Embracing the Power of Preaching and Sacraments

I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another. But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable sanctified by the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus. [00:01:04]

True faith as we confess is produced by the spirit and we say that it is produced through the preaching of the word and it's confirmed to us through sacraments by that very same spirit. He uses preaching does the spirit and he uses the sacraments one to produce faith the other to encourage or to confirm faith. So we want to look at both of those points tonight as we consider the gracious means of true faith. [00:06:54]

We confess that the Holy Spirit of God uses preaching to change people's lives to open the kingdom to edify the church of Jesus Christ in the ways of God. The Belgic confession states that the marks of the true church include these preaching sacraments and discipline. the faithful use of all of those. And the first one that's mentioned, of course, is preaching. Now, we hear from the word in Romans 10, if we were to back up a few chapters, we heard a little bit this morning, that faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of God. [00:10:07]

People, you know, today are looking for where the spirit is working, where he's working in people's lives and in the church of Jesus Christ. And they're looking for him in a lot of places. They're looking for him in charisma, in charismatic gifts, emotional outbursts, holy laughter, being slain in the spirit, all kinds of miraculous and spectacular ways and means. And this is a big drawing card. And people are saying that the spirit is at work in in things more more entertaining where they don't come to worship, they experience worship. [00:11:35]

If we really want to win people, if we really want to keep people, if we really want to excite people, then there needs to be less preaching and there needs to be more of everything else. Or if you're going to have it, you're going to have it farther down on the pecking order because that just isn't going to draw people. I had something come in my mail today uh not today but earlier in in this week and it it was coming from a body uh a a church body and as it was mentioning the things that were the drawing card to come and see them. [00:12:56]

And yet we have professed over the years that if you want to see the spirit at work, this is what we've professed historically and nobody's come around to say we got to get rid of this out of our confessions. But we have said if you want to see the spirit at work, look for him at work in preaching. If you want to win people over to Christ, try preaching Christ in season and out of season. What happened during the Great Awakening in this country a few centuries ago with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield and others? [00:14:49]

Paul tells why he writes to the Roman church. It's not the only time he writes about that. how he writes especially at the beginning of the of the book which again is a lot of times what you see happening in books right this connectivity between the beginning and the end we saw that uh we saw that this morning as we were looking at the resurrection passage but out of Matthew 28 but here too you you have a kind of a a reminder what started at the beginning about why he was writing to the church it appears to have been a predominantly gentile church. [00:16:16]

Paul had written earlier in Romans 12, as you remember, that in view of God's mercy in Christ, people were supposed to offer themselves as living sacrifices devoted to God with their lives. That's what Paul taught to all those to whom he preached the word. They were to confess Christ and the mercy of God and devote themselves in gratitude to the Lord as an offering of thanks. And that's the obedience to which the Gentiles were called, the obedience of faith. [00:18:15]

It was because the gospel needed to be proclaimed and preached that he went to all these places and it was why he was planning to go to other places including Spain. people needed to hear about the gospel. It was why Paul couldn't get to Rome. He says at the very tail end of our of what we read, "That's the reason why I haven't I I have so often been hindered from coming to you. Now, I'm hoping I'm going to be able to come now, but that's why I wasn't able to before." [00:19:23]

More was more. More preaching meant more people got to hear about Christ. more preaching would mean more times the spirit would be producing faith in people's hearts. Now, if that's the primary means that God uses to produce faith in people's hearts, if the Holy Spirit is at work in preaching, then it would seem that in the church of Jesus Christ, more of that is needed, not less. More of it, not less. If the almighty God is at work in the preaching of of the church, then in then in our faithful foolishness, we should tell people to come to our services, right? [00:20:47]

Preachers need to be preaching and they need to work on their preaching if they want to be a blessing to the church of Jesus Christ because that's the calling. Not to be CEOs, not to be organizers so much. They're to be preachers, both to those in the church and those outside. If God's at work in preaching, if you want to see the Holy Spirit at work, any young people who are here tonight, then guess what? This is when it's happening. to win people to the Lord and to feed God's people in the faith. [00:21:59]

Spirit not only produces faith through preaching, but he also confirms it or strengthens it through the sacraments. And and he only does it through two. And here's less is more. Here less is more. You know, the church has been tempted over the years to think that when it comes to props to help us in our faith that more sacraments would be better. The church has been tempted to complement the gospel with all sorts of things for that matter, thinking that these things would help us remember the gospel better or be confirmed in the gospel all the better. [00:23:42]

It's not enough today for people to be assured by the sacraments. People need the signs and wonders that were meant for critical times in the history of redemption. And they were there to do what? They were there to confirm the word of God. It's not enough for people to have the spectacle of the sacraments to encourage them. They need to be stimulated by whatever the church can prevent present to them uh visually. Even fireworks. I've seen that indoor fireworks. The temptation is to think that more is more when in reality it's less than that is more when it comes to visual presentations. [00:27:00]

It's less because these other things are not what the Lord ordained. It's because these other things burden us with so many things. Days to remember, weeks to remember, sacraments to consider, so many so many symbols to decipher, so many saints to venerate, so many plays to interpret, so many marvels to discern, so many other things to watch. It all becomes counterproductive. It becomes burdensome. It becomes self-defeating. And often times it leads to less holiness than more. [00:27:58]

The focus in the gospel and the focus in the sacraments for the focus of our faith is to be what all our worship is to be. What all our life is to be focused on God, focused on his grace, focused on the Lord Jesus Christ risen and reigning as the only ground of our salvation. That's what sacraments do. They don't focus on us. They don't focus on on what we've done. They focus on Christ and what he's done. And the spirit and God him God the Father. [00:29:25]

They are his they are God's means. They are the spirit's means of grace. Different from the preaching in that they don't produce faith. But the same as preaching in that the focus is not on us or what we think is important or what we think is effective but on Christ who with the spirit and the father alone is important. The spirit of Christ keeps things simple for us when we want to make it complicated. Not by using a myriad of signs that we think will be helpful, but only two so we won't get burdened. [00:30:27]

My friends, in a day when we're tempted to believe that less is more when it comes to preaching and that more is more when it comes to the sacraments, let's find that in the word and the sacraments that the Lord has ordained that in these means of grace, the spirit of God is at work. And that's a remarkable thing. Let's take advantage of them in the hearing of the gospel, the spreading of the gospel, the using of the sacrament. Because in these means, God is pleased to work his grace through the power of the spirit of Christ. [00:31:43]