time that will ever happen. So we are, you're in the middle of a series for Lent, a short series for Lent, where we're just going through some of the teachings in the Heidelberg Catechism on sanctification. We're actually just using the Heidelberg Catechism to just kind of, these four questions to introduce the topic and kind of guide us through that. What we did last week is we began with, if you flip, I don't know if it's on your second page or what, but you see where it says re-evaluation of five kinds of guys and gals seeking to grow in Christ. And so what we did last week is we began by just kind of discussing some really bad ideas that are out there regarding How you grow as a Christian. We talked about the Keswickian Christian. This is the kind that's like, look, your problem is you're trying. You need to learn to just let go and let God. Not a good idea. Mortification by confession Christian. This is the Christian who believes that if I just tell everybody everything that I've done, then somehow I will grow in Christ likeness. That's not true. Psychologizing Christian is an infinity of bad ideas and it could be anything from you need to deal with some unrecognized trauma in your childhood or some brokenness or whatever, but there's always these kind of, if you just deal with this psychological issue, you'll see great breakthrough in your walk with Christ. filled with bad ideas, lots and lots of bad ideas that distract us from the actual process of growing in Christlikeness, often. The carnal Christian, which is the person who's just kind of given up and begins to talk about the Christian life as though it was just always going to be filthy and ruined and this is just, you know, we're all just a bunch of broken people just living our broken lives and we're all just, you know, saved by grace here. Which is true, we are all sinners, but that type of attitude of resign to sinfulness is devastating to the Christian life and is not It's not how the Bible describes the victory of a Christian. There is a victory in Christian life. Then, I would add to that the put-off Christian, which is the person who focuses. This is kind of Stoicism. That's not exactly right. Stoicism does focus on virtue. this is the Christian that believes that simply through discipline and putting off and If I could just stop doing these bad things That's that that's half the view. That's the one side of a coin which is an illogical idea you need both sides of the coin and So the other side of that coin is vivification putting on the Lord Jesus Christ walking in the spirit communion with God and so forth and I want to begin by just quickly reading through the Heidelberg question and answer. So the first thing is, what is involved in genuine repentance or conversion? You say, two things, the dying away of the old self and the rising to life of the new. And then what is the dying away of the old self? You say, to be genuinely sorry for sin, more and more to hate and run away from it. And then what is the rising to life of the new self? You say, wholehearted joy in God through Christ and a love and delight to live according to the will of God by doing every kind of good works. There are no footnotes there. Pay no attention to those things. And what are good works? You say, only those which are done out of true faith, conform to God's law, and are done for God's glory, not those based on our own opinion or human tradition. So that's what I want to mostly focus on. I do want to briefly discuss, we talked a lot about mortification last Sunday school. and how it is the work of the Spirit, it is a process of continual battle to the death with sin universally, and it's described in Romans chapter 8 as a victory, a sign of victory, that the Christian is putting sins to death. And he's having victory. However, he does that his entire life. The old man stays in there as long as you are in the flesh. And that's the process of mortification. It's a process you will experience your entire life if you're a Christian. And I would add to that that it is something that comes from faith. It's a work of faith. It is not a work that is prior to faith. It's not, as Roman Catholics, to my understanding, I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I understand that they teach that it's a prerequisite to faith. That's not true. It comes out of faith. It can only be done in faith. based on the promises of God and trusting in Him and His Spirit. And then I wanted to add, there's a very fantastic book called The Mortification of Sin, which is a bit of a misnomer. I do highly recommend it, but everybody should know that you're actually not going to learn a lot about the process of mortifying sin. If you read that book, what you will learn is all of the work on the human level that goes into preparing you to mortify the sin. And so it's chapter after chapter after chapter after chapter. When you get to the final chapter, no joke, the last chapter, he says, now we're ready to start mortifying sin. And literally, he just says, now you put your faith in Christ, you call upon him, and you set the blood of Christ on that sin, and you put it to death. End period, end of book. But how do you get to that place where you're of a right mind to do that kind of battle with sin? That's the whole rest of the book, and it's actually a very helpful book in terms of thinking about how we think about sin. And so he says such things as, you should consider whether the sin you are contending with has any dangerous symptoms attending it. We all sin. Doug Wilson has a concept called nuisance lust, which is meaning just the day-to-day kind of little like moments where our heart kind of drifts in its longing after maybe a Sin, and we just come right back, and it's a nuisance. It's a nuisance. There is that kind of sin, which we all experience every single day. Like, why did I? That was an awful thought. Why would I think that? And we come back, and we walk. That is a kind of sin, and what he's encouraging you to think here is there's that kind of sin, and then there's really worrying sins, like I am falling into a deep snare of really bad and evil thinking, This is a besetting type of a thing. It's persistent. It's not going away. So he asks you to consider that. The second thing, get a clear and abiding sense in your mind and conscience of the guilt, danger, and evil of sin. We will not set ourselves in faith and prayer and on the blood of Christ and seeking after mortification if we do not understand the danger. So going back to that carnal Christian, the person who's just kind of made peace with the, this is just the situation, really what they've come to believe is that it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter. The Kezwickian takes sin way too lightly, the danger of it. We need to have these verses in front of us which speak of sin as being the kind of thing that will pull you down to hell. James, you know, will set your life on fire, you know, and so forth. Load your conscience with the guilt of it, and this doesn't mean walk around always in, you know, guilt and shame, guilt and shame. But when you sin, understand what it deserves. Understand, you know, come to a clear understanding of its deserves. and then get a constant longing for deliverance from the power of it. You see, these are all functions of the mind of thinking rightly about sin. How badly do I want to be delivered of it? You're never going to get out of debt, for instance, if you don't have a vision for what a life without debt is going to be like. If you just assume that debt is just the normal American thing, this is how so many Americans think, it's like you just got this payment, and you got this payment, and this payment, you will never arrive out of debt. You have to have a vision of what life could be like without it, a longing to be delivered from it. Consider rather the sin is rooted in your nature and exacerbated by your temperament. This is talking specifically about people who are maybe prone to anger, prone to sexual sins, certain kind of proclivities which make you especially in danger of this particular sin and be aware of that. Consider what occasions and advantages your sin has taken and exert. Does it always happen at the same time of day? Does it happen in a certain conversation with a certain person? Is there a person at work? Does it happen on a computer? Just consider, when is this happening? Be wise about this. So if you're going to put it to death, you need to have clear thinking about the sin itself. I like this, rise mightily against the first actings and conceptions of sin. Don't always just be thinking way after the fact. The moment you begin to say, wait a second, I've seen this before, begin at that point to fight. Meditate on the majesty of God in such a way that you're filled at all times with self-abasement and thoughts of your own violence. Very Puritan right there. But you understand what he's saying. The holiness of God is one of the things that drives us, right, like Isaiah, to fall on our face and cry, woe, woe am I, you know, I'm undone. And listen to what God says to your soul. Do not speak peace to yourself before God speaks it, but hearken what he says to your soul. Actually, John Owen is a little bit of a mystic in this regard. I wouldn't call him a charismatic or something like that, but I would argue that this is faith listening to the words of assurance of the ministry of the word and the ministry of the gospel at church. You can sit out in the pews and be harboring sin to yourself, right? And go through the motions of church. That happens, of course, right? Go through the motions of confession and not really mean it. Go through the motions of repentance. Go through the motions of approach to God and not really. You can do that, but that's not, for the normal Christian, that's not normally what we do here. More of the struggle is that you would believe what the pastor says to you. Your sins are forgiven. and receive that assurance. He's talking about some kind of peace of the soul that comes over you, and I would argue that what you need to do is not look inside yourself, but listen to the Word of God. Are you repentant according to the Word of God? Have you confessed your sin according to the Word of God? Believe what the pastor says about you according to the Word of God. Listen to the Word of God. Okay, and then, so and then run away you know is the last and then do everything you can to stop it you know fight fight for it but mostly it is a calling upon christ to save you he saves sinners christ is our savior And what we need to, we're going to talk about this in the sermon today, but we need to get away from that evangelical idea that Christ saved me a long, long time ago. And then I spend the rest of my life just trying to figure out, is that real? Did it really happen? That's not the relationship that we have with God, our Savior. Our relationship with God, our Savior, is that I have fallen back into trap. Help me. Get me out. crying to him for salvation, trusting in him, and then believing what he says about us. Okay, I want to, and then as I've already mentioned, sanctification only happens When we, not just when we put things to death, but when we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, we pursue virtue, we pursue communion with God. We don't just walk away from the darkness, we walk towards the light. And scripture is filled with all of these, humble yourself that he might lift you up. It is never ever just abase yourself, you know, be cruel to yourself, mortify, it's never just that. It is always, you see that right there in Romans 8, we put the deeds of the flesh to death and then immediately, what does the spirit do? It doesn't just say, yeah, we did it, we beat him. No, it turns around and says, now draw near to God your father. Draw near to him with the spirit of adoption, crying out, Abba, Father, in our hearts. If you don't have that, it's an incomplete work. You stay over here in the mess. Get out of there and go, live in his fellowship. Okay, so what can we say re-evaluating these five guys, these poor guys and gals, seeking to grow in Christ? And I do feel, I feel horrible. I feel that, you tell me, in your experience in encountering all the evangelicals you know in the world, do they have solid understanding of how to fight in the Christian life, fight their sin, walk with Christ. The world is filled with bad ideas. Washington County is filled with these ideas about we need to be truth tellers to our brothers and sisters as to how to walk as Christians. The Keswickian Christian, he is harmed by his passivity. You are called to be active. Work out your salvation because it is God who is at work in you. The mortification by confession Christian, he's harmed by the view that the chief sanctifying influence comes by sharing what you've done with others. Confession is about making it right with the person you've sinned against, not just about saying it out loud. When the Bible says, confess your sins to one another, it means you've harmed this person, go tell them, I'm sorry that I did this to you. And confess your sins to God, and then believe what he says, believe the word of God, and walk by faith. Psychologizing Christians are harmed in many ways. Probably the most destructive is the substitution of guilt and shame for lesser designations, brokenness, trauma. And there are people with trauma. I don't mean to minimize that. There are people that are really broken, broken psyches and harm. But those words have been inflated and what is worse is they've been substituted in for traditional Christian biblical language for sin and all the words associated with that. Often they will even teach that shame is what must be mortified. Your problem is that you have shame. That's a very common psychological idea and that's exactly the opposite. The problem with your shame There is a thing called misplaced shame, and it's real, and it can happen to us. People feel bad about things they shouldn't feel bad about. But shame is one of those driving motivations that John Owen would say, you know your problem? You need more shame. You're not feeling shameful enough about what's going on. It's the reason why this persists. And you don't want to stay in the shame. But if you don't understand your shame, you don't come running back to Christ who will deliver you from it. The carnal Christian is harmed by the view that we cannot expect success to lack of faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it will even lead to normalizing the behavior, and then the put-off Christian, everything is discipline, more punishment, more strictness, more rules. So, any questions about that before we go on? What I really want to talk about in the last few minutes we have is good works. What are good works, and how do we do them? Yes, sir, Chris. What would you say about the people who push back on the idea of the marble Christian? Well, yeah, I understand. You know, Albert N. Martin wrote a little book called The Carnal Christian, and what he meant is in that book. So first of all, the way in which, I know what you mean. The word Christian just means someone who's baptized, right? And somebody who wears the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So there really are such things called carnal Christians, and Paul speaks to the Corinthians as though they are carnal. And he even says at various places, purge the evildoers from among you, see whether or not some of you are in Christ, right? So there are people among the Corinthian church that are under judgment, that are carnal. But what is often meant by that, the carnal, pushing back on the carnal Christian, is there a person who can live in the flesh and go to heaven when they die? And the answer to that is absolutely not. It's contrary to the teaching of the Bible. Romans chapter 8, if we live according to the flesh, it's carnal Christian, we will die. We're doomed. So if sin has its way in us, And that's often not what's happening with these people. Sometimes they really are fighting, but there's bad definitions and things that work in them. This is often true, that real, genuine believers, the bad ideas get in there, and they can really mess with them and slow them down, postpone sanctification for, you know, that kind of a thing, but not necessarily destroy the faith. That's kind of how I think about it, but sometimes we don't know really what's going on there. So, good works, what are good works? Probably like a lot of you grew up in a context where had you said, we need to be about good works, we need to be all about good works, we need to be focused on good works and we need to be doing good works, someone would have said to me, probably it's already come into your mind, Devin, that sounds pretty Roman Catholic, or sounds kind of legalistic, or, Something like that. And that is because of a revivalism. We can thank revivalism for that. The whole idea that, you know, what I want for myself, for my children, for the people around me is just for them to get saved. Get saved. It's all about getting saved. And while certainly Getting saved is obviously good. What we should desire for ourselves, for our children, for the people we teach in schools and things like that, is that they would abound in good works. We will abound in works of one kind or another. The whole question is, what does God think of them? Are they good works? Okay, now according to the Catechism, good works, you'll notice there, it can be almost anything. This was one of the beautiful things recovered in the Reformation. Before the Reformation, this idea was kind of lost. What are good works? Only those done in true faith, conform to God's law, are done in God's glory, not based, it doesn't say what they are. It's not like a list of these 10 things. Do these 10 things, okay? That's not what good works are. Those are rather qualifications of good works, which we'll talk about in a second. But good works are anything that human beings would normally do in this world. That can be pleasing to God. God looks down from heaven and can be pleased with that. and even bless it, and as it says repeatedly throughout Scripture, even reward it in the world to come. Just everyday things that are done here in this life can be like that. This horrific teaching that was found among the Roman Catholics in the Middle Ages that there is a certain kind of religious life, the word religious was taken to mean people that have made a special monastic vow, they engage in certain activities throughout the day that is a religious life, and the rest of us while maybe devout or something like that, we live a secondary order of life that is more worldly and not as pleasing to God. That is horrific and is evil. My concern would be for the millions of people here living in Europe. throughout the Middle Ages, that went about their lives doing everyday things under bad teaching, thinking that the things they're doing every day in their lives don't really account for much before God. How horrible. That is horrible teaching to tell people. It's exactly, it's just completely different from that. You are humans taking dominion. Do what you do in faith. Trusting that it pleases God seeking to please him in all that you do from changing babies diapers to buying and selling to farming To praying to all these things human activities can please God In the same way that a child can do almost anything You should see how this church gets all in an uproar if Canaan just like holds a spoon above his head, you know or something like it or takes four steps It's just a, you know, it's like 50 parents sitting around going, did you see that? It's like little things, like we just get excited about, you know, what kids do. Our father feels the same way about us, just doing normal human things in the way that we're supposed to do them is pleasing to him, is pleasing to him. That's what good works are and it needs to be again fought for recovered This was one of those so we don't have to go back to the Middle Ages to pick on this This is one of those things that is commonly in our own day and age It's just commonly we beat young people over the head with you got to go on missions You got to get out. You got to leave look at all these dying people way out there in the world and And what, you know, like, love John Piper, but he gets up in front of a stage full of 10,000 people, and he's like, I want all half of you to go to the mission field. It's like, that is not helpful. Rather, start doing good works where you're at. You might find a powerful calling within to go do some great work of missions, that's true. And good, and God bless them. We need Christians doing good works here, okay? So I'm not against missions, okay? But I want you to notice this verse, Colossians 3, which I have written there, which is one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible, because if this person can receive the commendation and the reward of God, how much more all of you, how much more me? Look, bondservants, slaves, better translated slaves, Obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service, as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart. So be a good and faithful slave. Fearing the Lord, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men. knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ, for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done and there is no partiality. You see there this idea that as a slave who doesn't get to choose almost anything in his life, But what he does have control over is, I can impact my motivations of what I'm doing here, and I will do this work as menial as it is. All I do is wipe shoes when they walk through the door. Christ will reward that. Christ will regard that. Christ is pleased with that. And that gives me hope, right? But the motivations need to be there, the internal posture, the faith needs to be there, okay? So in short, good works are those which please God and are rewarded. That's what makes them good. In more short, shorter short, they are, listen to me, they're the meaning of life. Don't let the Roman Catholic thing that happened with good works and merit and all that, merit, awful. Don't let that detract you from the fact that the scriptures teach you are here to work and to please God and it is your purpose here. And you should be so thinking about what do I do all day? How do I do it? What are my motivations? That's what you're here for. That's what you're here for. Many, many Christians do this much better than other Christians. And consequently, when they arrive in glory, there's a pile of gold here, and it said, this is your works, this is what you've done. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians. And many Christians who think are very, very active, but their motivations are very selfish. And they're very high-minded about themselves, and they're very proud. And they get to heaven and they find, where's my, Where's my, you know, and St. Peter comes running out and he's got a little pile of straw. That's what you did. They're going to be surprised. They're going to be shocked. And he says there, it doesn't mean that they're not people of faith. They are, you know, the fire reveals what's there. And they passed through the fire, as it were. But they don't have much to show for that many years they were placed on this earth. Are all works equally good? Okay, this we need to understand. This is not what The Protestant work ethic, the Protestant view, sanctity of work, this is not what it's saying. It is saying that all work is acceptable and pleasing to God. It is not saying all work is equally pleasing to God. That's not what it's saying. It is not saying that. So we do need to realize that with wisdom, we have a number of resources, time, energy, wealth, people in our disposal and people, friends, and things like that. We all have a certain amount of, you know, a situation in Providence, the church we belong to. We have this situation, and from that, we are called upon to maximize our time here, for the glory of God. And some people will choose to do those things wisely, and some will not. And I want to commend to you all this little, I made another copy of about 10 of these, which I find just helpful. The Duties of Christian Fellowship. And I just maybe want to end with this. I do have one other point that's not written in here. Okay, well, actually, there's an important point. I realize I'm not getting to, but these are, do I talk about this? I just realized, maybe I. Okay, good works that are sorely lacking. It is a common, because of revivalism, evangelicalism, lack of church membership, lack of an understanding of church, covenant, what it means to be a covenant member of a church and to belong to the body, and frankly, just because people don't read their New Testaments correctly or their Old Testaments correctly. We think that just showing up on Sunday is All that is necessary when the scriptures speak of at the body of Christ and how it's supposed to work together and all of these interactions that we're to have with each other, things like praying for one another, fighting for the purity of the faith together, separating from worldliness, conversing frequently for edification, tithing, bearing with one another when we fall, that's what we're going to talk about today at communion, supporting one another in our physical needs. So, these are things that are very often by Christians who otherwise have faith and are very You know, maybe very active in the world, but they're neglecting their role in the body of Christ. It's a sin of omission. And they are going to find that, you know, they get to heaven and they're like, I maintain my Christian faith and that's great. And Christ is going to say, look, I placed you in a body of people. You didn't do much there. You showed up. You don't have much to show for that. The body of Christ is the fullness of Him who fills all in all, Ephesians chapter 1. The fullness of Him who fills all in all. It is everything. How we serve and love the body of Christ is everything. I have to move on. I'm going to put this out on the table if you want a copy of this. Go and do those things. Those are pleasing works. And I just want to end with, what is required to do good works? Well, as I said before, it doesn't require you doing anything, well, it doesn't require you, it's not a requirement of a particular kind of work. Certainly, it would include these religious works of faithful church members. But it can be anything. It can be how you do your job, how you serve your family, how you make your breakfast. But what is required? Does it proceed from faith? Romans 14, 23. Whatever is not of faith is sin. And I'm going to go through these quickly and then I want to say something really important about them. They're done according to the law. Obviously, it's not a good work if it's something contrary to the law of God. They're done for God's glory, 1 Corinthians 10, 31. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God. And I would add that it's certainly implied by the very next couple chapters later that it must be done in love, 1 Corinthians 13. You can offer your body to be burned, not a good work if it was not done in love. And so you see, it comes from a proper position of faith, love, virtue. It comes from a proper internal position, the glory of God, and so forth. But I do want to say this. I think we can get the wrong idea about this. There was a little book that was done practicing the presence of God. Brother Lawrence, practicing the presence of God. And that idea, this medieval idea, this is a guy with too much time on his hand, he's sitting around and he's like, what I want to do is do every single thing all day thinking about God. And I think that kind of pietistic burden placed upon all of our deeds is not what Paul is talking about in his letters. To do all things to the glory of God means that somewhere within you, you have a fundamental, a disposition to honor God in what you do. It does not mean every bite, honor God. Okay, honor God. Okay, honor God. That is psychotic. That's not how we're supposed to live. And that's a burden that Paul would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I did not mean I mean, think about that. Every one of your thoughts, right, should be done to the glory of God, right? Does that mean that with every thought you need to add another thought as a complementary thought to do that to the glory of God that you have to add like a little doxology to every single thought is insane. Rather, what you should do is focus bigly on orienting your life to the glory of God. orienting your life in faith, orienting your life in love. You do not have to do every single thing. So I love my wife, right? Is that true? I love her. Okay. I have to say that to myself sometimes. I love her. I do. And I know I do. But everything I do in and around her, interacting with her, I don't need to add, love you, hon. Love you, hon. Love you, hon. I don't need to do that. I have committed myself to this. I have made vows, and I have renewed those vows, and I often think about those vows. I have a disposition to love her. I don't need to add a little doxological thought moment at the end of everything I do saying, now do you love her? Was that out of love? That's not what Paul's talking about. Orient yourselves to the glory of God. Live by faith. Live out of love. Check your motives from time to time, but not everything needs to run through that filter. I think that's a definition of psychosis. You're not living in reality if you think you have to attend every thought. You can't. You absolutely can't. And God doesn't expect you to. That's not his purpose. Out of time, I would add to this that the Heidelberg Catechism was concerned with these works of supererogation, which just means super-added works that God has not required. Things like sleeping in a hair shirt, living on the top of a pillar, vows of chastity, things like that. God didn't require those things. They're not good works, and the Reformers had to say this because that's what we have our own works that add to the Word of God. God doesn't require us to do that. We can easily do that. We can put burdens upon people. For instance, go to the mission field. That's not That is not a burden that a young person should carry. If I just go somewhere, I just go, that's not a good work. That's not something God has required you to do. So that's what that is about. All right, real quick, one question. One comment.