Testament reading is from the book of Psalms, Psalm 105. Psalm 105, we shall read verses 1 to 11. In this psalm the people of God are called on to remember their history. Give thanks to the Lord. Call on his name. Make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him. Sing praise to him. Tell of all his wonderful acts. Glory in his holy name. Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Look to the Lord and His strength. Seek His face always. Remember the wonders He has done, His miracles, and the judgments He pronounced. O descendants of Abraham, His servant! O sons of Jacob, His chosen ones! He is the Lord our God. His judgments are in all the earth. He remembers His covenant forever. the word he commanded for a thousand generations, the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac. He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant. To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit. We end this brief reading at the end of the eleventh verse. From the letter to the Hebrews, chapter eleven, beginning to read at verse thirty-two and reading on into chapter twelve. Hebrews chapter eleven, verse thirty-two. And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised, who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength, and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received their dead back, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, ill-treated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. and there is an ample supply of these cards available on the bookshelf in the vestibule. So please take one of these if you haven't already got one. We would also encourage you perhaps to take some of these to give them to your friends. Perhaps they might like to come along and hear these messages or perhaps they might like to borrow tapes of the different sermons. It could be used as something to give to people outside the congregation. We are seeking to explain and understand better what it means to be a Reformed Presbyterian at the close of the 20th century. And we're thinking a little bit today about our history. So in preparation for that, let us turn to Psalm 77, on page 94 of the Psalter. Psalm 77 on page 94. The psalmist is discouraged, downhearted, almost depressed. He feels that God has forsaken his people. Life is dark. He tells us in previous verses that he is lying awake at night, worrying. And it's interesting to see here how he deals with his discouragement and depression. He reminds himself of church history, of what God has done for his people. And as soon as he does this, he is tremendously encouraged. This morning we come to the second of this series. Here we stand, Reformed Presbyterianism today. And the title of our second study is Rooted in History. Rooted in History. As I said last week, these are not textual sermons, but topical sermons in which we take a particular theme and develop that theme in a more or less logical way, referring to different passages of scripture as they are appropriate. So I don't have a text this morning, but if you are looking for a theme text, we could, for example, take as our theme Isaiah chapter 51 verse 1. In that section of the prophecy, God is speaking once again to a discouraged prophet a man who doubts whether God can bless his people again. And his advice to the prophet is, look back to your history. The text reads, look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn. The Reformed Presbyterian Church is a very old and historic church, certainly one of the older churches in the land of Ireland. Our church has its roots in the Second Scottish Reformation, which took place between 1638 and 1649. Our roots go back further. In Ireland, to the early Presbyterian settlers who came over from southern Scotland in the years immediately after 1607, when the land of the rebellious earls was confiscated by the government and given to settlers from England and Scotland. Our routes go back further still to the first Scots Reformation under John Knox which began in the year 1560. So we can trace our roots as a church at least back for 450 years. But I would want to trace our roots further back still. The Reformation itself was a purifying of the original apostolic church founded by Christ. It was not an invention of something new. It was a rediscovery of something very, very old. So we describe our church as an historic apostolic church, as a denomination We have a long and glorious tradition. As you sit here today, you are the heirs of the centuries. For hundreds of years, Reformed Presbyterians have sat and worshipped as we do today. And for many centuries beyond that, humble, believing Christians, holding the faith which we hold, have gathered in the presence of God. We are part of that church which our Lord Jesus founded. Now, many people would think that to have a long history is not a great advantage. They would think that in fact it is a disadvantage to be historic and to be old. There are many things which are old. Hinduism is a very old religion. It has a long history. It has thousands of years of tradition, and yet we believe it is false. Islam, while not as old as Christianity, in fact being the youngest of the great world religions, is still a very, very ancient faith. with a long tradition. Being old, being historic does not mean that we are true. Or again, we might regard something historic as interesting, admirable even, but not relevant to this present age. We go round the Ulster Folk Museum We see how our ancestors lived. We go into the cottage and the mill and we look at all the different implements that they had in their kitchens and on their farms and we study them. They are very, very interesting to study. To think how people used to live a century ago or a century and a half ago in Ulster. We look at all the different implements and we show them to our children. Perhaps some of us say, I remember those things. I remember the telelamp. I remember the spirit lamp and our children look at us as if we were something from before the ark. And these things are all very interesting, they're historic, but they're out of date. None of us would want to go back to those days probably with all the discomforts and inconveniences that were involved. We wouldn't want to take out our modern kitchens and try and build the kitchen of a hundred years ago. They're historic. They're interesting, but they're just not relevant to today's world. Some people might think we reform Presbyterian churches like that. In fact, I think some people do. There used to be a program on television, a popular program, called The Good Old Days. And people used to dress up in Victorian or Edwardian costumes and have an evening of music on. And the chairman would introduce in very flowery language all the acts and they would come on and everyone would laugh and enjoy it. It was a trip back to the past. A trip back to the past. Sometimes I think people think of us as a sort of a living example in the spiritual life of the good old days. It's nice to come back and visit the Common Ancestors from time to time. That's the way we used to worship. I would be Leonard Sachs, you see. The chairman, who used to bamboozle the people with big words. Interesting, but irrelevant. And we're living in a society, of course, which is attracted by what is new. Notice how often in advertising the two words are joined together, new and improved. New improved washing powder. If it's new, it's bound to be improved. I think I would agree with all that to a certain extent. History can be a curse. It can be a dreadful burden. I think many of us would agree that we are living in a land which is cursed by its history. We have far too much history. We have far too long memories. Many Protestants and Roman Catholics live back in old grievances of 100, 200, 300, 400 years ago and these things are still fresh. We are burdened by our history. We are destroyed by our history. It is a great weight upon us. In many ways it would be a blessing in Ireland if we could be free from a great deal of our history and make a new beginning. History can be a curse. It can be a burden. And it could be that for us as Reformed Presbyterians. But I would want to argue the other case this morning. The Bible calls on us to value our history, to remember our history. We often sing Psalm 105, verse 5. Remember the wonders God has done, O descendants of Abraham, O sons of Jacob. Remember God's wonders. And I want this morning briefly to think of our history as our roots. The title of our study is Rooted in History. And if we think of our history as our roots, I think we'll find it a helpful way to approach the subject. Now roots on a plant or a tree have two great purposes. And our historical roots, I believe, serve those two great purposes. Let me set them out for you in turn. The first function of the roots is to provide nourishment. To provide nourishment for the plant. The roots go down deep into the soil, and on each root are fine little hairs, root hairs. And these hairs are used to absorb water from the soil. And chemicals dissolve mineral salts, and the roots take in the water and the mineral salts. And this nourishment passes up through the roots and feeds the plant. So the roots feed nourishment to the plant. And I can think of at least three ways in which we are nourished as a church by history. Firstly, in teaching. In teaching. I should perhaps have come clean about this before now. I've been preaching in this congregation for very nearly twenty years and I've never told you I think that actually I have a panel of advisors to help me with my sermons. A number of very gifted men who meet with me every week and discuss with me the passage on which I intend to preach. And I really have received a great deal of help from these men over the years. I am very fortunate in having an international panel of advisors available to me. John Calvin calls in most weeks and we have a chat about the passage. I have a number of Puritans who help me. Quite a number of Scotsmen from the 19th century, I find, usually have something constructive to say, and there are a number of modern American and Englishmen who advise me on the passage. I'm referring, of course, to my books in my library. And I'm making a very serious point. I am to come to you to teach you the Word of God. And I am not to come to just bring my one individual, limited understanding of what the Word of God teaches. I enter into fellowship in my books with the greatest Christian theologians, scholars, and preachers of all the ages. What has God the Holy Spirit been saying to His people? about this passage. What have God's people learned? How can we be taught? How can all those centuries of prayer and study and teaching and witness feed you? And I see it as part of my task to gather together the best of the centuries, the best of the centuries, to distill it to bring it together, and then to try to change it and to apply it to your lives and your situations in the twentieth century. So that when you hear the ministry of the Word, it is not coming to you just through Ted Donnelly, but that it is, in a sense, the Word of God to his church throughout the ages. And we are being nourished and fed by all those who have lived before us. by all those throughout the world today in different places who study the Word and who have insights and understanding. I am not too proud to seek advice. I recognize that I need the help of greater men than I am. Charles Spurgeon once commented on men who would not read commentaries. These men said, we trust the Holy Spirit. He will tell us what to say. Spurgeon said, I am surprised that these men who so respect what the Holy Spirit says to them have little time for what the Holy Spirit has said to other people. That's a valid insight. How much poorer we would be if we were to sit down as a group of Christians and not listen to anybody and not read anybody or take advice from anybody and just start out with our Bibles and nothing else. we would lose so very much. History nourishes us. It enables us to profit from these men and be blessed by that which is good in their teaching. Secondly, we can be nourished or helped by way of warning. The writer of Ecclesiastes says there is nothing new under the sun. There is nothing new under the sun. And again and again as I look around me, in the light of history, I agree with what he said. There is no such thing as a new heresy. There is no such thing as a new heresy. These heresies, these cults, these sects that we see around us, most of these things have been taught before. They were taught in the second century A.D. They have been answered. They have been confuted. The mistakes which have been made in the past can teach us to avoid them in the present. The false directions which the Church has taken, we can learn from these. When writing his History of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon described history as little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. Now history is more than that, but it does provide us with warnings, heresies to avoid, mistakes to avoid, wrong directions to avoid. We can learn from the past. Someone else has said, those who will not learn from their history are condemned to repeat it. And we've seen that in our own country time and again. You remember how in 1 Corinthians 10, 11, Paul refers back to the history of the people of Israel when they sinned in the desert. And he says, these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us. Written down as warnings for us. You see how Christians have fought, how they've divided, how they've made mistakes. They're written down as warnings for us through teaching, through warning. And perhaps most of all, we can be nourished by our history by way of encouragement, by way of encouragement. We as Reformed Presbyterians are particularly touched by the stories of the Scottish Covenanters, those humble men and women who suffered and died out of loyalty to King Jesus. How could we read those stories of Richard Cameron and James Rennick and Margaret Wilson and many others without being stirred, without being challenged, without God saying to us, what are you doing in your day for Christ's crown and covenant. They suffered. They witnessed. They gave up their very lives out of loyalty to King Jesus. They were hunted across the face of the earth. They were tortured. They were burned at the stake. What are you doing? Or we read the great stories of missionary endeavour, of Cary and Livingstone and Judson and Brainerd, of Mary Slessor, and Isabel Kuhn and others in our own day, we read of these men and women who went out to the ends of the earth for God. Or we read of the times of revival, when the cause of Christ was weak, the church was poor, and the situation was dark. It seemed as if the gospel was going to be blotted out altogether. And then God worked. And God sent revival. And the nation was changed. And thousands were brought into the kingdom. We read about these things and we say these can happen again. Our history can encourage us, stimulate us, cause us to be more devoted to Christ. You remember how in Hebrews 11 the author gives an inspiring list of all those men and women of faith. He ends with the martyrs. And he begins in chapter 12, therefore, seeing we are surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses. I would say that to you and to me today. We are surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses. Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles us and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. My friends, a church with a strong sense of its history as part of the people of God is nourished. Our Lord Jesus spoke of the seed sown which sprang up quickly, but he said those plants withered because they had no root. There was nothing to feed them. We can be nourished by knowing that we are rooted in history. And then secondly, it provides not only nourishment, but stability. Stability. Or if you prefer alliteration, food and firmness. The roots not only feed the plant, but they serve as an anchor for the plant. They hold the plant or the tree in the ground. They support it. In fact, in some cases they even hold the soil together. And where there is soil erosion, people will plant different plants with fibrous root systems so that the roots together may hold the soil. The root is the anchor of the plant. If a tree has great, deep, powerful roots, When the gales and the winds come, that tree isn't easily blown over. The storms rage about the tree, but the roots hold it firm and upright. Not only nourishment, but stability. Now of course, our true roots are not in our history. Our true roots are in God. In the love and grace and covenant of God, in the mercy of Christ, Paul speaks of us being rooted and established in Christ's love. But it's true also to an extent of God's preserving us in our history. I want to suggest just in a sentence or two four ways in which our roots, our historical roots, can give us stability. The first word is consistent. The Reformed Presbyterian Church has many, many faults. I would be the last to deny that. We need to be reformed and we need to be revived. We need to confess and acknowledge that and to seek God's mercy. But having said that, I want to say that To my knowledge, no church in Ireland has an equal record of steadfast adherence to the scripture, certainly in her ministers and elders. I am not aware that in the 350 years of our history as a separate church, a single minister or elder has ever denied the complete truthfulness and infallibility of the Word of God, has ever wavered from the gospel of grace, has ever fallen into heresy or doctrinal error. There may be cases I have never heard of them or come across them in any of my reading. I don't say that in a boastful way, I trust, but it is something to give us stability. We belong to a that has never, ever moved on Scripture. Never, ever. It has never questioned it. It has never doubted it. It has never raised any question about the gospel. For three and a half centuries, not one voice within our ranks has been raised to question the great doctrines of the faith. That has not been true with some other churches. That does not mean, of course, that we shall continue that way. We daily need God's grace and enabling. But it is something to be thankful for. It is something to remember. Our church, for all these centuries, has a consistent record of steadfast adherence to Scripture as the infallible and inerrant Word of God, without question or qualification. Consistent. Secondly, confessional. We hold to the great historic standards. We hold to the confessions and catechisms drawn up by some of the godliest and most able men in an age of revival and great theological advance, the Westminster Divines. These standards are in turn based on the early creeds of the Church, the faith held by the people of God in every land and every nation. And we have published testimonies setting out what we believe. We are a confessional Church. Now what is the value of that? And it simply means that if someone comes to our church and they're interested in it and they say, what is your church about? What does it teach? What do you hold? We can say, read it. Here's what you're getting. Here's what we believe. There's no ambiguity. There's no uncertainty. We've heard all of us this week of the tragic end of people who were sucked into a cult. They started off thinking that the cult believed one thing. And they ended up not knowing what it believed. So many groups are springing up today. They're vague, they're amorphous, they're enthusiastic, they're zealous. But what do they believe? What do they hold? What do they teach? It depends so much on the personality of the leader. A charismatic with a small c, dynamic personality controls the group and shapes the group. in his own image. The people follow along as disciples. But my friends, you have a standard to measure me and my fellow elders against. You can call us to account. If we wander from the path, you can give us chapter and verse. You have a control, you have a pattern, you have a safeguard in our confessions and testimony. We come to the world and we say, this is who we are. This is what we teach. Come to us and this is what you will be getting. That gives stability. There is certainty. There is knowledge. It is clear what we stand for. Some fellow Christians may not agree with us and that is their privilege, but at least they cannot doubt our position. That gives great stability to a church. And then thirdly, we can be confident. We can be confident. We can look back over the centuries and be confident in God's purpose for His Church. Certainly for His Church. And we trust and pray and hope for the Reformed Presbyterian Church. Why has this little church been kept in being throughout these centuries? God has some reason. God has some purpose. There was a long period, for fifty or sixty years, when we didn't have a single minister. And yet the Church endured. There have been times of difficulty. There have been dark periods. Times when the Church has been very low. But the Church has been preserved. We believe that God, in the midst of her, doth dwell. And as we look back we say there must be a reason, there must be a purpose. We have a task to carry out. We have a place in God's plan. We're not here today and gone tomorrow. We have been in this land for many centuries and God's hand, I believe, has been upon us. Consistent, confessional, confident. there is stability. So reformed Presbyterianism is nurtured by its roots, nourished and stabilized. As I've implied already, history, to change the metaphor, is like a two-edged blade. It can be used to cut, or it can cut the hand of the person who is using it. History could damage us. The roots could take over. It would be wrong for us to rely on our history. It would be wrong for us to boast of our history. It would be very wrong for us to try to live in the past. It would be equally wrong for us to try to copy the past. and re-duplicate the past at the end of the twentieth century. In these instances our history would be damaging us and perhaps in the past our history may have damaged us to some extent. Perhaps we may have lived in the past. Perhaps we may have relied in the past. I simply ask you, what is the test of a good root system in a plant or a tree? What is the test of a good root system? You don't see the roots. They're underneath the ground. The test of a good root system, surely, is growth, life, fruit, leaves. You don't say of a plant, what wonderful roots. When you say that, the plant's dead, or dug up. You say, what wonderful fruit. And if our roots nourish us and stabilise us, that will be shown by our growth and our life, our vigour and energy, not in the past, but now, rooted in history. But we prove that by being fruitful in the present and in the future. A tree planted by streams of water. It's got good roots. How do you know it's got good roots? It yields its fruit in its season. Its leaf does not wither. And whatever it does, prospers. We've looked at the roots today. Let's concentrate on the fruit. Amen. Let us bow in prayer. Father, we live in an impatient age, an age where there is a desperate striving towards an unknown future in the hope that it will be better. And yet you are the God of the ages, the covenant God who works from generation to generation. And we are partly what the past has made us. Help us, O Lord, to obey the instruction of your Word, to remember your mighty acts, to remember what you have done for your people, to look at our past in the light of your truth and as a springboard for the future, that we may be nourished, that we may be stable and strong. We pray that our history may not be a drag upon us, holding us back and constricting forcing us into past outmoded patterns. But instead, O God, may be a motivating and energizing force that we may, by your grace, write a history for the future which shall be even more glorious. We ask it in Christ our Redeemer, the One who was and who is and who is to come. Amen. Let us close our service by singing praise from the alternative version of Psalm 48. Psalm 48 on page 214. We sing from verse 6 to the end of the psalm. The tune is Zerah number 239. Here the people of God go into the city, they look at the walls, they remember their history and think of what God has done. And they are filled with confidence for the future. In our God city we have seen what we before were told. Let us sing to the end of the psalm. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.