Edited Transcript:
Let us now turn to the portion of scripture that we read to Hebrews chapter 13. And as the Lord may enable us, we will consider verses seven and eight. Hebrews 13, verses seven and eight.
“Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God, whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”
The apostle here is writing to Jewish Christians, people who are descended from Abraham, according to the flesh, and have believed in Jesus of Nazareth as the true Messiah. That’s why it’s called the Epistle to the Hebrews, because it’s written to Hebrew Christians primarily.
And he is writing them to fortify them against tremendous pressure to turn back to Judaism. Judaism was the true religion before Christ died. That is, the Judaism of the Old Testament was the true religion before Christ’s death.
But the Jews who rejected Christ continued to observe all the rites, and ceremonies, and sacrifices of Judaism. And these sacrifices, and rituals, and types, as you know, pointed forward to Christ. They taught, as it were, by picture, and by action, what the Messiah would be like, and what He would do.
And so, to continue to observe these sacrifices was, in effect, to say that Christ had not yet come. Continuing the religion of Judaism after Christ had died was, in effect, a rejection of Christ. It would be apostasy for these Hebrew Christians, then, to go back to Judaism, to go back to the synagogue, and to the temple, and observe the sacrifices, and feast days, and so forth.
So Paul writes this Epistle, then, to fortify them against apostasy. And he brings out many wonderful things about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Now, in this chapter, after laying down the doctrine of the person and work of Christ, he exhorts us to practical duties. And it’s important to notice here that Paul emphasizes not any or every practical duty, but the practical duties that the Jewish Christians, in their particular circumstances, needed to do.
So, for example, he begins by telling them, “Let brotherly love continue. You’re living in a very discouraging time. You’re living in a time when you feel strongly tempted to give up Christianity. And I have been writing unto you to persevere. I have been giving you reasons why you should persevere. I have been laying down doctrines to encourage you to persevere. I have been setting out warnings of what will happen to you if you don’t persevere. I have set forth to you examples of believers in the Old Testament who persevered amid great difficulties. But you must remember that God has appointed means of preservation.”
Everyone here has either said or heard someone say that believers need to be kept. In fact, everyone has heard or said themselves that if the Lord does not uphold us by infinite power, we will immediately fall.
But it’s important to remember that the power of God works through means, and through humble means, and through practical duties. So one means of preservation is for brotherly love to continue. If there’s a neglect of the duties of brotherly love, you will not persevere. You will fall. You will turn away from the faith. Brotherly love is no small, minor, practical duty. It’s key to our preservation.
Now, Paul is writing to the Jewish Christians, and so they are kinsmen according to the flesh. You might say they’re all distant relatives of each other, and so they need to continue to have that natural affection for one another as relatives.
Christianity does not destroy natural affection, and there should still be natural affection to brothers, sisters, children, parents, cousins, in-laws, and so forth. The Jews to whom Paul is writing did have brotherly love, but he’s saying let it continue. Love one another, you who are related to one another.
Seek to have that affection that Paul had for his kinsmen according to the flesh, some of whom sought to kill him. You remember there were Jews that took an oath that they would not eat or drink until they had killed Paul, and yet how does Paul respond to that? He says, brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. How did he respond to these Jews who wanted to kill him? He says, my response to them is in these words, I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart, for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
So here the inspired writer is saying let that kind of affection continue among yourselves. Stir it up, pray, and pray earnestly until your heart begins to soften towards your kinsmen according to the flesh, until your affections begin to be stirred up for your relatives, your in-laws. It’s key to your preservation.
And let brotherly love continue. And of course, he’s also advising them and commanding them to have a Christian love to one another as the brethren of Christ and to continue to have that Christian brotherly love as well. He’s acknowledging they have it, but he says, let it continue because in the circumstances you’re in, the pressures you’re under, you will find many things to dampen that affection for one another.
There are other practical duties he mentions here, but we have to pass on to the one in our text, which is, “Remember them that have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God.” One of the striking things about this chapter – perhaps you noticed it while we were reading it – is that Paul mentions this phrase, “them that have the rule over you,” three times in this chapter. He mentions it in verse seven, our text.
He mentions it again in verse 17: “Obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves, for they watch for your souls as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you.” That’s the second time he mentions, “Them that have the rule over you.”
And then he mentions it the third time towards the end of the chapter, verse 24: “Salute all them that have the rule over you, and all the saints.”
Remember them that have the rule over you. Obey them that have the rule over you. Salute them that have the rule over you. This is key to your preservation. This is key to your perseverance. This is key to you not falling into sin.
Today we hear and notice a lot of indifference to church government “Well, that’s a really minor thing. The main thing is just believing in Christ and loving one another.”
Groups of Christians will even boast that they have no rulers or office bearers. “We’re all brethren. We’re all on the same level. We’re all equal.”
And they think this is a wonderful thing. But churches that have no structure or Christians that are not part of any church – how do they obey this chapter? If you don’t have rulers, if you don’t belong to a church, you can’t obey them that have the rule over you. You can’t salute them that have the rule over you. You can’t remember those that have had the rule over you.
If the church has no formal structure, there’s no office bearers, again, if they were to read this chapter and discuss it in a circle, as is so popular today, having a Bible study where everyone sits in a circle and they’re discussing this chapter, they would quickly run into a problem. “How do we remember those that have the rule over us? There are no rulers among us. How do we obey them that have the rule over us? How do we salute them that have the rule over us?”
We live in an age when rebellion is almost a virtue. The Rhythm and Vines concerts, no doubt, are full of musicians playing their songs, glorifying rebellion. And that attracts thousands of young people. Rock and roll is all about rebellion against authority.
But that’s come into the church. It’s come even into reform circles – people that profess to believe reform doctrine. “We don’t need rulers. We don’t need office bearers.”
It’s just the old rebellion coming back again. Obey them that have the rule over you. That’s a very unpopular thing to hear in the church today. There’s plenty of talk about leaders being examples, and they should be examples. There’s plenty of emphasis on leaders leading by quiet example. And that’s important too.
But Paul is speaking about a ruler that has authority and has to exercise that authority. The word for ruler here is the Greek word hegemon, from which we get the word hegemony. You might hear that word when you’re reading about international wars and current events: a nation seeking regional hegemony to guarantee or increase its own security.
That is, they’re trying to be a leader of a particular region. Or a great power like China or the United States seeking global hegemony. And they believe this is the best way to protect themselves as a nation. “If we lose global hegemony, then that raises the risk that we’ll be attacked one day.”
So the word here, hegemony, clearly means rule, the exercise of authority. And that’s very unpopular in the visible church today.
That’s why there are so many Christians that want to live outside the church, such as the Salvation Army. There’s all these Christian groups that avoid the word church. And it’s because they’re trying to get away from that structured authority that God requires in his word.
And Paul here says, here’s one means of your preservation. Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God. Now it’s important to notice that here he’s speaking of past rulers. “Remember them.” That is, remember what rulers in the past have taught you. He’s speaking about those who have spoken unto you the word of God.
There’s the past tense again. Consider the end of their conversation. Consider how they ended their lives on this earth. After living a life of faith, they ended up in heaven. They glorified God on the earth through a life of faith.
So he’s speaking about past faithful teachers who are now in heaven. You have to remember these men, and you have to follow their faith. Now that’s another thing that sometimes creates a backlash. People hear that word “following someone’s faith, or “following men.” They object, “You’re not supposed to follow men.”
Well, there’s some truth to that, but it can be exaggerated. There can be pride at work where someone says, “I don’t want to follow that person’s example.” Paul is saying, “No, there are some people that you ought to follow. You ought to imitate their faith.”
That’s what the word follow means, imitate their faith. You’re to think about these past teachers, faithful ministers and rulers in the history of the church, and you’re to imitate them. And many will say, “Well, I’m not to follow men. I’m just to follow the Bible.”
But again, the Bible commands you to observe your providence, to study the history of the church, to notice those who have been particularly been particularly renowned for their faithfulness, and you’re to imitate them.
And we would like to do that then, as the Lord might help us, to consider those who have spoken unto us the word of God in our heritage, which is a reformed heritage. You, the young people here have heard the word reformed.
Why do we call a church a reformed church? It’s because it’s a church that professes to have been turned back to the teaching of the apostles in matters of doctrine and worship and practice. That means that the church at one point had become backslidden, and they had slidden away from the doctrine and worship and practice taught by the inspired apostles. This took place, of course, in the early ages of the church and worsened in the Middle Ages, to the point when there was a thorough reformation needed in order for the church to be brought back to the doctrines and worship and principles taught by the apostles.
And the men instrumental in this work were called the reformers, like Martin Luther and John Calvin, John Knox. Applying these words in our texts, we ought to remember them, remember men like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox. They were men who spoke unto you the word of God.
You’re to imitate their faith, considering the end of their conversation. Why? Because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Savior whom they serve so faithfully has not changed one iota.
The world’s very different today, but Christ is just the same. He deserves the same devotion. He deserves to be served with the same zeal, the same faithfulness.
He deserves to have all his word received, all that it says about doctrine, all that it says about worship, all that it says about church government, all that it says about how we are to live our lives. These faithful men of God sought to receive the word of Christ in all these areas. They saw that Christ was worthy of that, and Christ has not changed since then.
He’s still worthy of that, though there’s been a great apostasy, a great forsaking in the West, a great turning away from Protestantism, even amongst professedly Reformed churches, and how many are even aware of many of the doctrines that the Reformers uncovered at the Reformation. There’s great ignorance about the Reformed heritage, though men still cleave to it in name. And this ignorance is unbiblical.
We are to remember them who have spoken unto us the word of God. Now, we do not have time to go into much detail on this subject, but, firstly, we may say a few words about the early declension when ministers began to speak the word of men.
During the time of the apostles, people were hearing only the word of God being spoken. Now, that’s not to say that it’s only when the minister is reading the word of God that that’s when he’s speaking the word of God. He’s speaking the word of God whenever he’s saying something that is biblical, whenever he’s applying something in a biblical way. And Paul is saying you have to remember them that have spoken unto you the word of God.
Don’t remember so much their manner. Don’t get caught up in their personality, their way of delivery, the words they chose. If they were speaking in a biblical way, they were speaking unto you the word of God.
And if you’re hearing a minister, his delivery might be very defective, but if you’re hearing a minister and what he’s saying is biblical, he’s not speaking, God is speaking. And that’s key to profiting from the Word. When you can, as it were, shut out the man in front of you to some extent and hear what he’s saying and you hear and you say, that’s biblical.
And therefore, it’s not the minister speaking, it’s God speaking to me. If we had that mindset more often, we would profit much more than we do from the preaching of the Word.
There can sometimes be too much analysis of preaching styles. There’s a place for it, but it can go overboard when it has the effect of, as it were, drawing men’s eyes down from God to the man and we’re focused on the man that’s preaching. His personality, his delivery, his character, so on. His character is important, of course, but the key thing is this, if he’s speaking Bible truth, God is speaking.
That’s why Christ told his disciples, who were ministers, “He that heareth you, heareth me.” Many will think nothing of disagreeing with a minister, forsaking the ministry. Christ looks on that as a forsaking of himself.
If that minister is preaching the word of God, if he’s declaring the truth, and that person walks away from the minister and his ministry, that person is walking away from Christ, and that person will discover that at the last day. “I turned my back upon Christ. He was speaking unto me the word of God, and I turned my back upon it.”
But in the early church, we said, ministers began to speak the word of man. How do they do that? Well, one is when they began to come up with their own ideas about how the church should be governed. You might say, that’s a small matter.
But yes, many church historians point this out. Declension actually began when the government of the church began to be corrupted, when ministers began to exercise unlawful power, by elevating themselves to the rank of bishops who had authority over other ministers.
This was beginning to happen even in the Apostles’ day. And John says in his third epistle, that “Diotrophes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receives us not.” And this love of preeminence resulted in a hierarchy in the church.
When men began to be elevating themselves into these positions that Christ had never created in His church, they then began to tamper with the worship of the church. Bishops began ordaining feast days and devoting days to remembering the saints, and then coming up with the idea of the confessional.
We were shocked to read recently, reading about the abuse scandals in the Mormon church in New Zealand. New Zealand has one of the most protective laws regarding priests and their confessors, or people who confess to them. They can hear people confessing to crimes, and they don’t have to report those crimes to the police. That just shows the influence of Rome in the laws of New Zealand, when people can go to a priest and confess to an awful crime, and yet the priest or the Mormon official doesn’t have to report that crime to the police.
It’s a dreadful state of affairs. But we come back to this point about the bishops, when they elevated themselves to positions that were of their own devising, they began to tamper with the worship of the Church. And this has appeared again and again in the history of the Church.
When Charles I, King of England and Scotland in the early 1600s, moved to introduce bishops, at the same time he was trying to corrupt the worship, get people to kneel when they receive the sacrament. Kneeling is something the Reformers rejected because it gave this idea that Christ was in the bread and wine, and therefore you had to almost worship them. That was why they resisted kneeling when receiving the sacrament so intensely.
But bishops and innovations in worship went together, so you learn from that that church government is no matter of indifference. We’re not to treat that as a light, insignificant matter.
The moment men start to say, “Elders, ministers, deacons, Presbyterian church government, that’s not that important” – they’re opening the door to further corruption in the church.
And then, along with these innovations in worship, came corruptions in doctrine. People like to say, “Well, all that matters is that you believe in Christ, and as long as your worship is sincere, it’s fine.
But that’s not what the Bible teaches. That’s not what church history teaches. Church history teaches that when worship is corrupted, doctrine gets corrupted, too.
If people say, I can come to God and worship in any way I please, they’ll start saying that in doctrine, too, I can come to God in any way I please, whether through Christ or apart from Christ, whether on Christ’s merits or on a mixture of my merits and Christ’s merits, I can come to Him in any of these ways. So, worship affects doctrine. Practice affects doctrine.
It’s true that Paul, in his epistles, starts off his epistles with doctrine and then moves to practice. But it’s important to notice, both in the Bible and in church history, often what happened when the church began to backslide was, first, practice began to become lax. People became more worldly, began to adopt the fashions of the world.
Then they started coming to church and saying, “The worship is very dull, very boring. We need to do something to make the worship more appealing.” You see, they got used to gratifying the flesh during the week, so then they came to church and said, “We need a more attractive church building. We need stained glass windows. We need musical instruments. We need ministers’ investments. We need a more attractive form of worship.”
That’s what happens when the church begins to tolerate the gratification of worldly lusts amongst its members, and lets its members adopt worldly fashions. That’s just gratifying a taste that will come into the church and affect the worship and doctrine of the church.
And then when worldliness is tolerated amongst the members, then the members will come having tasted of worldly pleasures and say, “The doctrine that we’re hearing is very hard on the flesh. We don’t like this. We need a smoother preaching. We need less on total depravity. We need less about regeneration. We need less about mortification and sanctification. We’re used to gratifying the flesh during the week and we can’t bear to hear it condemned on the Sabbath day.”
Doctrine, worship, and practice are all related to each other. If there’s leaven in one area, that leaven will spread to the other areas.
We could go through the Middle Ages and speak more about the declension. But time forbids. Suffice it to say that when men started to think that they were not totally depraved, that they could do something towards saving themselves, that’s when the doctrine of justification became undermined.
Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein He pardoneth all our sins and accepteth us as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. We are justified only on the basis of what Christ has done. We add nothing to what Christ has done in order to be justified.
But if you believe that you have some goodness in you, some capability of doing a good work, then you can do something towards your justification. That’s what the medieval church started to think. Semi-Pelagianism, the idea that man is sick, but he can do something to make himself better, spread all throughout the church.
After a while, priests began to teach a doctrine of justification by works. We know the story, many of us. That’s when the church fell into the Dark Ages because, you see, people could never be sure if they had done enough good works to secure their justification.
Some thought they had to become monks or nuns. Some thought they had to give more money to the church. Some thought they had to fast more. They were never sure that they had done enough good works of their own to secure their justification.
Now, this affected one man so badly that he nearly starved. He was a young man, a monk in Germany by the name of Martin Luther. He was in such bondage through fasting, his very life was in danger because he was never sure that he was doing enough to secure his justification.
That brings us, secondly, to the duty to remember those who have spoken the word of God and delivered the church from declension.
The first man who began to speak the Word of God, at least in regard to salvation, was Martin Luther. At least, he was the first clear example. You might say the first clear ray of light that pierced the darkness that the church was under, came through this man. He rediscovered – he uncovered the truth that we are justified by faith in Christ without the deeds of the law.
And that shattered the authority of the Roman church. That the priests held themselves as essential to the process of salvation. Confessing your sins to a priest was essential to securing your justification.
But if we’re justified by faith in Christ alone, then the priest is not needed to guarantee salvation. And so it shattered the foundation of popery.
Luther, we know, was courageous and brave, zealous, warm-hearted man, but he had his weaknesses. He had an erroneous view of the sacrament. He taught that the body of Christ was really present in the elements of bread and wine – in, with, and under the elements.
He couldn’t quite get away from the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, though he did reject it. He was still influenced by it.
Transubstantiation is the view that the body and bread become the body and blood of Christ. There are videos today of priests who literally weep and bow down before the wafer. And they start speaking to the wafer as if Jesus is there.
We’re not to think that blasphemous idolatry is a thing of the past. It’s still present all over the world. But Luther could not arrive at the correct view.
Younger reformers than himself had more accurate views of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. But sadly, Luther attacked them. There was one point when he attacked John Calvin and John Calvin responded in this remarkable way.
Writing to a friend, he said, “I would have you consider how eminent a man Luther is and his excellent endowments, with what strength of mind and resolute constancy, with how great skill and power of doctrinal statement he hitherto devoted his whole energy to overthrow the reign of Antichrist, and at the same time, has diffused far and near the doctrine of salvation.”
Then Calvin says this, after having been attacked by Luther, “Often have I been wont to declare that even although he were to call me a devil, I should still not less esteem and acknowledge him as an illustrious servant of God. That besides, you will do yourselves no good by quarreling, except you may afford some sport to the wicked so that they may triumph not so much over us as over the gospel.”
In other words, Calvin’s eye was upon the world. And he was saying, “The world is ready to pounce, the world is ready to gloat over us now that this division has opened up between us and Luther.”
“Even if Luther were to call me a devil,” he says, “I would not cease to esteem him as an illustrious servant of God.” That’s the kind of humility and brotherly love we need today. It’s not that we become lukewarm in contending for the faith and contending against error, but we need to have that discernment to see that a man may be in error and yet have the root of the matter in him.
That’s what Calvin saw in Luther, a man of gigantic graces, and yet a man who had some gigantic corruptions too. He says, “I would rather that you would consider and reflect on these things rather than on what Luther has deserved by his violence, lest that may happen to you, which Paul threatens, that by biting and devouring one another, ye be consumed one of another.”
Here’s another wise piece of advice. “Rather than think about what Luther deserves for his terrible attack upon us in the press, think more about the glory of God, the cause of Christ, the fact that Luther is a gracious man going to heaven. Focus on that, lest instead by biting and devouring one another, ye be consumed one of another.”
Now Luther, as some of you know, believed that when it comes to the worship of God, if something is not forbidden, it’s fine. If the word of God does not forbid something in his worship, it is lawful.
And that’s why to this day, Lutheran worship seems similar to Roman Catholic worship. But later reformers saw that no, one of the root causes of corruption in the church was this very rule, that if it’s not forbidden, it’s allowable. That’s how all manner of things came into the worship of God and led to Romanism.
They would say, “Where does the Bible say we can’t wear a vestment? Where does the Bible say we can’t have a statue in the church just to remind us of a godly man in the past? We’re not worshiping it, it’s just there for a reminder.” But it led to people bowing down before images.
A lot of innovations come into the church when people say, “It’s just a help to devotion. It’s just a help to get us in a more devotional frame. The stained glass window, the sign of the cross, the statue, we’re not worshiping any of these things. They’re just reminding us about spiritual things. But where does the Bible expressly forbid these things?”
Well, as Calvin and Knox and others pointed out, that is not our rule. Something in the worship of God must have a direct commandment. If it’s not commanded, it’s forbidden.
Now, time is going away so we can only move on to consider how this principle was applied amongst the reformers.
There was a difference that arose, not just between the Lutherans and the Reformed, Calvin and Knox and others, but there was a difference between the Continental Reformed churches and the Church of Scotland over how to apply this principle.
One of the early historians of the Scottish church describes the Scottish Reformation like this. He says, “The ministers took not their pattern from any kirk in the world, no, not from Geneva itself.” (Geneva was where Calvin and Theodore Beza, his successor, ministered.) “The ministers who founded the Reformed Church of Scotland took not their pattern from any kirk in the world, no, not from Geneva itself, but laying God’s word before them, made reformation according unto it, both in doctrine first and then in discipline” – that is, worship, government, and practice.
So they looked to Calvin’s Geneva for guidance, but they said, ultimately, we have to put the Bible before us. We have to go through every single thing the church in Geneva is doing and ask, do they have express biblical warrant for what they are doing?
Some of the Swiss Reformed still would observe Christmas and Easter, Ascension Day, and so on. They would say, “These are good ways of remembering various events in the life of Christ, to have a day for remembering Christ’s birth, to have a day for remembering his death, Good Friday, to have a day for remembering his resurrection, his Ascension, to have a day for remembering Pentecost, and so on. We found these things to be useful and edifying.”
See, that’s where many innovations come in. When someone says, “How can this thing be wrong? I got blessing by it. I got a great blessing under an Easter sermon.”
But the right way to answer that is, yes, God can bless something despite the unscriptural channel through which the truth is conveyed to you. He can bless His own truth, though that truth is being conveyed through an unlawful channel. So a person might have gotten great blessing, not because of Easter observance, but in spite of Easter observance.
And so, Knox, John Knox and others would frequently quote those words of the Lord in Deuteronomy, “You shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish ought from it.” That means not one thing. “You shall not add one thing, however small. You shall not diminish one thing, however small, from the worship of God.”
When we bring in something into the worship of God that doesn’t have direct biblical warrant, in the long term, it actually comes between us and the Bible. When there’s something brought into the worship of God that doesn’t have direct scriptural warrant, it actually becomes a barrier or a hindrance to profiting from the word.
Take, for example, the people who went into a church where there was a stained glass window and saw these pictures of Bible stories on the windows. They may have been solemnized when they saw it. And they may well have been subdued when they saw this and it put them in a more submissive frame for hearing the Word. Therefore, they might claim that it did them good to be in a church with a stained glass window.
But in the long term, these kinds of things distract us because people come to church saying, “I’m going to look on the stained glass window to bring me into a better spiritual frame rather than look to Christ alone and look to His Word alone.”
We read in history of a time when Theodore Beza sent the second Helvetic confession to the Church of Scotland. That confession mentions Easter and Christmas and all these festival days.
The response of Knox and the Church of Scotland is very instructive. It’s very warm, it’s a very loving response to Beza, expressing their deep gratitude and appreciation for the fact that the Swiss Reformed churches were standing for so many of the same doctrines they stood for.
But they faithfully then said, “The only thing we take exception to in your confession is what you say about the feast days, the festivals. These festivals at the present time obtain no place among us in Scotland for we dare not religiously celebrate any other feast day than what the divine oracles have prescribed.”
So then to come back to the text here: “Remember them that have spoken unto you the word of God.” We have in our heritage those who stressed speaking only the word of God and all the word of God. This was their great aim and their great endeavour: to make sure there was nothing of man in what they were speaking.
Now this commitment to the whole Word of God and only the Word of God is what has been repeatedly tested in our history as a Church. Many of you have heard about the Covenanters. Did you know that the Covenanters suffered unto the death over Presbyterian church government? That is something that many people would say is a rather small thing to suffer over. That’s exactly what happened. The King of England wanted to change the government of the Church of Scotland.
And there were many in Scotland that conformed. “We can still go to the same church, hear the same doctrine. All we have to do is acknowledge that the King has the right to change the government of the church. We can hear the same doctrine, worship in the exact same way.”
And the Covenanters said, “No, we would rather die than go along with that. That will lead to the whole lump being corrupted with leaven of error in church government.”
And coming more to our own century, there was a time when the Free Church of Scotland wanted to reunite with us. They said, “We have the same confession of faith, we sing the same metrical psalms, we have the exact same worship, we are identical. There’s no reason why the two churches should be apart.”
But there was one problem. A minister in our church had left and gone over to them and was questioning 1 John 5, 7, the verse about the Trinity. He said it wasn’t in the original manuscripts. And he said the last verses of Mark are also probably fraudulent, added in by someone else, not inspired by the Holy Ghost.
And those who have spoken unto us the word of God said, “That alone is reason enough why we cannot reunite with them. They’re not willing to speak the whole word of God and only the word of God. They are willing to tolerate this minister and professor of theology who is ready to take things out of the word of God.”
Today, as one of our ministers said, perhaps our greatest test is over practical issues. If you look throughout the history of our church, many times the controversies that have arisen have been over practice. There’s a famous case about a dance held in a free Presbyterian home, which led to a number of people leaving.
In 1989, there was a controversy over attendance at a mass. And many people left sadly over that. And again and again, the question is, are we going to speak the whole word of God? Not only what it says about doctrine and worship, but also what it says about practice.
The Bible says we have to flee idolatry. We have to run away from it as far as we can and as fast as we can. The mass is idolatry. And therefore, everyone who professes to be a Christian cannot be near it. They have to abhor it in order to be obedient to the word of God.
Well, these are the ones that we ought to remember. Those that have spoken unto you the word of God, whose faith follow. Imitate their faith – their faith in the whole word of God. Imitate their determination to persevere in the belief and practice of the whole word of God, however many may forsake it.
That’s what we find in our heritage. Neil Cameron, one of our first ministers in Glasgow, he had a congregation of almost 2,000 people at one point. He said, he kept a list. He lost 100 families in his ministry over his refusal to give them baptism because they wouldn’t keep the Sabbath day according to the word of God. 100 families.
He would say, I will baptize your children provided you keep the Sabbath day as we observe it and as we believe is biblical. And they would get offended and they would say, “Very well, I’ll go get my children baptized in the Free Church.” But these men were willing to give their lives to have faith in the whole word of God, a faith that worketh by love, a faith that responds by way of obedience to the whole word of God, and a faith that continues to obey the whole word of God even when many are forsaking that steadfastness.
It is these men that we are to remember. Paul says, “That is a means of your preservation.”
Application
Now, there’s one thing we might say by way of application to everyone here, and that is this. You might be asking, “You’ve been talking a lot about churches that are on the other side of the world. We live in New Zealand. The situation here is very different.”
Well, there was another body of believers long ago who lived far away from what you might call the mother church, and they were a group of people in Thessalonica.
These people lived many, many miles away from Jerusalem where the mother church was. And we read that when Paul and his companion came to Thessalonica, “They received the word of God, not as it is the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which worketh effectually in you that believe.”
And what was the result of this diverse people, many of whom had probably never been to Jerusalem? The fruit when they heard the word of God was this, “Ye brethren became followers of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus. Ye became imitators, as the word is. Ye became imitators of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus, for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews.”
In other words, “You’ve not only received the very same doctrine, the very same principles as believers in Judea far away received, but like them, you’ve been willing to suffer for these doctrines and these practices. And you’ve become imitators of them in both your beliefs and in your practice and in your willingness to suffer for these things.”
We read that because of this, “Their faith to Godward was spread abroad.” First Thessalonians chapter one, verse six: “Ye became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost, so that ye were in samples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. For from you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad so that we need not to speak anything.”
Here was a people who, by their embracing of the truth as it is in Jesus and their willingness to suffer there in Thessalonica, were the means of spreading the gospel far and wide, even though they may not themselves have gone anywhere.
We hear a lot of talk – and for good reason – about how the church is to witness in the world today. How is it to spread the truth? Look at the Thessalonians here. They were instruments of spreading the truth far and wide simply by receiving and embracing the whole word of God and suffering for it. It had a dramatic effect upon their lives. They turned from idols to serve the living and true God.
So it wasn’t just a change in their beliefs in their head. Their lives dramatically changed and they were willing to suffer for the truth. And as a result, their faith to God was spread abroad.
Simply believing in Christ, becoming obedient to His word, willing to endure His reproach, we become effective witnesses for Christ. We may do more good for the cause of Christ than handing out many, many thousands of tracts. Not that we’re discounting that or saying it’s wrong. It has its place, but even better is to receive the whole word of God and to suffer for it. Then our faith to Godward will be spread abroad. Oh, may the Lord enable us to become followers of Christians long ago and to follow them as they followed Christ.
May He bless His Word to us. Let us pray.
Speaker: Rev Caleb J Hembd
Congregation Gisborne
Text: Hebrews 13:7-8
Date: 1 January 2025
Series: Church principles lecture