NEWTON PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

 FALL 1993 SERMON SERIES

"Timely Answers To Timeless Questions"

Selected Questions From The Shorter Catechism on the

350th Anniversary Of The Westminster Assembly: 1643 - 1993

September 12, 1993

(1) How Children - and Grownups - Learn About Faith

Page 4

 

September 19, 1993

(2) A Faith That Dares To Question

Page 8

 

October 3, 1993

(3) Why Am I Here?

1. What Is Man's Chief End?

Page 11

 

October 10, 1993

(4) How Can I Discover The Truth?

2. What rule has God given to direct us?

Page 14

 

October 17, 1993

(5) What's God Like?

4. What is God?

Page 18

 

October 24, 1993

(6) Why Are Christians Always Using That S-- Word?

14. What is sin?

Page 22

 

October 31, 1993

(7) Who Is This Jesus Anyway?

21. Who is the Redeemer?

Page 26

 

November 7, 1993

(8) What's So Special About Being A Christian?

32. What benefits do they that are called partake of in this life?

Page 29

 

 

November 14, 1993

(9) What is baptism?

94. What is baptism?

Page 33

 

November 21, 1993

(10) Can I Talk To God?

98. What is prayer?

Page 36

 

Notes

Page 40

 

TIMELY ANSWERS TO TIMELESS QUESTIONS:

(1) Asking Questions: The Only Way to Learn

(Luke 2:39 - 52)

 

 

This past summer I made two trips to Westminster Abbey. The first was when my wife Judy and I conducted a group of Americans through the building. I had first seen the Abbey forty-five years ago when my missionary father insisted I visit the grave of David Livingstone, the intrepid Scottish missionary of the last century. My wife as a part of her profession teaching history to English school-girls was familiar with every detail of the Abbey. We quavered as our van driver announced: "You have twenty minutes to see the Abbey." Thirty minutes later we got our friends past the souvenir store to the waiting driver. He was not as impressed as we were by our speed.

 

The second visit to the Abbey was in July. This time I went alone in order to prepare myself for the fall sermon series. You have to make special arrangements with the staff to see the Westminster Chambers, off to the right through the Abbey precincts. It was there that I marked the 350th anniversary of the writing of a statement of faith that has shaped my life more than anything else (other than the Bible itself). Three hundred and fifty years ago over 150 Englishmen and eight Scots sat down to draft what we call the Westminster standards: three documents that would alter the shape of theology - the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger Catechism, and - almost as an afterthought - the Shorter Catechism.

 

Those were tumultuous times in England . The country was on the verge of Civil War: the ultimate outcome of which would be regicide, the death of the reigning monarch. Quietly, for over nine years as the armed conflict progressed, a group of individuals was busy formulating a statement of faith that was intended to bring the country together, cross sectarian divides, and unite England and Scotland in a single expression of belief that would be ecumenical in the best sense of that word.

 

It is the final of the three documents that we want to study: the Shorter Catechism. "Catechism" - particularly one that calls itself "Shorter" and extends for 107 questions - seems outmoded and outdated today. But I can remember the time, at the age of nine, when that Catechism was first handed to me as a member of the fourth grade class at the Sunday School of Park St. Congregational Church on the Boston Common. We were told that if we memorized the first thirty-eight questions, and a few others scattered further on in the Catechism, we would receive a leather-bound edition of the Thompson Chain Reference Bible, inscribed by the minister, Dr. Harold John Ockenga. I can still remember the thrill when, six months later, I sat with seven girls to recite the Catechism with the Assistant Pastor, Gleason Archer. My pride was turned to shame as one of the girls forgot a line. As the only male, I cheered the mistake of the alternate gender. Gleason ushered everyone out of the room and then delivered me a lecture on not rejoicing in the adversity of others!

 

When the Shorter Catechism first appeared in Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1647 it was by no means an unusual occurrence. John Cotton, then minister of First Church in Boston , explained that there were no less than 500 catechisms in the colony. Indeed, he had written two for his congregation: one quaintly titled Milk For Babes and other pastors had done the same. Thomas Sheppard wrote a catechism for First Church , Cambridge , which he pastored. Further out in Salem , Newbury, Rowley and Ipswich , pastors wrote catechisms to train their young. By 1669 the Governor and Council of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had ordered clergy "to catechize and instruct all the people (especially youth) under your care in the orthodox principles of the Christian religion, and not only in public but privately from house to house".

 

The Shorter Catechism was a part of the instruction of Presbyterian and Reformed churches for the past three hundred and forty-seven years., In this congregation for the first one hundred and thirty-seven years of our history, members of the Junior Department of the Sunday School would be expected to recite the entire Catechism to one of the members of Session. The Shorter Catechism shaped the life and thinking not only of this congregation but became what we used to call in the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., along with the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger Catechism, our "subordinate standard".

 

Catechisms are as old as the Christian religion: the word catechesis described the process by which instruction in the faith was given the young and the new convert. It's a late Greek word that actually means echo, and my picture of catechesis is of one generation echoing the faith to the next as the ripple effect of "Jesus Is Lord" sounds from one period of church history to another until finally it is taken up in eternity by the great cloud of witnesses that surround us. Catechesis as a term has enjoyed a rebirth in our time and is the contemporary word of choice for both Catholics and Protestants to replace those tired old word: "Christian education" and "religious education".

 

How does faith "echo" from generation to generation? Much as any body of knowledge does; through teachers. Teachers such as the men and women that we have commissioned today. Rally Day is a reminder that the Christian faith is only as strong as its programs for catechesis. In a society that is preoccupied - one might say obsessed - with the quality of its education, we might ask: "What makes a good teacher?" And, as we answer, we need to think of teachers that have changed our lives.

 

When I think of teachers that have affected me, I recall two. One was my fourth grade teacher at Agassiz Public School in Cambridge . Miss Hill had Samuel Gorowitz and I, the so-called "brains" of our class, running from class down Irving St. to the Cambridge Library to get more information on what she had been teaching us that day. Then there was Marvin Goldberg, my high school physics teacher, whom I saw just last April at a farewell for the Headmaster of my prep school. I was scared of physics and yet Marvin put me at ease when he said at the first class: "Never fear asking questions in class: if you want an answer, you can be sure there are others who also don't know and want to find out."

 

Asking questions, knowing what questions to ask, discovering answers to questions. This is the mark of a good teacher. Gilbert Highet has some memorable words about quality teaching:

"...teaching is a.. a demanding profession. Doctors make sick people well again. Lawyers reconcile people's differences. Clergy make people better in spirit. Teachers make children and youngsters, half animal and half savage, into civilized human beings. That would not be possible, of course, unless they wanted to undergo the change. Every child, every youth and girl, at heart wants to grow to the fullest powers of which he or she is capable. The best teachers in the world cannot force this growth. All they can ever do is to help it and encourage it. Their best reward is to see, not a 'product'., but a free and independent human being who can think."^[i]

 

Professor Highet says that one individual met this criteria as a Teacher: Jesus Christ. He was the Master Teacher, whose pupils were the women and men who followed Him around the dusty roads of Galilee , learning and being taught by Him. How did He teach? By asking them questions and by instructing them in how to ask, whetting their appetite for learning, broadening their horizons, making them cast aside the easy assumptions and the quick and easy generalizations that the facile thinkers can make. And how did He learn this secret of pedagogy?

 

Look at the story at the end of Luke 2. Here is where Jesus learned to be a teacher. By sitting at the feet of other instructors. The twelve-year old son of Joseph and Mary sits at the feet of the learned, being a typical method used by Jewish us instructors of the First Century. He sits at their feet and we read - verses 46 and 47 - "listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard Him was amazed at His understanding and His answers." The word 'question' there is an unusual one, suggesting not only curiosity, but "probing questions designed to elicit decisions"^[ii]. Jesus at the threshold of manhood not only could ask questions, He knew what questions to ask, and further he could provide answers. For a Prophet was among them, and they knew it not.

 

Jesus the master teacher, the master catechizer. Jesus, we could say, the walking catechism. Three incidents with one of His pupils, Simon Peter, illustrate this.

 

A prostitute anointed the feet of Jesus with expensive perfume,. The host, Simon the Pharisee, is outraged that a holy man should be compromised in such a way. Jesus turned and said, "Simon, I have something to tell you." And then he told a story of two who had borrowed money, one five hundred denarii, the other fifty. The one to whom they were indebted forgave each. Then Jesus the Master Teacher asked His question: "Which of them will love him more?"

 

Simon thought about the instructor's question and replied: "The one who had the bigger debt canceled." Jesus' reply was to give him an A+. "You have answered correctly."^[iii]

 

The other incident also relates to a fallen friend^[iv]. This Simon is Simon Peter who has denied his Master. The teacher meets him after a night of fishing. Three times he asks his pupil: "Simon, do you love me?", "Simon, do you love me?", "Simon do you love me?" Then, having responded affirmatively after each question, the risen Christ commissions the forgiven pupil with a three-fold summons: "Go and feed my lambs, my sheep."

 

The third incident that illustrates the questioning instructor comes at Caesarea Philippi^[v]. "Who do the crowds say that I am?, Jesus asks. "John the Baptist ... Elijah ... one of the prophets come back to life", they reply. "But what about you?", He asks. That question clinches it all. "The Christ of God." Peter has learned his lesson. He knows the Answer.

 

That's the most important question Teacher Jesus can ask of any of us as His pupils. A correct answer initiates a life-time of other questions as we sit at His feet, being instructed by Him,. That's what the Christian life is all about: learning from Jesus, being taught by Him, broadening the horizons of our knowledge, discovering new things about Jesus. To journey's end.

 

I remember the first September after I had left graduate school and seminary. I was in rural Nova Scotia , and no longer would I be leaving - as I had for nine years previously - at the end of August to return to smelly dormitories, starchy food, and late night cramming sessions before exams. I felt both relieved but anxious: how would I survive without my educational "fix"?

 

This is September. As Christians we are summoned back to school - if we've ever left - invited to a learning experience with the Master, to be taught by Jesus, to hear Him asking us probing questions and, in turn, to discover new Truth as we answer. Pray God that we will never stop learning, never finish the course, always return to the same Instructor every Fall, and take advantage of all the opportunities for learning that this congregation provides for pupils of Jesus, the Master Teacher.

 

                                    TIMELY ANSWERS TO TIMELESS QUESTIONS:

                                                (2) A Faith That Dares To Question

                                                                 (Matthew 11:2-6)

 

As I looked out over the congregation for several Sundays I noticed that he wasn't there. Nothing unusual: this was winter, a season of heavy storms. Perhaps he would be there the next week. Finally, after I'd had reports that there were other problems, I decided to call.

 

"Bill, (I'll call him that to protect his identity) Bill, can we get together?" It hadn't been easy to reach him, but I'd persevered pasts answering machines, receptionists and beepers. "Bill, let's do breakfast." (Everyone has to "do breakfast", surely!) Reluctantly, he agreed. "Where?"

 

So it happened that at 7:30 one morning, at the McDonald's at the corner of Longwood and Beacon, we met. After the usual pleasantries, I plunged in. "We've missed you, Bill, what happened?"

 

I loved Bill: he'd come to me with the usual professional concerns of a man who spent his life treating terminally ill children. My heart went out to him the first time we met. We discussed the ambiguities of faith, the struggles of a young adult in a city like Boston finding themselves professionally. But above all, he's asked me questions. And I'd done the best I could to answer them. At least I thought I had.

 

But this morning his mind was made up. "Bill", I asked when it became apparent that he had buried just one child too many, fought for one more research grant that hadn't come through, faced another set of parents with questions too gut-wrenching to answer. "Bill, how can you survive without a faith family?" Then his question came: "But is it true? Was Jesus really God?" Again, I parried: "Don't you sense any loss?" Again: "But is it true? Is there a God? Does He care?" Again, "You're going through a tough time, Bill, but you'll come through it." "That's not what I asked. Is it true?"

 

Two hours later, after a crash course in Apologetics 101, we called it quits. The table at McDonald's was littered with styrofoam cups, some of them partially demolished as we had worked through our conversation, seeing both the shredding of the cups and the unravelling of his faith.

 

"But is it true?" The question has haunted me ever since. Do I as a minister of the gospel really believe that God is out there, that He loves all of us, that He sent His Son Jesus to tell about love - to tell us, yes and to live and die for us?" Are the truths that I have based my life - and my ministry on - are they really true? What would I say if my life was spent dealing with the persistent onslaught of death among the young, the weak, the helpless? I loved that man, and I still do: his honesty was compelling. It was deeply disturbing that I was unable to answer - to his satisfaction at least - that question of all questions: "But is it true?"

 

Questions. They come to all of us in our faith journey. We're thinking about students this morning: they will come to you with relentless and unceasing persistence in your work this year. How you deal with them is going to determine whether your faith is a living and vital reality.

 

But they come not only to the young, to those who are starting out, but they also come to those further on in life. They come with particular persistence to those facing death. Like my friend Bill, death - to paraphrase Samuel Johnson - has a way of wonderfully concentrating the mind. You can't avoid death, it will come to all of us, and it has a way of directing us to the ultimate issues: life and death matters.

When I think back on Bill's question I remember John the Baptist on death row in the maximum security prison of Machaerus^[vi]. He's too young to die - only in his early thirties. He has stood for principle, fearlessly denouncing the head of state for sexual abuse, for incest. Surely, he'd argued, God will look out for me, will defend me. And then, rotting away in prison, condemned for his integrity, he is reminded of how bad things do happen to good people. Things don't always work out.

 

And so he starts to question: "Is my cousin Jesus really the Christ? Is He the One promised? Perhaps it was all a mistake. I've built my life on an illusion." It had seemed so simple in those early days: the message had attracted crowds of eager - and repentant - people, gathering by the River Jordan. "Judgment is coming! The universe is unfolding as it ought! God will punish the sinner and reward the saint! There is a rational system of checks and balances in the world!"

 

But there is no judgment, no reconciling of accounts, no punishment for evil doers. Wrong persists, right is powerless. And John ends up in prison, the victim of the very injustice he had claimed would end. And those questions persist.

 

What questions would you like to ask God this morning? If you could write a catechism what would your interrogations be of the Almighty? Lord, why didn't he live? Lord, why did she leave me? Lord, why did that happen to me? Lord, do you know what you are doing? Who are you any way, Jesus? Why are you so distant from me? Why can't I feel you near?"

 

So John - not Jesus as we saw last week - becomes the catechizer: "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" "Who is this Jesus anyway?" "Why have I given my life to Him? Why am I now facing death without comfort or consolation?"

 

Let me say something to you if any of those are your questions today. Jesus takes questions like that seriously, as He does with John. He takes them seriously if you ask them like John. He takes them seriously if, instead of the third person plural, you ask the questions in the second person singular. Not do "they" know what they're doing, these mysterious forces of fate or destiny. Rather: Lord, do you - the familiar German du - do you know what you are doing? Are you there Lord?

 

And so he sends friends to Jesus - friends who have been there with him and who now come to the Master with their inquiry. They are there with him for Him. Friends who don't give the pat answers of Job's comforters, who think it is all up to them to defend the Almighty. But they channel the inquiries to Jesus and bring them to the feet of the Master.

 

Jesus understands those questions. Jesus who knows the end from the beginning would be asking a similar question at the end of His life. There on the cross He would call: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?" The so-called cry of dereliction would be a cry of the Person closest to God who felt in that awful moment separation from the Father. So He accepts the questions of the young, the old, those near death, those who are too close to death to fake it, to pretend they have answers.

 

And how does Jesus answer? He turns to those friends and says: "I want you to bring back eye-witness evidence that you have seen Me at work." "Report back to John that you have received confirmation of that the word of prophecy, the message of Isaiah, which he so faithfully proclaimed is, indeed, true: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached." It is all there - Isaiah 35, Isaiah 61, the Scriptures are true, and you can rest on that certainty.

 

The catechizer receives the answer straight from God's catechism. "Are you the one?" God replies, not with words but with deeds, "The Word of God is sure. The prophetic message is secure."

 

And more than that: "I am the One." For it is in Christ that our questions are answered. We come back to Him, over and over again, secure in the knowledge that He does not reject our questions, think the less of us for them: as long as we come in the Spirit of intimacy, as long as we address Him as "you" and not "he or "it", then we are grounded in the reality of a relationship.

 

"No one leaves Christ as he or she came to him. Everything is transformed." So spoke Helmut Thielicke in a memorable sermon on this passage^[vii]. "My anxieties become the raw material for a new hope ... The burden bears me."

 

"That, therefore is the message ... You may bring me everything that worries you, not only the wounds in your heart and your tormenting skepticism, but also your physical pains and your toothache, your cares about education and your love problems, and even the examination that you must take in the morning. For nothing can happen to me that he has not examined and blessed to my use."

 

"Everything must go through him before it hits me."^[viii] Even our questions. Don't be afraid to ask. Don't be afraid to hear the answer:

 

"The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.

 

Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me."

 

                                    TIMELY ANSWERS TO TIMELESS QUESTIONS:

                                                           (3) Why Are We Here?

                                           (Shorter Catechism #1, I Corinthians 10:31)

 

Let me introduce you to "Pam Fletcher" who lives on the South Shore. Pam grew up in an educated, middle-class Pennsylvania household that was open and talked about everything. As a child she attended neither synagogue or church and designated herself "non-sectarian". She's now 37 and she and her husband, reared congregationalist, have no interest in any place of worship. "You have people when things get upset or things don't work out, they turn to religion. They go to church. It never even occurs to us. I go to my parents." When asked about God she is "uncertain". The question of baptizing their children as babies was settled when she went to her husband and said: "It doesn't mean anything to me. If it's important to you, it's your upbringing." Her husband then replied: "Pam, I couldn't care less".

 

"Pam Fletcher" is a person who has recently been chosen by a group of sociologists as typical of baby-boomer church dropouts. That generation, born between 1947 and 1964, is called - in the title of this study - A Generation of Seekers^[ix]. A curious thing emerged about Pam Fletcher: "secularists we talked to often expressed the lack of a broad encompassing framework for interpreting their lives and a yearning to be able to express their deepest feelings about life."^[x] That yearning is drawing some people back to church. Why, sociologists asked these "returnees"? They replied that they had "a personal quest for meaning .. something to believe in .. answers to questions about life." A woman from North Carolina spoke for many: "Something was missing. You turn around and you go, is this it? I have a nice husband, I have a nice house; I was just about to finish graduate school. I knew I was going to have a very marketable degree. I wanted to do it. And you turn and you go, here I am. This is it. And there were just things that were missing. I just didn't have stimulation. I didn't have the motivation. And I guess when you mentioned faith, I guess that that was what was gone."

 

"You have made us for Yourself, and the heart is restless until it finds its rest in You." So Augustine confessed to God at the end of his search. And at the beginning of the Catechism the question is raised: "What is it all about? Why am I here?" It is phrased in an unusual way: "What is man's chief end?" But allowing for unfamiliar vocabulary, the question is addressed to the same numbing void in the human heart that graduate student from North Carolina experienced: "Is this it?" Or, as the question came to Michael Caine: "What's it all about, Alfie?"

 

It was that skeptic about organized religion, Thomas Carlyle, who stated towards the end of his life: "The older I grow, and I am now upon the brink of eternity, the more comes back to me the first sentence of the Catechism which I learned when a child, and fuller and deeper its meaning becomes, 'What is the chief end of man? To glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.'"

 

Man's chief end: 'end' conceived of as purpose, intention, design. An 'end' is a boundary, a limit, but it can also represent how we get there. What is the end by which we are intended to reach the limit of our days? Our chief end - our priority in life - is but a single goal: to glorify God and in the glorifying find enjoyment and fulfillment.

 

That's a radical statement that flies in the face of everything we assume today - both in the church and outside. We live in a day committed to self-realization, achieving self-fulfillment, of actualizing one's self potential. And the Christian community is no different from the culture around us. The sociologists, interviewing a regular churchgoer heard the statement: "If one believes in oneself, there is almost no limit to what one can do." The conclusion was inevitable: "based on these comparisons, it is clear that the values of self-improvement and self-fulfillment have deeply influenced the conservative Christian community"^[xi]

 

The Shorter Catechism begs to differ. The purpose of human life is to be found in God. Two great purposes are the reason for human life: consecration and celebration. The more we glorify God, the more we will enjoy Him, enjoy life.

 

I. CONSECRATION: "glorify God"

 

Why am I here? "To glorify God." What does it mean to glorify God? Perhaps some of you may recall the advertisement for "Halo" shampoo two decades (or was it three?) ago. Halo is the shampoo that glorifies your hair. Glorious hair: bright, glowing, incandescent with highlights, irresistible, compelling, perfect.

 

Glorifying God means all that and more: it means both making Him glorious and also acknowledging Him to be glorious. It means that not only is God glorious, He has made us for a single purpose: to ascribe to Him the glory that is His due. We are called "give to the Lord the glory due unto his name ... to worship the Lord in beauty of holiness"^[xii] But worship is not something we do at 11 o'clock Sunday morning: glorifying God means that our lives are lived with one aim: to give to God that glory which is His rightful due. As an old Puritan once said: glorifying God is ""the yearly rent that is paid to the crown of heaven"^[xiii]. Or in the words of a Toronto minister, the late mystic A. W. Tozer: "We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God".

 

Does that seem impractical, imprecise? Look at Paul's instructions to the Church in Corinth. They are puzzled over the question of proper behavior. Specifically should they eat meat that had previously been sacrificed to idols? Paul says that a single principle motivates all Christian behavior: the glory of God should be our sole concern eating or drinking or whatever we do. If I substitute an idol for the living God, if I create divisions in the church, if I cause a fellow Christian to lose the way: then, I have failed to give God the glory that is His due.

 

That old Puritan I quoted earlier speaks of glorifying God under sixteen headings! I glorify God by putting Him first, by confessing my sin, by believing in Him, by being tender for His glory, by bearing fruit, by being content, by the spiritual disciplines, by standing up for His truth, by being zealous for Him, by witnessing to others, in suffering, by preferring His reputation to ours, by living a holy life. The list is endless.

 

Only one Person could truthfully say that He had done that. Jesus Christ was not only an expression of the "glory of the Father"^[xiv], he could also say to that Father at the end of His life: "I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do."^[xv]

 

Each of us has been given work by that same Father to do: we find our purpose in life as we do the task set before us. The day begins with a single concern: "How can I glorify you today, Lord?" It should end with a confession and a blessing: "I have not given you all the glory that is your due, Lord. But I want to glorify You: make me a worthy representative of your love and your peace." Or to pray with Richard of Chichester:

"Day by day, dear Lord, of You three things I pray:

To see You more clearly

To love You more dearly

To follow You more nearly."^[xvi]

 

And then - and only then - can the party start "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever".

 

II. CELEBRATION: "enjoy God"

 

For the kingdom of God is a party, as Tony Campolo keeps telling us. The bread and the wine are spread before us today. It is the bridal feast for Jesus. We celebrate His victory, the life He gives us through the resurrection. Across all the divisions of our planet we come to mark a world-wide family of sisters and brothers in a common Lord. We are called to enjoy God forever- the banquet today reminds us that there is an eternal dimension to our praise and worship: "Worthy are you, Jesus, to receive honor and glory and power ... ". And we joy in His presence: "In His presence there is fullness of joy, at His right hand there are pleasures for ever more."^[xvii] As Jesus Himself said around that first communion service: "I have told you (these things) ... that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete."^[xviii]

 

As I drive over to church each day I pass two buildings which remind me of what's going on in our city. As I cross Walnut St., turn down Newtonville Ave., I pass an old church. It's been a restaurant, a bar, an office building, since the Newtonville Methodists sold the building over a decade ago. But the square tower of a steeple was a problem: it was too high, too dangerous, too risky. So contractors have been busy bringing the tower down to a more manageable level. When I drive by I say "That's a picture of what's been happening in our society: the sacred symbols are disappearing, the transcendent has vanished. Nothing to look up to any more."

 

The other reminder is a house which went on the market for 1.9 million. They couldn't sell it, and eventually it went for less than a quarter of the original asking price. The reason? The foundation of the old Victorian house had completely crumbled. "Who would want a house for $600,000 if the whole thing could collapse some day?" a neighbor in our church asked. But a lot of people are building lives without any firm basis. Perhaps you are one of them. They remind me a bit of Pam Fletcher and her "lack of a broad encompassing framework for interpreting (her life) and a yearning to express (her) deepest feelings about life."

 

Sooner or later, the questions come: "Why am I here? What's all about?" Then comes the nagging doubt that pierces the armor of our certainties. God breaks through. Perhaps He's breaking through this morning. "What is the purpose of life?" And you hear for the first time: living for God, glorifying God and enjoying Him. Forever.

 

"Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."

 

Let's celebrate the party!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                    TIMELY ANSWERS TO TIMELESS QUESTIONS:

                                                (4) Where Can I Learn About God?

                                        (Shorter Catechism #2 and #3, II Timothy 3:16)

 

A Sunday like this one is a time of remembrance and recollection. It helps us to focus on one disciple of Jesus who went through more suffering and asked more questions than most of us twice her age. Kathy Ginsburg was a remarkable woman - of indomitable courage and scintillating intellect. She came to this congregation after her first diagnosis, listened, and returned. She returned with a notebook. She would put down everything that she heard, listening carefully, asking what had been said if she didn't catch it, and asking questions if she failed to grasp something. She was there at the Narthex with her pad, jotting down some reference, some quote. She'd take the printed sermons home, pore through them, and come back the next week for more. And her Bibles: I can remember the first Bible she had, one from Roma's family, a King James Version. Then there were others: a brand new Bible she'd been given at a family Christmas in Los Angeles, that she showed me proudly at her Hospital bedside. It was there by her side on September 4, 1992. If there was ever an appropriate memorial for anyone, it was the gift of Bibles we dedicate this morning.

 

"What rule has God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him?" The second question of the Shorter Catechism flows from the first: "What is man's chief end?" "To glorify God and enjoy Him forever." But who is this God, and how can we know how to glorify Him and enjoy Him for ever? "To reach so lofty an end" - to glorify God and enjoy Him forever - "we need direction."^[xix] So the Shorter Catechism picks up where the Confession, written at the same time, begins. Chapter 1 is titled simply "Of Holy Scripture" and under ten exhaustive paragraphs gives us a whole compass of the Reformed teaching about the Bible. We're marking the 350th Anniversary of the Assembly that drafted our subordinate standards. The meetings went on for nine years, but much of the work was done in four. But the first chapter of the Confession took almost two years, was debated clause by clause not only by the Assembly but also by the House of Commons. One paragraph, the eighth, was the subject of a special joint committee between the legislature and the Assembly!^[xx]

 

Can you imagine the House or the Senate debating with clergy today the finer points of divine revelation? Those in the Seventeenth Century knew just how important one's source of authority really is. It would be naive of us to say that they didn't appreciate all the difficulties of a high view of the Bible. That subsequent critical insights, linguistic advances, textual improvements, make us considerably less confident that what we have between these pages can be relied on and trusted. What the framers of the Shorter Catechism - and the Longer Catechism and the Confession of Faith - understood clearly was that if one's basis for knowledge is unsure then the whole structure can quickly crumble and disappear. That's what Kathy Ginsburg learned - that on good days and bad, when there is sunlight and when there is darkness, we need a map, a set of directions. For her and for countless other Christians over the ages, that has been the Holy Scriptures. The matter of authority is intensely practical and utterly foundational.

 

Nothing illustrates that better than our own denomination. As I sat through sessions of the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s General (national) Assembly in Orlando last June and heard them debating issues such as homosexual ordination, same sex marriages, the propriety of having bishops, and not just those controversial and highly publicized issues, but all the routine concerns that cried out for an objective criterion for evaluation and reflection, I thought back one hundred years earlier to the General Assembly of 1893. There Charles Augustus Briggs was evaluated for statements he had made in a speech two years earlier when he was inaugurated as Professor of Biblical Theology at Union Theological Seminary, New York City. His title that January 20, 1891, had been "The Authority of Holy Scripture" and in it he analyzed the sources of authority, which he stated were three: the church, reason and the Bible. He chose examples of people who had found God by each method: the Roman Catholic mystic John Henry Newman, who had found it by the church; Harriet Martineau, the Unitarian social reformer, who had found it through reason; and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who had found it through the Bible. "The average opinion of the Christian world would to assign him (Spurgeon) a higher place in the kingdom of God than Martineau or Newman", he concluded^[xxi]. In judging his views the Assembly declared categorically: "This General Assembly reaffirms ... That the original Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, being immediately inspired of God were without error."^[xxii] And went on to state that this "has always been the belief of the church".

 

The battle for the Bible has raged on for a hundred years and today we are far away from the somewhat modest critical statements of Charles Augustus Briggs, who by contemporary standards would be regarded as conservative, if not neolithic - and certainly patriarchal - in his Biblical interpretation. We have debated terms like "inerrant" - which the Confession does not use - and words like "infallible" which it does. The real heart of the debate, and the ground which is most defensible, seems to be in the words of questions two and three of the Shorter Catechism. But let us make no mistake about the debate over Scripture: without a clear and ringing affirmation of the authority by which the church - and the individual believer - rules their life, we have no purpose for life, no basis for our affirmation that our "chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever." That is what Kathy Ginsburg found and has been, is and will be, the experience of every believer when she or he finds themselves in a tight corner or a dark place.

 

Two responses then that questions 2 and 3 make about the Bible:

 

I WHERE I CAN LEARN ABOUT GOD? - "The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him."

 

The reply of the Catechism is simple, direct and unambiguous: I learn about God from a Book. That book is described in four different ways:

 

(a) the word of God - the affirmation of the Shorter Catechism is that the God Whom I am to glorify and enjoy forever has indeed spoken, He is not silent, and that in the Bible I discover the Word of God. As Calvin states "Scripture is from God ... above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God Himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men"^[xxiii] That is the claim that Scripture makes for itself: no less than 3,808 times in the Old Testament do we read "the Lord said", "the Lord spoke", "the word of the Lord came"^[xxiv] When Paul reflects on this he says that the Jew had - and has - a tremendous advantage over everyone else: " First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God."^[xxv] And II Peter affirms this as well: "For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit"^[xxvi]

 

(b) the Scriptures - another word the Catechism uses is "Scriptures" - literally "the writings" in Greek, the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. It was to these that Jesus appealed when he was accused of blasphemy. "You claim to be God," his critics stated. he then referred to Psalm 82. Affirming as he did so "the Scripture cannot be broken" as He clinched His argument.^[xxvii] The designation "Scriptures" refers to the reality that the Word of God is written and flies in the face of any dismissing of the actual language of the Bible. as incidental.

©) the Old and New Testaments - the Old and the New are equally inspired. The Old is in the New revealed, the New is in the Old concealed. "You diligently study the Scriptures ... These are the Scriptures that testify about me."^[xxviii] The old covenant - literally "testament" - points to Christ as we read in II Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man (or woman) of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."^[xxix]

 

(d) the only rule - so the Word of God, the Scriptures, the 39 books of the Old and the 27 of the New Testament, are alone the rule for us to live our lives. Scripture is sufficient - and we need neither additional word or other Biblical literature not found in the canon.

 

II WHY I MUST LEARN ABOUT GOD - "The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man."

 

So much for what the Bible is. What does the Bible do? In its simplicity the Shorter Catechism says, in the answer to the third question, that the Scriptures do two things for us. "They teach what I am to believe about God and what God expects of me."