Sermon on Lord’s Day 1 (Q&A 1)

1.Q. What is your only comfort in life and death?
A. That I am not my own,[1] but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death,[2] to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.[3] He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil.[5] He also preserves me in such a way[6] that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head;[7] indeed, all things must work together for my salvation.[8] Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life[9] and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.[10]
[1] I Cor. 6:19, 20 [2] Rom. 14:7-9. [3] I Cor. 3:23; Tit. 2:14. [4] I Pet. 1:18, 19; I John 1:7; 2:2. [5] John 8:34-36; Heb. 2:14, 15; I John 3:8. [6] John 6:39, 40; 10:27-30; II Thess. 3:3; I Pet. 1:5. [7] Matt. 10:29-31; Luke 21:16-18. [8] Rom. 8:28. [9] Rom. 8:15, 16; II Cor. 1:21, 22; 5:5; Eph. 1:13, 14. [10] Rom. 8:14.

Scripture Reading:
II Corinthians 1:1-11

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 111:4,5
Psalm 40:4
Psalm 12:4
Hymn 49:1,2
Psalm 134:3 (After Ordination)
Hymn 53:1,2

Beloved Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Today a tenth church may be instituted in the bond of the Free Reformed Churches of Australia. A church: that’s not a club of like-minded people. Nor is a church a social organisation, a group of tightly knit family members who all get on well with each other. A church, we learn from Scripture, is the work of God; specifically, a church is a gathering of believers, of those washed in the blood of Jesus Christ and renewed by the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

A gathering of believers. What is it that the church believes? What faith binds the members together? What faith is to characterise the Free Reformed Church of West Kelmscott, what faith shall its office bearers cultivate – if this church is to remain a church of Jesus Christ? As we institute today the new congregation of West Kelmscott, this is the question I wish to lay before you. The faith that characterises the church is not a set of doctrinal truths and no more; the faith that characterises the Lord’s church is the faith of Caspar Olevianus and Zacharius Ursinus so long ago, a faith that lives, is practical and vibrant.. It’s the faith confessed in LD 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism.

To draw out with you this afternoon the feel of that faith, I wish to read with you first the introduction given in our Book of Praise to the Heidelberg Catechism; it’s on page 473. There I read the following:

"The Heidelberg Catechism, the second of our doctrinal standards, was written in Heidelberg at the request of Elector Frederick III, ruler of the most influential German province, the Palatinate, from 1559 to 1576. This pious Christian prince commissioned Zacharius Ursinus, twenty-eight years of age and professor of theology at the Heidelberg University, and Caspar Olevianus, twenty-six years old and Frederick’s court preacher, to prepare a catechism for instructing the youth and for guiding pastors and teachers. Frederick obtained the advice and cooperation of the entire theological faculty in the preparation of the Catechism. The Heidelberg Catechism was adopted by a Synod in Heidelberg and published in German with a preface by Frederick III, dated January 19, 1563.

1563. We live in 1998, 435 years later. The authors of the Heidelberg Catechism lived in Germany; we live in Australia. More, the authors were theologians; we’re normal, common people. The question jumps at us: how in the world can a document written 435 years ago –it’s the age of the donkey and cart; they didn’t so much as dream of bicycles, let alone cars and aeroplanes, computers and televisions and the internet and space shuttles- how in the world can a document written in such a remote past be of any assistance to us today?? We are today’s people, instituting a new congregation in the midst of today’s problems; don’t we then need today’s answers? How shall a church on the threshold of the 21^st century survive with a faith that’s centuries old?!

The answer, my brothers and sisters, is quite simple. The fact of the matter is that the God confessed in this confession has not changed in the 435 years since Caspar Olevianus and Zacharius Ursinus believed in Him and put their faith to paper. More, their God is today our God, Yes, this is the God who today causes His church to be instituted in West Kelmscott. Because this God does not change, yes, because this God is busy in our midst today must this confession of long ago be our confession today. God has made us today as rich as He has made them of long ago, and so we, like they, need to respond to His promises by confessing the faith. As our ways as one congregation part, it’s quite in place to consider the nature and the need of this confession.

I summarise the sermon with this theme:

IN THE CATECHISM COMMON PEOPLE RESPOND TO GOD’S GLORIOUS PROMISES.

1. what circumstances surround real-life people
2. what promises do real-life people have
3. what response do real-life people give

What circumstances surround real-life people⤒🔗

LD 1, in fact, the entire Catechism, is punctuated by personal pronouns. Time and time again we meet the word ‘I’, the word ‘my’, the word ‘me’. Who, I ask you, is meant by these personal pronouns? When LD 1 says that "I am not my own, but belong … to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ" who is the ‘I’, the ‘my’, that’s speaking here??

The correct answer, we all know, is: the ‘I’ and the ‘my’ refers to the believer, to you and to me. Yet I draw to your attention, beloved, the fact that neither you nor I wrote the Heidelberg Catechism. In first instance, the ‘I’ and the ‘my’ and the ‘me’ of our LD is a direct reference to Caspar Olevianus and Zacharius Ursinus. These two figures of church history worked with the promises of God as given to them in holy Scripture, and then, in their situation, echoed those promises as their only comfort. This afternoon I take you back into church history to observe how God deals with His real-life people.

Caspar Olevianus and Zacharius Ursinus are introduced for us in the Introduction we just read to the Heidelberg Catechism. Zacharius Ursinus, says this Introduction, "was twenty-eight years of age and professor of theology at the Heidelberg University." The other man, Caspar Olevianus, was "twenty-six years old and Frederick’s court preacher." Both details paint to our minds pictures of these two men as arm-chair theologians, persons who don’t breathe the air of daily living, who don’t get their hands dirty with the nuts and bolts of normal life.

Yet that turns out to be quite incorrect. These two men –and their ages aren’t that different from the average age of the present Kelmscott congregation- both very much had their feet on the ground, both were common, normal people who got their hands as dirty with the mud and misery of this broken life as anybody else. Consider.

It’s a historically documented fact that Caspar Olevianus was a student. And, as students do, young Caspar studied…, and then got rid of his cramps and his cobwebs by a bit of adventure. He and some friends found themselves a dingy to cross the river. But a number of drunks climbed on board also, so that the boat capsized. One of Caspar’s friends couldn’t swim…, and drowned before Caspar’s eyes…. Caspar himself passed on the sad news to the father of his drowned friend….

Again, it’s a historically documented fact that Olevianus, once he finished his studies, returned to his native town (the people were still Roman Catholic) to tell his school friends and family members of the gospel he had discovered while studying, the good news of salvation not through works but through God’s grace only through faith in Jesus Christ. The people of his home town received the gospel eagerly and joined the Reformation. The governor wasn’t happy with that development, and sought to arrest the young preacher. When the town’s folk refused to cooperate, the governor had their crops burned…. For us today, that may not be such a major disaster, for trucks will bring bread to Kelmscott from elsewhere. Not so in those days; the people’s defence of young Caspar meant that they and their animals hungered throughout the next winter. The result was that Olevianus was arrested and gaoled. And again: as we consider Olevianus in gaol, we’re not to think of a place like Casurina; we’re to think instead of a dungeon, damp and dark, flea-invested and stinking. Make no mistake, beloved: Caspar Olevianus knew life from its dark side, knew what it was to suffer, and to suffer wrongfully. And who can tell what guilt burdened his conscience as a result of his friend’s death? If only he hadn’t suggested the boat…, if only he’d stayed with his books…, if only he’d dived for his friend sooner…. Isn’t that human? Young Caspar, my brothers and sisters, was as human as you and I…. There was nothing artificial about this man, nothing protected. This brother of long ago felt the consequences of the fall into sin just as acutely as we do today. So, for that matter, did the other author, Zacharius Ursinus; a picture of his humanness is as real as Olevianus’.

Frederick III, ruler of a district called the "Palatinate", saw need for a Catechism so that the people of his realm might be taught the Word of God. At his request, two young men sat down to fulfil their mandate. And see: Olevianus and Ursinus do not begin their Catechism by asking what the doctrine of the Bible might be. They’ve got their feet on the ground, and they’ve got their hands dirty with the mud and misery of this broken life, and they know that Frederick wants to use this Catechism to teach people who are also burdened by the concrete trials and tribulations of their lives, and so they begin their Catechism with a question that’s born from the actual pain characterising this broken life. Etched into young Caspar’s mind is that horrible vision of his friend drowning in the river; in that concrete life-and-death tragedy, what, Caspar, is your only comfort?? Not all that long ago he spent time in that rat-infested, stinking dungeon; what, Caspar, in the midst of the horrors of this life, when you do not know whether the guard’s opening of your cell door means freedom or execution, what is your comfort? How, Caspar, in such situations can you keep your chin up? How can you, no matter the horror of the circumstance, be at peace? Caspar knew, and Zacharius Ursinus did too, that the people out there in the fields of Frederick’s little kingdom, had reason both to laugh and to cry, could be joyful as the harvest was ripening and devastated when the hail storm destroyed the ripened crop. They knew –they were as human as anybody else- that the people of the streets were faced with every possible temptation and gave in to temptations also and so had to cope with a guilty conscience and the bitter results of their sins. What these people needed was not dry doctrine from armchair theologians; what these normal, average people needed was the gospel of Jesus Christ set within a framework of the mud and misery of this real life. So Olevianus and Ursinus put to paper no truisms, but their own personal faith. As you, Caspar, sat there day in day out in the dark dampness of your dungeon, what was your only comfort? What hope would you cling to, how could you stay in good cheer?? And Caspar Olevianus, a real-life person, supplied his answer:

"That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ."

It’s quite an answer Olevianus gives to the question. As he thinks back to the drowning of his friend, as he recalls the chill and the stench and the hopelessness of that prison cell, he doesn’t say that there is no comfort, nor does he say that he could do nothing better than wish to be dead himself or drown his sorrow and anguish in a drinking binge. No, congregation, Olevianus could give a straight answer: I had comfort in the chill and the stench and the hopelessness of that dungeon because I knew that I was the special possession of "my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ". This Saviour

"has [long ago] fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him."

And we wonder: how does Olevianus know this? How can anybody know this?? That’s our second point: what promises do real-life people have?

What promises do real-life people have←⤒🔗

Yes, congregation, how can Olevianus in prison know that he belongs to Jesus Christ?? The answer is actually very straight forward: God told him so. I’m thinking now particularly of the significance of the sacrament of holy baptism administered to young Caspar when he was still an infant. In that baptism, the Lord God from heaven above established His eternal covenant of grace with this little sinner; God claimed tiny Caspar as His. Though the "Form for Holy Baptism" as we find it in our Book of Praise had not yet been written, we understand that its Scriptural content was true for children over the centuries, for Caspar too. May I ask you, then, to turn with me to that well-known Form for the Baptism of Infants in your Book of Praise, pg 584. There the riches of the sacrament of baptism are explained as follows (middle of the page):

Second, baptism signifies and seals to us the washing away of our sins through Jesus Christ. We are, therefore, baptised into the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

a. Just what God promises when He has a child baptised into the Name of the Father is set forth in the next paragraph, like this:

When we are baptised into the Name of the Father, God the Father testifies and seals to us that He establishes an eternal covenant of grace with us. He adopts us for His children and heirs, and promises to provide us with all good and avert all evil or turn it to our benefit.

God from heaven above, then, reached down to that infant Caspar and adopted him to be His child and heir, promised to provide him with all good and avert all evil or turn that evil to Caspar’s benefit. We understand: that’s a most rich promise. In the course of young Caspar’s life, almighty God in heaven placed in young Caspar’s life the death of his friend, later placed the young preacher in the foul dungeon of the governor. Did the hurt and discomfort of the circumstances into which God led Caspar’s life give the lie to God’s promises?? Caspar was convinced: if God is God –sovereign, holy, gracious to sinners- the mud and misery of this life do not give the lie to God’s promises; I remain God’s child by covenant, precious in His eyes, and He continues to provide all good and turn all evil away or work the evil of being in prison or loosing a friend to my benefit. You see, congregation, br Olevianus knew Who God was –always reliable, trustworthy- and so did not give up hope as one dark day flowed into the next dark day in that cold, damp and smelly dungeon. He knew it: God said I belong to Jesus Christ, and so God is my Father, and that means that He "preserves me in such a way that without [His] will … not a hair can fall from my head" – even in this rat-infested prison; "indeed, all things must work together for my salvation."

So he said it, with the words of LD 1. What we have then? This: with LD 1 Caspar Olevianus (and Zacharius Ursinus too) responded to what God had said to them years ago in the covenant of grace He made with them.

And let me ask you, beloved: is any other response fitting?? Given Who God is, is any other response acceptable to God? If He is the almighty, Who once spoke and this world came into existence, if He is so gracious that He gave up His only Son to save sinners, is any other response fitting to a promise from Him? Surely, it’s clear: the only fitting response to the promises of God given at holy baptism is a confession in the vein of LD 1: God said I’m His, and so I confess that I "belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ." And so I’m sure: "without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation" – even if a friend drowns in my presence or I’m locked away in the king’s dungeon.

b. God’s promises to little Caspar at his baptism were greater still; Caspar was baptised also in the name of God the Son. The Form for Baptism gives us the Scriptural significance of baptism into the Son with these words:

When we are baptised into the Name of the Son, God the Son promises us that He washes us in His blood from all our sins and unites us with Him in His death and resurrection. Thus we are freed from our sins and accounted righteous before God.

That’s to say: God promised to little Caspar that all his sins would be washed away, that he would in fact be considered righteous, without sin, in the courts of God the Judge. But see, in the course of his young life, Caspar gave himself to all the sins that you and I give ourselves to also; there was nothing unhuman about this man. But as Olevianus considers the events of his life, the death of his friend, the hunger of his town’s folk, his time in prison, he doesn’t chastise himself with thoughts of: God must be angry at me, I must have done something wrong, otherwise these evils wouldn’t have happened. None of it; he instead clings to what God has said concerning him while still an infant. And when the question comes to him about what his comfort might be in the midst of the dirt and the damage of this life, Olevianus feeds back in his own words the words that God had earlier spoken to him, and he says:

I … belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. [Regardless of what my sins were], He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil."We understand: then br Caspar does not have to go through life chastising himself for having left his desk and having gotten into that boat; whatever guilty conscience he might have on account of sin is relieved of its burden, simply because God said that He would freely wash away all sin for Jesus’ sake and declare Caspar righteous before the throne of God. So trials and tribulations are not expressions of God’s wrath on sin; instead, God, my Father for Jesus’ sake, is busy working all things in my life for my salvation. Truly, what peace fills one’s mind when the promises of God are embraced as br Olevianus could do! And make no mistake: given the identity of the God who gave such promises, no other response was fitting for Olevianus – no matter his circumstances!!!

c. God’s promises are richer still. For God had little Caspar baptised also in the Name of the Holy Spirit. The wealth of that baptism is expressed in the Form for Baptism like this:

When we are baptised into the Name of the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit assures us by this sacrament that He will dwell in us and make us living members of Christ, imparting to us what we have in Christ, namely, the cleansing from our sins and the daily renewal of our lives, till we shall finally be presented without blemish among the assembly of God’s elect in life eternal.

That God, instead of being angry, would make His home in the sinner, would renew him so that on the last day we may be perfected before God – surely, how marvellous is the gospel! There’s Olevianus in prison, uncomfortably so. How can he keep a spark in his eyes? What’s his hope?? God has spoken, and so there’s only one fitting way to respond. And that’s what Olevianus does in the dirt and difficulties of this life, and so echoes what God said to him as an infant: "by His Holy Spirit," he says, God "also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him." Dirt and damp and darkness, the mud and misery of this broken life: br Olevianus works with the words of God once spoken to him, and so has comfort, has hope, has perspective, has peace-of-mind in the real-life circumstances of daily existence. In the misery of his prison he knows –for God promised it- that the crown of righteousness is laid aside for him, that one day he’ll enter the very presence of God Himself, and there there’ll be no tears any more, and no pain or hunger or misery either…. For that’s what God has promised him….

What response do real-life people give←⤒🔗

The very personal nature of the Confession drawn up by Caspar Olevianus and Zacharius Ursinus became in turn an example for the people of the Palatinate. After all, God’s covenant of grace was made with so many of them too. So they also had to respond –how?- by taking God’s words revealed in Scripture and underlined in the sacrament of holy baptism and repeating these promises as true and fact for the self. To echo, to repeat after God as true for the self what God has promised: given Who God is, there simply is no other acceptable way to respond to God! Countless of the Palatinate believed God’s promises, and repeated those promises as their own with the words of LD 1. See there the church gathering work of the Lord centuries ago.

And we? God has made His covenant of grace with all of us also. That’s to say: the Lord has claimed us as His, told us that we belong to Him, that He is our Father, His Son is our Saviour, His Holy Spirit is our Renewer. As such we’re grafted into His church. That’s what God says to us in the nitty-gritty of this life – including depression and cancer and marriage strains, etc, etc. Now tell me, beloved: how do you respond to what God has said to you?? Will you, in the pain of your lives, keep God’s promises at arm’s length? Or maybe even judge them hollow, empty? Know it: it is true for us as much as it was for Olevianus and Ursinus, and it was true for Olevianus and Ursinus as much as it was for Abraham and David and Paul before them: given Who God is there is only one response acceptable. And that is this: Lord, if you say I’m your’s, then it is so; "I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and death, no matter my circumstance, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ." It’s to say: "Christ has fully paid for all my sins and set me free from all the power of the devil." Again, it’s to say: "He also preserves me in such a way that [today] not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my heavenly Father; indeed, all things [even my mess at home] must work together for my salvation." And because I’m Christ’s He "by His Holy Spirit … also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him." That’s the response of faith, that’s to accept what God in mercy has said to me and work with it.

Is, then, the Heidelberg Catechism outdated?? Not at all, beloved, not at all. For God does not change, and so His promises to His children do not either. You and I at the end of the 20^th century may take on our lips the very personal response of Caspar Olevianus and Zacharius Ursinus and make that response our own simply because the promises of God to them are also His promises to us and to His promises one response only remains fitting – and that’s to repeat after God what He has said to us.

There, beloved, you have also the reason why we may not minimise the confessions, as if they are simply the work of well-meaning believers of long ago, but we today have our own problems that demand our own answers. A confession by definition is man’s response to God’s promise; the very word ‘confession’ in its Greek original means ‘to say the same thing’. And God doesn’t speak out of two sides of His mouth, does not give different promises to different people either; His promises are always the same, and so God’s people over the ages can do nothing else than echo what God has said. That’s why the faith of Olevianus and of Ursinus can be our faith today – just as it was Paul’s faith centuries before.

Now we institute a new church. What faith may characterise this church? More, what faith must characterise every church of Jesus Christ? What faith shall the office bearers encourage in the flock? No, my beloved, the faith is a not a set of doctrinal truisms that we need to get straight in our minds and nothing more. The faith that’s to characterise all churches of Jesus Christ is this: by God’s grace I was once grafted by baptism into the church of Christ, and so God gave to me delightfully rich promises in Jesus Christ! So I respond to what God has said, and I –with the church of all ages- take that faith on my lips, using words borrowed from brothers of a previous century, and so echo the wealth that God has given to me. This is a faith that’s intensely personal, a faith that lives, that has value and potency smack in the middle of the dirt and difficulties of this broken life.

A new church may be instituted in West Kelmscott, another congregation and assembly of the true Christian believers who expect, in their specific circumstances, their entire salvation in Jesus Christ, are washed –no matter the nature of their sins- by the blood of Jesus Christ, sanctified and sealed by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. As long, my beloved, as you cling to this faith, not just in its various doctrinal details but in its power as a personal response to the promises God has once given to you in your baptism, you shall remain a true church of Jesus Christ. But if you cling to the various doctrinal points and at the same time divorce their wealth from the nitty-gritty of your daily lives, you simply don’t have true faith – and so cannot claim to be church of Jesus Christ. Similarly, if you make light of the points of doctrine, and claim instead that you have personal bond with God and so all is well, you again cannot claim to be church of Jesus Christ.

The promises of God stand firm, my beloved. See to it, under the leadership of your God-given office bearers, that you respond, every day anew, in your concrete circumstances, in the only way fitting to any word that God has spoken. Then, Yes, you will be a blessing to one another, a blessing to the bond of churches, and a blessing in the community. And God Himself, at the right time, will speak to you another word of promise: "Well done, my good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Master." Amen.

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