Covenant Protestant Reformed Church
83 Clarence Street, Ballymena BT43 5DR
Rev. Angus Stewart
Lord’s Day, 27 November, 2022
“And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and
heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29)
Morning Service – 11:00 AM
The Mosaic Law: Illustration, Expostulation & Allegory (2)
The Heir Comes of Age [youtube]
Scripture Reading: Galatians 4:1-7; Romans 8:12-27
Text: Galatians 4:4-7
I. The Sending of the Son
II. The Adoption of Sons
III. The Application to Sons
Psalms: 34:1-10; 49:10-14a; 107:10-16; 3:1-8
Evening Service – 6:00 PM
In Ourselves, We Cannot Stand a Moment! [youtube]
Scripture Reading: James 4
Text: Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 52
I. Our Terrible Weakness
II. Our Mortal Enemies
III. Our Earnest Prayer
Psalms: 61:1-5; 49:14b-20; 38:1-7; 143:1-7a
For CDs of the sermons and DVDs of the worship services, contact Stephen Murray
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
Quotes to Consider
Martin Luther on Galatians 4:4: “If we think of Christ as Paul here depicts Him, we shall never go wrong. We shall never be in danger of misconstruing the meaning of the Law. We shall understand that the Law does not justify. We shall understand why a Christian observes laws: For the peace of the world, out of gratitude to God, and for a good example that others may be attracted to the Gospel.”
John Brown on Galatians 4:5: “… it was obviously necessary that that Divine Substitute should become both a man and a Jew, and in human nature, and subject to the Mosaic law, and as all his people under that law were bound to do, and suffer all they had deserved to suffer, and thus lay a foundation for the honourable termination of a system which had served its purpose, and the continuation of which was inconsistent with the higher and better order of things which was now to take place.”
Announcements (subject to God’s will)
The November Covenant Reformed News is on the back table. A few 2022 PRCA Acts of Synod are available. Because there are limited copies, please take one to read and return it when you are finished.
Monday catechism classes:
5:00PM: Corey, Jason, Katelyn, Maisie & Sebastian (Seniors OT)
5:45PM: Eleanora, Felicity, Hannah, Jorja, Keagan, Lucas, Sammy, Somaya,
Sophie & Yossef (Beginners NT)
6:30PM: Penelope & Xander (Juniors OT)
7:15PM: Angelica, Bradley, Jack, Josh, Samuel & Taylor (Heidelberg, Book 2)
8:00PM: Alex, Jacob & Nathan (Pre-confession)
Membership Class: Billy & Val McCaughern, Monday at 9 PM.
Tuesday Bible study at 11 AM will meet to continue our discussion on faith and reason, looking at the Roman Catholic conception.
Belgic Confession Class meets this Wednesday at 7:30 PM. In connection with article 37, we will consider the characteristics of the signs of our Lord’s return.
The Saturday night Bible study will be held this week, 3 December, at 8 PM at the Kennedys’ home and on-line to finish Malachi 3.
The Reformed Witness Hour broadcast next Lord’s day (Gospel 846 MW at 8:30 AM) by Rev. Bruinsma is entitled, “The Messiah Revealed” (Isa. 40:4-5).
The baptism of Jude McCaughern is scheduled for the morning of 11 December.
Offerings: £995.57. Gift Aid Refund (for 1 year): £13,430.50.
Translation Additions: 1 Afrikaans, 2 Hungarian, 3 Polish, 2 Russian and 13 Swahili.
PRC News: Rev. J. Laning accepted the call from Zion PRC to be home missionary. Rev. Kortus declined the call to Hudsonville. Hosanna PRC called Rev. J. Holstege.
Dear friends in the CPRC and the wider UK,
First of all, greetings to my many friends in the CPRC and those to whom I have written in the Covenant Reformed News for many years. At the suggestion of Rev. Stewart, I write this. The occasion for his request is the death of my wife, Wilma, who after 69 years of marriage to me, was taken from me to her eternal home on 13 October, three days after my 92nd birthday. She was 91.
My wife had dementia for almost 11 years. We spent the last two years of her life in a nursing home where I lived with her and cared for her as much as I was able.
It is not so much the physical decline of her mind and body with which I am concerned in this letter. For the most part, she was contented, even though her sister had had the same disease and my wife knew what was happening to her. When she was bed and wheelchair bound, she sometimes wondered why God had reduced her to a condition in which she could do nothing herself, not even eat.
As she neared the end (although I did not know it, for her physical condition did not change much), looking back, I think she knew. She wanted to talk with me about something but I could not know what, for she had lost her ability to recall a lot of the words that expressed her thoughts. Then I discovered what she had on her mind: it was the horror of her sins, and her certainty that they were too many and too great for her to go to heaven.
I felt bad. Many people had been troubled similarly when they neared death. While the devil preys on old people with vicious intent to claim them as his own, he finds old people more easily affected by these things than when they were young. He reminds them of how wicked they are; he challenges them to think of the impossibility of such sinners going to heaven. He reminds people of the sordid characteristics of their youth. They know how important it is to pray as David in Psalm 25: “Lord, remember not the sins of my youth.”
Once my wife even brought up the subject of the relation between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility, though not with those words, of course. She finally said, after a long discussion, “I believe both are true, but how are both related?”
I reminded her that the question was 1,500 years old, and that the church’s best theologians struggled with that question and could not answer it. “Yes,” she said, “God is greater than we are.”
Death was nearer then I thought. Some time in the night she cried out triumphantly, “I’m going home! And no one can stop me.” God gave her the victory over all the black hordes of hell. The reason? Christ crushed the head of Satan on a small hill, in the darkness of hell itself, on a cruel cross, suffering more than you or I can suffer. He suffered for you and me, terrible sinners. Thus we believe and, weeping, we lay down the burden of our sins at the foot of that cross. He also died for a poor and unknown lady who was my wife.
She left behind a grieving husband. I faced the question of whether it is wrong to weep. I think not. She was a faithful and wonderful gift of God. I loved her dearly. I dreaded the thought of a marriage like the one my father encountered during his ministry. A new widow said to him, when he came to comfort her, “You do not have to comfort me, Rev. This is the happiest day of of my life.”
Paul tells us that, when we marry, we become one flesh. I am torn in half, for I am 1/2 alive and death has done it. God gave her to me, a priceless gift whose value is above rubies. But I’m going home soon as well. Then my wife and I will both be married to Christ and one flesh with him. Paul’s words ring in my ears: “ I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
Prof. H. Hanko
John Calvin on Galatians 4:6
The adoption which he had mentioned, is proved to belong to the Galatians by the following argument. This adoption must have preceded the testimony of adoption given by the Holy Spirit; but the effect is the sign of the cause. In venturing, he says, to call God your Father, you have the advice and direction of the Spirit of Christ; therefore it is certain that you are the sons of God. This agrees with what is elsewhere taught by him, that the Spirit is the earnest and pledge of our adoption, and gives to us a well-founded belief that God regards us with a father’s love. “Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (II Cor. 1:22). “Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit” (II Cor. 5:5). But it will be objected, do not wicked men, too, carry their rashness so far as to proclaim that God is their Father? Do they not frequently, with greater confidence than others, utter their false boasts? I reply, Paul’s language does not relate to idle boasting, or to the proud opinion of himself which any man may entertain, but to the testimony of a pious conscience which accompanies the new birth. This argument can have no weight but in the case of believers, for ungodly men have no experience of this certainty; as our Lord himself declares. “The Spirit of truth,” says he, “whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him” (John 14:17). This is implied in Paul’s words, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts. It is not what the persons themselves, in the foolish judgment of the flesh, may venture to believe, but what God declares in their hearts by his Spirit. The Spirit of his Son is a title more strictly adapted to the present occasion than any other that could have been employed. We are the sons of God, because we have received the same Spirit as his only Son. Let it be observed, that Paul ascribes this universally to all Christians; for where this pledge of the Divine love towards us is wanting, there is assuredly no faith. Hence it is evident what sort of Christianity belongs to Popery, since any man who says, that he has the Spirit of God, is charged by them with impious presumption. Neither the Spirit of God, nor certainty, belongs to their notion of faith. This single tenet held by them is a remarkable proof that, in all the schools of the Papists, the devil, the father of unbelief, reigns. I acknowledge, indeed, that the scholastic divines, when they enjoin upon the consciences of men the agitation of perpetual doubt, are in perfect agreement with what the natural feelings of mankind would dictate. It is the more necessary to fix in our minds this doctrine of Paul, that no man is a Christian who has not learned, by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to call God his Father.
