, everyone of the elect come to faith only through the hearing of the Gospel. Every person here – whether they be a boy or girl, a teenager, a young adult, a parent, a senior citizen – has a neighbor, a fellow worker, an acquaintance, who is not a believer. Invite them to church with you. Invite them to church where the Spirit, under the preaching of the Word, can work and strengthen faith. For that is the God-ordained way of bringing His chosen ones to salvation.
III The Sacraments
A The Spirit, as I already said, uses not only the Word but also the sacraments as a means of channeling God's grace into the lives of His children.
The word "sacrament" is not a term you can find in Scripture. It is a Latin word that means "a holy thing with a hidden meaning" – which is not an inappropriate word for baptism and the Lord's Supper. The sacraments, you see, are not veiled in mystery and secrecy; their meaning is not unknown. They clearly point to the Gospel promise:
to forgive our sins and give us eternal life
by grace alone
because of Christ's one sacrifice
finished on the cross.
B Before anything else is said, it needs to be noted that the sacraments do not add anything to our faith or to what the Gospel says. For what God says in the Gospel is simply confirmed by baptism and the Lord's Supper. The Word and sacraments bring one and the same message from God to us:
that our entire salvation
rests on Christ's one sacrifice for us on the
cross.
C If, then, the sacraments add nothing to the Word, why did God give them to us?
We are told by the Catechism that the Holy Spirit uses the sacraments to confirm or strengthen us in the faith. And, in Answer 66, the Catechism says that
Sacraments are holy signs and seals for us to
see.
They were instituted by God so that
by our use of them
he might make us understand more clearly
the promise of the gospel,
and might put his seal on that promise.
In the Reformed family of churches the giving of the sacraments is seen as showing God's compassion with human frailty. According to Article 33 of the Belgic Confession of Faith, God added the sacraments to the Gospel "mindful of our crudeness and weakness." He wanted
to represent better to our external senses
both what he enables us to understand by His
Word
and what he does inwardly in our hearts.
(B.C. Article 33)
In today's language we would call the sacraments an object lesson, a children's sermon, on the Gospel. They are special measures designed by a loving Teacher for slow learners.
I'm sure you know the expression, "seeing is believing." There is something inside each one of us that wants to see and feel and taste. Very few of us like to deal with just the intellect and the abstract. We have a real human need for the visible and tangible. All of us, I am sure, look forward to the day when we no longer have to live by faith but by sight. In the sacraments the Gospel becomes visible and tangible. The sacraments remove a certain sense of distance and remoteness and bring the reality of Christ's death right among us. They are the Holy Gospel pictured. They are God's promises made real on our heads and in our mouths. "They are holy signs and seals for us to see."
Conclusion
As I already said, our God is so almighty. Through the Holy Spirit He is able to use anything, any event, and any person as a channel of His grace into our heart. Especially, though, He uses the Word and the sacraments, through the operation of the Spirit, to bring His grace into people's lives. The Spirit uses the Word to produce faith and the sacraments to confirm our faith in Jesus Christ.