Covenant Protestant Reformed Church
83 Clarence Street, Ballymena BT43 5DR
Rev. Angus Stewart
Lord’s Day, 16 June, 2024
“My covenant was with him of life and peace” (Mal. 2:5)
Morning Service – 11:00 AM
Lead Us Not Into Temptation [youtube]
Scripture Reading: James 1
Text: Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 52
I. The Source of Temptation
II. The Results of Yielding to Temptation
Psalms: 115:1-11; 103:1-7; 19:9-14; 119:33-40
Evening Service – 6:00 PM
The All-Controlling Influence of the Gospel [youtube]
Scripture Reading: II Corinthians 4
Text: II Corinthians 4:1-2
I. We Do Not Faint
II. We Renounce Craftiness
Psalms: 119:89-96; 103:8-15; 26:1-8; 43:1-5
For CDs of the sermons and DVDs of the worship services, contact Stephen Murray ([email protected])
If you desire a pastoral visit, please contact Rev. Stewart or the elders
CPRC Website: www.cprc.co.uk • Live Webcast: www.cprc.co.uk/live-streaming
CPRC YouTube: www.youtube.com/cprcni
CPRC Facebook: www.facebook.com/CovenantPRC
Quote to Consider
Herman Hoeksema: “There is a close connection between the fifth petition, which is a prayer for the forgiveness of sins, and the sixth, which is in principle a petition for final victory … In the prayer for forgiveness we seek to lay hold on the glorious gift of justification by faith through the blood of Jesus Christ … For this unspeakable blessing of God we ask in the fifth petition … Although justification is first, it cannot be last. Justification changes our legal status before God in judgment, but it leaves our sinful condition unchanged. It delivers us from the guilt of sin, but it leaves us still stained with the pollution of sin. By justification we obtain the right to be delivered from the dominion and power of sin, as the pardon of a governor gives a criminal the right to be set at liberty. But justification does not liberate us from the power of sin and corruption. Justification cannot be the end of our salvation, for Christ did not give himself for us only in order that we might be redeemed and justified, but that he might ‘purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works’ (Titus 2:14) … All scripture is full of the truth that justification cannot stand alone but must have its end and fruit in sanctification and complete deliverance from sin and death. The relation between the fifth and sixth petitions is that the fifth is basic for the sixth. Justification is the basis of sanctification. In the gift of justification, we have the right to be sanctified. We are justified in order that we may be delivered from sin and death. We are pardoned in order that we may be liberated. We are forgiven in order that we may be freed from the power and pollution of sin.”
Announcements (subject to God’s will)
Tuesday Bible study at 11 AM will critique further the soteriology of the Word of Faith that undergirds their way of obtaining earthly prosperity.
BRF Conference: Have you booked and paid for the BRF Conference yet? Full payment should be given to Kristin by this Wednesday, 20 June.
Ladies Bible study will meet this Friday at 9:30 AM. We will be discussing Psalm 139 from the book A 30-Day Walk with God in the Psalms.
Men’s Bible study is this Saturday, 22 June, at 7:30 PM on-line, considering Amos 2.
The Reformed Witness Hour broadcast next Lord’s day (Gospel 846 MW at 8:30 AM) by Rev. Bruinsma is entitled, “Abigail Pleads with David” (I Sam. 25:28-31).
Offerings: £2,656.05. Donations: £300 (New Jersey, USA).
Translation Additions: 2 Polish, 2 Portuguese and 1 Spanish.
PRC News: Rev. Decker declined the call from Loveland PRC. Hope (Redlands) PRC will call from a trio of Revs. Engelsma, Eriks and Brummel. Lynden PRC has a new trio of Revs. Barnhill, Brummel and Lee. Rev. and Deb Bleyenberg are in Singapore for the CERC’s annual church camp. Synod unanimously approved all aspects of Arend Haveman’s examination and declared him a candidate for the ministry of the Word and sacraments in the PRC. The work of Synod 2024 will continue this coming week.
The Righteousness of God
(an article by Rev. Dale Kuiper)
“He is the Rock, his work is perfect; for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deut. 32:4).
This text is taken from the beginning of a speech that Moses made before the nation of Israel shortly before she crossed the Jordan into the promised land. Actually this is more than a speech, it is a song; a beautiful word of praise to God in which Moses recounts two histories. There is the sad history of the unfaithfulness of the Israelites to their God, and the history of God’s dealings with this stiff-necked people, a treatment of them in which God was always strictly righteous.
Because Israel had so often failed to hear the Word of God, Moses addresses his words to the heavens and the earth … Let the whole creation bear witness to the truth of what he says! “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the shower upon the grass: Because I will publish the name of the Lord; ascribe ye greatness unto our God.” Then the faithful servant of God points Israel and us to the everlasting truth that we may never forget. “He is the Rock, his work is perfect; for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he,” From this passage in its historical setting, we may learn regarding the wonderful virtue of God’s righteousness.
Righteousness is a legal term. Righteousness involves perfect conformity to some standard or law. That is true in respect to man, and is no less true when we consider the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God means that He conforms perfectly to a certain standard. The Hebrew and the Greek terms express the idea of being straight. So we must conceive of a certain standard, a perfectly straight line. That which is conformed to that standard is righteous; that which does not conform at all points is crooked, perverse, unrighteous and evil.
God is righteous in that He conforms very exactly to an ethical yardstick. To be sure this yardstick is not one of man’s devising, as if man could ever call God into account and judge whether God was worthy of being called righteous! Rather, that God conforms to a perfect standard means that He conforms to His own holiness! God is spotlessly holy; God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. He never takes delight in sin, cannot tempt man with sin, can have nothing to do with sin. That is God as far as His own Being is concerned. In all God’s willing, acting, and speaking, in all His dealings with the sons of men, He is always in perfect conformity with the standard of His own holiness. We could define the righteousness of God, then, as that virtue according to which God, in His willing, working, and speaking, is always in harmony with His holiness, or the ethical perfection of His Being.
In the text above, Moses makes a marvellous statement regarding the righteousness of Jehovah! His point is that in all God’s dealings with Israel in the wilderness, He was always righteous, always in conformity with His beautiful holiness. Notice how the Old Testament mediator heaps up words as he ascribes greatness to God. He is the Rock; not a rock, but the Rock, the One who is firm, unchangeable, the standard and criterion of all things. For this reason, His works are perfect, that is, sound and blameless. Hence, all His ways are judgment; in all His dealings with men, God is always busy comparing men to the standard of His Holy Word and Law. In all of this, He is a God of truth and without iniquity … just and right, or just and straight, is He! What makes this passage so beautiful, in addition to the fact that all these terms are heaped one upon another, is that Moses declares this so joyfully even though this righteous God has recently declared that Moses would not enter into the land. You know the history of Moses striking the rock in anger, of calling the people of God rebels … God in His righteousness declared that Moses would see the land, but he would not enter it. Moses pleaded, but God said, “No, and don’t ever bring it up again.” Moses bows to that judgment of God, and here even magnifies the God of such consistent, high righteousness.
The Scripture uses the word righteousness in several other senses. When we read in Matthew 19 that Jesus came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance, it is clear that the Lord is speaking of a counterfeit, man-made, useless righteousness. Second, the Bible, especially in the Psalms, calls certain men righteous, because they are as to the direction and tendency of their lives, not sinless, but in harmony with the law of God nonetheless. The righteous stand out in contrast to, and in opposition to, the wicked (Ps. 1). Third, the Scriptures also speak of a righteousness provided by God for His children that is an imputed righteousness; it is not earned by works of the law, it is not deserved or a matter of wages, but it is graciously bestowed upon a man because by faith he is joined to Jesus Christ who is the righteousness of God. But in our passage, the righteousness of God Himself is on the forefront. It is even the case that if God were not righteous, He would not be and could not be God. Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid!
God reveals His righteousness by unfailingly rewarding good with good and punishing evil with evil. That God blesses obedience and punishes disobedience is the outstanding lesson of Deuteronomy 32. Had the Israelites believed the report of the two faithful spies, God would have led them into the promised land immediately; because they accepted the lying report of the ten spies in unbelief, God caused them to wander in the wilderness a year for each day the spies were in the land of Canaan (cf., Ps. 81:11-12). In the last part of Romans 1, the apostle Paul makes clear that God gives the wicked over to uncleanness, to vile affections, and to a reprobate mind as a punishment upon their sin, after they had manifest that knowing God they refused to serve and glorify Him.
… God also rewards good with good, for “we must all appear before the judgment seat of God to receive according as we have done in the body, whether that be good or bad.” If a man, by the sovereign grace of God, believes and repents, calling upon the name of Jesus in the shadow of the cross, God grants the great gift of forgiveness and everlasting life. To be sure, it is God who works the sorrow and repentance, the turning and the obedience. And then the righteous God blesses His own work in man with more and greater blessings! And there is never a departure from that fundamental way of dealing with the sons of men.
Sometimes children of God have questions at this point. This was the case with Jeremiah (Jer. 12:1) and Asaph (Ps. 73). Do you ever have the same kind of problem? I do. We observe wickedness, violence and rebellion about us in the world. Yet those who do these things seem to prosper. They seem not to have any difficulties, they have more than their hearts desire and they have the praise of men. But the church and the children of God have hard going. There is suffering, poverty and persecution. Does God not see? Why does He not strike the wicked down in His wrath? We need to be instructed from the Word of God, and we need to learn that God is indeed aware of these things and He is judging those wicked every day. With the ease that they experience, God is setting them in slippery places that they may hasten on to destruction. It isn’t even the case that they get away with things now, but God’s justice catches up with them in the Judgment Day. Rather, God judges all men day by day. He rewards good with good and evil with evil day by day. In the Judgment Day all these things become clear, unto the glory of His name!
There is another manifestation of the righteousness of God that the church must know and loves to know. At the cross of Jesus Christ, the righteousness of God was displayed fully, terribly and beautifully! There He Who knew no sin was made sin for us. In order to satisfy His justice and to maintain His righteousness in the salvation of all the elect, God dealt with Christ as if He had committed our sins. Since Christ went all the way to death in submission to His Father’s will, God accounts to the elect the perfect obedience of Christ. God did not set aside His righteousness in the salvation of the church, but He caused His saving love to reach us in the way of justice, satisfaction and payment! Psalm 85:10 expresses this so beautifully: “Mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Hence, we must conclude that God’s dealings with the wicked world and with the redeemed church are always characterized by justice and righteousness.
What is the believers response to this great truth of the righteousness of God? The first response of faith is to be filled with fear, reverence and awe! … Jesus instructs us to “Fear Him, which after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him.” The response of faith is to love the law of God and to meditate upon it by day and night. The response of faith is to hate sin as God hates sin; to condemn it, flee from it and avoid the very appearance of it. The believer fears God and keeps His commandments!
In the second place, the response of the believer is a deep thankfulness that the righteous judgment of God does not cause him to go down into death, but secures for him a place in the everlasting tabernacle of God. “God hath made Christ to be sin for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made righteousness of God in Him.” Thus we spend our days in living a holy, thankful life to the praise of our Redeemer God, and it will take eternity adequately to thank God for His unspeakable Gift and His unspeakable goodness.
