BY THE REV. ALEXANDER MACKAY, OBAN.
Preached by him as Retiring Moderator before the Synod, met at St. Jude’s Hall, Glasgow, on Tuesday evening, 22nd May, 1917.
“Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; for he is faithful that promised.”—HEBREWS x. 23.
YOU will notice that the human author of this epistle does not mention his own name, although the Hebrews, to whom he originally wrote, knew him well. It was not an unusual thing for writers of the Holy Scriptures to refrain from mentioning their own names, when circumstances did not demand that they should do otherwise. It is my belief, however, that the author of this epistle was none other than the Apostle Paul, and that for the two following reasons: (1) his own reference to Timothy; and (2) Peter’s particular reference to a special epistle which Paul sent to the circumcision (2 Peter iii. 15). But I shall not enter further into the question of the human authorship of this epistle, as it is evident that it has a divine author, even the Holy Spirit.
The contents of the epistle are largely taken up with a comparison between Christ and creatures—both angels and men—and also between His sacrifice and the blood of ceremonial sacrifices. The Apostle proves that Christ infinitely excels all created beings; that His blood made a complete atonement for sins, which that of beasts could never do, and that the very fact that their blood had
to be shed year by year continually was itself a proof that sin remained, to be taken away by a higher sacrifice, namely, the blood of Christ. The Apostle shows that all those sacrifices were only shadows of good things to come—even the great sacrifice of Calvary. In our text it is not the term “faith” that we find in the Greek in the words, “the profession of our faith,” but the term “hope,” and the Gaelic version follows the original here. Since faith, however, is the foundation of hope, and since, also, the profession is a public one, “hope” here includes faith. We are told to give a reason for “the hope” that is in us, that is, to publicly profess our faith when called upon to do so. Then Paul says, “I have kept the faith,” which means, the doctrines of salvation.
In seeking to direct your attention briefly, as the Lord may enable me, to this portion of God’s Word, I shall consider three things:—
I.—The profession of our faith.
II.—How we ought to act with regard to our profession. We are to hold it fast, “without wavering.”
III.—The encouragement given to us to act in this manner. “He is faithful that promised.”
I.—The profession is a public profession, and is founded upon the Word of God. God has revealed Himself in the works of creation and providence, but in His Word He has revealed Himself as the God of redemption. The profession of the Church of Christ embraces three things: (1) doctrines; (2) mode of worship; and (3) practice.
(1) With regard to doctrines—and I can only, in the brief time at my disposal, allude to some of these—we have, at the outset, the Being of God and the plurality of Persons in the adorable Godhead. The Church believes in a Trinity in unity: three persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—the same in substance, equal in power and glory, and yet one God. The Trinity is beyond the comprehension of any finite creature; yet these distinctions are apprehended when that word is fulfilled: “And no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him” (Matt. xi. 21). It is impossible for any one to apprehend the Trinity, so as to embrace the Trinity as one’s own God, without being sainly taught of God.
The Church believes that the “worlds” were framed by the Word of God, in other words, created out of nothing. Man was the crown of all that God created in this world, and the Church believes that man as he came out from the hand of his maker was holy. Philosophers view man differently from the Church. According to philosophers, man is ascending from a lower to a higher state—a state to which he has hitherto not attained. Well, one would think that philosophers who have adopted such a theory would
feel very much disheartened by the slow progress man is making upwards, for we find in our own day that nation, which philosophers considered a few years ago as almost within reach of the goal they had set before man, turning out to be so low in the moral scale as to deserve the epithet “Huns.” The Church views man as a fallen being. He lost God, and therefore he lost all. He has no claim upon God, apart from the claims which the free and sovereign love of God makes over to him, no more than the devils. In our day men teach that man is the child of God, in the sense that he has by his creation claims upon God, and that God will prove unjust if He does not acknowledge these natural claims; but, apart from the Covenant of Grace, as far as man is concerned, he has no claim upon the favour of God. Man is so ruined morally that he cannot bring about in the least degree his own redemption. The Church believes in the redemption of sinners—not of all men, but of an elect number. These elect sinners God loved from everlasting with a peculiar love, and He gave them to His Son to redeem. This leads us to consider the great doctrine of the person and natures of the Son of God, but time would fail, except to say this much, that the Church holds, as I have already pointed out in connection with the Trinity, that the Son is a divine person, the only eternally begotten Son of the eternal Father. It was to the Son that the redemption of the elect was entrusted, and He had to become incarnate to redeem them, for there were two things that had to be done before they could be redeemed—(1) Their sins had to be atoned for; and (2) their state and nature had to be changed. In becoming incarnate, that is, in taking human nature, Christ did not take a human person into union with His divine person, nor did He lay aside His divine nature when “He took upon Him the form of a servant.” The Son of God could not cease to be God; He could not lay aside His divine nature. What He did lay aside was the glory and the dignity which He had with the Father before the world was, and which adequately showed forth the glory of His eternal Sonship—just as a king does not cease to be a king, although he should lay aside his royal robes and don a beggar’s apparel. We may say that Christ left His glory for those who were given Him by the Father, and He took their nature, “a true body and a reasonable soul,” into union with His divine nature, and by His incarnation, life, and sufferings, He bought the Church with His own blood. But, although He did all this, and although it is brought before us in the Scriptures as the fruit of God’s love to lost men, yet men will not come unto Christ unless they are drawn by the Holy Ghost. The Church believes in an effectual calling by the Spirit and Word of God. In our day the most of the people of this land might say with regard to the teaching given them: “We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” The new birth is as great a mystery to the Pharisees of this age as it was to
Nicodemus when he asked, how a man could be born when he was old? But the Church of Christ holds this fundamental doctrine as absolutely as the glorious Head Himself held it. I can only refer under this head to the doctrine of justification by faith. Faith, and “the works of the law,” are so diametrically opposed that the one excludes the other. Sinners are justified as sinners without having done anything but sin, and faith is a work only in the sense that it is an act of the mind; it is not a meritorious work or act; it is merely the empty hand stretched out, and taking hold of the fulness of Jesus. It is “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.” Now, the Church holds that this faith is itself a gift. We may look at it in this way. The man with the withered hand had a hand, but it was withered: it needed the strength which God alone could give before it could be stretched out. So with sinners. They have a heart, but it is withered by sin and guilt, so that they can never believe until Christ bestows the strength of faith, and when this is given, the renewed, but still empty, heart goes out in a way of appropriating the fountain of life. This is the faith which justifieth, and which at the same time is a work or act of the mind, and yet is the gift of God.
The Church believes in sanctification by the Holy Ghost. God’s people are not made perfect when they are justified. It is only the foundation of holiness that is then laid. Justification is an act completed for ever, but sanctification is a progressive work. The Church holds the doctrines of the perseverance of the justified—”The righteous also shall hold on his way”—and the resurrection, and final judgment. But I cannot enlarge further on doctrines.
(2) Mode of Worship.—The Church under the old economy had its mode of worship direct from God, and in this epistle Moses is commended for his faithfulness as a servant in carrying out all things in connection with that worship according to the pattern shown to him in the Mount. Are we to think that the greater than Moses—the Son over His own house—has left the mode of worshipping the Father to the caprice of men? Verily no. Christ has through His Apostles, guided by the Spirit, who took the place of Christ in the Church on earth, when He went to the Father, set up a new mode of worship in His house, and I can only refer to this subject also. With regard to the office-bearers of His Church, there are no priests in the Church, neither is there a pope, nor cardinals, nor the many other office-bearers which men, led by the devil, have set up. The permanent office-bearers of the Church of Christ are elders or bishops, and deacons. The elders or bishops, which mean overseers, have the teaching and ruling committed to them; the deacons have the secular interests of the Church to look after. The worship of the Church is spiritual. “God is a Spirit,” and they that worship Him must do so in spirit and in truth. The
natural man is carnal, and knows not the things of the Spirit of God. Hence, men who come into the Church, not by the door, but by climbing up “some other way,” set up carnal worship. The Apostle warned the Galatians against such men. Formality is what the natural man wants. Give the natural man forms and ceremonies, and you give him what he finds congenial to his ignorance, and pride, and self-righteousness. But it is to the heart that God looks, and it is to the heart that all who are taught of God look also. Christ has not authorised the use of instrumental accompaniment in the praise of the sanctuary, neither has He permitted the use of uninspired hymns. He has, however, told His Church that He desires “the fruit of the lips,” and the “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,” of which the Book of Psalms is made up, as the praise book of His house. He has instituted the preaching of His Word, prayer, and the two sacraments of baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, as means of grace, and He seeks such to worship Him as will in spirit and in truth make use of these means.
(3) Practice.—The Church is in the world, but not of it. She must follow the Master and not men, however great. In our day the world and most of the professing Churches are identical. Worldly songs and music are the order of the day, while the preaching of the Word is slighted. The Church of Christ cannot tolerate such practices, not because she is morose and narrow, but because she has no appetite for these superficial joys, having tasted the pleasures which flow out of “the river which makes glad the city of God.”
II.—How this profession is to be maintained.—It is to be held fast, without wavering. Some take up a profession very lightly, and they value it so little that they will as readily let it go as they took it up. The profession of the Church will be tried. God tries it, and of this trial we have many instances in the Bible. God tried the patience of Abraham. Abraham received a promise that his seed would inherit the land, and he believed God’s promise; he staggered not, and he was justified by his faith. But God tried this faith, and he and Sarah began to waver, and in their wavering they adopted a method to accomplish the fulfilment of the promise, which was a source of trouble to them ever afterwards. Hezekiah was tried when men from Babylon came to him with a present and smooth words, and he, instead of treating them as suspicious visitors, as he ought to have done, opened his heart and his house to them and showed them all his treasures. No doubt some would commend Hezekiah for his action, and say he was charitable. The prophet of God, however, told him otherwise. Satan tries this profession. Job was tried, but he stood firm, holding “fast” the profession of his faith, when he said, “What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” so that his patience amidst the loss of family, wealth, health, and a good name in the world,
became proverbial. “Ye have heard of the patience of Job,” etc. Men try this profession. Jesus was tried by men. He was reviled, slandered, and forsaken by men, which is a trial hard to endure. At one time He had only the twelve disciples left—the multitude had forsaken Him. Jesus said to them, “Will ye also go away?” Peter replied, “To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” The answer Jesus then gave is noteworthy, “Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” intimating that He would not flatter any, in order that He should have followers, even although His followers had been reduced to such a little band. The great Apostle Paul was tried by men, and we believe by some who were good men. How pathetic it is to read his Second Epistle to Timothy, sent from the cold, dark dungeon in Rome! He is forsaken by men: “Notwithstanding,” says he, “the Lord stood with me and strengthened me.” “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
The profession is not only to be held fast, but it is to be held fast without wavering. There must not be any compromising. The individual, if he wavers, falls. So does the Church; if she wavers, she goes backward from that moment and falls, and we have terrible examples in the Churches of this land, and also in the State, of the truth of this. We, as a Protestant nation, have yielded principle after principle for the sake of unity and a false peace, until at last the Coronation Oath was changed, and now we support an ambassador at the court of the “man of sin.” The result of these departures is misery. We, as a Church, made a good profession, not for “loaves and fishes,” but, like the disciples, we knew the Master, and loved, valued, and followed Him for His own sake and the sake of His cause. We knew the truth, and realised the obligations under which we were to maintain it and hand it down to the generations unborn, without wavering about its inspiration, when so many, to win the applause of the world, wavered and fell.
III.—The encouragement.—(1) The promise; (2) His faithfulness to His promise.
(1) What is the promise? It is, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” This promise, given to the Church under the new dispensation, is equivalent to that given to Israel under the old, namely, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.” This promise includes everything the Church needs. It includes temporal and spiritual blessings. God directed the attention of Israel, after they had spent forty years in the wilderness, to the fact that their clothes and shoes were as good as new. “Thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot.” Jesus called His disciples and asked them if they had lacked anything since they had left all and followed Him; and they answered, “Nothing.” No; neither temporal nor spiritual blessings would fail if men would only “observe all things whatsoever he commanded them.”
(2) His faithfulness is another encouragement. Did He ever prove unfaithful to His word? Men may do so, but God never. He may—as we have seen already—try His people, but He will “never, never leave them; never, never, never forsake them” (Hebrews xiii. 4, original).
Our duty as a Church is obvious. We may say—not in any spirit of boasting or of self-righteousness, but in amazement that God would use such unworthy, weak creatures to do anything for Him—we may say, with the Apostle, that hitherto we have “kept the faith.” As individuals, we have great need of repentance, but as a branch of the visible Church of Christ, we can say before men and devils that we have been enabled, by God’s grace, to keep “the faith.” We have been accused of making too much of our Free Presbyterianism by those who were making much themselves of another name, which they have yet to prove belongs to them. We can afford to be misunderstood, if we are found faithful to our profession. Let us continue to hold it fast, remembering that “he is faithful that promised,” for the necessity to hold it fast is greater than ever. If we waver in the least, we are undone as a Church, for then we cannot expect His presence; and the spirit of our Church from the beginning has been that of Moses, who said, “If thy presence go not with us, carry us not up hence.” As in the past, so in the future, may love to the truth, dependence on His grace, and an appreciation of His favour, characterise our little Church, “until the day break, and the shadows flee away.” Amen.