Dear radio friends,

     There are many questions in life concerning which ignorance and indifference are neither blameworthy nor fatal.  There are many questions to which you may say, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”  You may be content to be ignorant and willingly indifferent as to the answer and nothing horrible will ever happen to you. 

     However, there are some questions concerning which ignorance and indifference will make you guilty and which are eternally fatal.  There are some questions, and the answers to these questions, concerning which you do not have the luxury or the right before God to say, “I don’t know, I don’t care.”  Such questions are ones that we would like to consider in this message:  Are you for real?  Do you possess the marks of God’s children?  Do I have them?  How do I know that I am not a fake?  How do I know that Jesus Christ is in me?  How do I know that when I die and must appear before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ, I will hear those most glorious words:  “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” and that I will not hear those dreadful words:  “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels”?  How do I know that I will hear the word of blessing and not curse?  Are you for real?  Do you have the marks of God’s children?  In the words of the apostle John in his first epistle, do you assure your heart before God? 

     These, of course, are questions that no hypocrite cares to face for any length of time.  He does not want himself opened to himself.  He does not want a soul-searching ministry.  He does not want to belong to a church that will examine the thoughts of his heart in the light of God’s Word.  He spends his entire life silencing his conscience.  He wants a religion that will make him feel good but not look too close into his heart. 

     Do you ask the question, “Am I for real?  Am I truly a child of God?”  If you do not, then you ought to be asking the question:  “What materialism has clogged the arteries of my heart?  What attraction in this vain world is more important to me than Jesus Christ?”  You see, the question will not go away.  For only one who has received the marks of the children of God will enter into the kingdom of heaven in the end.  In that day, the chief Shepherd, Jesus Christ, will not allow one to pass by Him who is in sheep’s clothing but has a wolf’s heart.  No one who has been comforted with what is so popular in the church world, “easy-believism” — abcd:  accept Christ, believe, confess, and all the easy schemes — no one will go into the kingdom of God who trusts in carnal security.  Not even will they go into the kingdom of God if the church may have said concerning them, “you are forgiven,” yet they secretly go on in impenitent life, pulling the wool over the eyes of the elders. 

     For the Word of God is very clear.  “And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie:  but they that are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Rev. 21:27).  

     Now, as we press these questions in the light of God’s Word today to our hearts, we must understand that these questions are not placing us upon the slippery slope of a “feeling-based” faith that is also so popular today.  We are not here to say, “I feel, therefore I believe.”  But we are here to understand the biblical, the Reformed, and the necessary need for every child of God to confirm his own faith in his heart, the experience of a saved child of God, the reality of the truth of that experience.  And the Scriptures are given for this very purpose.  We must look to the Scriptures to discover the marks.  And while we look into the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit confirms in our hearts these marks.  For Paul says to Timothy in his second letter to Timothy:  “That from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (3:15). 

     Therefore, the child of God is willing and desirous that God would search him out, that God would look into every nook and cranny of his heart.  “ Examine me, O Lord; and prove me; try my reins and my heart” (Ps. 26:2).   Every word is important in that verse.  The word “examine” means “to melt” — Lord, melt down my heart as a metal would be melted down by the heat in order to determine exactly the alloy and to examine exactly what it is made of.  Lord, melt it down in my heart and let me know exactly what Thou hast made of me in Christ.  “Prove me,” says the psalmist.  And that word means “to mount up on high, to be on a tower in order to see.”  Lord, from Thy sovereign hill, with Thy all-mighty eye, look into my heart and thoughts and confirm in me that I am truly one of Thine. 

     The Reformation that we celebrate as children of the Reformation of the sixteenth century restored to the church the marks of God’s children.  The sixteenth century Reformation, perhaps you know, was primarily a reformation of the marks of the church, so that, once again, by God’s grace, through reformation, the church of Jesus Christ began to look like the bride of Christ.

     Not only was the Reformation the restoration of the marks of the church, but it was the restoration also of the marks of God’s children.  For Roman Catholicism had not only placed the garments of a whore on the church, but it had also dressed the children of the church in the garments of a hypocrite.  For the souls of God’s people were deluded under false comforts that the virgin Mary or the work of saints could avail for them and that the essence of a Christian faith was to be able to clutch a rosary and to be able to repeat “Hail, Mary.”  Rome said that the mark of a Christian is works.  Good, that is correct.  James assures us that faith brings forth works.  But what were Rome’s works?  Were they good works?  No, they were silly works.  They were pilgrimages — off to some distant land.  Or they were going to see a relic.  What had happened throughout the centuries was that Phariseeism had been instilled among the people of God. 

     The Reformation reinstated from Scripture the marks of God’s true children.  The Reformation did not invent these marks but restored these marks.  These marks had always been there. 

     The Belgic Confession (one of the creeds that came right out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century), Article 29, is well-known for listing from Scripture the marks of the true church, which are:  the preaching of the gospel, the administration of the two sacraments, and the exercise of Christian discipline.  But what is forgotten sometimes is that in that article, the church immediately goes on to confess from Scripture the marks of the believer.  I read, “With respect to those who are members of the church, they may be known by the marks of Christians, namely, by faith; and when they have received Jesus Christ the only Savior, they avoid sin, follow after righteousness, love the true God and their neighbor, neither turn aside to the right or left, and crucify the flesh with the works thereof.”  This is not to be understood as if there did not remain in them great infirmities.  But they fight against them through the Spirit all the days of their life, continually taking their refuge in the blood, death, passion, and obedience of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom they have remission of sins through faith in Him.

     The Reformation restored the marks of God’s children because the Reformation was, above all things, pastoral in its emphasis.  The Reformers were not philosophers.  The Reformers were not mystic theologians.  But the Reformers were the presence of God restoring in His church the gift of the ascended Lord Jesus Christ.  Ephesians 4:11 tells us that the ascended Lord has given to His church those who are pastors.  Why?  “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, … till we all come in the unity of the faith” (vv. 12, 13) in Christ Jesus.  John Calvin and Martin Luther, Bullinger and Knox, Bucer and all the others were pastors who went among the sheep of God so long oppressed by false shepherds.  And the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel arose once again:  “And I will give you pastors according to my heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.” 

     From the Word of God, these pastors again taught the people of God the marks of God’s children.  That is the Reformation — not simply a reformation of the church, not only tearing down the false garb around the church, but the establishment of the marks of God’s children, so to speak. 

          Through the Reformation of the church, the Reformers opened again the windows of the church in order that the light of God would shine.  As the light of God shone in the church, the people of God were changed again into the beauty of holiness.

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