Last Sunday morning at TURC, Pastor Vos began a sermon series on the Belgic Confession of Faith. He did something a little out-of-the-ordinary in this introductory message of the series; he spent a large portion of it providing a sketch of the story of the confession and its author, Guido de Brès. Pastor Vos never tells “stories” in his sermons but he thought it might be helpful this time for a couple of reasons:
I [tell the story] in the vein of Hebrews 11, where the author of Hebrews takes us through many of the saints of the Old Testament, and he does so for a reason; not to extol the saints, but through the saints to extol the one to whom the saints bear witness, even Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. So it is certainly my intention this morning not to extol the man, but to extol Jesus Christ, whom the man served. Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow Him – and in hearing and considering the story of Guido de Brès this morning it is my prayer that we may be better enabled to consider the cost, that we might indeed take up our cross and follow Jesus Christ, even unto death.
Here’s the whole audio file:
Listen Here to “Let Us Hold Fast the Confession.” (MP3. 38 minutes. From this page)
This may be a helpful listen for those who are unfamiliar with the man behind the Confession of Faith.
Here’s a link to the book he refers to at the beginning. I’ve never read it so I can’t comment on it.
How convenient — it so happens I need to refill my .mp3 player tonight!
By: RubeRad on January 16, 2008
at 1:14 pm
Can we discuss the appropriateness or lack thereof of preaching Confessions?
By: Echo_ohcE on January 16, 2008
at 3:44 pm
Sure.
You start.
By: Rick on January 16, 2008
at 4:05 pm
It is inappropriate, because it raises the Confession to the level of Scripture. Rather than Scripture being what nourishes us, it says that the Confession is just as able as Scripture to nourish us in our faith.
I’m all for USING the confession in sermons, but using it as a sermon text is totally wrong. It is the Word of God that is the flesh of Christ upon whom we feed.
I suspect what’s taking place is that your pastor is using Scripture proofs as sermon texts, and so he’s basically doing topical sermons, taking his queue from the Confession. That’s not so bad. My disagreement with this is far more mild.
But I don’t like topical sermons. I’m a huge supporter of lectio continua, preaching through books. Why?
Because we aren’t saved by being catechized. Being catechized isn’t our hope, doctrinal knowledge is not our hope. We want to have doctrinal knowledge, we want to be catechized. But the preaching of the Word is the primary means of grace, not the preaching of a system of doctrine.
We need to be preaching the gospel from every text of Scripture, fixing our eyes on Christ in the Word. I love teaching the catechism, and am doing so right now for the children of our church. But this is in Sunday School time, not in the worship service.
The confessions and catechisms are the church’s instruction on what God is saying. But in the worship service, it needs to be God himself addressing his people. Preaching the confession takes the people a step away from the text.
By: Echo_ohcE on January 16, 2008
at 4:52 pm
Echo,
The confession is the never the sermon text, nor should it ever be. It’s merely the preaching schedule. Scripture is what is preached, texts expounded. The confession is itself exposition.
If you’re “all for using confessions in the sermon” then I don’t see what problem you might have with Confessional or Catechetical preaching. Again, the confession is never the text.
But by being a confessional church, are we not saying that the confessions are a faithful summary of what God’s Word teaches? So wouldn’t a confessional preaching schedule force the pastor to preach on “the whole counsel of God”? Again, by preaching Christ and Him crucified FROM SCRIPTURE – using an article of a confession or catechism as the -Ahem- “topic” for each sermon.
How do you feel about the congregation reciting confesional articles in worship? By your comments it seems you would be against this too. You say: “But in the worship service, it needs to be God himself addressing his people.”
Can the people not recite or respond, in one voice, confessing their common undoubted faith?
Many Dutch Reformed Churches over the years have set aside one service per Sunday for this kind of preaching schedule – it should be noted that it has never been in a church order that two services have confessional or catechetical preaching.
Why haven’t you brought this up to Dr. Riddlbarger on his blog? His whole Belgic Confession series on the Riddleblog were sermon adaptations.
More to come I’m sure.
By: Rick on January 16, 2008
at 5:32 pm
Check out this article by Brian Lee from 2000 (Mod Ref login account needed).
By: Rick on January 16, 2008
at 8:12 pm
Well, when I said in the worship service it needs to be God addressing his people, I meant to be distinguishing the sermon from Sunday School. Sorry for the confusion on that point. Of course the people can confess.
In the OPC, though, we don’t have subsciptional membership, so we don’t demand people hold to the confession, so no, it’s not appropriate to use it in worship. We use the Apostle’s Creed or Nicene Creed. While we don’t make people sign on to the WCF, we do require a credible profession, and you can’t have that if you disagree with these creeds.
So anyway…
Topical sermons are also bad because it tends to make the sermon about the topic, rather than about Christ. Sure, you can discuss both, but Christ needs to be the clear focus.
So if I preach a sermon on Election for example, my sermon’s no longer about Christ, but election, and I find a text to support my topic. This is the wrong focus for a sermon, because it turns into one big imperative to believe a particular doctrine. It’s no longer gospel, but law. Now election may be a topic that you would argue is inherently gospel centered or something, and there’s a great opportunity to preach the gospel there, but the focus of the sermon would still be off base. The sermon needs to focus on what Christ has done for us. Election can and should be MENTIONED, when appropriate, and the confession can and should occasionally be mentioned as support from time to time, but the focus has to be what Christ has done for us.
Again, preaching should not be of a system of doctrine. Our system of doctrine helps us to understand Scripture. It helps us to understand how Christ is revealed/pointed to in the passage.
In other words, the only reason to talk about election is to support that our salvation is not by works but by grace.
Doctrines are not ends in themselves, they point us to a greater reality, namely the reality of our salvation in Jesus Christ and the glory of God. This has got to be the focus of the sermon. Everything must be painted not as an end in itself, but as a means to this end.
Riddlebarger doesn’t very often respond on his blog to comments, and it wouldn’t be right to have that conversation with him on his blog anyway.
This is, by the way, a traditional difference between the OPC and the URC.
By: Echo_ohcE on January 17, 2008
at 12:30 am
I listened to (most of) the .mp3 on the way to work this morning, and while it was good, inspiring Christian history, I have to say I would be uncomfortable having that as a sermon — or indeed having a topical sermon series that drove through a confessional standard.
By: RubeRad on January 17, 2008
at 11:10 am
Echo,
I’ll just respond with this: If the preacher does not preach Christ from a text of scripture he is not preaching. But you can preach Christ and explain election right? I really think that we are in agreement as to the content of preaching – Your beef is with the topical schedule. It’s really a minor point. Were you able to read the Lee article?
Rube, as for the audio of the sermon linked here -it doesn’t stand as a good example of a confessional sermon. Really, the preaching Christ portion of it is at the beginning and end – the “story” portion, I regret to admit, was just that, a story – perhaps best suited for a bible study lecture. But he did preach the Gospel, however brief (compared to the rest of the message). He struggled with whether or not to tell Guido’s story in the sermon. It was a one-time thing.
But as historical background of the Confession – it’s a good listen for those who may not be familiar. That’s why I posted it.
By: Rick on January 17, 2008
at 11:44 am
I am with Rick. I tend to think that a resistance to preaching through the forms might tend to see an unnecessary antagonism between the text and interpretation. The resistance seems more in keeping with the tradition of solo scriptura than the one which champions sola scriptura.
By: Zrim on January 17, 2008
at 12:40 pm
There’s a difference between “faithful” and “complete”. Just as the scriptures themselves are insufficient when it comes to matters they do not intend to address, I would not say that the confessions are exhaustive. How could they be, since at the bottom, they contain fewer words than all of scripture, and “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful…”
Also, the confessions are not an inspired organization of what God’s Word teaches. Granted, I wouldn’t say that the order of the books of the bible is any more inspired than the chapter and verse divisions, but the structure within each book as a whole is inspired (or pairs/groupings of books like Chronicles, Ezra/Neh, the Pentateuch), and we profit from following it.
By: RubeRad on January 17, 2008
at 12:53 pm
I don’t know what else to say that I haven’t already said. I need Hyde to come here in defense of Catechetical and Confessional preaching – He defends it well. I need more time to think.
By: Rick on January 17, 2008
at 4:44 pm
NO! You must anszer us NOW!
We have vays of making you hastily commit yourself to a position you will regret later…
By: RubeRad on January 17, 2008
at 6:24 pm
Rick,
My main concern is that of focus.
E
By: Echo_ohcE on January 17, 2008
at 8:14 pm
They even get you to think you may not believe in sanctification, or the Bible, or that good is better than evil. Sheesh, how’d I get here?
“Mother, will they tear your little boy apart?”
By: Zrim on January 18, 2008
at 9:34 am
Echo,
As a URC minister who, in submission to URCNA CO Art 40, must “ordinarily preach the Word as summarized in the Three Forms of Unity” I would like to offer my two cents FWIW:
1. I too, Echo, am committed to preaching lectio continua, and redemptive-historically. That is why I (and I think many, if not most, URC pastors) only preach catechetical sermons in the evening service. (And not all the time! Our CO gives us some room with its language of “ordinarily.”)
2. I think you are making an unfair criticism of catechetical preaching. You said, We need to be preaching the gospel from every text of Scripture, fixing our eyes on Christ in the Word…in the worship service, it needs to be God himself addressing his people. Preaching the confession takes the people a step away from the text. I don’t know what type of catechetical preaching you have been exposed to, but your characterization of cat.preaching doesn’t describe what I aim to do when preaching through the TFU. EVERY sermon I bring is to bring the eyes of God’s people to the Person and Work of Xp. Period.
But that doesn’t mean that that cannot be done in one particular pericope that addresses, say, the doctrine of baptism. Any law-gospel preacher worth his salt can preach a sermon on the doctrine of baptism that still hinges on the Person and Work of Xp. This has the positive effect of people hearing from God what baptism means for us as his people. That is gospel, not law!
3. You do not seem to account for the fact that within the URCNA there are two different recognized methods of cat. preaching. So recognized are they, that there has been published debate between two prominent men within the URCNA. The two methods are, a) expositing the text of the catechism (Lord’s Day, question, or BC/CD article), and, b) expositing a particular text from Scripture that has to do with a certain catechism question, etc. The former method is the one usually taken by MARS grads, while the latter by WSC grads (most of the time). I am sensitive to the fact that poor cat. preaching can in fact have a feel of removal from the text of Scripture. For my part, that is primarily why I choose the latter method. I do not see how the latter method, when it is done properly, can be guilty of removing the people a step away from the text.
4. I am not sure what your point is by bringing up the fact that in the OPC you do not require people to have subscriptional membership. Are you implying that that is somehow better than what the URCNA does? If so, I think it is very easy to show the downside and inconsistency of a church confessing a particular doctrine yet not requiring its own members to believe it.
5. So if I preach a sermon on Election for example, my sermon’s no longer about Christ, but election, and I find a text to support my topic. This is the wrong focus for a sermon, because it turns into one big imperative to believe a particular doctrine. It’s no longer gospel, but law. I totally disagree. First of all, if you preach Ephesians 1.4-5 or Romans 9 as you are preaching through Ephesians or Romans, well, the sermon is going to be largely about the doctrine of election.
That does not mean that the sermon doesn’t preach Xp and him crucified. In fact, I don’t see how one could faithfully preach those texts (or ever talk about election, for that matter) w/o preaching the Person and Work of Xp. It just doesn’t follow that a sermon like that somehow turns in to a big imperative, or law instead of gospel, as you put it. For my part, I could never live with myself if I preached law instead of gospel!
I could not agree with you more that “doctrines are not ends themesleves” and our preaching should not be a system of doctrine. But explaining particular doctrines in a sermon, and connecting them to the doing and dying of Xp, has the profound benefit of renewing the minds of Christians, causing their understanding of who God is and what he has done for us in Xp to deepen (as well as what they believe and why they believe it), and helping us to proclaim the full counsel of God’s Word. I know this is a fact, because I have seen the fruit in the lives of my congregants.
FWIW…
By: Mike Brown on January 18, 2008
at 5:53 pm
Mr. Brown,
Fair enough. This is something the OPC and URC don’t agree on.
I really see topical sermons in general as being subject to the charge of having a message and then finding a text that contains that message, rather than having a text and letting it dictate what its message is.
I’m not saying don’t preach election, I’m saying don’t focus the sermon on election, and don’t preach Rom 9 because you want to preach election. I’m advocating letting God’s Word drive what is preached, that’s all.
I don’t think catechetical preaching is sinful and those who do so are false prophets. I just don’t think it’s the best thing to do.
Your church mandates it, so you have to do what you have to do.
But I wonder why you would say that it is more appropriate in the evening service? What’s the difference between the morning service and the evening service?
Echo_ohcE
By: Echo_ohcE on January 18, 2008
at 11:15 pm
If you want to preach election, then you can always choose the book of Romans to preach through…
By: RubeRad on January 19, 2008
at 1:14 am