October 21, 2023
As you'll see below, this coming Lord's Day evening the churches of the Presbytery of the Mississippi Valley are gathering for a Reformation Day service at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson. Dr. Bruce Baugus, the former RTS professor and interim pastor at Trinity Presbyterian, is going to be preaching God's word, and members of our choir will be joining the FPC choir to lead us in singing. There will be a special children's Reformation program for four year olds to 3rd graders. It's always a rich joy to sing and hear God's word together with all the saints of our Presbytery, so make plans to end your Sabbath day with us!
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The Reformation was a foundational period in church (and world) history, not only recovering the light of the gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, but also restoring the purity of worship to the church. If you want to know what changes the Reformers were striving to accomplish, John Calvin's book On the Necessity of Reforming the Church is a great place to start. He writes, "If it be inquired, then, by what things chiefly the Christian religion has a standing existence amongst us, and maintains its truth, it will be found that the following two not only occupy the principal place, but comprehend under them all the other parts, and consequently the whole substance of Christianity: that is, a knowledge, first, of the mode in which God is duly worshipped; and, secondly, of the source from which salvation is to be obtained."
We tend to forget about the reformation of worship that took place in the 16th century. Romanism was filled with superstition, ceremonies, idolatry, additions and subtractions from biblical worship, and the Reformers (particularly Calvin and his followers) sought to restore the Bible to its rightful place, both in terms of establishing the how of worship - what elements are allowable in corporate worship (answer: only those that God has commanded in His Word) - and in terms of the priority of preaching in worship. If the gospel preached is God's primary ordained means of saving sinners and growing them up in Christ-likeness, then worship must be filled with the word of God.
But the retrieval of a pure gospel was the most transformative result of the Reformation. God changed and then used His servants to bring back to light the truths of sin, sovereign election, justification by faith alone, assurance of salvation, and the necessity of holiness as the fruit of repentance. The recognition that sinners are not justified by the sacraments, by buying indulgences, or by works of any kind, but only by the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, credited to our accounts through faith alone, freed men and women and boys and girls to serve God in Christ with joy and confidence. The Westminster Confession of Faith (written in the 1640s, approximately 100 years after Luther's death and 80 years after Calvin's death) beautifully summarizes how the Christian should understand good works:
"We cannot by our best works merit pardon of sin, or eternal life at the hand of God, by reason of the great disproportion that is between them and the glory to come; and the infinite distance that is between us and God, whom, by them, we can neither profit, nor satisfy for the debt of our former sins, but when we have done all we can, we have done but our duty, and are unprofitable servants: and because as they are good, they proceed from his Spirit; and as they are wrought by us, they are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection, that they cannot endure the severity of God's judgment. Notwithstanding, the persons of believers being accepted through Christ, their good works also are accepted in him; not as though they were in this life wholly unblamable and unreprovable in God's sight; but that he, looking upon them in his Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections" (WCF 16.5-6).
Let us give thanks to God for His providence in restoring the true gospel to the church, and let us pray that we will continue to protest and push back against any and all deviations from the gospel of free grace, standing up for the truth in a crooked and perverse culture.
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Please be in prayer for me next week, as I'll be away from the office on my study week. This is the time when I plan the preaching calendar for the following year, as well as do some early preparation work on sermon series, read for personal growth in skill, knowledge, and grace, and spend time in prayer. Pray that it will be a profitable week spiritually and logistically, and that the Lord would bear much fruit from my time in the lives of you His people!