What we have here is an example of Paul's preaching. And pay attention, therefore, to how he focuses on Jesus, the Savior. Acts 13, we begin to read at verse 13, and then read through verse 41. Acts 13, verse 13. Now when Paul and his company loosed from Paphos, they came to Perga in Pamphylia, and John departed from them, returned to Jerusalem. But when they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch in Pisidia, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and sat down. And after the reading of the law and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, Ye men and brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation for the people, say on. Then Paul stood up and, beckoning with his hand, said, Men of Israel and ye that fear God, give audience. The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with a high arm brought he out of it. And about the time of 40 years, he suffered their manners in the wilderness. And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he divided their land to them by lot. And after that, he gave unto them judges about the space of 450 years until Samuel the prophet. And afterward, they desired a king. And God gave unto them Saul, the son of Kiss, a man of the tribe of Benjamin by the space of 40 years. And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king. To whom also he gave testimony and said, I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will. Of this man's seed hath God, according to his promise, raised unto Israel a Savior, Jesus. When John had first preached before his coming the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel, and as John fulfilled his work, he said, whom think ye that I am? I am not he, but behold, there cometh one after me whose shoes of his feet I am not worthy to loose. Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, And whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent. For they that dwell at Jerusalem and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath day, have fulfilled them in condemning him. And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a sepulcher. But God raised him from the dead. And he was seen many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people. And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children, and that he hath raised up Jesus again. As it is also written in the second Psalm, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, Now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. Wherefore, he saith also in another psalm, thou shalt not suffer thine holy one to see corruption. For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep and was laid unto his fathers and saw corruption. But he whom God raised again saw no corruption. Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. Beware, therefore, Lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets, behold ye despisers and wonder and perish. For I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you. So far we read God's holy word. The basis of this and many other passages of God's word is the instruction of the Heidelberg Catechism in Lord's Day 11. There in question 29, the Catechism asks, why is the Son of God called Jesus, that is, a Savior? And the answer, because he saveth us and delivereth us from our sins. And likewise, because we ought not to seek, neither can find salvation in any other. Do such then believe in Jesus, the only Savior, who seek their salvation and welfare of saints, of themselves, or anywhere else? They do not. For though they boast of Him in words, yet in deeds they deny Jesus, the only Deliverer and Savior. For one of these two things must be true, either that Jesus is not a complete Savior, or that they who by a true faith receive this Savior must find all things in him necessary to their salvation. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Heidelberg Catechism's treatment of the Apostles' Creed is divided into three sections in harmony with the way the creed itself is laid out in a Trinitarian form. Article 1 deals with God the Father and creation, and there the catechism dealt with then the matter of creation and God's fatherly care in Providence. Articles 2 through 7 of the Apostles' Creed deal with the instruction on God the Son and our redemption, and the remaining articles will set forth the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Recall that this is now in the second section of the Catechism, the section that deals with giving us the knowledge of our deliverance. All of this is about our deliverance, and it began with the Fact that we are saved by faith alone. By faith alone. Faith in Jesus Christ. Only those who are graft into Him are saved. And that faith is a certain knowledge and a hearty confidence of everything that God has revealed in His Word. And then the Catechism says, well, what is that knowledge? What is it that we have to know? And the Catechism said, well, it's briefly summed up in these words. of the Apostles' Creed. And so now we are treating these. This is quite a gift for us, really, that in God's providence and putting this into the catechism, that we have sermons on our confession of faith. There is a great danger that Sunday after Sunday we just repeat the words of the Apostles' Creed without thinking. But now these sermons should fight against that as it will explain the various articles and enrich our understanding so that as we make confession of our faith on Sunday evening, those articles take on or have for us a very rich content. They're meaningful. We turn then to Lord's Day 11 as an exposition of the confession, I believe in Jesus. I believe in Jesus. It is a confession of faith, of course, first of all, in the second person of the Trinity, God the Son. The catechism begins that way. Why is the Son of God called Jesus, that is, a Savior? But it is a confession concerning the second person of the Trinity who took on human flesh and came and dwelt among us in order that he might save us from our sins. The catechism will give important knowledge concerning that one, the second person who became flesh, by examining the various names that are given. Now, there are many, many names in catechism, Heidelberg catechism. We came up with probably 30 different names that the Bible has for Jesus. The Catechism will look at four, starting with the name Jesus. Jesus is the personal name of our Lord. This is the name his parents would have used when they called him in for supper. This is the name the disciples would have used when they wanted his attention. They would use this, his personal name is Jesus. It's a name that God gave to his son, And the name has significance in itself because it's made up of two Hebrew words. The G.E. of Jesus is from the word, the name Jehovah. And the S.U.S. of Jesus is coming from a Hebrew word, which means salvation. The Old Testament name that corresponds with that is Joshua. Joshua. So the name itself means Jehovah salvation. And that's why When God gave this name to his son, the angel in the dream said to Joseph, thou shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. So the very name shouts that out. For Jesus, his personal name was not just one that the parents liked, but it was a name God gave him. This man is. Jehovah Salvation, the only Savior. So let's examine this name, taking the instruction of the Heidelberg Catechism, the theme for the sermon, very simply, Jesus, our Savior. Well, notice in the first place, the need, the need for this Savior. Secondly, the reality that He is this, a Savior, and then our confidence that all our salvation is in Him. First of all, the need. The need is salvation from sin. Now, to understand the salvation, we need to understand what sin is. That's crucial. Most in the world are looking for the wrong kind of Savior because they do not understand sin. They sort of equate sin, if you want to talk about it at all, with simply misery in this life. what they dwell on, the misery in this life. Misery, of course, is due to many things. Broken homes bring misery. Poverty, so that there's a lack of food or clothing or adequate shelter, bring misery. War brings misery. War between nations, war between families, war between religions brings misery. Crimes that are committed, stealing or assault or murder brings misery. Injustice, ill treatment of the poor and the weak by those who are powerful and rich brings misery. So does loneliness. So if this is what people are focusing on in life, all the misery of life, when they look for a savior, they're looking for someone who would deliver them from the misery. Someone who will take away all of this trouble, all of these evils that are making my life to be less than perfect, all kinds of miseries in life. And ultimately, for man, that will be the Antichrist. He will promise to be the Savior. He will promise to take away all the miseries of this life and make your life to be happy. That's the Savior men are looking for. Well, this problem is also found in the church. where the idea of sin is not the biblical concept of sin. Sin is seen as a kind of weakness, as a tendency in man toward evil. Sin is not guilt. Adam's fall, if they believe in Adam, Adam's fall resulted in Adam passing along a kind of weakness to other people, a tendency that they can go toward evil. Because so much of the world, the church world, has rejected even creation and now believes in evolution, they look at sin as being something that's kind of arising out of our sensuous nature and out of our kind of remnants of our primeval state when we came from animals. And so all these things are just remnants of that. It's not sin and it's not guilt until the choice actually is made that a will says this is what I'm going to do and then it's evil and then we can call it sin maybe. According to this, the church offers education and support groups for all the miseries in this life. On the one hand, a support group may help bolster a man's will so that he doesn't make bad choices anymore. He needs anger management or Alcoholics Anonymous to help him make better choices or more education to help him understand the bad choices. You shouldn't make those bad choices, make good choices. And you offer support to those who are harmed by these bad choices of others. This is serious, because if one does not understand sin, if it's just a bad choice, if it's merely a tendency towards something that's not good, it's a bit evil, if that's all sin is, then they will not seek salvation from the one and only Savior. Sin is a transgression of God's law. That's what sin is. It's a transgression of God's law. That's so important that we maintain that sin is in the race because it came from Adam. He transgressed God's law. He deliberately turned away from God. He deliberately turned away from serving God. And determined to serve himself. You can be as God said the devil. That's what the man wanted. I want to be like God. I don't want to serve that God. I want to serve myself. I want to do whatever I please. That's what sin is. It's turning its back on God, violating His law deliberately. This is the original sin of Adam, which is passed down to all the human race. The original sin is two-sided. It's original guilt, because Adam is our representative. And then there's original corruption, which is passed down through the generations. which we call total depravity. What was passed down to all men is not a mere weakness of will or character, a bit of impurity. We sinned in Adam. We transgressed God's law. We departed from Him. All the miseries of this life are rooted in that, in the sin which man committed, which we commit. The blessedness that Adam had, life with God, fellowship with God, he lost when he sinned, because when he sinned, he became guilty, liable to punishment. The salvation, therefore, that the catechism speaks of involves deliverance from those two sides of the effects of sin, from the guilt side, And that's the catechism speaks of Jesus saving us, and that involves the guilt and the punishment. And then delivering us involves delivering us from the power of sin, the ruling and corrupting power of sin. Let's examine those two aspects of sin. Sin is first of all guilt and punishment. It brings that on. Sin is that because it's a violation of a law, and that's true of any country. It's true of our country, too. When a man is found guilty of breaking the law, then there is a certain punishment that goes with that. If he is speeding, there is a fine. If he steals, there may be a fine and an imprisonment. You are guilty. You have broken the law. The law sets the standards. God's law is the standard of man. And when you break that law, the punishment is death. It's eternal death. That's what sin brings on man. Adam died spiritually. He lost his righteousness and holiness and true knowledge of God. He became completely evil. He lost his fellowship with God and he became liable for of eternal punishment in hell. That punishment has become ours because we are all guilty in Him. We deserve that punishment. The salvation that we need, therefore, must deliver us from the guilt of sin and from the punishment that guilt demands. And then, that's only a negative, And then to be restored back into the favor of God. So that we can fellowship with him. Keep that in mind. The catechism is only talking about the negative delivering saving from. And that's that's important, but the work of Jesus Christ goes beyond that it goes into restoration. That's part of his saving work. But first of all, it's. guilt and punishment that sin involves. Secondly, sin is also a power. And sin is a power in two different ways. First of all, it's a power that rules, that controls. When Adam sinned, he gave himself over to a life of service of sin and Satan himself. In fact, God gave man over into that. That's part of His punishment. That man is now a slave of sin, shackled to sin. Satan became the spiritual master of Adam and his descendants. And everyone that's born into this world is born a slave of Satan. That's how we are born. They can only choose sin. They only will choose sin. There isn't anything else they can do. They are absolute slaves of sin and Satan. And that's what sin does. It rules. It's a controlling power. And you can see that in life. You can see that when a man begins to give himself over into a sin, whether it's gambling or drinking or drugs, but also lying. and stealing and anger. They take control of him. He can't stop. He goes down the road of that, regardless of how much damage it's doing to himself or to others around him, because sin is a controlling power in man. And the unbeliever, of course, it's absolute. And the picture of that is seen in the Bible the demon possessions that they were absolutely controlled by the devil. That's what sin does. It rules, it controls. And as I said, in the unregenerated man, that's still there, that's all he can do. But Paul has to warn us even, as he said to the Romans in chapter six, do not let sin have dominion over you. Don't let that happen, because it can. It is a ruling, controlling power. In the second place, sin is a power in the sense that it's a corrupting power. A corrupting power. It's like leprosy. Leprosy that spreads wider and wider, deeper and deeper. that corrupts and defiles and destroys and ultimately it kills. That's what sin does too. It spreads through the whole of a man's being. It spreads to his emotions so that he loves that which is evil and he hates that which is good. It spreads to his mind so that he cannot think wisely, and with proper knowledge, he thinks as a fool in his life, ignoring the realities of life and walking in foolishness. It corrupts his will so that he chooses evil, and it keeps corrupting that power of corruption so that he chooses ever worse sins. And deeper into sin he goes, and it corrupts his body. so that his body is filled with lust, and this lust doesn't satisfy, and so it goes to beyond that, and it goes beyond that. Man is full of iniquity, corrupted by sin. Calvin writes in his Institutes, whatever is in man, from the understanding to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, has been defiled and crammed with concupiscence. By that he means evil lusts. Or to put it more briefly, he writes, the whole man is of himself nothing but concupiscence, nothing but evil lusts. This is total depravity. the total corruption of the human nature. As the Catechism set it forth already in the second and third Lord's days, we are by nature prone to every evil, incapable of doing any good. Sin has made us guilty, worthy of punishment. Sin becomes a controlling power that has that rules, a power that corrupts and defiles and ultimately kills. The relationship between those two things, of course, is that because we are guilty in Adam, therefore we are deserving of the punishment, death. And that death is manifested in the vile natures that we have and the control of sin over us. is what we need to be saved from. The guilt, the punishment, the power of sin. We need a Savior. And the only Savior, the reality, the only Savior is Jesus. The only one who can save from all that. Jesus saves first in the work that He does for us. We're going to talk about the work that Jesus does for us and in us in order to understand how He saves us. He saves us by the work that He does for us, that is, outside of us. In the whole of His life, culminating in his cross and resurrection. This is the work that Jesus does for us. And that's the first part of the catechism when it says, he saveth us. We'll talk about delivering in a minute, but he saveth us from our sins. And that's the guilt and corruption. Jesus as Savior came into our world to take away our guilt and to remove the punishment. To do that, he became one with his people. Now, eternally He was already one in a certain sense, wasn't He? Because God chose Christ to be the elect, the mediator. And then God chose all His people in Jesus so that He becomes the head of this body before anyone is even created. Jesus is eternal, but before we were created, we are there in that body. We are one with Jesus Christ. And His, our guilt rather, can be imputed to Him. And he can be our representative, our substitute on the cross. But then to fulfill all of that, God made him to be one with us by him taking on our flesh. He had to become a human being in order to be able to bear the punishment that we endured. Jesus would save us by becoming one with us, one with us. And so he bore the punishment. The wrath of God, all His life long. We can't even imagine what this is like. But as a little child, somehow He was already bearing our guilt and the punishment of God's wrath. And as He developed into a young man, and as He served the Lord through His three and a half years of public ministry, and especially on the cross and that terrible, agonizing three hours of darkness. He bore our punishment. He became accursed. He took our guilt and he bore the infinite wrath of God and finished, finished that work of salvation completely. He took the place of God's people underneath the wrath of God and their sin and their guilt are gone. He saved us from sin, the guilt, and the punishment. In this work, that same work, not going yet to the delivering part, in that work of saving, again, that's all negative so far, isn't it? But there's a positive side. And the positive side is He earned a righteousness, which could be imputed to His people, and was, because He's one with us. So now our guilt is transferred to Him, but His righteousness is transferred to us, and we are justified by faith. God does not look at us anymore as lawbreakers. He looks at us as innocent people who have kept the law all their life. They're righteous before Him. They have the right, therefore, To have fellowship with Him. Jesus did that. None of your works come into this. None of your works make you worthy to be there with God in fellowship. It's all in Jesus. He makes us righteous. He makes us to have the right to have fellowship with God. That's what Jesus did for us. saving us from guilt and punishment, and restoring us to fellowship. But there's more to be done, because there's still that power within that rules, that power within that corrupts. And so he has to work in us. And the in us part is what the catechism says when he says, and delivereth us. So he saves us from guilt and punishment, but he delivers us from the power of sin as well. Jesus does that by his spirit. So important, the spirit of Jesus and Jesus are inseparable. Jesus sends his spirit into into His people, and the Spirit begins to work. All of that is based on the cross. It would be wrong for the Spirit to work any of this unless there had first been the payment for sin and the righteousness that's imputed. On the basis of that, the Spirit goes to work in God's people. He regenerates. And as soon as the Spirit regenerates, He has destroyed the domination of Satan. Satan is no longer master. Satan has been dethroned. Sin no longer dominates, absolutely, as it once did. No more is it so that this man who was regenerated can only sin. No, he can do good now. There has been this huge transformation. He's delivered from the bondage of sin. That's the law that we read this morning. I am the Lord thy God who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. I've brought you out. I've delivered you. Regeneration. gives a man a new life and that life comes from heaven. That life is absolutely holy. That life is absolutely sinless. So that man has a life that delights in that which is heavenly. That delights in that which is spiritual. You have that life. As a regenerated child of God, you have that life. The power of sin is broken by regeneration. Before regeneration, man can only sin. But after regeneration, though he is a sinner, he has a different life. He is able not to sin. He has a small beginning of the new obedience. Jesus saves us from the ruling power of sin, breaking the domination, the absolute domination of sin and Satan. But he also has to work on the corrupting power of sin, the corrupting power. Sin defiles every thought, action, word, and deed. and the spirit, the holy sanctifying spirit, will reverse that. There will come a day when it will be absolutely reversed. There will be no sin in you. The body, nothing but lust, said Calvin, that will die. Raised a new body, incorruptible, undefiled, holy. The day is coming. when all sin will be gone from us. But now in this life, the Spirit begins the process of reversing that, the process of corruption in us. He works a hatred of sin, a hatred of sin. For the first time in a man's life, when he's regenerated, he begins to hate sin. Otherwise he never would hate it, except what people do to him. But his own sin would never be the object of hatred. Now he begins to hate sin. When he sees sin on the billboard or sees sin in a magazine or on the television screen, he hates it. And he begins to love holiness. Often in a believer's life, that's the main part of his sanctification. Paul said that. Paul, the apostle Paul said, This is the way I go through life. I have within me a life that loves the good, wills to do it. But then I fail. I don't do the good. And I find myself doing that which I hate. That's the life that the Spirit has worked. We have such a corrupt nature in us that will stay corrupt until we die, that that's always militating against that life that the Spirit puts in us. We have such a small beginning of the new obedience. And yet there is, because of that work of the Spirit, a change. We are, says the Bible in another way, we're a new creature. A new creature. A creature that has the mind of Christ, so that he's able to think biblically, not as a fool. So that his will, which was otherwise dead in sin, is now able to will, to choose what is good. He's able. Jesus does all of this. You can find salvation in Him alone, not in any other. It's His work that completely removes the guilt and takes away the punishment. He is the one that makes us to be righteous before God and restore to His favor. The rest of salvation is Jesus' work in us, destroying the domination of sin, cleansing us by the power of His grace and Spirit, and restoring us to life with God. The work that Jesus did of delivering us from guilt and punishment and giving us His righteousness makes us have the right to fellowship with God, but the work that the Spirit does now restores us to it so that we begin actually to love fellowship with God and enjoy fellowship with God because of that life, the life that delights in holiness, that delights in heavenly and spiritual things. All that Jesus does as our Savior. You understand that that is the foundation of every aspect of salvation. The foundation of every aspect. No matter where we turn, when we start looking at our salvation, it always rests on this, that Jesus is the only Savior. That He accomplished every part of our salvation, whether it's for us or in us. Everything. rests on Him and on Him alone. That's the reality. Jesus is the only Savior, the only one. That salvation in Jesus Christ is complete means that we have perfect confidence in Him as the complete Savior. Because there isn't any blessing of salvation that comes to us apart from Him or grounded on Him. Question 30 indicates how serious a matter this is. Do such then believe in Jesus, the only Savior, who seek their salvation and welfare of saints, of themselves, or anywhere else? And the answer is no, they don't. For though they boast of Him in words, yet in deeds they deny Jesus the only Deliverer and Savior. For one of these two things must be true, that either Jesus is not a complete Savior, or that they who by a true faith receive this Savior must find all things in Him necessary for their salvation. The Catechism was written very much in the context of the Reformation, and they have their eye on the Roman Catholic Church. Rome boasts that salvation is in Jesus, but in reality denies that with the rest of her theology. Rome finds all sorts of ways of minimizing what Jesus did, and putting the emphasis on you or the church, what the church will do. It claims, for example, that when the church baptizes, that washes away original sin. So you don't need Jesus really to wash it away. The church washes away original sin. Then it goes to work on sin and creates all sorts of categories and minimizations of sin. There are great sins, there are lesser sins, there's mortal sins, there's venial sins, there's all different categories of sin and different kinds of merit that you can do in your life. And Rome claims that Christ paid only part of the punishment for sin. They distinguish, and there's a legitimate distinction, between the temporal punishment and the eternal punishment. But they say Jesus paid the eternal part, but every person is responsible for the temporal part. And you have to take care of that temporal part. And you can get it removed by doing penance when the priest, you confess your sins to the priest and he says, this is what you must do. These works of penance, and then you are free from that guilt. You've taken care of your guilt there, your temporal punishment. You can go to the church and pay for a mass. Understand there's the actual Eucharist of partaking, but there's also the mass, which is that theatrical performance by the priest. You can pay him to do that, and that will take away the guilt, your temporal. You can go on a pilgrimage to Rome and get on your knees and go up the stairs praying to Mary and to Jesus and taking away your sins. You can buy an indulgence, and if none of those things finally covers it all, when you die, you go to purgatory, and there you'll suffer until all of your punishment is finished, and then you can go to heaven. You can also draw on the merits of saints. I say, saints in Christ. Quotation marks, because they have a special category for saints. They are people who lived extra special holy lives, did some miracles, and therefore they earned with God a repository of merit, and you can draw from that. You can pray to a saint. You can pray to Mary. In order to go to God and ask for mercy, you can get some of that for yourself. So clearly while they speak of Jesus as being the Savior, in the end, there's all sorts of things that you must do or you'll never get to heaven. Arminianism can be accused of the same. Arminianism claims Jesus is the only Savior. They preach him without sopping. He's the only one. He died on the cross for your salvation. He died for the salvation of everyone. He earned salvation full and free. There isn't anything that can be added to that. Jesus did it all. He did it all. But now you must open up your heart. You must let him in. He's knocking. He wants to come in. He wants to save you. It's all done. It's a finished work. He accomplished it on the cross, but now you have to let him in. And now, of course, they take biblical language. That means you have to confess that you're a sinner. You have to believe in Jesus. That's all true. But then they add this. Now, don't forget, now that you're saved, you have to persevere to the end. Otherwise, you'll still be lost. So in the end, while they boast about Jesus being a savior, leave something crucial, your letting Jesus in will determine whether or not you are saved or not, your work. The Catechism rejects that. One of two things must be true. Either Jesus is not a complete Savior, so we don't look to him for the fullness of our salvation, or that those who by a true faith receive this Savior must find all things in Him necessary to their salvation. We do receive Him. Jesus comes into us by His Spirit. We do receive Him by faith. By the grace of God, the Protestant Reformed churches do not merely boast of Jesus, but find all things necessary for our salvation in Him. By the grace of God, that's our theology to the core. We were born in the midst of a controversy over that very question, common grace. And we deny that there is a grace that is common. to all men, a non-saving grace. And especially denied that there was a well-meant offer of the gospel that God offers salvation to everyone and gives them grace to be able to respond to that offer. But He really does want to save everyone. We rejected that. The fathers rejected that and said, no, grace is particular. Grace is always saving. God saves His elect. God saves everyone for whom Christ died. He died for the elect alone. Every one of them are saved. All our salvation is by grace and is particular. And then, 25 years later, we had to maintain this in a little different way in the controversy over the covenant that resulted ultimately in the split of 1953. Rejecting any conditions in the covenant. That's what it was about. The idea that God promises salvation to every single baptized child on the condition that that child believes. That salvation is right there waiting for the child just to reach up and take hold of it. It's available for every one of them. And if the child will then believe and take hold of that salvation, the Spirit will work it all in him. He's just standing there ready to go. And we rejected statements within the churches that God promises every one of you that if you believe, you will be saved. God doesn't promise salvation to everyone. And faith is not a condition. We rejected the idea, the statement that our act of conversion is prerequisite to entering into the kingdom. Because we are brought into the kingdom by regeneration. It's not our act of conversion that brings us into the kingdom. So the church has condemned those statements as heretical and rejected all conditions in the covenant. The battle will never be ended. And the battle came to us again in the last six or seven years. And it had to be fought, again, as a preacher made statements that seemed to make our way to the Father in John 14, verse six, I am the way to the Father, no man cometh unto the Father but by me, and seem to make our works to be part of that way unto the Father. And that's not so easy. It's difficult because the reality is that as we walk in our daily life, we must be obeying. We must be doing good works. That's what God requires of us. But we may never make our good works to be part of our way unto the Father. And that was condemned in 2017, and the minister recognized it, retracted it, apologized. But then there were more statements. Statements like this, that the Senate of 2018 said were doctrinal error. We do good work so that we can have our prayers answered. Again, obedience is required here, obedience that I must perform in order to enjoy fellowship with God. Again, there are requirements for him to fellowship, to approaching unto God, coming to the Father. Godliness is the requirement according to scripture for our prayers to be heard by God. Again, what do the creeds say about the relationship between obedience and fellowship? This is coming to the crux of the matter. Obedience and fellowship, what's the relationship? that there are requirements, that there is obedience required in order that we may have fellowship, prayerful fellowship with God. The Catechism says, come to God. I'm not, this isn't my words, I'm still quoting. The Catechism says, come to God that way, meeting those requirements, meeting those demands of God for a proper prayer, and you can be assured you will enjoy fellowship with God. The error, according to Synod 2018, is that the believers' good works were given a place and function out of harmony with the Reformed confessions, out of harmony with the catechism and the canons, what they have to say. They don't exactly directly address the matter of fellowship and works. It has never been addressed directly. But what they do say about fellowship and what they do say about works, these statements are out of harmony with that. It doesn't fit. They were connecting, these statements were connecting good works and fellowship with God in a wrong way. There is a relationship, but not this. Not this. Insisting that good works are essentially prerequisites to fellowship. and that good works will get you better fellowship with God? That's not the confessions. I want to make this clear, and this is important, that that was not the intent of that minister. It's obvious. He retracted. He apologized. That was not his intent. It was not the intent either of the consistory or classist that sometimes defended the minister and failed to catch the error. Classist Senate rather 2018 said, you failed to catch the error. You failed. You weren't defending the error, but you failed to see it. But that doesn't in any way take away from the seriousness of the doctrinal error, so serious that Senate 2018 said this, the doctrinal error of the sermons then compromises the gospel of Jesus Christ. For when our good works are given a place and function they do not have, the perfect work of Christ is displaced. Necessarily, then, the doctrine of the unconditional covenant fellowship with God is compromised by this error. There's another side of it, justification, but we'll leave that for later. We're only focusing now on this, and I'm bringing this up because it fits in this Lord's Day. This Lord's Day says all our salvation is in Jesus. Every part of it, every blessing is in Him alone. And when the synod makes that statement that it compromised the gospel of Jesus Christ and displaced the perfect work of Christ, then we better understand that. How did those statements that I read to you, how do they displace the perfect work of Christ? Well, now we've talked about the perfect work of Christ here this morning in some detail. And what the Senate meant certainly was not this, that somehow these statements are displacing the work of Jesus Christ, saving us from guilt and punishment. That was not what the Senate had in mind. These statements are not touching that. They are not taking away from the saving work of Christ, taking away our guilt, taking away our punishment. Nor do these statements take away from the other side of Jesus' work in us that Jesus delivers us from the power of sin, delivers us from the corrupting power of sin, and the ruling power. None of that was ever debated. None of that was ever in question. So, what was? What work of Christ was being displaced. It's the positive side. Remember how we said, there's the negative, saving us from, delivering us from, but then there's the positive side. What Jesus does, that He restores us to fellowship with God. That's His work too. That's where there was a displacement. In Jesus giving us His own perfect righteousness. In Jesus reconciling us to the Father. In Jesus restoring us to the position of covenant children. In Jesus giving us the right to fellowship. And then giving us the fellowship. He gave us the right to fellowship when He justified us. And He actually gives us the fellowship brings us to God. All of that is in Jesus. None of it depends on our activity. None of it. Nothing. No blessing of salvation ever depends on our works. It can't. Jesus is the complete Savior. Nothing depends on us. Works are not a condition to fellowship with God. Works do not get us better fellowship with God. Works are not an instrument to give us any benefit of the cross or any blessing of the covenant. They do not. Jesus alone is the reason, the cause, the ground of every blessing, every blessing of salvation, every blessing of the covenant. It's all in Him. and fellowship is enjoyed through faith in Jesus. Does God demand obedience of his covenant people? Yes, he does, of course. And that's as obvious as the son of the heavens. Let's go to a covenant family here for a moment and say, does a covenant father demand obedience of his children? Of course he does. And when those children do not give obedience and they walk in disobedience, is there in that family a nice, pleasant, happy fellowship mood? No. The father is angry. But when the children do obey, have they earned their supper? Have they earned the warm bed? Have they earned fellowship with their father? No. No. And the same thing is true of God. God, our Heavenly Father, demands perfect obedience. Perfect. And He sent His Son, the Savior, Jesus, to die for the disobedience of His children. To die for their disobedience and to remove their guilt and deliver them from the power of sin. That's why he sent Jesus. So that his covenant people can walk in obedience. He wants them to. He demands it of them. In and through this work of the mediator, God takes his people into his loving embrace. And there he says, you are my children. Be ye holy, for I am holy. Be ye holy. Walk in the power of the cross of Jesus Christ. There's the fullness of your salvation. There's your power. Walk in that power. In so doing, understand, you will earn nothing. You will earn nothing. Because Jesus earned it all. He did it all. You will earn nothing. by your most outstanding obedience, if you want to speak so foolishly. Understand, God tells his people, you will never lose my friendship. You will never lose my friendship. Fellowship might be affected, but my friendship, that can't be, because I promised you, I will be your God, you will be my people, and that rests on Christ. There's the foundation. And so you can never lose friendship with God. That's impossible. But you will not experience the joy of fellowship with me if you walk in disobedience. If you walk impenitently in sin, you will not experience a good time, fellowship, spiritually speaking, until, to use the words of the canons, chapter 5, article 5, Until on your returning unto the right way of serious repentance, the light of God's fatherly countenance again shines upon you. But even then, even then understand that that repentance, and if you begin to walk in obedience, that didn't earn you anything. It doesn't restore you to my favor. That's all in Jesus Christ. All in Him. He did. everything. Trust Him alone for your salvation and for every blessing of salvation and the covenant. Amen. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we thank Thee for Thy Son, a Savior complete, a Savior who never failed or will fail, and in whom we can place all our confidence. We are, Lord, so, so thankful for that salvation in Jesus Christ and for the joy of that salvation in our covenant life with Thee. Lord, forgive our sins in the blood of Christ. Sanctify us by thy spirit for Jesus' sake. Amen. We sing Psalter number 317. In stanza four, salvation's joyful song is heard. where'er the righteous dwell, for them God's hand is strong to save, and doeth all things well. Let's sing stanzas one and four, one and four of 317. And all His saints I heard proclaim His everlasting love in my despair. I Ah, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, For he alone has won wisdom, and he's in glory that excel. And thus saith he this glorious day, long as the ages shall endure, The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.