The July 2014 radio messages of the Reformed Witness Hour are now available in print form. The four messages were delivered by Rev.Carl Haak, pastor of Georgetown PRC in Hudsonville, MI and contain the initial messages of a series on the OT prophecy of Jonah.

The entire booklet in pdf form is attached here. But you may also find these four messages separately on the website at the links below:

July 6, 2014 - "Arise, Go, Cry Against It" - Jonah 1:1-2

July 13, 2014 - "The Prophet Who Ran Away" - Jonah 1:3

July 20, 2014 - "The God Who Would Not Let Go" - Jonah 1:4-17

July 27, 2014 - "Prayer From A Whale's Belly" - Jonah 2

If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive these messages in print each month, visit the RWH website and send an email to the address found there. Or send a note to Judi Doezema at the Seminary: doezema@prca.org.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Message Title: "Prayer from a Whale’s Belly"
Broadcast Date: July 27, 2014 (#3734)
Radio pastor: Rev. Carl Haak

Dear Radio Friends,

In our last message on the prophet Jonah we praised God who did not let His disobedient prophet go but was committed to restoring him to the path of obedience.  We learned that Jonah tried to run from God.  He did not believe God’s mercy should be shown to heathen Ninevites, the very people who were Israel’s enemies.  And he challenged God’s sovereignty, he challenged God’s very right to show mercy to whom He would show mercy and to harden whom He will (Rom. 9).  And in his disobedience, Jonah went down, down, and down.  He tried to get away from everything that would remind him of God and of his obligations to God. 

        But God did not let him go.  In the narrative of Jonah, chapter 1, we saw that God reveals His power to bring His child back.  We saw that it was God’s initiative, that God uses the whole creation at His disposal.  He brings a storm upon the ship.  He controls the role of the dice to point the finger to Jonah.  And He even used pagan men to begin the process of rebuke.  We saw that God’s process of bringing Jonah back to the place of obedience was first of all to wake him up to the reality of his sin; to indict him through the means of unbelieving men; and to have him acknowledge his sin and his worthiness of death.

        We emphasized last week that God’s purpose was to restore Jonah to obedience, not to drown him.  Jonah, even when he was cast overboard from the ship, was not in the place of full repentance.  For that, God prepared a great fish to swallow him up.  And there Jonah, in his misery, is brought by grace to repent and to turn fully to God.

        Today we are going to look at the prayer that Jonah offered from the fish’s belly in the second chapter of Jonah—perhaps the only time in history that prayer came from that place.  But any place can be a place of prayer.  There is no place like a fish’s belly, under three or four hundred feet of water, that so calls for prayer.  And there is no place where prayer will be more likely simply to magnify God and turn to Him alone.

        Jonah was brought very low.  That was the purpose of God.  God’s purpose was to show His grace and power.  As we come to this prayer, you should note with me that this is not all that Jonah prayed.  He was there for three days.  And he prayed without ceasing.  We have here only a summary of his prayer.  Secondly, you should note that the prayer is not, perhaps, organized with divisions and sub-points.  When you are in distress, you pour out your heart to God.  But there are two things that come out in his prayer.  First of all, his great distress and overwhelming fear.  “I cried…from the belly of hell….  I am cast out of thy sight…water compasses me and brings me down…my soul faints within me.”  Secondly, the prayer is characterized by faith in God’s mercy.  “He heard me.”  And that is before Jonah was delivered.  He says, “He heard me … I will look toward Thy holy temple…I will remember the Lord…salvation is of the Lord.”  Those two thoughts:  Jonah’s great distress, and his faith in God’s mercy, leapfrog over each other until at last Jonah is restored to obedience.

        “Then,” we read, “Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly.”  It was a great fish, probably a whale or some other large fish not known to man.  We know that unbelief jeers and howls in mockery at this.  Clarence Darrow, in his great trial, said concerning a witness:  “Why, a person could believe this man’s testimony as easily as he could believe a fish swallowed Jonah.”  Well, we believe that a fish swallowed Jonah.  It is a fact.  A miracle, yes, but a fact.  Our God, who raised Jesus from the dead, could certainly cause a great monster of the deep to come alongside a boat when His prophet is thrown overboard and swallow him.  Besides, we have Jesus’ word on this.  When the unbelieving Sadducees and scribes asked Jesus for a sign to validate His claim as the Messiah, He responded (Matt. 12:39, 40), “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:  for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”   The reality of Jonah being swallowed by a fish, and Christ’s resurrection, go together.  This is reality, no myth. 

        Try to put yourself in Jonah’s position.  He’s been picked up and he’s been flung over the side of a ship.  The waves have poured over him.  In all probability, he was not immediately swallowed but went through all that a man experiences in drowning, maybe even to the point of unconsciousness.  In verses 5 and 6 of his prayer he says that the weeds of the bottom wrapped themselves around his head and he felt the ooze of the muddy bottom.  He came to the roots of the mountains.  Whatever a man experiences in the last moments of drowning, Jonah experienced.  But he came to awareness and consciousness, coughing and sputtering.  And it dawned upon him that he must be in the belly of a fish.  He has air to breathe after a sort.  But he smells the rotting food in the stomach of the fish.  Think of the gastric juices, the stench, the darkness, the slimy, slopping around in the belly of a great fish.  After a while he is aware what has happened.  He has been brought down low, exceedingly low.  He is at the end of the earth.  Now the Scriptures focus, in Jonah 2, not so much on what went on inside the fish, but what went on inside Jonah.  There is where the real miracle is taking place. 

        As I pointed out, back and forth Jonah prays of his misery and his faith in God.  He sees all of his misery as affliction from the hand of God.  He calls the fish’s belly “the belly of hell,” not profanely but because he felt that he had been cast out of the sight of God and he would be abandoned.  He who ran from God’s presence now fears that he is abandoned by God.  He fears that he has had it, that God is done with him.  He is in the depths of despair.

        But then he says, “When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord” (v. 7). There is the breaking forth of faith.  He says in verse 4, “I will look again toward thy holy temple.”  And in verse 7, “I remembered the Lord:  and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.”

        We need to apply this for just a moment.  In the belly of a fish, wretched, shocked with fear day after day after day, inwardly struggling against the demons of fear, Jonah cries out in faith to God.  Does that describe you?  No, you have not been in a fish’s belly—nothing so dramatic.  But has God, in restoring you, brought you to a place like that?  You struggle with fear that you are abandoned?  You are cast off?  You have only grief and misery?  By faith, God’s gift to you, you cry out to God?  You see, we have a great truth illumined here.  We gain an accurate picture of the spiritual life of a child of God when he is under trial and severe chastisement.  Affliction is the index of the soul.  An index will tell you what is in the book.  Chastisement tells you what God has put in the heart of His child.  Here is Jonah.  Up to this point in the book we see very little of the work of God in him.  We might even say, “How can he be a child of God, that disobedient man?”  But affliction shows the true Jonah.  When Jonah is down in the depths of the sea in the fish’s belly, you find out what God put down deep into him. 

        What does affliction do to you?  In some children of God even the heaviest chastisement seems to produce no spiritual good.  God corrects and they become bitter, resentful, angry.  No sanctified spirit.  But here we see that God’s chastisement is having its intended effect.  The spell of Jonah’s sin is broken, shattered.  And in a humble and broken spirit, he cries to God to restore him in mercy.

        What was the primary concern of Jonah’s prayer?  We might answer that according to our own thinking:  “Get me out.”  Was Jonah’s primary concern simply to get out?  No.  Jonah’s primary concern in his prayer was not deliverance but a return to what he had so foolishly despised.  He had despised God’s presence.  Now, in the belly of the fish, it becomes his greatest treasure.  In chapter 1:3 we read that Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord.  And we saw that that meant that he wanted to put away from himself everything that would remind him of Jehovah.  Jonah did not believe that God was simply confined to a place on earth.  But he wanted to have no dealings with God.  He did not want to have his heart pricked by the Word of God.  He did not want to be told that he was sinning. 

        Now look at his primary concern in the belly of the fish (2:4).  “Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.”  Look to the holy temple?  In disobedience he did not want to be anywhere near that holy temple.  But now he looks toward that holy temple.  He looks to God’s presence, not simply to a building in Canaan, in Jerusalem, Solomon’s temple.  In a fish’s belly he did not know east from west, north from south, up from down.  But he says, “Here I am.  And in a sense I got exactly what I wanted.  I wanted to run from the presence of the Lord.  I got what I wanted.  But I can’t stand it.  I must have Him.  What I despised, what I foolishly turned from, what I squandered, I see now as the treasure above everything else.”  Verse 7, “When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord:  and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.”  He sees his prayer as a messenger that runs from a fish’s belly to God’s throne. 

        Does that apply also to you and me?  The greatest cost of the sin of a backslidden Christian is that he has forfeited the experience of communion with God.  True repentance is a desire for the restoration of fellowship with God.  The words of the prodigal son, “I will arise and go to my father.  And I will say [what was he going to say?  Do you remember, children?  Was he going to say to his father, ‘I missed the well-spread table’?  ‘I missed my own room’?  ‘I missed all the things that were at home’?  No, ‘I will arise and go to my father and say’], father, I have sinned against thee.”  When you have lost God’s presence in disobedience, either by a deliberate disobedience or by multiplied carelessness and God now comes to chasten you, what happens?  By grace, you cry out, “I must have God!”  True repentance is evidence that the child of God wants the greatest treasure:  communion with God.

        You see, a Christian is not simply someone whose sins are forgiven and now he is off on his own so that he has comfort as he continues in his life of greed or lust or whatever it may be.  If that is the way you view a Christian, then you smear the cross of Jesus Christ.  Jesus died in order that we might have the treasure of Father’s house and fellowship.  When God restores you in repentance, when He brings the pincers of affliction into your life, His purpose is to restore you to fellowship, to have you treasure what you took so lightly, namely, the presence of God.

        But then we see also the working of faith in Jonah’s prayer.  Jonah begins to acknowledge the hand of God.  He sees that it was God who had cast him into the deep.  We would say, that is the way Jonah prays in verses 2 and 3 of chapter 2.  Now we might say when we read that, “I thought the pagan sailors cast him into the sea.  Didn’t they take up Jonah and cast him into the sea?”  Yes, it was.  But Jonah sees beyond men.  “It was Thou, O God.”  Faith sees to the cause—God’s hand.  That, too, is repentance.  If God sees fit to chasten me and lead me down, it was God’s hand that did that, not fate.  Jonah recognizes that God’s hand had caught him in his disobedience and he submits to God.  Now what happens to you when God begins to affect your life, when He begins to deal with you because of your sins?  And the wind begins to blow and He begins to shake your life all around you?  Do you say, “Oh, things are not very good at home.  Things are not very good with my husband/wife/children”?  Do you say, “Oh, my problem is those people in the church, or those elders, or that church, or my problem is the economy or …”?  Oh, may God stop our stubborn, self-loving flesh and bring us to the point where we say, “Thy hand, O God, is upon me.”  May we acknowledge the living God as the creator and understand that God brings us back to repentance.

        By faith, Jonah recognizes God’s goodness in afflicting him.  He says, “God is bringing me up from corruption” (v. 6).  He says that he will “sacrifice unto God with a voice of thanksgiving” (v. 9).  He even sees God’s goodness to him in the fish’s belly.  Chapter 1:12, he said, “I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.”  He understands that although he deserved death, yet God had preserved his life.

        So he makes use of God’s Word as he prays.  Jonah quoted no fewer than seven times from the psalms in his prayer.  Some of them were verbatim.  The references were these:  Psalm 130, Psalm 42, Psalm 31, Psalm 18, and Psalm 116.  Jonah is using various verses from the psalms mingled into his own prayer—because no book of the Bible so expresses the life of the child of God as the Psalms.  The Psalms are the written, spiritual biography of the work of God’s grace.  Jonah, who was a prophet, and had been a mouthpiece of God, nevertheless, when it comes to prayer, he begins to piece together the beautiful litany of the Psalms applied to his situation.

        You have the Bible, do you not?  Do the Scriptures form your prayers?  How did Jonah have the Bible?  Did he have it on a scroll?  No.  Did he have a candle?  Could he light a candle in a fish’s belly?  No.  How did he know?  He knew it, he had meditated upon it, he had learned it, it was in his heart.

        What about you?  You have God’s Word.  Do you store up God’s Word?  Do you store that Word up for days of trial?  Do you read it regularly day by day?  And in your prayers, does God’s Word come out from your lips? 

        Jonah was brought down in his prayer to confess his sin.  Verse 8, he prays, “They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.”  A lying vanity is an idol, anything that turns you from God.  Whatever takes the place of God is a lying vanity.  Jonah had observed the lying vanity.  That lying vanity was his own will.  He said “No” to God.  He said that his own thoughts and desires were better than God’s.  Jonah made his own god.  “I will do as I want.”  He lifted himself over the Word of God and he forsook his own mercy.  Mercy here is the personification of God, the God of mercy.  Instead of serving the merciful God, Jonah decided he would observe a lying vanity.  Jonah says that, not to excuse but to confess, to acknowledge his sin. 

        Then Jonah goes on in verse 9:  “Salvation is of the Lord.”  I will pay my vows unto the Lord.  I vowed to be a prophet.  I vowed to go where He would send me.  I will pay that vow.  I will go back, the Lord being merciful to me, I will go back and go to Nineveh.  For salvation is of the Lord. 

        That brought comfort.  The taking of a soul from guilt and bondage and forgiving that soul and freeing that soul from the bondage of sin is the work of God.  Salvation is of the Lord.  When you are in a fish’s belly, that much is clear.  Salvation is of the Lord.

        That must be clear to you today personally.  All of our belonging to God and all of our having God as our Father and as the Almighty One who cares for us in Jesus Christ, that was not due to anything of ourselves—not our will, not our work.  We do not take the credit for that.  Oh, you might take the credit today if you are standing on your own two feet in pride.  But not if you are in the belly of a fish with the slime and ooze of your folly and your sin around you.  From the depths, when the waves and billows have gone over our soul, then we know one thing for sure:  Salvation is of the Lord.

        Why did God restore Jonah?  Because He would have Jonah first confess, “My salvation is of Thee, Lord.”  That is why the Lord does not let you go but restores you to repentance. 

        Let us pray.

        Father, we thank Thee for Thy holy Word and we ask again that Thou wilt write it upon the pages of our hearts.  We pray in the name of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, Amen.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Message Title: "The God Who Would Not Let Go"
Broadcast Date: July 201, 2014 (#3733)
Radio pastor: Rev. Carl Haak

Dear Radio Friends,

        In his disobedience, he wanted to push away from him as far as possible anything that reminded him of God’s presence and commandment, anything that could remind him of his obligation to God.  He fled from the presence of the Lord, from that place where God was worshiped, where His Word was heard, where prayer was offered, where His people were found.  He wanted it removed from his eyes. 

        We saw, then, that the best of the saints, when left to themselves, are capable of the greatest and most foolish of sins. 

        Today, our focus shifts to the God who will not let go.  The whole picture changes in three words:  “But the Lord” (v. 4)—words that express the sovereign grace of God in the preservation and the restoration of backslidden children.  In verse 3 we read, “But Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord.”  Those words represent our depravity in our sinful nature to choose the way of disobedience to God.  In verse 4, “But the Lord,” we see an expression of the cause of our salvation.

        According to many churches and theologians, almost everything depends upon man, and a little on God’s election and preserving grace.  If that were so, it would have been the end of Jonah.  If God’s dealings with Jonah depended upon Jonah himself, God would have said, “Jonah, you did it now.  You disobeyed and forfeited any right to be called My prophet.  I’m casting you away.”  But that is not how God works.

        God has elected Jonah to a task.  God had a purpose with Jonah.  And God would not let go and allow Jonah to destroy himself.  He would restore him. 

        But that way of restoration is hard.  Do not abuse the doctrines of grace.  Do not play with the seriousness of disobeying God.  The way back for Jonah would be slow and hard, and it would break him in pieces.  The way of hell is easy.  The way of grace, of restoration, is severe, though it be blessed.  Jonah, in his disobedience, rebelled against God, and he involved others in his rebellion.  Now the Lord is going to work and bring him back.  He is going to restore him to obedience. 

        Let us look, then, for a few moments at the God who would not let go.

        “But the Lord,” we read, “sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken” (v. 4).  That is a very comforting truth.  That shows that the hand of God reached out for Jonah.  God’s purpose was to bring His child to repentance.  And we see, first of all, that the repentance of the child of God, and of Jonah, was due to God’s initiative, it was due to the activity of God Himself.  “But the Lord sent out a great wind” (v. 4).  “Now the Lord had prepared a great fish” (v. 17).  “The Lord spake unto the fish” (2:10).  “And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah” (3:1).  God takes Jonah in hand and says, “You, by the weakness of your flesh, by your foolish disobedience, and by your carnal mind, have chosen the path of disobedience, which will lead you to destruction and bring ruin upon all around you.  That is what you did.  But you have not silenced My love for you.  My purpose is to bring you to repentance, Jonah, because (Ps. 89) My covenant is sure; no change can it know.  Lamentations 3:  ‘It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed.’  Malachi 3:6:  ‘I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.’”  God brings you to repentance.  God changes the heart.  God’s love tracks you down.

        We see, then, that God is going to restore a man who walked in blatant disobedience.  His divine love takes the initiative. 

        But we marvel at the diversity of the means of God.  What Jonah had tried to do, of course, was preposterous and shows the folly and the stupidity of his sin.  To flee from the presence of the Lord?  God calls Himself “the Lord of hosts.”  All the creation, all of its creatures, man, ocean and wind, insects and fish are His army to do His will.  God uses first the element of wind.  “The Lord sent out,” literally “hurled,” a great wind into the sea.  And that stormy wind fulfilled His word.  It blew harder and harder.  As the narrative goes on (v. 11), “the sea wrought, and was tempestuous.”  As the captain and the sailors questioned Jonah on the deck of the heaving ship, more and more became the waves of the sea.  It is as if the Lord says, “What shall I use?  All is at My disposal from the tiny cut worm which will eat the root of Jonah’s gourd (chapter 4), to the air current and the weather patterns.  They are all My servants.” 

        You remember that God also used the lot.  Pagan sailors cast lots to find out who was the root-cause of their problems.  They say, “Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us.”  The Lord controlled that.  The lot is cast into the lap (Prov. 16), but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.  So we read, “and the lot fell upon Jonah.”  People call it chance, it just so happened that way.  A sinner says:  “A mere coincidence caught me.  I had it all figured out.  It was perfect.  Just one thing, and who could have known?”  Do you talk that way?  Do you curse “bad luck”?  The lot fell upon Jonah.  Of course it did, because God is in His heavens (Deut. 32).  Be very sure:  your sins will find you out.

        Then God uses a great fish.  Even though translated in the New Testament KJV as a whale, it was simply a great fish.  God prepared one.  The mighty God spoke and brought that fish to swallow Jonah.

        So God is able to use all things.  But in the narrative we see that Jonah’s restoration was not confined only to the brute creation.  That is, the elements God used were not only found in the brute creation, but they included men, pagan men.  That is something to notice.  If you read Jonah, chapter 1, then you see that the pagan sailors were used of God to ask some very probing questions, questions  that nailed Jonah in his disobedience.  God did not have another prophet somewhere hidden in the vessel to jump out and rebuke Jonah.  No, God used unbelieving and idolatrous sailors.  “What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God.  Tell us why this evil is come upon us.  Who are you?  What is your occupation?  What did you do?  Why did you do that?” 

        Has that ever happened to you?  There is shame here.  There is shame when the church is rebuked by the world.  But it happens.  One child of God in disobedience sometimes sees less than even the unbelieving world sees concerning the consequences of sin.  That happens.  Maybe it was your boss who is an unbelieving man.  He rebuked you on an issue involving your faith and walk with God.  He has come to know how you work and your personal life.  And he calls you into his office and says, “Now listen.  You may not do that.”  Maybe it is the neighbor lady who sees you as a wife all upset and she says, “But why are you so upset?  You go to church.  You believe in God, don’t you?”  There is shame here.  Sometimes God uses even the wicked world to rebuke the church.

        There was a very painful and slow process of restoration.  The process that God used with Jonah is often the process that He uses in our lives.  I would be very greatly surprised if there were not many Jonahs listening today.  The Word of God has come to you and to me.  No, it did not come as it did to Jonah with a voice or a vision.  But it came in its inspired Word, a word that has called you to a duty that you are not willing to do, a word that has called you to deal with a sin, perhaps a word that calls you to a certain act of obedience.  It comes to you, as it did with Jonah, at a point where you do not want to obey and you do not want to accept that responsibility and you do not want to put away that sin.  So you, too, go and find your ship and go to sleep. 

        How does God restore us?  The first thing we read is that Jonah is awakened.  The point, perhaps, of greatest tragedy in the narrative is verse 5:  “Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them.  But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.”  Why was he asleep?  The storm was great.  And even though Jonah might have been weary from a two or three-day travel from Gath-hepher to Joppa, that could not explain his sleep in a storm.  Why?  You see, this is the sleep of the disobedient child of God who finds sleep an escape from the terrors of conscience.  Awake he could not but feel the terror of his conscience.  Sleep sometimes does what drunkenness can do.  It provides an escape from reality.  Jonah does not want to wake up to the reality of what he has done.  A sleepy man is oblivious to reality.  Jonah is utterly oblivious to the danger in which he has exposed not just himself but the whole crew on the deck.  He is down below asleep.  In the path of disobedience, he sleeps.  Disobedience can be like a drug, a sedative.  Disobedience can do to your soul what no sleeping pill can do.  The further you go in the disobedience, the deeper comes your stupor. 

        The shipmaster’s words were abrupt.  “What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.”  When God will bring us to repentance, to a clear understanding, God does not immediately fix everything.  It is not simply that you say a prayer (of Jabez) and now all is OK from then on.  Oh, no!  That is not the Bible.  God wakes you up to your sin and to the danger that is come because of your sin.  He woke Jonah up to the reality that, in a sense the pagan mariners saw, this was no ordinary storm.  This was God’s judgment, this was God’s chastening hand.

        Are you a Jonah today?  Do you know God’s first work?  God will use whatever He pleases to hurl into your ear, “What meanest thou, O sleeper?  What do you mean, father, to cast your whole family into a turmoil because of your sin?  Son and daughter, the storms are brewing in your household.  There is no trust.  There are bad attitudes.  There is bitterness and bickering, resentment because of your sin.  It is high time to awake out of your sleep.” 

        Sometimes we congratulate ourselves on our ability to sleep in a storm.  Well, if that means, as with David in Psalm 4, that as a humble, repentant child of God we are leaving to God the outcome of our fears, good.  But if you sleep when crashing around you are broken relationships, yelling, bickering, and distance, and when the life of your whole family is subject to the waves of trouble and you are not bothered by it, it is high time that you awake. 

        The second thing that God did was to bring an indictment of Jonah’s disobedience.  When Jonah appeared on the deck and he was singled out by the lot, questions came pouring from the sailors:  “Who are you?  Why did you do this?  What is your occupation?  What people are you from?”  Every eye was upon him.  There is an irony here.  Jonah refused to preach to pagan Ninevites.  Now, in spite of himself, he is about to do exactly that.  He is going to preach a pretty good sermon, he is going to leave a pretty good testimony before these unbelieving sailors who have come with the indictment, “Why did you run from the presence of the Lord?” for he had told them that he did.  “Why hast thou done this?” 

        Now suppose yourself to be Jonah.  Why?  The question that is put to you by a heathen man, “Did your God provoke you to flee from Him?  Did He deal harshly with you?  Did He give you a calling without any encouragement to be with you?  Is your God, then, a harsh taskmaster, so that you have to run away from Him?  Why?  Why have you followed the ways of the world?  Why did you set your heart upon them, you who know the Scriptures, you who know fellowship with God?  Why?  Why did you do that?  Is it because the fellowship of sin is better than the fellowship of your God?  Produce your reason.  Has God been a wilderness to you?  Do you have a better friend than your God?  Have you found His promises unfaithful?  Has the world been better than God to you?  Why did you do this?”

        Then the third step in the restoration was Jonah’s acknowledgment.  Jonah evidently told them what he had done.  He confesses that the Lord, the God of heaven, who has made the sea and the dry land, is his God.  He is a Hebrew.  He was God’s servant.  “I fear God,” he said.  “I reverence God.”  That is all good.  But it comes short of a clear and simple confession:  “I sinned.  I will arise and go to Nineveh.  I will obey.”  Jonah did not say that. 

        At this point, although Jonah begins to acknowledge a few things, he is still a mass of contradictions.  He says to these sailors, “I fear God, but I’m on this ship in disobedience to His command.  I am an Hebrew, a friend of God; but I’m running from His presence.  The God of heaven made the sea and the dry land, but I’m running from Him.”  The backslidden Christian is a mass of contradictions.  The child of God overtaken in a fault is the most contradictory thing on the earth.  The beauty of an obedient life is symmetry.  Symmetry is when everything is in proportion.  This is something beautiful.  It is when confession and walk of life are consistent.  But for a child of God to walk in disobedience, he becomes a mass, a bundle, of contradictions.

        The full repentance of Jonah is going to be learned in the belly of a fish.  Jonah did not get to the point of full repentance on the deck of the ship.  It is going to take being cast into the sea.  God’s purpose is to restore Jonah to obedience, not sacrifice.  God’s purpose in repentance was to bring Jonah back to where he went wrong.  God’s purpose with Jonah was not that he be drowned in the sea, but that he go to Nineveh and preach the preaching that he was told.

        Repentance leads one to obedience.  But even strong measures of the storm and drowning at sea did not bring Jonah to the point where he would get up and obey God.  He had to go down to the belly of a fish to learn to do that. 

        The pagan sailors asked him, “What shall we do to you that the sea be calm?”  What could he say?  Could he say, “Repent of your sins and turn to Jehovah and serve Him like I do”?  No, he could not say that.  Could he claim ignorance, could he say to the sailors, “I don’t know what to do.  Give me an oar and let’s row”?  No.  He knew exactly why this storm had come.  And it was getting worse. 

        What could he say?  Did he say this:  “Sailors, it’s very obvious what God wants me to do.  God called me to go to Nineveh.  I have to obey God.  Captain, put the bow of this ship back toward Palestine.  Point it towards Nineveh.  And I assure you that the moment the bow is pointed toward Nineveh the sea will be calm.” 

        But Jonah did not say that either.  He said, “Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you.”  There is acknowledgment there, all right.  There is an accepting even of the justice that his sin deserves:  death.  But, you see, God did not call him to death.  He called him to obedience.  Repentance is not just being awakened.  It is not just being indicted.  It is not just acknowledging your fault.  It is not even saying that “my death will be justice.”  Repentance is more.  Repentance is the hardest yet of all.  Go back, the long way, to where you went wrong.  And this time obey.

        That is where God’s grace is going to lead Jonah.  Sometimes death is easier.  Sometimes we are brought by God to see just how far down we have gone.  The consequences, the long consequences and the guilt are upon us.  And we would say that it is easier now to acknowledge my sin and die.  “Cast me into the sea.” 

        But God would not have it.  “No, child of God.  I’m going to bring you back, over many miles, in a fish’s belly, back to my command.  And I’m going to show you the blessing of obeying Me.  You see,” says God, “you’re going to go back where you got off the road.  That is what you have to go back to, and, by grace, in My mercy, you will begin anew.”

        Do you see yourself?  Do you walk away from God?  Do you say, No?  Listen.  The way of disobedience appears cheap.  You can pay for it with what you have in your pockets.  You have the fare.  But the way back, you cannot find, you cannot buy it.  It is all of God’s grace.

        God does not let us go.  In His mercy and grace He brings us back.  He gave His Son to forgive our sins and to ransom us from all of our folly.  God shows His mercy when He arrests you in your sin, when He wakes you up, stops you, indicts you, calls you:  “Son, daughter, obedience to Me in love—that is the path that will bring you blessing and peace.”

        Let us pray.

        Father in heaven, we thank Thee for Thy holy Word.  We pray that it may enter into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.  Defeat our proud natures and humble us to obey Thee.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Message Title: "The Prophet Who Ran Away"
Broadcast date: July 13, 2014 (#3732)
Radio pastor: Rev. Carl Haak

Dear Radio Friends,

        God’s will for our lives is holiness, obedience, and trust.  But that will of God clashes with our sinful will.  At times so strong is that clash that we deliberately set aside God’s will and then attempt to remove or get away from anything that would remind us of Him, whether that be in the family or in the church; whether that be as parents or as husband or wife; whether that be in prayer or in the Bible.  At first it seems that everything is going to go well.  But if you are God’s child, it will not be long before God begins to break your life up into little pieces.  The question then is:  Do you go God’s way, or do you try to run as Jonah ran?  If you run, as a child of God, God will trouble your life.  For God is committed to doing whatever it takes.  He chastens us, corrects us, and teaches us the good of obeying His will.

        One of the most amazing aspects of the Bible is the untouched portraits of the saints.  You know the difference between the professionally altered portrait and the untouched snapshot.  Seldom would we say of a professional portrait, “I don’t take a good picture.”  But the Bible is not a gallery of professional portraits, but of untouched snapshots.  Noah, who for a hundred and twenty years built the ark out of faith ... and then became drunk and naked before his family.  Abraham, the father of all the faithful, who lied to save his skin.  David, a man after God’s own heart, who one evening allowed lust to cripple himself and his family for the rest of his days.  And we could go on and on. 

        In Jonah, we have here an episode probably unparalleled in the whole Bible.  We have a true prophet of God who has received a call from God, and he deliberately disobeys.  God issued a clear, sovereign, righteous commission:  “Jonah, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city.  And cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me.”  But, without one word of explanation, Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord. 

        We know that all that is given by God in His Word is instruction for our righteousness.  So we consider today the prophet who ran away.

        Now the Word of God to Jonah, as I said, was very clear.  It is always very clear.  Jonah, arise.  That is, interrupt your normal life as a prophet in Israel.  Go to Nineveh.  Use whatever means of transportation is available to go to that city that everybody knows about.  (He did not need to look it up on the map.  It was the capital of the mighty kingdom of Assyria).  And cry against it.  Deliver a message of impending judgment.  But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

        If you are acquainted with Bible geography, you will remember that Nineveh is where the present-day country of Iran exists, on the converse of the Tigris and Euphrates River.  For Jonah, it was east and a little north.  But Jonah, instead, went to Tarshish.  Most probably Tarshish was on the far coast of Spain, beyond Gibraltar, some two thousand miles from Nineveh, in the other direction.  It was one of the most distant places west then known.  It was on the edge of the known world.  It was as far as possible in the other direction from where God was sending him. 

        We can visualize it.  Jonah comes out of his house in Gath-hepher, in Israel.  He looks down the long road east that led through the Arabian desert to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates and ended before the gates of Nineveh.  And he turned on his heels and went the other direction, west to Joppa, where he finds conveniently a ship laden for Tarshish.  He pays his fare.  The ship weighs anchor.  There are favorable winds.  The sails unfurl as billowing clouds.  The shoreline recedes.  He flees from the presence of the Lord!

        Now, what does that mean?  Does it mean that Jonah could go somewhere on earth where God was not?  Could he escape?  No!  It does not mean that.  Jonah knew the Word of God.  In Jeremiah, “Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord?  Can any hide himself and I shall not see him?”  Jonah knew the truth of God’s omnipresence—that the Lord God fills heaven and earth and that it is impossible to hide from God.  “Thou, God, seest me” (Gen. 16:13).  Jonah knew that.  Later on, he is going to pray to God out of the belly of a fish in the faith that God fills heaven and earth and that there is no place where God is not. 

        By the presence of the Lord we must understand those places and those means whereby God makes Himself known.  The concept of the presence of the Lord is, first of all, initiated in Genesis 4:16 where we read, “And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.”  That does not mean that Cain, who murdered Abel, went to a place where God could not see him.  But he went outside of the Land of Eden, where Adam lived, where God was manifest in Himself.  Cain left the realm where God was feared. 

        Likewise we read in II Kings 13:23 that God was gracious to Israel and did not cast them yet from His presence.  God’s presence was experienced in the land of promise, Canaan.  There He had given prophets to bring His Word.  There He gave priests to lead in worship.  There were the temple and the sacrifices.  God did not yet cast Israel from His presence—He did not disperse them from that land.

        So the presence of the Lord refers to those places and to those things by which God, in a covenant way, manifests Himself to His people through the means He has appointed.  For Jonah, that was the land of Canaan.  That was the sacrifices of the priests.  For us, that is the preaching of the Word of God on the Sabbath.  That is divine worship services on Sunday, two times.  That is prayer and Scripture reading.  That is fellowship with the people of God.  Those are the means, those are the places, where the presence of God is experienced. 

        But Jonah, in a state of disobedience, having decided he was going to go his own way, was determined to put away from himself as far as possible anything that would sting his conscience or remind him of the claims of His God.  He would flee from the presence of the Lord.  He would go to a place where he could forget.  And what better place than in the company of pagan sailors heading toward the most distant location known to man. 

        All seemed to go well at first.  Everything falls into place.  He finds a ship going to Tarshish.  He pays his fare.  He boards the ship, going up the gangplank.  Do we see the rats coming off the ship?  The captain welcomes him aboard, “Welcome, Jonah.”  Orders are given:  “Hoist the sail.  Weigh anchor.”  And with a sigh of relief, Jonah believes he has put behind him everything that could remind him of the presence of God and of God’s call to him.

        Do you ever do that?  The Word of God presses upon your conscience.  And you believe that the solution will be simply to get away from whatever reminds you of God and His call and His Word.  You say, “I’ve got to get away from those parents—that house—that family—that church.  I need to criticize the fellowship of God’s people.  Who can live with those people?”  All an attempt to avoid the presence of God and His call upon you.  Do you see this played out before you in your own life?  Do you see yourself in Jonah?  This is what happens when you have a controversy with God.  Then you want to get away from everything that is going to remind you of your obligation to the living God because you do not like what He is saying to you.  You do not like it.  Maybe you have even said, “I’ll leave the church.  I’ll leave this marriage.  Who can live with that woman, with that man?  I’ll leave this family.  I’ll leave these people.  They’re my problem.  They’re a strait jacket.  And I envision that everything is going to be fine on the high seas of life, in some remote part—new people, adventure, glamour.”

        Any Jonahs listening today?  This is what happens when you have a controversy with God and, for whatever reason, you simply have decided that you are not going to do what He calls you to do because you do not like it. 

        Here are the symptoms.  You can feel it coming to church.  You do not want to.  You become infrequent in your attendance.  You come because your parents make you.  You have as much dealings with the Bible as you have to.  You do not read it.  Why?  Because it reminds you of God’s claims.  You begin to criticize.  You say, “I can’t understand the words of the Bible.  I can’t understand those sermons.  My family doesn’t understand me.  My wife doesn’t understand me.  The people, the way they are, who could live with them?”  All to silence the voice of your own obligation to God.

        So, you say, “Oh, yes, I’ll read my Bible before I go to sleep, a little later, after I check the newspaper or click on the TV.”   Do you flee from the presence of the Lord? 

        But, you see, it is not just the symptoms of disobedience there, it is also the cost of disobedience.  Think of it.  What greater good, what greater comfort, than the presence of the Lord.  “In Thy presence,” says the psalmist, “is fullness of joy.  At Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.”  Scripture says the presence of God is the super bonum, it is the quintessence of blessing.  What ought to be our greatest delight?  The presence of God.  Now, look at the cost of disobedience.  Is it worth that?  The presence of God will be our greatest joy in heaven.  If you find yourself running from those things that bring His presence to you—the church, the Bible, prayer, worship services twice on Sunday, your believing family, the communion of saints—if you find yourself avoiding them, you had better look in the mirror and see Jonah. 

        Why did Jonah do this?  What was there about his commission that collided with his will?  We want to be very careful in that.  We want to be careful when we assign motives to God’s people.  We might want to speculate.  It would not be too hard to speculate.  Why did Jonah do that?  We could imagine, perhaps, that Jonah was overcome by thoughts of the sheer difficulty of the commission—that great city Nineveh, alien to God.  What could one man do?  Who was going to listen?  Where was his support?  And, remember, he was to bring God’s Word.  And that Word was not, “God has a wonderful plan for your life.”  But, “forty days, and God will destroy you in your sins.”  The best he could anticipate was that he would be laughed at and called a fanatic.  But if those were his thoughts, we are not told that they were.  There is no hint of that in the book.  And besides, God would have answered him and said, “Jonah, I will be with you.  Is not My Word like a hammer?”  No, it was not because of the difficulty. 

        Was it because of the danger?  It was not just difficult.  It was dangerous!  If you read the prophecy of Nahum, you will find that that prophecy is concerned with the wickedness of Nineveh.  It is called a bloody city, full of lies and robbery.  The dead were unburied on the streets.  What was one preacher to do against such wickedness?  Would they not just kill him and add his body to the pile of carcasses?  But if Jonah had thoughts of fear (and we would not blame him), we do not read of that in this book.  And still again, God would say, “Jonah, what time you are afraid, put your trust in Me.” 

        Then why did Jonah run away?  If you page ahead in the prophecy to chapter 4:2, you find the reason.  There, after he had been swallowed by the fish, vomited out, gone to Nineveh to preach, and Nineveh has repented, we read, “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.  And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country?  Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.”   There Jonah stands before God and he is not perplexed and confused over what God has done, but he is angry over what God has done.  Why?  He says, “I fled to Tarshish because I suspicioned when I was in my own country that the reason I was being sent to the Ninevites was that God was going to show sovereign mercy.  He was going to save many of them according to His own eternal, particular good pleasure.”  Jonah was filled with the attitude that had crept in upon Israel—an attitude finding its source in his own sinful flesh.  That attitude was that God’s mercy belonged to Israel.  And those whom he considered unworthy, those Gentile dogs, those people of Nineveh—God should not work among them His electing mercy!  When God’s people were mindful of their unworthiness and of the sheer mercy of God to them, they had no problem with God’s purpose of extending mercy to the elect placed in other nations.  They remembered the word to Abraham:  “In thee shall all nations of the earth be blessed.”  They confessed and rejoiced in the truth of the universal church out of every nation and manner of people — every tribe and tongue.  But when spiritual apathy set in in Israel, they began to think that they were God’s favorites and God needed them.  They could not conceive of God giving grace to other people, to pagans.

        Jonah became resentful of God showing mercy to those he considered unworthy.  And it was not a passing thing.  It was a settled disposition.  It stuck with him through all of his preaching in Nineveh and it was something that God had to chide and rebuke him for over and over and to say to him, “Jonah, I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy; and whom I will, I will harden.  I’m sovereign.  The church is built on My good pleasure.  I do not send out My saving mercy on the basis of your prejudice or your ideas as to who you think should make a nice addition to the church.  I  show mercy as I please, to whomsoever I will.”

        There are some mighty powerful lessons here.  We certainly see the weakness of the most holy of God’s people if they are left to themselves.  Jonah was a holy man of God, make no mistake.  He was a prophet of God.  He was a means to bring God’s Word.  He was faithful in a difficult and a frightening commission.  But the best saint, when left to himself, is foolish and blind. 

        Let the Word of God now, today, speak to you.  Jonah is not an excuse.  He is not an example here to follow.  He is a beacon to warn you.  No matter the graces that you have, no matter your spiritual track record, no matter your advancements, if you are left to yourself there is no sin that you could not commit.  Every child of God—that is you!—is of himself capable of committing the most foul sin.  If you do not believe that, the devil is at your door.

        Look at the frightening power of this spiritual pride—the frightening power when we begin to think that somehow God’s mercy to us was because we deserved it, that somehow we rank higher than someone else, that it is because of our skin color or our income or our social class or our simple decency that we are in the church.  And then we say, “Well, look at those filthy people over there.”  And we base our revulsion of sin on ourselves and not on the holy God.  And we condemn others, not because of their sin before God, but because they, apparently, do not measure up to us.

        Still more, would you note with me the danger of judging from God’s providence as to whether or not you are doing the will of God.  Everything at first seemed to work out well for Jonah.  He disobeys, and the ground did not break open under his feet.  He made his way to Joppa, that seaport, and a travel agent could not have done anything better.  He finds a ship.  He is going to Tarshish.  He pays his fare.  The sail is set.  Here is a man who has defied God, disobeyed God’s will, and apparently everything is going well.  It looks like God is going to wink.  But He is not.

        If you read that first chapter yourself, you will see the repeated play on the word “down.”  He went down to Joppa.  He went down into the ship.  Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship.  Then he goes down to the bottom of the sea.  It is all down!  Do not gauge whether you are doing God’s will by your feelings or by the apparent success in your life.  God says to you as a young person:  “Do not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever.”  But maybe you say, “Well, I’m dating this unbelieving boy (girl).  It’s working out OK.  He’s a nice guy!  He is not a member of the church, but I asked God that if it was not His will then He not give me these feelings for him.  And I prayed that if I was not to marry him, then God would stop the marriage, He’d break my leg.”  Not only young people but even married people reason that way.  The new, the second wife—“I divorced my wife.  And that other woman, if I wasn’t supposed to have her, why do I have these feelings for her.  And she’s so nice.  So I am going to do that.” 

        Now, what do you want God to do?  Do you want God to lasso you on the way down the aisle of marriage to tell you that you are not supposed to get married to that person?  Is that what you want?  You must not gauge God’s will by your feelings.  You must gauge it from the holy Scriptures.  We could apply that to a career.  You might say, “Well, if God doesn’t want me to have that job that takes me away from the church, then He’s going to close the door, right?”  What do you want God to do—send bankruptcy into that new corporation to tell you not to join it?  God’s will is, Seek His kingdom!  Be faithful to the church.  Your Sabbath life, your family life, that is how you gauge where you are going to work—not on their offer.

        But sometimes we get our own will into our teeth, just like the horse gets the bit in its teeth.  And we interpret everything by feel.  We interpret God’s providence to be an evidence of His approval, that this is His will.  Now, listen.  God’s providence does not teach you His will.  God’s Word teaches you His will. 

        Jonah, at this point, leaves us with a heavy heart.  We see ourselves.  And we pray, Lord, conform me to Thy will.  Make me obedient, holy, and trusting.

        Let us pray.

        Father, bless Thy word to our hearts through Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, Amen.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Theme: "Arise, Go, Cry Against It"
Broadcast Date: July 6, 2014 (#3731)
Radio pastor: Rev.Carl Haak

Dear Radio Friends,

Today I would like to begin a study of the prophecy of Jonah.  There are a number of reasons why I pick this book of the holy Scriptures.  First, Jonah teaches us the sovereignty of God over our lives — that is, the truth that God sovereignly, powerfully, graciously, wisely rules over the lives of His people.

        The book of Jonah is unique among the Old Testament prophets in that it is the life of the prophet more than his message that is the content of the book.  If you are acquainted with the other prophecies of the Old Testament (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos), you know that we are given in those prophecies scant details of the lives of those men.  The prophecies of those prophets consist of the sermons that they preached.  But the extent of Jonah’s sermon was, “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”  Rather, the book of Jonah centers upon Jonah’s life. Jonah’s rebellion against his commission from God to go to Nineveh, Jonah’s unhappiness over God’s mercy—these become the theme of the entire book.  His life more than his message is the content of the book.  Or, we may say, the message of the book is written in his life. 

        That means that in this book we are really taught about ourselves and about God’s sovereign, wise dealings with us.  We are as Jonah, Jonah who ran away from his commission, Jonah who resented God showing mercy to the people he thought were unworthy, Jonah who pouted when God accomplished something contrary to his own will.  There is not a point in the book where we will not be able to see ourselves. 

        But we must also see God—God sovereignly accomplishing His own purpose in dealing with His son Jonah, and in keeping the prophet who ran away.

        The second reason why the book of Jonah is so instructive is that it teaches us the sovereignty of God in His mercy.  The book will illustrate what we read in Romans 9:  I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and whom I will, I will harden.  God will send the gospel to whomsoever He in His good pleasure wills to send it.  In His mercy, He will powerfully bring to repentance His own elect, even where their wickedness has come up before His face.

        Therefore, the call of the church, the commission given to the church, is:  Arise, go, and cry against it.  That is, Preach the Word of God!  The gospel of the Word of God must go forth, and the church must be faithful to bring that sovereign Word, in the certainty that God is going to accomplish His purpose in the sending forth of His glorious Word.

        We begin our study of the book of Jonah with the first verses of the prophecy:  “Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.” 

        Who was Jonah?  Well, Jonah is thrust upon us with the other prophets.  We might have been given something of the setting and details of his life, but Jonah is simply thrust upon us.  Everything in the book is concerned with his unique and his unparalleled commission:  Arise, go, and cry against Nineveh, that great city.  Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the mightiest nation in the world at that time.  Our focus is directed straight to this commission.

        There is a passage, however, II Kings 14:23-27, that gives us some information on the man Jonah.  Jonah lived at the midway point of the kingdom of the ten tribes of Israel.  Those ten tribes, you will recall, had broken away from the house of David under Jeroboam.  They were given over to idolatry and there was a steady degeneracy among them, until they would be destroyed by this very nation, Assyria (Nineveh), to which Jonah is sent.

        Jonah lived during the reign of Jeroboam II.  Under Jeroboam II the ten tribes reached their peak of prominence and prosperity.  We read in II Kings 14 of this Jeroboam II that he did evil in the sight of the Lord and he departed not from this evil.  However, he restored the coasts of Israel from the entering in of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the Word of the God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher. 

        We learn here that Jonah was from Gath-hepher, which was in the land of Zebulon.  His father was Amittai, which means, “The truth of God.”  He was, then, a recognized prophet laboring in the ten tribes.  Most importantly, then, we learn two things about Jonah.  He lived in a day, first of all, in which God’s people did evil in God’s sight.  They followed the sin of Jeroboam who made the golden calves.  And they progressed in the degeneracy of their sin, specifically of the rejection of the Word of the Lord.  However, it was a time of great affluence and prosperity.  Apparently they concluded that it was OK to set aside God’s Word.  Nothing bad comes when that is done.  Those were the days in which he lived. 

        Second, Jonah had witnessed an unusual display of God’s mercy toward the remnant of grace that were still in Israel.  Jonah had witnessed that, although the nation under Jeroboam II showed itself worthy of destruction, God yet dealt with that nation out of His mercy toward the elect remnant among them and He would not yet blot them out, because His purpose for them was not yet complete. 

        We need to underscore both of these in our minds as we study the book of Jonah.  First, Jonah lived in a day when Israel showed themselves hardened in their sin and rejection of God’s Word.  Second, Jonah had seen the mercy of God directed toward the remnant of His grace, which allowed the judgment not to come upon that wicked nation prematurely.

        Then we can understand something of the reason for the commission of Jonah.  “Arise, go to Nineveh, and cry against it.”  Behind that commission is the truth that the gospel of grace is going to go to the nations upon the rejection of the Word of God by the Jews.  That is the first thing we learn.  If you want to have that fleshed out for you, you should read the book of Romans, chapters 10 and 11.  There is a principle here.  There is a principle that you must hear with great sobriety, soberness, in your heart.  That principle is this:  The Word of God leaves those who reject it.  And it goes to a people who, by grace, will be made to hear it and tremble before it. 

        Do you know the Word of God?  Do you sit in the church?  Do you hear the gospel preached?  Is your church, historically, a church that has stood upon the truths of the Word of God?  Do you become complacent and indifferent to the Word of God?  There is a principle.  Where the Word of God has been in generations, and now a generation arises that becomes apathetic, careless, hearts fixed elsewhere upon the things of this world, then that Word of God is going to be taken away and given to a people whom God will raise up to treasure it and to publish it.

        That principle is illustrated time after time in the history of the church.  Always it happens when in the church there arise those who question the accuracy of God’s Word; when there comes a feeling in the church that we decide what we are going to accept in the Bible and what we will not; when the church is concerned simply to be accepted by the world, not to stand out different from the world.  Always when that comes into the church and the church is viewed merely as an institution “to make me feel good and to give me my happy hour on Sunday,” when the people of God, the church, view themselves that way, then the Word of God is taken away and the power of that Word will be demonstrated in others.  Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.  Listen.  It is not enough for you simply to nod your head and to give formal assent to God and to His Word.  It is not enough simply to keep a pretext of religion while you set your heart upon the flesh and upon the world.  We must love the Word of God and the precious gospel. 

        Why was Jonah sent to Nineveh?  First of all, to show that God takes His Word from the complacent and raises up a people who will receive it by His grace.  What is your attitude, right now, and your posture, right now, towards God’s Word, as you live in the church? 

        But there is another reason.  The other reason is that Jonah’s commission to Nineveh, to the wicked country of Assyria, displays the sovereignty of God’s mercy.  We are going to see that this was Jonah’s problem:  that God would show mercy to such people!  Jonah was infected with the attitude of his day.  The people of God had become smug.  They thought that they were the people of God and that the other nations simply did not deserve any mercy because they were so desperately wicked.  When Israel was spiritual, when Israel understood that their own salvation was entirely of God, then they had no problem with the spread of that Word to the other nations.  Then, in the psalms, Psalm 67, they could sing, “O God, let people praise thee, let all the nations sing.”  But when Israel began to think that that they were God’s special favorites, and when they would become enmeshed in their sin and would say, “But our sin doesn’t really matter.  We are the people of God.  We are not like those unbelieving Gentile dogs”—it was exactly then that God would display the sovereignty of His mercy.  He would send forth His Word once more to a people who, by His grace, would receive it. 

        So the question is again to us:  Do we grow smug and complacent?  You know the gospel.  You sit in a sound, believing church.  Do you say to others, “Well, their skin is a different color than mine.  Their culture is pagan.  They beat on drums.  They don’t deserve the Word of God.”  You see, Jonah was infected by the narrow carnality that resents God’s showing mercy to others who are considered undeserving.  That commission of Jonah is going to demonstrate that God is sovereign in His mercy and sends His Word to whom He will.

        That commission came to Jonah purely out of God’s sovereignty.  God speaks as the King.  “Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah.…  Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.” 

        Nineveh was a great city.  As I said, it was the capital of the world power, Assyria.  And it was strong in every sense.  It was an evil city.  It was a city under the darkness of sin.  It was the capital of Assyria, which would destroy the kingdom of Israel.  We learn that Nineveh as a city was great in geographic size.  In Jonah 3:3 we read, “Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey.”  It took three days to walk through it.  It was of a great population, a minimum perhaps of two million people.  And it had a great structure.  Its walls were around the entire city.  History tells us that the walls were so wide that three or four chariots could be driven abreast on them.  It had towers.  It was the seat of the government.  What Peking is to China and what Moscow is to Russia and what Bombay is to India, so was Nineveh unto Assyria—a great city.

        But the commission is simply given:  “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it.”  Jonah was called to do what no other prophet was ever called in the Old Testament to do.  Go to the very stronghold of the world’s darkness and tell them, “In forty days my God will destroy you.  Repent.” 

        Now, Jonah’s God is our God.  In His clearly revealed Word He also speaks to you.  No, He does not speak to you in a voice out of the sky.  But He speaks to you in the Scriptures:  “As a parent, arise, go, rear your children in the way of the Lord.  As a young person, arise, go forth into this world and keep yourself unspotted from the sins about you.”  That sovereignty that comes to you is the same as it came to Jonah.  God’s Word comes to you, as a child of God, with utter sovereignty.  Does He tell you today something you must do?  You must confess your sin to someone you have sinned against.  You have to apologize.  You have to talk to your wife or your teenager.  He presses upon you your biblical duties.  The Word of the Lord came:  Arise, go, and cry against Nineveh.

        There is a special application there to the church in our activities of evangelism.  As the call of the Word of God is to spread the Word of God as a congregation and as churches in unity, to send forth that Word of God also through the means of sending out missionaries, preachers of the gospel, do not drag your feet.  God says, “Proclaim My Word.  Go forth and preach the Word of God.  Arise, go, cry against it.”  Why?  “Because Nineveh’s wickedness is come up before me.”

        That is instructive.  What is the motivation for the church right now to proclaim the Word of God?  Is the motivation, perhaps, as some would say, because God has a desire to save all?  Is the motivation for spreading the Word of God found in a well-meant offer of God, that He is willing to save all?  Is it because God can say to all mankind, “I’ve got a wonderful plan for your life if only you would accept it”?  No!  No, to every one of those.  The motivation for the spread of the Word of God is based upon God’s uncompromising righteousness.  He is the God before whom all men stand.  He is the Judge of all the earth who takes vengeance upon the evil.  “Jonah,” says God, “cry against Nineveh, because it is worthy of judgment.  All that they have done is come up before Me.  Their wickedness is come up before Me.  Go there.  Preach to them that they are not autonomous, they are not independent, but that man is answerable to God, and that all of his actions, thoughts, and words are judged according to the standards of the righteousness of God.  Go and cry against them and make plain to them that the great issue of their life is a holy God and their own sin.

        There is another principle that is being shown to us here, and that principle is this:  Sin comes up before God.  “Their wickedness is come up before me.”  Men, in their sin, try to convince themselves that sin goes no higher than their own head, that it is a personal matter.  As long as no one else is hurt, they say, it is my prerogative—whether that is homosexuality or living together outside of marriage, whether that is embezzlement in business or lies or swearing or whatever it may be.  That is my decision and nobody else has anything to say about it, men say.  They think that their sin is like soap bubbles.  The bubbles might float around a little bit but then they explode and it is all forgotten.  It is just a segment of their life; they can go on.  But God says to man, He says to you and to me, “I know your secret thought.”  Because your sin is not immediately judged, you think that perhaps the almighty God in heaven is like you, tolerant, and He is going to forget.  But it is not so.  “I will reprove you,” says God.  “And I will show your sins before you.” 

        “Jonah, I am the God of all the earth.  Every man is Mine and answerable and exposed to My righteousness.  I am as acquainted with every deed of every man as I am with the deeds of My people.  The eyes of the Lord are in every place.  It is all before Me.  I am the judge of every man, woman, and child or teenager.  Now, go to Nineveh—that place where the measure of sin is filled up and it comes up before Me.  And preach My Word.”

        The righteous God gave Jonah a commission to proclaim His Word in the midst of a sinful world.  The application?  That Word comes to you and me, too.  We, too, think that we can stamp out our sin so that it leaves no trace.  But God says, “I know your sins.”  Do not think that God is as you are.  Your sins are known to God.  God is not a private God, confined to a church within four walls on Sunday so that we honor Him then and the rest of the week we do as we want behind our computer screen on the Internet, or working in the kitchen, or painting, or driving, or whatever we do.  Our lives and our hearts and our words come up before God.  And, therefore, we are called to confess our sins and forsake them.

        There is a profound word to our nation.  We must cry out to our nation.  The pride of our nation must sicken God—the murder of millions of the unborn, gay parades, militant feminism, smug arrogance (also in the church) against God’s Word, public blasphemy.  We have warrant today from God’s own Word to cry out:  “Your sins are known to God.  They come up before Him and they cry for judgment.  Repent, or perish.”

        That might not make you the most popular person on the block.  That might not make you the most popular person in the lunchroom.  You say, as you talk to your fellow workers, “God says, one man and one woman in marriage for life.”  You say, “Sabbath is God’s day, not your day.”  God will use that word, either to soften, by His grace, or to harden. 

        Pray, then, for the pure preaching of the Word of God, the preaching of the whole counsel of God without compromise.  Pray for present-day Jonahs on the pulpit, Jonahs on the mission field, men sent of the church who will proclaim that God is God.  He is the living God of all the earth.  You have one and only one need:  Bow down before Him and know Him in Jesus Christ the Lord.

        By faith, we look to this sovereign God of our salvation for grace to obey and to trust and to rest in Him for our strength.

        Be sure to join us next week as we will continue in this amazing book of Jonah.

        Let us pray.

        Father, bless Thy Word to our hearts.  Cause us to be humbled before it.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

The June 2014 radio messages of the Reformed Witness Hour are now available in print form. The five messages were delivered by Rev.Carl Haak, pastor of Georgetown PRC in Hudsonville, MI and include special messages for Ascension Day, Pentecost, and Father's Day.

The entire booklet in pdf form is attached here. But you may also find these five messages separately on the website at the links below:

June 1, 2014 - I Go to Prepare a Place for You (Ascension Day)

June 8, 2014 - Try the Spirits

June 15, 2014 - A Father's Pity

June 22, 2014 - Keeping the Lord's Day Holy

June 29, 2014 - Freedom (in Christ)

If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive this RWH booklet each month in print form, contact Judi Doezema at the PRC Seminary (doezema@prca.org).

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Theme: "Freedom"
Broadcats date: June 29, 2014 (No.3730)
Radio pastor; Rev.Carl Haak (Georgetown PRC)

Dear radio friends,

        You say, “Of course, I’m free.  I’m my own man.”  But I am not asking you that, either.  I am not asking for your opinion of yourself or of your own will or character.  Are you free? 

        Are you free from the dominion of sin, so that sin does not rule over you?  Are you free?

        Jesus Christ said in John 8:  He that committeth sin is the servant of sin.  He went on in that chapter to say that He alone was able to make men free.  “If the Son shall make you free,” He declared, “Ye shall be free indeed.”  Are you free in Jesus Christ from the dominion and power of sin?  Not that you do not sin, but that you know your sin, you confess it in tears of sorrow before the living God.  It grieves you. 

        And are you free in this sense, that you fight your sin.  You fight against that sin all the time.  You do not want to yield to it.  Are you free in this sense, that you would live a new and obedient life.  That, rather than yielding all of your life, your thoughts, your abilities to sin and to yourself, you would rather, by the grace of God, yield all in the service of Jesus Christ.  Are you truly free?  Free, then, from the damnation and condemnation that you deserve, which is hell.  Free from an awful, ruinous life of pride and sin.  Free to serve God in Christ Jesus.

        We read in the Word of God concerning freedom.  We read this in Romans 8:2:  “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”  Paul there declares that, by grace, the child of God is made free, that he has true freedom.

        In Romans 8:1 we have a very precious statement of what is called justification.  Let me read the verse.  “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”  There the apostle declares that when, by grace, we have been united to Jesus Christ by God’s powerful work, then Christ is our righteousness; then Christ has performed the work for us upon the cross; and then, as God sees us in Christ, we are declared “not guilty.”  The guilt, the penalty, the condemnation of our sin has been removed.  That is what it means to be justified—to be declared by God innocent and righteous and forgiven of all our sins so that we shall not endure eternal condemnation.  That is Romans 8:1.

        But then, in verse 2, the apostle proceeds immediately to another biblical doctrine, namely, sanctification, or transformation.  He says, “For by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus [I have been] made free from the law of sin and death.”  In other words, he says that wherever God has declared a justification, a pardon and forgiveness of sin, He goes on to work a sanctification.  The Spirit of Christ is placed within those who are forgiven by mere grace.  And that Spirit of Christ works within them and empowers them to a new life in Jesus Christ, a life that is one of repentance, a life that desires to serve Christ.  We have been set free, free from sin, from the dominion of sin, by the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

        Let us ask a few questions about that today.

        First of all, we are set free from what?  And the answer:  the Spirit has set us free from the law of sin and death. 

        What is the law of sin and death?  The word law here in the Bible is used to refer to a principle or a power.  The verse is saying that there is a certain principle or power of sin within us that holds us, that subdues us.  The word law in Romans 8:2 does not refer to a code of do’s and don’ts.  It is not a reference to the Ten Commandments, but it is a reference to a principle or a power that works within.  The law here is not like going in the summer to a park or to a campground and on the board are posted the rules:  #1, no fires; #2, no alcohol; no pets; no firearms.  Not law in that sense.  But the word law here has the same idea as when we use that word in science, as for example the law of motion, the law of thermodynamics, or the law of gravity.  We refer to certain principles at work, certain powers at work in the creation.

        Now Paul says there is also a law, there is a principle, that is operative in sin.  Then he says, “Praise God, there is another law—the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” 

        The law of sin and death, then, is the principle or the power of sin.  Paul says in Romans 7:22, 23, “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:  But I see another law [there it is again] in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law [there it is again] of sin which is in my members.”  Paul says, “There is a principle, there is a law, of sin in my members.  And it is constantly bringing me into subjection unto sin.”

        Well, what are the axioms, or the corollaries, or the postulates of this law of sin and death?  There are especially three.

        The law of sin and death is, first of all, this:  that sin in me (or my human nature as fallen into sin) reacts always in hatred and resentment to God and to what God requires of me.  Paul will say in Romans 8:7 that “the carnal mind…is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”  The carnal mind is enmity against God.  The first postulate of this law is that there is within me irritation with, and the desire to break, the commands of God. 

        It comes out in a little child.  You say, “No, don’t touch that candy dish.”  The child looks at you and reaches out to touch it.  It seems that the good law of God, the commandments of God, provoke and stir up sin within us. 

        Paul says in Romans 7:5, “For when we were in the flesh, the motions [or the desires] of sin, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.”  It is as if the law is the stick that pokes the dog. 

        I remember, as a boy in the second or third grade, a particularly cold winter—sub-zero temperatures.  And at that time many houses would have outside an oil barrel for heating.  And I remember my friend’s father saying to us as we were outside playing that cold day, “Don’t put your tongue on that barrel in this cold weather.  It will freeze immediately.”  Well, we had never thought of doing such a thing.  It had not occurred to our mind.  But when the prohibition was given to us, it was irresistible.  The commandment came, and the desires of rebellion arose. 

        And so it is within.  There is this law within our natures that when the good law of God comes to us and says, “No, don’t do that,” there stirs immediately within our hearts by nature, “Who is God to tell me?”  And we defy that law, so that the skin of our life is torn off and we are brought into pain and misery. 

        That is the first postulate of sin and death—the urge of the sinful nature to violate God’s good law simply because God has told me not to.

          The second postulate of this law is that sin breeds sin.  Sin gives birth to sin.  You cannot contain a spill (an oil spill).  You cannot get it to stop.  It keeps coming and keeps polluting.  We think we can stop it.  But we cannot. 

        What King David thought was just a fling of one night with Bathsheba brought murder and lifelong, horrible, devastating consequences into his life.  He thought it would be just one little sin. 

        You tell a lie in time of trouble and that lie, to cover it up, requires five more.  Parents come home and say, “Were you on the computer while I was gone?”  Or, perhaps, as a little boy, there was the quarter on the counter that Mom left there and you took it.  And then that quarter became a dollar and the dollar became…. 

        We read in the Bible, in Genesis 4, of Cain, who was jealous of Abel.  Before Cain killed his brother, God came and spoke to him and said, “Cain, sin lies at the door, and unto thee shall be its desire, and it will rule over you.”  God thus warned Cain of this law.  He said, in effect, to Cain:  “You’re jealous of your brother.  You pet that jealousy and you think that that jealousy is just like a little pussy cat.  You can comfort yourself by being jealous.  But, I tell you, Cain, it is no little kitten.  It is a lion.  That jealousy is just like a lion, and it’s crouching right now.  It’s outside your door.  It’s crouching to devour you.” 

        And so you say to a sin, “It’s just a little one, it’s just once.  It doesn’t matter.  Don’t bother your head about it.”  So, what once would cause deepest hurt and pain and remorse, now you do not even blush.  In fact, you do not even know that you are doing it anymore.  That is the law of sin and death.  It breeds sin.

        The final postulate of the law of sin and death is that sin does not let go.  Sin embeds itself.  This is true of specific sin, of lust, greed, bitterness, anger, addictions.  There is the law of sin and death.  Addictions are the fangs of the pit bull of sin.  They do not let go.  So, eventually, the job and family and children and everything that you worked for are gone.

        We read in Proverbs 23:29-35 of what is called the addiction, chemical addiction, unto wine—drunkenness, says the Bible.  There the Bible speaks of the person who has redness of eyes.  Who is this that has redness of eyes, and wounds without cause—all kinds of hurt and broken relationships and contentions?  He has eyes for strange women.  The one who has this is the one who has been drinking.  And then read those most distressing words (v. 35):  “I will seek it yet again.”  Sin does not let go.  I will seek it yet again.

        There is a law within our members as sinners, fallen in Adam.  It is in us right now.  This law is operative in our minds and our tongues, and in all the organs of our bodies.  It is real.  It is as real as the law of gravity that holds us to the ground.  And it is irrevocable of ourselves.  It is the law of sin and death.  It leaves us broken and miserable and ruined.

        But we have been set free, declares the apostle.  This is the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.  This is its wonder:  Freedom, true freedom!  Not man-made freedom.  This is true freedom—to be freed from the powers of sin.  “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”  Let that Word of God come to you.  Let it roll over your mind and soul with all its glory and power and relief and comfort.  It is really the same words that I quoted of Jesus:  “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”  Jesus Christ is the great emancipator.  His cross not only erased the guilt of our sin and its punishment, but His Spirit, the Spirit of the crucified Jesus, frees me from sin’s dominion. 

        There is another principle.  There is not only the law of sin and death, but there is a greater principle.  It is called the law of the Spirit of Christ Jesus.  The Spirit of Christ frees the child of God from the power of sin and death.  Paul is referring to the authority and the power of the Spirit of life in Christ to bring us unto life.  God, by grace, implants within us this other principle.  It may now be only a beginning principle.  But it is the life in Christ Jesus.  It is the life that is directed toward God.  It is a life that is from Christ Jesus unto God.  It is in Christ Jesus.  That is, it is for those for whom Christ has died.

        Not only is there, as I said, no condemnation, but there is also for them freedom—freedom from the law of sin and death.  The child of God does not simply say, “I am forgiven and now I am content to live in sin.”  That is impossible.  But along with the forgiveness comes the work of the Holy Spirit of repentance and sanctification.

        But still we say, Free?  What do you mean by free?  You yourself said that the law of sin is in our members and remains there.  What do you mean, Free?

        Well, free, not in the sense that sin is gone.  A Christian does not say, “Well, I lived once a life in which I swore and drank and lusted and all the rest.  But now I couldn’t swear if I tried.  And I don’t have any lust in me anymore.”  That is simply not true.  The person who says that is blind, blind to his own self.  The Holy Spirit always works within us (John 16) a conviction of our own sinful nature.  The apostle means free in the sense that this principle of sin is now checked.  It means that the dominion of that principle is broken.  It means that I can contradict the law of sin and death.  It means that the power that I now desire to follow is the law of life in Christ Jesus. 

        It makes us free in two ways.  The Spirit of Christ makes us free, first, in a painful way.  He gives us to know our sin.  The conviction of sin.  He slays us.  The Spirit of Christ introduces me to my sin.  I mean, truly introduces me to my sin and to my problem.  Do you know your problem?  You say, “Well, of course I know my problem.  She is sitting across the table from me.”  Or, you say, “Well, it’s my mother.  It’s my parents.  They’re so unreasonable.”  Or, “It’s him.  If you had to live with him, you’d know what my problem is.” 

        When you speak that way, you speak out of the law of sin in your members.  What you are saying is that your sin, at least in comparison to other people’s, is not so bad, and that what you do and say in your marriage is explainable because of the other person.  As long as you think that way, you are in the bondage of your own sin.  The work of the Spirit of Christ is first to show you yourself, that the tyrant and the evil sinner is yourself.  Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.  That was the testimony of the apostle Paul. 

        So the first work is a painful one—the conviction of sin.  But then the second work of freedom of the Spirit is repentance.  And repentance is freedom.  It is to say, “I’m sorry, truly sorry.  I have sinned against heaven and I have sinned against you.”  The devil says, “Don’t say that.  Don’t humble yourself.  Be proud.”  Freedom is repentance.  It is the faith of Christ within our hearts delivering us from the hardness, the darkness, the selfishness, the defiance. 

        Do you repent?  Is your heart soft before God?  Do you know what it is to be broken, in tears, over your own sin?  This is a miracle.  This is the principle of the life of Christ within you.  In Christ we receive this power to repent, to sorrow over our sin, and to desire to walk in a new and holy life.  United to Christ, we receive not only pardon, but also the work of the Spirit bringing us sorrow and repentance and the desire to walk in obedience to Jesus Christ.  That is what it means to be free.  We are free in Christ Jesus.

        Out of the blood of Christ, which has justified me and forgiven me of my sins, I am given the power also to fight lust, greed, anger, pride, and selfishness.  Freedom.

        Out of the love of Christ, and out of the blood of Jesus Christ, I am given not only to know my sin but also to hate my sin and to fight my sin and to desire to serve God.  This is freedom.

        Out of the love and blood of Jesus Christ, I am not only forgiven my sin, but I see that indeed my problem is my sin, and I want to take hold of myself and walk in obedience to Christ.

        How do you approach the battle against sin in your life?  Do you approach as a victim?  Do you say, “I can’t help it.  Everyone does it.  It’s to be expected.  You’d do it too if you were in my circumstances.  And it doesn’t really matter.  Aw, come on, it’s not as bad as So-and-So.”  We learn where the bar is set.  And if we can come under that bar, then we think we are OK.  If that is the way we think, then we do not know the cross of Jesus Christ. 

        Do you battle your sin this way, as one who in Christ has been made free as a conqueror, and more than conqueror, in Christ Jesus?  Do you know that you have been forgiven, and not only forgiven but made free, that the Spirit of Christ now rules in you, so that you want to resist that sin, hate that sin, fight that sin, and you want to live now in a way that will thank Him and praise Him?  We fight our sin, not to earn salvation, but because God has forgiven us.  Then all the glory is God’s.  Absolutely all the glory is of God.

        Understand, and live in freedom, forgiven in the blood of Christ, so that you might repent now, humble yourself, and feel, by the Spirit of Christ, a new impulse to submit all things in loving obedience to Jesus Christ.  This is freedom.  And all of this to God’s glory.

        Let us pray.

        Father, we thank Thee for the Word, and we pray for its blessing upon our hearts in this day, that we may stand in the freedom, in the liberty, of Jesus Christ.  In His name do we pray, Amen.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Theme: "Keeping the Lord’s Day Holy"
Broadcast date: June 22, 2014 (No.3729)
Radio pastor: Rev. Carl Haak

Dear Radio Friends,

        The fourth commandment says, “I am the Lord of your time.  Your time, too, is redeemed by Me.”  The psalmist confesses in Psalm 31:15, “My times are in thy hand.”  Time is an instrument of God, to mold us for endless time.  As children of God, we make the glorious confession:  “I am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, both in body and soul.”  Belonging to Jesus Christ as a Christian, both  in body and soul, means that also our time, how we spend our time in body and soul, belongs to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ.  It is not my time.  It is not that I decide what to do on Sunday.  But it is Christ who is the Lord of my time.  He is the Lord of everything that I do.  Joyfully, six days I labor for His glory, and on the seventh, the Sabbath, how I spend my time is determined by my relationship to Him. 

        Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is Lord of your time?  How do you spend your Sunday?  Does your church attendance show that you belong to Jesus Christ and that you use your time to glorify and obey Him?  Or do you spend Sunday as your time?  Jesus said, in Mark 2:28, “the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.”  Is He Lord of your Sabbath?  Is your attendance at your church off and on?  Is it once?  Are you gone for long periods of time?  Do your pleasures and fun and luxuries interfere with the hour of worship?  Is your will, your pleasure, your feelings, lord of the Sabbath?  Or is Jesus Christ the Lord of your Sabbath, to the glory of God and as a witness to the world around you? 

        Gratitude runs deep within our veins as redeemed of the Lord.  We love the Lord Jesus.  We belong to Him by the covenant of His grace.  Our gratitude runs deep when on nice summer Sundays we diligently frequent the house of God to hear His Word. 

        The fourth commandment is God’s commandment to every one of us:  “Keep the Sabbath Day holy.”  It is a commandment to all the children of God:  Rest in Me. 

        We have a catechism called the Heidelberg Catechism, a faithful exposition of the Word of God and a faithful exposition of the fourth commandment.  In the thirty-eighth question of this Catechism the question is asked:  “What does God require on the Sabbath Day?”  It does not ask “What does God suggest,” or “What does God recommend?”  But, “What does God require?”  And the answer is:  “That all my life I cease from evil works and yield myself to God, and especially on the Sabbath Day, the day of rest, I diligently frequent the church of God to hear His Word, to call upon His name, and to contribute to the relief of the poor as becomes a Christian.”  We do not say to the Lord, “Sunday is no big deal.  I do as I please.”  But in our heart, when we hear the fourth commandment, we say, “My times are in Thy hand.  Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth” (Ps. 31). 

        The point to be remembered by us today is that the fourth commandment, as it is one of the ten commandments of the law of God, remains the will of God our Savior for New Testament Christians.  It remains the will of God for you and for me as much as any other of the ten commandments.  Now, certainly, we would not say, as a Christian and redeemed in the blood of Christ, that an occasional violation of the ninth commandment is permissible.  The ninth commandment says, “Thou shalt bear no false witness.”  We would not say, “Well, occasionally, you know, a lie is OK.”  Nor would we say that of the seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”  As a redeemed Christian we would not say, “Well, it is understandable that the child of God is going to fall into fornication occasionally.  After all, it is so prevalent.  So, occasionally, if children of God give up their chastity or their vows of marriage, this is understandable.”  We would not say that.  We would say that the ninth and the seventh commandments are the abiding will of the Redeemer, Jesus, for the life of every one whom He has redeemed in His precious blood.  Tell the truth—always.  Live a pure sexual life—always. 

        So also the fourth commandment (Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy) is the remaining and abiding will of our Redeemer Savior Jesus.  The requirement of the fourth commandment is that on the day of rest, Sunday, I diligently frequent the church of God.  And “diligently frequent the church of God” means twice.  If you come once, that is not frequent.  That is infrequent.  We come twice to hear His Word, and to pray, and to call upon the name of the Lord, and to use the sacraments, and to contribute to the relief of the poor.  All of this is behavior that becomes a Christian.  This is not behavior that becomes, as some would say, a Puritan, or an Old Testament saint, and we know better now.  Or a legalist, or a formalist—someone who is concerned only with form and does not have the heart of Christianity.  No, to keep the Sabbath Day holy, to come diligently to church twice, is behavior that becomes a Christian, one who is redeemed in the blood of Jesus Christ.  It becomes a saint of God.  “For I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with the multitude that kept the holy day” (Ps. 42:4). This is consistent.  This is in harmony with, this flows out of, the Christian life.  This is not an imposition upon a Christian life.  This is the Christian life. 

        The fourth commandment is an abiding commandment for twenty-first century Christians—twenty-first century Christians with cottages, with Skidoos, with recreational vehicles, with vacations.  It is an abiding commandment, the will of the Redeemer, Jesus. 

        The first reason that it is an abiding commandment is to be found in the commandment itself, for we read that the fourth commandment is rooted in creation.  In Exodus 20:11 we read:  “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth…and rested on the seventh day.”  I bypass, for now, the plain condemnation of theistic evolution that is to be found there in the Word of God.  And I bypass what it would mean for you and for me if we were to come to church in faithful obedience to Jesus on Sunday seeking rest, seeking rest for our souls in the unshaken, unbroken Word of God, the Word of truth, and the very first thing the minister would do would be to tear the first three or four pages out of the Bible.  What would that do to you, and to your rest in Jesus, if the Bible in its entirety is not the Word of God?  How could you find rest there, in that church? 

        But the fourth commandment says that it is rooted in creation.  It teaches that the creation was performed by God in six 24-hour days, and God rested on the seventh.  And, therefore, God says to us, “Moses did not give the fourth commandment.  The fourth commandment did not begin at Mount Sinai.”  Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man, made for man as man.  Man was made with the need of rest in God.  God made man, even before sin, to need the time when he could put down his hoe and rest.  We need the time when we can get out of the truck, hang up the work belt, and enjoy God, waiting upon Him without distraction. 

        The second reason the fourth commandment is an abiding commandment is that the fourth commandment is rooted in redemption.  It is especially God’s commandment for those whom He has redeemed from the bondage of sin.  This is found in how the fourth commandment is given in Deuteronomy 5:15.  The ten commandments are given twice (Ex. 20 and Deut. 5).  In Deuteronomy 5, the fourth commandment is stated differently.  At least the rationale for keeping it is stated differently.  There we read that we must remember the Sabbath Day for this reason:  “And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm:  therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.”  There God is speaking to the redeemed, the redeemed of the Lord, redeemed by a mighty display of the power of the Lord.  The redeemed of the Lord must show forth their gratitude to the Lord for their redemption.  All the days of my life I must yield myself to the Lord because I have been redeemed by His blood.  But central to that, to doing that for six days, is that I will devote one day in seven to Him. 

        The fourth commandment abides and is necessary for the Christian life.  The Christian life cannot endure without the observance of a day of rest.  The fourth commandment brings, after all, the first table of the law to its close.  Jesus said that there were two tables of the law:  Love the Lord thy God; and love thy neighbor as thyself.  The first four commandments are in that first table.  And at the end of that first table is:  Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. 

        So, look at its place in the ten commandments.  It shows the way, how we are to stay on the path of keeping the first three commandments of the law of God.  In the first commandment we are admonished to have God as our trust:  Have no other God before Me, have no idol in your heart.  In the second commandment we are to worship God as He instructs in His Word.  We are to have no graven images.  In the third commandment, we are to revere His holy name.  We are not to take His name in vain.  But how shall we do this?  How shall we trust; how shall we worship; how shall we revere the Lord God in our lives, day-by-day?  How will we do this?  The fourth commandment comes and says, “Remember the Sabbath Day.”  It is God’s institution of maintaining love for Him.  Can you maintain love for your wife and children without time spent with them?

        But there is more.  The breaking of this commandment, the setting aside of the fourth commandment, and the refusal to hallow this day by setting aside our own pleasures and devoting ourselves to the Lord, is to sow in our life apostasy and falling away from the Lord. 

        In Hebrews 10:23-25, we have words of wonderful encouragement.  In the context there, “Let us draw near to God….  Let us hold fast the profession of our faith….”  And then that chapter, after the wonderful encouragement, ends with a chilling warning to those who would tread underfoot God, and who would count the blood of the covenant whereby they are sanctified an unholy thing.  And right between the encouragement and the warning, you find this:  “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is” (v. 25).  To neglect the worship services is the first step on the road to apostasy in your own personal life and in the life of your congregation. 

        The fourth commandment is utterly crucial, because on this day the child of God finds one thing that his soul needs.  If we are to continue faithfully as those who tread the way to Zion (Ps. 84), as those whose hope is set in Christ, in all the glory and the promises of heavenly life; if we are to continue on that pathway, we require something:  rest, rest for my soul.  Sabbath means rest.  The Sabbath, then, has a very appealing ring to it:  the word “rest.”  What does the word “rest” mean to you as a mother who is taken for granted, who is harried and busy from dawn till sunset?  Rest.  That is an appealing word. 

        The Sabbath is the rest of God.  The Sabbath of the Lord thy God, the rest of the Lord thy God, of course, does not mean that God is idle, that God ceases from His work.  But when we search the Scriptures we discover that God’s rest is His enjoyment of Himself.  It is His enjoyment in His work so glorious that He is the all-sufficient and wonderful God.  Especially the Sabbath rest is His enjoyment of His perfect work in Jesus Christ—when He raised Him from the dead and set Him on high above all things.  It is rest— for God and man.  Apart from God, man cannot rest.  He has no rest.  Isaiah 57:20, “The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest.”  But there is a rest for the people of God.  That rest is in the completed work of Jesus Christ, perfected in heaven and tasted on Sunday. 

        Diligently frequent the church of God on the Lord’s Day to hear His Word.  Attend the church where His Word is preached and honored twice on the Lord’s Day.

        “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is” (Heb. 10:25), and so much the more as we see the day approaching.  There the Scriptures are speaking of an assembling, an assembling for worship—not simply a social gathering, but a time when the people of God are actually called by God.  God calls us.  Psalm 50:5:  “Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”  Let us go up to the Lord’s house.  We are called to enter into His house.  Do not forsake this call. 

        We say, “Well, it’s easy to become accustomed not to go to church.  That happens slowly and gradually.”  In Hebrews 10, the Hebrew Christians were beginning to forsake the assembling on the Lord’s Day.  It was due in part to persecution.  If you read the verses 32 and 33 of that chapter, you will find that they were enduring a great fight of affliction and that they were being made a gazing stock of the world by reproaches.  Sometimes that can come to us.  If you diligently come to your church twice on the Lord’s Day because you thirst after the Word of God, and you bring your family, then, perhaps, you will hear words like this:  “Why?  Do you think you’re better than everybody else?  Do you need to go twice?  Why can’t we have the family party on Sunday?  It’s always you who are making a problem with the family.  If you miss once, it’s not going to hurt.  You must think that you’re better,” they will sneer at you.

        Have you endured that reproach, or have you succumbed to that reproach?  Have you become accustomed to going once?  Maybe your parents cannot get you out of bed?  Maybe you prefer to watch TV, or you are doing your own pleasure on the Lord’s Day?  We must answer to the Lord.  In Luke 4:16 we read of Jesus:  “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up:  and, as his custom was [as His custom was!], he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.”  That was His custom on the Lord’s Day.  His custom was that He would go to church diligently, faithfully.

        We must delight ourselves in this day.  We must come to church with a sincere, heartfelt love for the risen Savior, in gratitude for all that He has done for us and in anticipation of all that He has laid up for us through His death and His resurrection.  We must use the Sabbath Day to stock the cabinets of our heart with spiritual food, so that we can make it through the next six days.  And then, after those six days, we return bruised and weary from the fight against sin, that we might again rest for awhile in our Savior.  We are fortified on the Sabbath to fight the good fight of faith, that we might yield ourselves for the next six days unto the Lord.  Keeping the Sabbath means that you are active in your faith, that you are living carefully for six days, not worldly for six days and then thinking that you can have a blessed Sabbath, that you can make up for it by going to church.  But keeping the Sabbath means that you live out of Jesus Christ consciously all the days of your life.  And then on the first day of the week you meet with your risen Savior and you learn what the Lord has done for you.  The idea of staying home will become foreign to you.  You will not look for your own pleasures upon this day.  You will not say, “Aw, it’s too far to go.”  But it will be your custom to gather with the people of God.

        Hear the word of the Lord.  Do not say, “This is too hard.”  Do not say, “Oh, that preacher is way too strict.”  But, if need be, let us repent.  Let us not say that we can honor the Lord without honoring His day.  Let us keep the holy day spiritually, joyfully, actively, out of faith.  Keep Sunday.  And as you hear the Word in church, let that Word whet your appetite and comfort your soul for the glory that is already ours, and that soon will be ours perfectly in heaven.

        Let us pray.

        Father, we thank Thee for the Word.  We pray that it may go forth and accomplish Thy purpose.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Theme: "A Father’s Pity"
Broadcast date: June 15, 2014
Radio pastor: Rev. Carl Haak

Dear radio friends,

        Psalm 103 is a beautiful Psalm.  It is outstanding among the 150.  In that Psalm the psalmist says that he will bless the Lord, he will speak well of the Lord; and he calls us also to extol our God with him, and with all that is within us.  In order that we might do this, the psalmist says, we must remember all of Jehovah’s benefits so richly showered upon us.  He speaks to us of the central benefit of the forgiveness of our sins.  For instance, in verse 3:  “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases.”  He goes on to explain to us that this forgiveness is rooted in God’s tender mercy, verse 8:  “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.”  He tells us further that the forgiveness that God has given to us in His Son is a complete and thorough forgiveness.  It is no little forgiveness, verse 11:  “For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.” 

        And then the psalmist tells us what causes him to adore his God more than anything.  He says that it is His pity.  “It’s my heavenly Father’s pity.  He pitied us as His children in all of our woe of sin.  He was moved with compassion toward us in our hopeless misery.”  Jehovah, our perfect heavenly Father, pitied us.  That is what undergirds His being a perfect Father.  And it is that fatherly pity of God that a human, Christian father is to have if he is truly to be a Christian father. 

        We read, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.”  What does it mean to pity?  We would say, “Pity—who wants that today?”  In our proud and self-absorbed age, that is considered demeaning and condescending.  Do we not hear the words, “Don’t pity me!”  The handicapped do not want your pity but your respect.  The downtrodden do not want pity but understanding.  Does it not mean, when you pity someone, that you are looking down on him and degrading him? 

        Yet, we read that Jehovah pities us, His children.  And God’s pity is one of His most beautiful virtues.  It tells us that He is a God who is filled with tender compassion.  It tells us, first of all, that in our best estate, that is, when we are standing on our two legs in all of our beaming pride, He looks at us and He sees much to pity.  He sees nothing of good.  He sees that we need His compassion.

        That ought to humble us.  That ought to check our pride.  And that ought to comfort us.  Our God is not a God of wood or stone, untouched, but He pities right now.  And in His pity He never ceases to flow out towards us in His compassion.  God’s pity is His love in the form of tender, melting compassion for His elect in Christ as He sees us in all of our weakness, suffering, misery, and sin.

        The word “pity” means to be soft, to hold in tender affection.  It implies that we who are the object of God’s love are of ourselves only miserable sinners.  Yet the Lord has taken note of us and for His own Name’s sake has pitied us and given to us a full and free salvation.  It is God’s love in the form of tender, melting compassion for His own elect as He sees them in their weakness, suffering, and sin.  That is a beautiful thing.

        That pity is an aspect of His eternal Fatherhood.  For as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those that fear Him.  As our heavenly Father, He is the God who is moved with eternal pity for us and has given to us His Son to save us. 

        Now, that truth of Jehovah’s fatherly pity must be seen in a Christian father.  For the pattern of all of our life is to be holy as God is holy, that is, to pattern our life after God.  For instance, in marriage we must live as God lives with His bride, the church.  Therefore, as fathers, we must seek to conform our earthly parenting and fathering to His heavenly fathering and parenting.  God says, “I have shown My pity to you as My son.  I am your perfect example.  As I have pitied, so you are to pity your children.”  You must cultivate a relationship with your children in which you seek to reflect the fatherly pity of God.

        Yes, that means for sure that as a father you are called to meet their earthly needs.  You are to fill their bellies.  You are to clothe their backs.  You are to put a roof over their heads.  And, yes, leave them an inheritance.  But what a horrible thing if that is what fathering means to you—if it is nothing more than that—if you do not prayerfully create a climate of spiritual warmth in your home, of tenderness and pity and affection for your child.  You must be as God, filled with tender pity and affection and compassion in Christ for your child.  Do not say, “Oh, that pity stuff is for wimps.”  Oh, no.  As a father you are to reveal the pity of God.  That means that you must not allow coldness, distance, ill-will, resentment to be the atmosphere of your home.  If you allow that to be the atmosphere of your home between you and your child, if you are guilty of those things, if you are guilty of the abuse of your child, if you are guilty of harboring resentments and ill-will and distance and coldness toward them, you are being ungodly.  You are not as God! 

        This is the question with which we must confront ourselves as Christian fathers today:  Would you want God to be the kind of parent to you that you are to your children?  Fathers, you and I are confronted by that question today in God’s Word.  Would you want your children to conceive of God’s heart as they conceive of your heart?  That is serious business.  You say, “I never thought about that when I got married.  I never thought about that when I started to have children.  You mean to say to me, pastor, that all of my child’s concepts of God are also to be based upon what they see in me as a father?”  I answer you, “Yes.  That is the teaching of God’s Word.”  That is why we tremble.  That is why we need to be on our knees before God.  That is why we need the holy Scriptures.  That is why we need the faithful church of Jesus Christ to instruct us.  And that is why we need one another in the house of the Lord.  We must work together as men of God, that we might be fathers in Christ.

        That is why you need, as a man of God, a husband, father, to know more of your God—more and more of Him.  What will our children think of their heavenly Father?  Much of the answer is to be found in you, especially in those formative, pre-school years.  Oh, we are not perfect.  That is why repentance is so necessary in our lives before our children.  But, you see, if we resent those children; if in our frustration we slap them across the face; if we do not use wise, consistent, biblical discipline applied to the seat of their pants; if instead we rant and we yell and we call them names and we have no time for our kids — if that is the way we go about things and brush it off as insignificant and we go on in those patterns of life, then we are being ungodly.  What will that little boy, that little girl, think when you teach them to fold their hands and pray, “Our Father who art in heaven”?  How will they have the courage to look to heaven and believe that they are precious to their heavenly Father?  That means that you must rear your child conscientiously, principally, from the Word of God.  You must seek to be conformed to the pattern of your heavenly Father.

        Your life, then, as a father is to be exemplary.  There is nothing that so confounds and confuses a child as inconsistency.  We must not simply talk of God’s grace.  We must not simply sing lustily about God’s amazing grace to which we are a debtor.  We have to live it in front of them.  Our Lord spoke of this when He spoke of the painful reality of hypocrisy.  In Matthew 23 He spoke of the Pharisees who said but did not do; of the Pharisees who set out the duties for others until a man was so laden down that he could not get up, but, the Lord said, they never lifted a finger to remove the burden.  They said what they were to do but they never did it. 

        That means that we can be conversant with the holy Scriptures, we can talk of honesty, respect for authority, and moral precepts, but if we fail to embody them, then we do not see our own sins.  And we are confounding our children.  If you walk in dishonesty, if you lack respect for the civil authority, for the church authority, you are lading your children with an inconsistent example.  And that is going to create in them cynicism toward the gospel. 

        We cannot fool our children.  They know about the reality of our life.  We can be guilty of the most glaring inconsistencies and try to gloss it over with the clever use of words.  You say to your children in their squabbles with each other, “You shouldn’t lose your temper like that.  Think before you speak.  Honor your mother.”  So you said that to your little boy.  Ten minutes later they see you come home and over a slight provocation you blow up at your wife, you have hard words, you lose your temper, and in innocency they come and say, “Daddy, isn’t that a bad temper?”  And you respond, “You keep your place.  I’ve got a righteous anger.  You mind me, you impertinent thing!”  That will provoke your child to anger.  That will foul up your child’s ability to discern righteous anger from pride.  That will make them lawless.  They will not respect authority that way.

        It means that as a father you wish to cultivate a climate of closeness and spiritual warmth in your home.  That is part of God’s pity.  In His pity God comes close to us in compassion.  God’s pity to us is not the pity of a millionaire who says, “Well, here’s a donation to help out.  But don’t bring those people to my doorstep.”  In His pity, God made an atonement for our sins.  He erased our debt.  But He was not content with that.  He was not content simply to have our birth recorded in heaven, to adopt us in the blood of Christ, and to leave it in the file drawer way off in heaven someplace.  No, He wants you, He wants you to be with Him, He wants you to enjoy His fellowship. 

        The parable of the prodigal son—remember about the father who received his wayward son?  How did the father receive him?  Did he receive his wayward son in a merely cold and legal way as a lawyer behind closed doors signing papers?  No, he pitied him.  He received him in the closeness of the covenant bond.  We read that when the son was yet a long way off, his father was moved with compassion and ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him.  He did not say, “Well, glad you came to your senses, you rebel.  You wasted your inheritance.  I don’t want to be shamed in front of the neighbors, you had better come on in.”  No, He took us from the hog pen, from hell itself, and He turned us to Himself in sorrow.  When the son returned, by God’s grace, in humble self-loathing, how did he find his father to be—distant?  Aloof?  No, the father was not content with anything less than intimate closeness.  He ran out to his son, he embraced his son, he put a robe around his son, he put a ring upon his finger, he invited him to a banquet. 

        So also, as fathers, we must show the covenant closeness and spiritual warmth of Christ to our children.  Are you determined that your children will see this in you?  Or do you say, “They get on my nerves.”  I want to say this reverently.  Do you not think that you and I get on God’s nerves?  How do we act in front of God?  Oh, He chastens us as a holy and righteous Father.  But He is filled with pity.  You say, “But I can’t understand where those kids are at, especially those teenagers.”  Let me ask again, “Don’t you think that you and I need infinite understanding, patience, and wisdom from God with us who are such complicated, fickle creatures of sin?  If that’s the way God is toward us, what are we to be?”  No, it does not mean that you let your child run all over you.  There must be one person who rules the house, and that is the parent.  But you cannot exercise that rule without pity.  You have to see your own sins.  And if you understand your own sins, you will understand your children.  Then you will understand why they do what they do.  That is why it hurts, right?  As a believing father, you see your own sin in your own children, do you not?  Does that not give you some kind of compassion and understanding and wisdom how to deal with them?  That means that you are determined to be close to them.

        Now they may not have the same tastes that you have.  You may have thought that your little boy was going to be a mechanic, a carpenter, a computer genius.  He was going to be sharp as a tack in business.  And he grows up and shows no interest for any of those things and you find him at a piano.  He likes music.  And you do not care about that.  Guess what?  That means that you have to get over to the piano and become interested in those things with him.  Or your little girl was going to be prim and feminine.  And instead of that she likes dirt—a lot of dirt in the back yard.  She is not what you pictured.  Well then, you had better learn to go to the back yard and play with her in the sandbox if that is what she likes.  Do not resent them because they are not what you want them or expected their interest to be.

        You never cuddle what you resent.  How many times do we not as God’s children come to God?  Constantly, and He never rejects us, does He?  Then, do not say to your child, “Get away.  Stop bugging me.” 

        As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him.  I’m sure that as fathers, when we hear the Word of God today, we feel great pangs of guilt and inadequacy.  We often think, as a father, that it is unmanly to confess our faults in front of our wife or children.  Sometimes, brethren, we have to do that, we must do that.  A believing child does not expect you to be perfect.  But he has a right to expect you to be sincere.  We need to spend time on our knees repenting of our sins. 

        But we do not leave this Word of God despairing.  No, we leave this Word of God rejoicing.  The more we consider what God has done for us, what pity He has shown to us, the more we will be moved to exercise that pity to our children.  He pities us.  He has chosen us in Christ, not because we were better or more noble.  We were the least.  We have no right.  But for His own name’s sake He willed to have compassion upon us.  Oh, what pity!  He gave His Son to die upon Calvary’s cross.  Look at it, the shame, the agony, the darkness.  Jesus bore what our Father knew we could never bear.  He gave His Son to do that for us.  And throughout our life our heavenly Father keeps us and carries us and protects, forgives us and draws us and pities us. 

        Now when our children see us living in the consciousness of such pity, then they will be encouraged to look heavenward.  Then they will fear Jehovah.  They will not dread Jehovah, but they will stand in awe of their heavenly Father, by the grace of God.  Through the Scriptures they will listen to Him and obey Him.  Is that not what we desire more than anything else?  Is that not what you desire for your children—that they know their heavenly Father?  Why, we would die for that!  Well, God does not call you to die for it.  God calls you to live and to show your children a father’s pity.

        Let us pray.

        Heavenly Father, bless us as human fathers that we may turn to Thee for wisdom and strength.  Bless our children.  Supply to us all that we need.  Amen.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Theme: "Try the Spirits"
Broadcast date: June 8, 2014 (No. 3727)
Radio pastor: Rev. Carl Haak (Georgetown MI PRC)

Dear Radio Friends,

        It happened at 9:00 in the morning.  Acts 2:1-13 tell us that the hundred and twenty disciples were gathered together in Jerusalem and that suddenly there was a sound as of a mighty rushing wind.  There were cloven tongues as of fire that sat upon the head of each of the disciples.  And they all spake in different tongues the wonderful works of God.  The Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of the risen Lord, was poured out upon the church with irresistible power to cleanse us from our sins and to gather by the Word all of Christ’s own out of all nations and thus form the one church of Jesus Christ.

        If someone were to ask you as a Christian:  “What is Pentecost?” were you aware it is today?  If someone were to ask you, “Who is the Holy Spirit?  What does He do?” would you be able to answer with more than just a sentence or two, with more than just a “Hm-m-m, I’m not sure”?  Young people, would you be able to answer?  Children, what about you?  Who is the Holy Spirit?  What does He do?  You say, “Well, I could say something about the birth of Jesus, and the death of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus, and maybe even something about the ascension of Jesus.  But Pentecost?  The outpouring of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ?  Hm-m-m.”  You do not know much about that?

        I can give you a little excuse.  The work of the Holy Spirit, according to the Scriptures, is self-effacing, that is, the Holy Spirit always covers Himself.  Jesus said, “He shall not speak of himself; …he shall glorify me:  for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you” (John 16:13, 14).  But, nevertheless, if you and I do not know the work of the Holy Spirit, we dishonor Jesus Christ.  We dishonor God.  We show that we are not appreciative of the greatest gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit.

        Still more.  If we do not appreciate the work of the Holy Spirit being poured out upon the church, then we are exposed to being deceived by the spirit of the antichrist, the spirit of falsehood, because one of the most important and crucial works of the Holy Spirit in the church is the work of leading the church into all the truth.  Jesus emphasized this almost exclusively when He told the disciples that the Spirit was going to return after He left.  He said, in John 14-16, that the Holy Spirit would comfort them, but repeatedly He emphasized that the Holy Spirit would lead them into the truth.  “But when he is come (the Spirit of truth), he will guide you into all the truth.” 

        The Holy Spirit does that through the Scriptures, the Bible, the Word of truth.  You see, it is not the Spirit guiding us or the Word of God guiding us, but it is the Spirit and the Word; or, better, the Holy Spirit works through the Scriptures.  In this way, and in this way alone, He keeps the child of God from being seduced, from being led astray by error, which is so great and prevalent today.

        It is the work of the Holy Spirit, through the Scriptures, to teach the church to confess the truth of Jesus Christ.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures to keep you, as a child of God, from falling away and being swallowed up by error.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures to work in your heart, as a child of God, to know the truth and to be blessed in it.

        There is a passage in the Bible that speaks of the work of the Holy Spirit in this regard.  It is found in I John 4:1-3 where we read, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God:  because many false prophets are gone out into this world.  Hereby know ye the Spirit of God:  Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:  and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God:  and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.”  There the Scriptures tell us about the work of the Holy Spirit of guiding the church into an understanding of the truth.  The apostle says, “Try the spirits whether they are of God.”  It is the calling of every child of God who has received the Spirit of Christ to be trying the spirits.

        Now, by the word “spirits” there is not meant ghosts or devils or demons, but teachings, and specifically false teachings, brought by flesh-and-blood men.  He goes on to say:  “Because many false prophets are gone out into this world”—the spirit of error.  The apostle John is talking about ideas, attitudes, thoughts that gain acceptance among men, that begin to infiltrate people’s thinking and take hold upon the mind and the heart; teachings that, in fact, we pick up on and that would move us in one direction or another.  In one word:  the spirits that we are to try are every teaching, every idea, every attitude that would attempt to lodge within us in our thoughts—specifically, every thought, every teaching, that is contrary to God’s Word.  Try the spirits!

        Sometimes those teachings, attitudes, or thoughts are seemingly insignificant and minor, something, you might say, that does not matter—it is insignificant.  It may be the subtle nuance of a TV commercial.  It may be a joke about marriage that was told you in the office.  It may have come through something you read in the paper or heard on the radio.  It may filter down into your mind and heart through the lyric of some song.  Not necessarily something abrupt, but an idea, a teaching, an attitude confronting you day after day after day, attempting to gain acceptance in your mind and to regulate how you will think, how you will act, and how you will view life.  That attitude, that thought that is attempting to infiltrate itself into you, may appear to be harmless, non-threatening.  It may even come as something that is apparently good and passionate, and something that is yearning for your acceptance. 

        But the Word of God tells us that these spirits are false prophets who are gone out into the world.  And we are to test, by the Word of God, in dependence upon the Spirit’s work in our heart, every teaching, every idea, and every attitude—because false spirits are gone out into the world.  The idea is this:  As the church sends out into the world teachers, ministers, and missionaries; and as the ordinary believer goes forth into his job to speak the truth of God; so also the kingdom of darkness, Satan, sends out into the world false prophets.  False prophets are those who contradict the Word of God.  They do not take their starting point saying, “Thus saith the Lord.  The Lord has spoken.”  But they take their starting point with the words, literally, of Satan:  “Hath God said?  Is that really true?  Is not the Word of God somewhat repressive and restrictive?  Is it not misguided at certain points?  Is it not really a compilation of various myths and traditions?  Doesn’t it really, at times, express a bigoted attitude?”  These spirits, these false ideas, these false, heretical teachings can come forth even from the church.  When the church begins to allow (and say) that the Scriptures are not the sole authority; when the church says that creation did not happen, as God’s Word plainly says, in six 24-hour days but it was over a long period of time; when the church begins to say that those doctrines of an eternal predestination, of an unconditional election and reprobation, those are unbiblical and not taught in the Bible—then out of the church itself are coming false spirits, false prophets. 

        Especially there is the false spirit going forth, which has claimed a place in the hearts of a vast multitude, that says, “Religion is all about you and your feelings.  It’s all about community and meaningful relationships.  It’s all about connecting with yourself.  It’s all about fulfillment.”  These are false spirits.  These false spirits can come to us from the world.  They can be, perhaps, the idea that there is no ultimate truth, there is no one code of behavior.  There are many ways of approaching God.  There are many ways of identifying God.  There is one God, but everybody worships Him in different ways and calls Him by different names.  These spirits go forth into the world.  They are false spirits.  And the Bible says, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God.” 

        That means that when the Holy Spirit is poured out upon the church He says to that church, “The Scriptures are the foundation of all truth.”  And the church and the believer must subject all things to the teaching of the Scriptures.  Therefore, the church on earth is a thinking church.  The believer on earth is a thinking Christian.  The church must reason from the Scriptures.  The believer must learn from the Scriptures to be discerning.  That is the exercise of the mind.  Is it not a striking thing today that men and women can think, and think well, on almost every topic except religion.  Then, it seems, that the brain is turned off and we have to be spoon-fed.  But the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit, are telling us the very opposite:  “You must first of all think.”  If you are inclined to spiritual laziness, if you think, “Well, you know, if you want me to have religion, you had better make it pretty easy, because if it’s not easy, I’m out of here, I’m not going to listen,” then you are set up for destruction.  The Holy Spirit makes you a discerning spirit, makes you a discerning Christian.  Lethargy is a sin, it is spiritual pride.

        Very often there is in the church the attitude, “Well, I really don’t concern myself with doctrine.  Our minister, evidently, is a great man.  He’s an inspiring leader.  He probably knows what the truth is.”  Do you discern?  Do you read the Scriptures?  You are called to be a discerning Christian.  That is the work of the Holy Spirit.  The work of the Holy Spirit is not some type of emotional upheaval bringing you to where you know not.  But it is the work of the intelligent Holy Spirit giving you to understand the mind and the thoughts of God as they are revealed to you in the sound doctrines of the holy Scriptures.  What do you believe from those Scriptures?  You say you have the Spirit?  Well, what do you believe, then? 

        If you do not know, then you had better get on your knees with an open Bible and find out.  You had better come under instruction, sound instruction, from the holy Scriptures.  That is your need.  That is the need of your family.  That is where you have to have your family.  You have to bring your family under the truth, the truth of God’s Word.

        That is a calling for all of us, every one of us.  The apostle says, “Beloved, believe not every spirit.”  Do not believe every spirit that is going around.  You have to try those spirits by the Word of God.  That is the work of the Holy Spirit.  That is certainly the work of ministers and of elders.  That is certainly their work in the church of Jesus Christ.  The work of a faithful minister and the work of faithful elders is to take heed to the doctrine, the teachings of the Word of God, and to know them and to preach them and to teach them faithfully to the people of God.  Is that what your pastor is doing?  Is that what you elders are doing?  If so, by the grace of God, then you ought to be today profoundly thankful to God.  You had better have your eyes open for what a blessing that is.  That is the evidence that you are a church of Pentecost, that the Holy Spirit is in your midst.  Do nothing to grieve the Holy Spirit, then, through pettiness and bickering and raising up side issues, issues among the people of God that are hard, perhaps, to discern, that is, issues related to things of spiritual maturity.  Do not cause division in the church over your own opinions.  But if the Word of God is being taught faithfully, then be thankful to God for that. 

        It is the calling, nevertheless, of all of us.  Each child of God must discern the truth.  Each child of God is now filled with the Holy Spirit.  Joel prophesied that the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon sons and daughters, upon old men and old women.  The idea of being filled with the Holy Spirit is not a life of being swept up in the clouds of spiritual utopia.  But to be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be waked out of stupor, out of indifference, and to be made alert on the battlefield and strengthened for the fight.

        The words that we are looking at from I John were written by the apostle John.  John’s purpose in this epistle was that we have fellowship with God.  He says, “I write of those things that we have seen and heard, and we declare them to you.”  Why?  In chapter 1:3 we read, “That ye also may have fellowship with us:  and truly our fellowship is with the Father; and with his Son Jesus Christ.”  The purpose of John in writing this epistle is that we have fellowship with the Father and with His Son.  And now he tells us that error, false teaching, is destructive of fellowship with God.  Those spirits lead us away from the presence and the experience of God’s fellowship.  As a child of God, you must try the spirits, you must repudiate error, in order that you might experience fellowship with God and with one another.

        So this applies to all of our life.  To try the spirits is to subject all things to the teaching of the infallible Scriptures.  It means that you will become a humble and diligent student of those Scriptures.  You will love the biblical and Reformed faith.  You will attend that church which preaches the truth.  And under the preaching of that truth you will listen and grow.  You will read sound, biblical expositions.  You will read good, sound material.  And you will teach your children how to read.  You will teach your children how to be critical in their thinking.  You will explain things to them from the Word of God—not simply tell them the do’s and the don’ts.  You will seek to train up your child to be a discerning Christian, able to understand, able to think biblically, able to think the thoughts of God after God.

        That means that you will not say to your child, “Well, sheer enjoyment and relaxation shall be our goal.”  But you will teach your child to say, “What does God say about this?  What is being said in this book?  What is being said by this documentary you are watching?  Child, you have to be on your guard.  You must examine.  You must not simply accept something on its face value.  You must be discerning in the Word of God.”  In college, when you are assigned to read a book, and when you listen to a lecture, you must discern them according to the truths of God’s Word. 

        You will then be busy, if you are filled with the Holy Spirit, with the holy Scriptures.  You will be found in a faithful church.  You will come under the faithful preaching of the Word of God.  And you will be humble, because, as you stand before the Scriptures, you will stand before the revelation of the wisdom of God.  You will see that, although those are clear, that is, that you can understand and you can discern the truth, nevertheless, they are profound, they are a great depth.  For the Spirit is showing to you the deep things of God. 

        Discerning the spirits of your day, the attitudes, the trends, the thoughts in the light of holy Scripture—that is the proof of the outpoured Holy Spirit.  Has the Spirit been given to you?  Here is the test:  Do you take the Scriptures as the only authoritative truth?  And do you bow humbly before them, seeking to have all of your thoughts, and all of your actions, all of your heart, and all of your desires in conformity more and more with the Scriptures?  That is the fruit of the outpoured Spirit.

        Let us pray.

        Father, we thank Thee for Thy Word.  We thank Thee for the wonder of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that we celebrate on this day.  We pray, heavenly Father, that He may dwell in us, and that through Him we might come to know the truth.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.