Thank you, Pastor. And since this isn't an official stated service, I want to take just a moment to thank everyone for their generous outpouring of friendship. This is a wonderful church family to belong to. I've never seen anything like it in my whole life growing up in the church, and I'm very grateful, our family's very grateful for all of your prayers and thoughts and tangible, other tangible means of support. Why are we here tonight? You know, there are all kinds of reformation rallies and services, opportunities to mark this great half a millennium event. Why are we here? There are people who get together, for instance, in Northern Ireland to march through the streets for the Orange Day Parade. and if you asked them what the Reformation was all about, they probably would have absolutely no idea, but they are very proud to be Protestants. We haven't come here tonight for that. Of course, we know that. We have not come here because we are celebrating being Protestants. There's nothing to celebrate about being a Protestant. In fact, it's rather a tragedy that we have to be called Protestants, even after 500 years, that we still have to be called Protestants. that we're still protesting. It's sad. It's sad that the whole church isn't agreed on this. It's not something to celebrate. Why are we here? We're not here to celebrate being Protestants, to sort of wave our flag, sort of the reformed version of the Republican or Democratic National Convention. Why are we here? What are we celebrating? As we just have heard. Celebrate in confession and in song. We're here because of the gospel of grace alone. That's what we're celebrating. We're not celebrating being Protestants. We're celebrating the gospel. The gospel which in every period of church history is always under threat, even sadly in the church. And that's why the text before us brings to such a focus this charge that the church always has in every generation, including ours of getting the gospel right and getting the gospel out. Now, those are often seen as two antithetical things. There are a lot of churches that are pretty good at getting the gospel out, but then sometimes you scratch your head, and even though the gospel is present, there are bits and pieces. Sometimes what is given with the left hand is taken away with the right. There's a lot of confusion, but they don't want to be slowed down. because they're getting the gospel out and you just want to fill their heads with a bunch of theology. Then there are other people who think, well, we have our theology right. We have the gospel right. We have for 500 years. And yet, sadly, when we sit down and we really ask ourselves how concerned we are about reaching the lost, reaching those who have not yet heard the gospel. Sometimes we rest on our laurels, getting it right. Sometimes means that we don't have to get it out. The text before us tells us that this is a false dilemma. We don't have to choose between these two important aspects of the Great Commission. It's from 2 Timothy 1, verses 8 through 14. Paul writes to young Timothy, before the beginning of time. But it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. And of this gospel, I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher. That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed because I know whom I have believed and am convinced that He is able to guard Guard what I have entrusted to Him for that day. What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you. Guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. Was the Reformation a missionary movement? I was asked to preach a sermon that in some way would bring together the Reformation and missions. And as you think about it, you sort of scratch your head and it's not often presented that way. The Reformation was a great movement in church history of getting the gospel right. But it was a subsequent movement, the modern missionary movement that actually got the gospel out. The Reformers weren't that concerned about missions. That, in fact, first of all, isn't actually the case when you think about the fact that the first missionaries sent to the Western Hemisphere from the Protestant churches were sent from Calvin's Geneva, under Calvin's leadership in Geneva, were sent to Brazil. It's a huge witness to Christ in Brazil that blossomed out of that movement. Did you know there are more confessional, reformed Christians in the country of Nigeria today than in North America? When you think about the heritage that we have come to celebrate, it has to be the gospel. It can't be our heritage. When you look around and you see the shambles in which some of our churches are in around the globe, but also here in North America, it really is remarkable that the light hasn't gone out. It's just so much of it has gone to other places. Getting it right and getting it out belong to our great commission. First of all, Paul focuses here on the message, getting it right, and then secondly on getting it out, although it's not as easily carved apart the way I've just done it, I do think that Paul makes both of these points here. First of all, in terms of getting it right. He starts out by saying he's not ashamed. Paul is always having to protest that he is not ashamed. That's a kind of odd thing. A lot of preachers today aren't ashamed about what they're preaching because they've made it too relevant to be ashamed. There's no obstacle, there's no offense for us to be ashamed by. Paul says he isn't ashamed of the gospel because he knows that it's a rock of offense to those who are convinced that their own righteousness can in any way commend themselves to God. And he says the Greeks do it in their way and the Jews do it in their way, but we're all alike in this. And it's a theme, of course, in all of Paul's letters. Romans 1.16, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God and the salvation for everyone who believes. 1 Corinthians 1, for Jews demand a sign and Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Or Philippians 3, verses 7 through 9, after he gives his bio, he says, But whatever things were gained to me, my being a Jew of Jew, a Pharisee of Pharisees, the greatest pedigree, what things were gained to me, whatever was in my credit column, These I have counted loss. Put in my debit column. All that I was trusting in. All that I thought was my security. All that I thought was my acceptance before God. All that I thought I had going for me spiritually. I put that all over on the debit side. It was actually dragging me to hell. Not raising me to heaven. In fact, I count it all rubbish. And that's not really what it says. I count it all rubbish that I may gain Christ. I may gain Christ and be found in Him not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith. You see, that's why he's not ashamed of the gospel. If anybody had a right to be ashamed of the gospel, It would be someone who had accumulated everything that the gospel says is not the right path to God. And yet Paul counts it all rubbish. He's turned his back on it all. Therefore, he says, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God who has saved us and called us with a holy calling not according to our works but according to His grace. Notice here that Paul's witness is to God's testimony that which God has promised and God has accomplished. His witness is to God's witness. God has sworn an oath in court for our salvation. And Paul is simply bearing witness to that, standing up, if you will, as a witness in a court case. Again, the parallel with Romans 10 appears. There Paul says that there is a righteousness which is by faith and there is a righteousness which is based on works. The righteousness which is by works says, how can I climb up to God? Or how can I go across the seas to find Him? Go into a local Christian bookstore today and you'll find as plentiful options as anyone could have in the medieval church for going on pilgrimages or crossing the seas, getting on airplanes, buying tickets, going to sacred places, going to where the Spirit seems to have fallen last. And there people believe finally they can meet God, they can finally hear God, they can finally, if they do the 40-day fast, or if they read the right book, or if they go on the right spiritual diet, somehow they can get in touch with God in that deeper way that they have never really sensed, but they've heard about for so long. But what does Paul say? Paul says the righteousness which is by faith says you don't have to go and find Him. He has found you. He is as near as the word of the gospel that we preach. He's come down to us. And so the logic of the message controls the logic of the methods. You can't preach a gospel that's by grace and have methods that talk about us climbing or gaining or controlling. Here Paul defines this gospel again in this passage to Timothy in sharp contrast to human striving. It is the testimony to our Lord. The witness to our Lord's testimony. Sharing with Him in the sufferings for the Gospel according to the power of God who has saved us and called us with a holy calling. And that leads to the content. What is the content here? He says, saved us, not by our works, but according to His purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before time began, but has now been revealed by the appearance of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, to which I was appointed a preacher. This is the content of the message that he preached. And this is why he's not ashamed of it. This kind of a message fills him with excitement because it has taken the monkey off of his back. It's not just a message that he knows is right and it's good for people to believe right things. He knows that even though at great personal cost, not even the physical suffering, but the spiritual suffering of realizing everything he'd worked for, everything he had put his faith in, everything that gave him confidence was now counted as rubbish in the sight of God. And so now Paul's whole ministry centers on the extrapolation, defense, and application of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Saved and called according to His grace, not according to our works, according to His purpose, not according to ours. That is good news. That's very good news. If I thought that even my faith was the one point at which I contributed something to salvation, I would be in pretty bad shape. I don't know about you. My faith, okay, I guess. I'm not the one to judge. Okay, on Mondays, but by Thursday, I have trouble with my faith. You know, I have to come back and hear the gospel. I have to hear the law first. I have to hear that I really am a sinner because I stopped believing that too. I hear the gospel and my faith, that flickering candle gains a flame again. And this isn't simply works of a particular kind, circumcision, keeping the ceremonial laws. It's any and all works. You see, it's the principle of works versus grace. Now, this isn't because grace and works are opposed in principle. It's not that God's grace and God's law, God's gospel and God's law are intrinsically opposed. they agree. They agree in the point of everything, that God is righteous and God is holy. They don't disagree about the righteousness of God. And that's exactly what caused Luther problems as he sat and he read Romans 1.18. He said, the wrath of God is being revealed. God's righteousness from heaven is being revealed. That was a terrifying thought for him. righteousness of God, something that Luther said, I absolutely abhorred. I came to hate God because of his righteousness. And it was only until he realized from the very same passage that the righteousness which God is, that condemns us, is also the righteousness that God gives in the gospel. That he provides us with what he requires in the law through the gospel. Not by working it into us gradually, although he does that, but by giving it to us all at once through the imputation of Christ's perfect obedience. So the law and the gospel aren't intrinsically opposed. The law as the reflection of God's wise and perfect will for our life both restrains the reprobate and guides the believer. And the same apostle makes it clear all over the place that the same God who justifies, sanctifies. That the law is still a guide for the Christian life. But when it comes to this question, how will you stand before God on the last day? When it comes to the question of your conscience at night when you put your head on the pillow, asking yourself, after the kind of day I've had, after the kind of thoughts I've had, after the kinds of attitudes I've expressed, I could not possibly be in the same relationship with God today as I was yesterday. Every time all of those thoughts come to us, Calvin says, separate the law as far as the east is from the West from your mind? The law can't answer that question. Only the gospel, only the gospel can deck you out in the robe of righteousness that can alone satisfy the conscience in the presence of God. Rome didn't deny that we were saved by grace or by Christ or by faith. that comes as a startling thing sometimes when we sort of have these misrepresentations of Roman Catholic teaching Rome never not even on a bad day taught what for instance revivalist Charles Finney taught that we are justified by doing whatever we can do in order to repent enough so that God will accept us Rome didn't teach that Rome taught that we are justified by God's grace working in our hearts so that as we cooperated with it, we could finally attain justification one day. The bumper sticker of the Middle Ages was God will not deny his grace to those who do what lies within them. God helps those who help themselves. That was the medieval theology. It was that little qualifier alone that got our reformers in trouble. That's what always got them in trouble. Not that they believed in grace through faith because of Christ, but because they believed in grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone. It was the alone that got them into trouble. And similarly today, you won't find a lot of Protestant Christians, especially evangelical Christians, saying that we're not saved by grace or that we're not saved by faith or that we're not saved through faith or that we're not saved by Christ. But according to recent surveys, most professing evangelicals today believe that human beings are, and this is from a University of Chicago study, Most evangelicals say human beings are by nature good. That God helps those who help themselves in the matter of salvation. In fact, 66% thought it was a biblical quotation. And that all good people go to heaven when they die, regardless of whether they've received Christ. Billy Graham has gone on television promoting that very idea. This is exactly what the modern Roman Catholic Church continues to teach chapter of the Second Vatican Council, which is perfectly consistent with its theology of grace, faith, Christ, but not grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone. It isn't consistent with ours. It is not by God's grace working in the hearts of people who don't even trust in Christ. It's not even by the Holy Spirit working in the hearts of people who do believe in Christ that we are justified. it is by Christ working every day before his Father, carrying out his Father's will in our place. And by the pleasure that God takes in his obedience that you and I are received into his everlasting arms now and at the last when we stand before him on that great and dreadful day. We are saved by works. That's what that means. We are saved by works. God cannot set aside His law. The law and the gospel must agree. And they do in Jesus Christ. We are saved by works. The question is whose? We'll either be condemned by our works or justified by Christ's works. And then the character of this gospel is news. Its content is saved by grace. Its character is news. In contrast to our works, which give us instructions, require instructions. That's what happens with, if you're saved by works, what do you need? A manual. And so the Bible becomes reduced to the road map for life. You know, the manual, the owner's manual. That's how it is in a lot of churches today. People come to church because they think it will help them save their marriages. It will help raise positive kids in a negative world. It will help provide good role models and so forth. None of that, none of that is to be seen as a negative. That's not why we come to church. It's not why we belong to Jesus Christ. That's not why we are in him. We are in him because we need news, not instructions. Now, of course, we do need the law. As I mentioned, it's the guide for the Christian life. But no matter how much instruction, moral encouragement and moral instruction we get, we cannot, we cannot appear before God on Judgment Day having fulfilled the righteousness that He requires. And so we better get some good news here or we're in real trouble and we're wasting our time putting on our clothes and coming to church each week. And that's why the minister is a herald or a reporter, even more than that, an ambassador, someone who's designated and officially empowered, a notary public, a proxy who is able on God's own behalf to announce on behalf of the king each week. Victory in Europe. The war is over. Preaching fits news. Now kids, we've had a lot of bad news in the last week. Some good news at the end of it, but we had some pretty bad news at the beginning of all the fires, right? You see why it's important when you're wondering how things are going to turn out, that you have news and not just instructions. We also got instructions, didn't we? What to do in case of fire. But instructions about what to do in case of fire are very different from the headline, fire extinguished. Now that's good news. It comes to you from the outside. It's why Christianity turns not on good advice or good instructions or good intentions, but on good news. God justifies the wicked. That's the message. That's the gospel that has Paul so excited, as he says in Romans chapter 4, to the one who does not work. That's the very opposite of what we intuitively think in religion. Every single religion thinks To the one who tries a little, to the one who does his best, to the one who at least meant well, what religion says to the one who does not try harder, to the one who doesn't turn over a new leaf, to the one who hasn't been able to pull himself up by the bootstraps. only those people can become God's children the social worker at the hospital where our kids are right now Jewish woman, wonderful woman we've had the opportunity to talk about the gospel it's one of the things that she keeps up bringing it's the thing you hear on the street it's the thing that everybody you talk to non-Christians it's over and over and over again And what happens when really bad people go to heaven? And then you claim that it's possible that someone who's really good can go to hell because he didn't believe in Christ. It's the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard. It's the best news in the world. But it's the foolishness of the cross to those who are perishing. And that's why we have to keep preaching it. We have to keep proclaiming it. And brothers and sisters, not just to ourselves. We don't just have to proclaim it to new Christians. We have to hear it as old Christians. No matter how long you've been a Christian, you have to hear this gospel. Again and again, God justifies the wicked. That God is lenient with the wicked. That God reforms the wicked. That God gives the wicked a second chance. Those things we can stomach. but even as Christians, don't we wonder? How far does God's mercy really go? How much grace really covers how much sin? And again, in a lot of the preaching today, that's not the confidence. The confidence is in the new method, in the new technique, and in the new message. Whatever your problem is, and you decide what it is, God can fix it. That's the good news that we bring to the world? That God is at least as helpful as Oprah? But just where the gospel is an offense, just where it's an offense, just where it gets dangerous, it gets interesting for unbelievers. And that's where we stop short so often. Because we're afraid of offending. They are bored. When I talk to non-Christians, they're bored, understandably bored, by everything else that passes for religion in popular culture. Absolutely bores them. Only this message that Paul proclaimed could get him up in the morning and put him through the ringer that he was going to face that day. Because it's good news. Not just good advice, not good instruction, but good news. J. Gresham Machen, the founder of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, said, what I need, first of all, is not an exhortation, but a gospel. Not directions for saving myself, but knowledge of how God has saved me. Do you have any good news? That's the only question I ask of you. I know your exhortations and they will not help me. But if anything has been done to save me, why don't you just tell me the facts? and that's what the whole Christian life is getting used to the facts of what God has done to save us only that can stir us to obedience only that can make us cry out how I love thy law because it no longer condemns us it has no place in the courtroom because in Christ we have fulfilled the law so when I asked Martin Luther well if you believe all of this then what you're basically saying is that we don't contribute anything to our salvation and Luther said I'm sorry I didn't mean to convey that impression we do contribute a lot to our salvation sin and resistance finally very quickly God's ministry, getting it out. The gospel has a particular office for its faithful delivery on God's behalf. And that's why Paul brings these two features together. We aren't on our own mission, he says here. We aren't just a bunch of people with a good idea, with good instructions. We come with news. And it's news that we have been appointed to preach. We've been sent on a commission to preach it. God has already determined what the great need is in every day. And it's always the same. It is God's ministry, Paul says, to which we have been called. To which I was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles. And he's willing to suffer, not because it's a good cause. Or because once he starts something, he finishes it. He's just sort of that way. but because God has appointed him to this charge and God will not be faithless in keeping his promise. I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him until that day. Of course, he has to remain faithful to his calling And yet this sacred message, God's grace to save and keep sinners, is the basis for this sacred mission, God's grace to save and keep the ministry of this gospel. What Paul's saying is the gospel is so good, it's so great, it's so wonderful, it can even save preachers. It's not his confidence in his powers of holding on to Christ and the gospel, but the efficacy of God and his testimony to see the covenant through to the end. And again, this all parallels the latter part of Paul's argument in Romans 10. How shall they then call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? In other words, the logic of the gospel is that God comes all the way to us not only at Calvary, but He comes all the way to us even now when we're dead in trespasses and sins and raises us from the dead, not because we get in a plane and fly to Lourdes or the Protestant version of it, but because He has come to us through a minister who preaches the gospel. He has come all the way to us. He has come all the way down to us. And now the question is, where are the heralds? God even takes the responsibility upon Himself of getting the gospel to us. And not only to those out there who haven't heard it, but to those of us in here who need to hear it each week. And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things, So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. There are lots of distractions from the proclamation of this message. In Paul's day and in ours, we always think that we have a better message. We always think that we have something better to get out, something better at least to market or to package, something more attractive. C.S. Lewis called it Christianity and. In the Screwtape Letters, Screwtape tells Wormwood, what we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in a state of what I call Christianity and. You know, Christianity and the crisis, Christianity and the new psychology, Christianity and the new order, Christianity and faith healing, Christianity and psychical research, Christianity and vegetarianism, Christianity and moral reform, Substitute for the faith itself some fashion with a Christian coloring. Work on their horror of the same old thing. The horror of the same old thing is one of the most valuable possessions we have had in the human heart. An endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. Cruel ages are put on their guard against sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism. And whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants, we make liberalism the prime boogie. But we can also be drawn away by conservatism. The reformers were not conservatives. They were conservative in a sense. They didn't want to radically break from the traditions of the church. They wanted to reform the church. And so we're conservative in that sense. But Abraham Kuyper had this to say in his day about the kind of conservatism that sometimes grips us when we think we have the gospel right and yet we haven't thought about it in a while. Then everyone, he says, began to swear by his own slogans and wander down his own paths. And all too cruelly, the carefree circle of brothers had to pay the penalty for opting to be a circle of friends rather than a church. People now discovered that for public life, spiritual affinity is not enough. One needs the bond of a confession. Hold fast to what you have was still the rallying cry, but what people had in Christ remained uncertain for their heart and undecided for in their mind. From that moment on, a nervous scrupulosity hindered every step. What he's saying there is conservatism doesn't really know what it believes or why it believes it. And so it's scrupulous. It's always concerned about whether it's saying it the right way or whether it's expressing it in the right context. And from that moment on, Kuyper says, people were doomed to inaction. They kept gliding over the surface, fearing that if they immersed themselves more deeply, they would drown. And so internally divided, now swinging one way, now another they could not stand firm, much less show a character that compelled respect from the enemy. Neither was there any power in it. And so we seem to have, on one hand, this sort of perilous liberalism, the free-flowing spirit of mainstream evangelicalism, but on the other, we have to be aware of a stultifying, paralyzing conservatism. The confidence that Paul had in the Gospel, despite his own extreme unpopularity, enabled him to ignore the circumstances of his ministry. He wasn't scrupulous. He was just filled with the joy of the gospel and desire to faithfully proclaim it. And yet, and yet, Paul brings this back to the form of sound words with which we'll close. Paul says, Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. You see, evangelism is the goal of the creeds, the confessions, the liturgy, the word, the sacraments, the preaching. Evangelism is the goal. But evangelism doesn't just refer to non-Christians hearing the gospel. It also refers to Christians hearing the gospel. Children, you need to be evangelized every week. Now that doesn't mean we're going to have an altar call. We're going to have you come forward and receive Christ week after week after week. What it means is you receive Christ each week as he's proclaimed to you, as he's given to you in the gospel. He comes to you again and again. You're not just hearing these old things that you've heard before, these great doctrines, these great truths. But Jesus himself comes in the swaddling clothes of the preaching to you again and again to say, come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And yet as important, covenant succession in families is the most important evangelistic tool we have. As important as that is, it is not an alternative to our reaching out to our non-Christian neighbors. I know we joke about church growth happening in Reformed churches by live births. That's our evangelism. Now, there's a certain truth to that. People make fun of us for kind of, you know, populating the kingdom of God in quite that way. But that is an important part of evangelism. It is an important part of the kingdom of God. Many of our brothers and sisters, dear evangelicals who want to reach out to a lost world will have huge crusades filled with people who 10 years from now themselves may not be in church and their children, even children raised in evangelical, supposedly Bible-believing churches, don't even know that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the Gospels. and so Paul says as we reach out as we reach out remember hold fast the pattern of sound words not just to sound words, slogans but to the pattern of sound words what's a pattern of sound words? this, what we did tonight from the Belgian Confession that's a pattern of sound words to teach us like a trellis to grow up like a plant where we should grow and to not freely make up Christianity as we go along. And so we have to on one hand resist the temptation in evangelicalism today to downplay forms as stultifying to the Holy Spirit. The Spirit works through forms. He works through the covenant. He works through covenant succession. but he also works through the proclamation of the gospel as we're able to testify to Christ ourselves and bring people under the preaching of the gospel in church. Getting the gospel right is essential because what purpose is it, as Jesus said, if we go over land and sea and make people twice the children of hell they were before? we cannot choose the false path of getting the gospel out without getting the gospel right but we also must resist the path of a false conservatism that cannot even sustain its own irrelevant existence with the passion in its heart for the gospel that always brings about a passion for the lost souls who need to hear it. Far, far from exhibiting sectarianism, the form of sound words that Paul herein joins on Timothy provides both the magnet for unity and the boundaries within which faithful preservation of God's truth can serve the ever wider, ever more joyful, ever zealous proclamation of that truth to every single person in the world until the glory of God covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. Let's pray. Our great God and heavenly Father, we thank you that you have given us such a rich treasure in Jesus Christ. Once we see the greatness of that treasure, it is folly for us to look elsewhere. For one gem, for one bracelet, for one earring of that glory and righteousness. Help us, Father, to be overwhelmed again and again by that wonderful treasure. And help us, Father, even when our own faith is sagging, for us to hear that gospel with new welcome ears. help us to receive it into our heart and not just repeat it as a form of sound words, but a form of sound words filled with the power of the Spirit. And Father, help us to understand the pity in your heart which moved you to save us and our families. See that that same pity cries out for the world around us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.