" THE HOLY SPIRIT ALONE WORKS FAITH ."

65. Q. Since then faith alone makes us share in Christ and all His benefits, where does this faith come from?
A. From the Holy Spirit,[1] who works it in our hearts by the preaching of the gospel,[2] and strengthens it by the use of the sacraments.[3]
[1] John 3:5; I Cor. 2:10-14; Eph. 2:8; Phil. 1:29. [2] Rom. 10:17; I Pet. 1:23-25. [3] Matt. 28:19, 20; I Cor. 10:16.

66. Q. What are the sacraments?
A. The sacraments are holy, visible signs and seals. They were instituted by God so that by their use He might the more fully declare and seal to us the promise of the gospel.[1] And this is the promise: that God graciously grants us forgiveness of sins and everlasting life because of the one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross.[2]
[1] Gen. 17:11; Deut. 30:6; Rom. 4:11 [2] Matt. 26:27, 28; Acts 2:38; Heb. 10:10.

67. Q. Are both the Word and the sacraments then intended to focus our faith on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as the only ground of our salvation?
A. Yes, indeed. The Holy Spirit teaches us in the gospel and assures us by the sacraments that our entire salvation rests on Christ's one sacrifice for us on the cross.[1]
[1] Rom. 6:3; I Cor. 11:26; Gal. 3:27.

68. Q. How many sacraments has Christ instituted in the new covenant?
A. Two: holy baptism and the holy supper.[1]
[1] Matt. 28:19, 20; I Cor. 11:23-26.

Scripture Reading:
Romans 10:9-17
Acts 16:11-15

Singing:  (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 19:1,2
Psalm 19:3,4
Psalm 84:1,5
Hymn 37:1,2
Hymn 36:4,5

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

A couple of Lord’s Day’s back, the Catechism had been most emphatic: to be righteous before God, to escape God’s eternal wrath and be justified before the Creator of heaven and earth, one must have faith. That fact makes the question imperative: where does faith come from? That’s the question addressed in our Lord’s Day for this afternoon.

The answer is clear. Faith, says Lord’s Day 25, comes from the Holy Spirit. That excludes any other source; faith does not come from parents, does not come from ministers, does not come from church itself; faith comes from the Holy Spirit alone. So it is to the Holy Spirit that LD 25 draws our attention, to the Spirit and how He works faith in the hearts of sinners.

The Spirit: He’s in today; to speak of the Spirit is fashionable. And the role of the Spirit in working faith, yes, that’s acknowledged too. But the big question is: how does the Spirit work faith? The answer to that question depends on who the Spirit actually is – and on who we are.

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

1. Who is the Holy Spirit.
2. How does the Holy Spirit work faith.
3. What responsibilities follow.

Faith comes from the Holy Spirit. That fact, I said, means that any other possible source of faith is ruled out; faith is not inherited from one’s parents, does not come from the minister or from teachers. Faith comes from the Spirit alone, comes from nowhere else.

It raises a question: why does faith come from the Holy Spirit alone? Why can I not receive faith from, say, my parents?

The answer to that, brothers and sisters, older and younger, lies in what we people are. The Scriptures make clear that we are sinners, more, that we are spiritually dead. From experience we know that the dead do not do anything; dead is dead. So, a person spiritually dead is not able to work faith in himself. From experience we know too that no creature can resurrect anything dead from the dead; it is simply beyond our ability to give new life to any creature.

Yet of God we read that He can give new 1ife. It pleased God in the beginning to utter a decree calling birds and bees, fish and trees into existence. He spoke, and there they were. It pleased Him too to fashion a man from the dust of the earth, and then to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, with as result that "man became a living being." In the course of the history of the world, the Lord has time and again given new life to the dead; there was the son of the widow of Zarephath, the son of the Shunamite couple, the raising of Lazarus, the boy who fell out the window after listening to Paul, and so many more examples. The example, of course, is Jesus Christ who arose from the dead after three days in the grave. In a word, God alone has the power to give life where there is no life. God alone has the power to raise from the dead. And that reality is not only comforting in the face of death; that reality is also instructive on the matter of where faith comes from. For faith implies a resurrection from spiritual death, and for that reason one is totally dependent on God alone for faith; He alone is the Giver of life.

Faith comes from God. Yet we can be more specific: faith comes from the Holy Spirit. It is specifically the work of the third Person of the Trinity to resurrect to life those dead sinners who are chosen by God to be His special possession.

The Holy Spirit. He, it is said, is the forgotten Person of the Holy Trinity. What God the Father does is well known; He created and now upholds the world, including us His children. Similarly, we know what the task of the Son is; Christ reconciles sinners to God. But what is the task of the Holy Spirit? What specifically does He do?

One could mention a number of activities of the Spirit, could mention too the one highlighted in our Lord’s Day. He works faith in the hearts of sinners. That, however, is not the central task of the Holy Spirit. His central task is to draw attention to Jesus Christ; the Spirit is Christ-centered. By way of illustration, one can refer to the task of a floodlight placed in front of a building; the task of the floodlight is not to draw attention to itself, but rather to the building. So also the Spirit: never in the Bible does the Spirit draw attention to Himself; always He directs the attention of Bible readers to Jesus Christ. That task remains central for the Spirit even today; today too He directs the attention of people to Jesus Christ, today too He causes people to behold the Christ and appreciate the Christ for what He is.

That means this. It was God whom we offended in Paradise with our fall into sin, God whom we daily offend by our repeated transgressions. It is necessary, then, that we be reconciled to this God; if we are not reconciled to Him we shall suffer the consequences of His intense wrath - hell. Yet from LD 23 we know that there is only one way to be reconciled to God, and that is through Jesus Christ. There must, said that Lord’s Day, be a mediator between us and God.

Yet it is not just that there must be a Mediator between us and God; one is also to see Christ as the Mediator He is. And that can be done only by faith; by faith alone can one see Jesus Christ as the Mediator, who reconciles men to God. But no person dead in sin can behold the Christ; to see Christ one must receive the gift of spiritual vision, the gift of faith. And that is the task of the Spirit. His central task is to draw the attention of people to Jesus Christ. To do that, He opens the eyes of the spiritually blind. In the words of LD 25: the Holy Spirit works faith.

So the situation is this: to be reconciled to God, one needs Jesus Christ; without Christ there is no salvation. But to believe in Jesus Christ, to appreciate Christ for the Savior He is, one needs the Holy Spirit. In other words, there is no salvation without the Holy Spirit. Take away the Holy Spirit, ignore the Holy Spirit, and salvation itself is lost.

That’s why Lord’s Day 25 is not at all flattering when it tells us where faith comes from. Without the work of the Holy Spirit one cannot be saved, and that is simply and only because we are ourselves dead in sin, are totally depraved. It is that hopeless depravity within ourselves that lies behind this LD.

The reality of that total depravity ought also to mean, beloved, that we do well to make a point of listening humbly to LD 25. We may find it disagreeable that we cannot work faith in ourselves, may also find it disagreeable that the Spirit works faith in one specific way. But we’re not asked whether we find God’s word about the work of the Holy Spirit agreeable to our depraved natures or not. What we are asked to do is humbly accept the fact that there is no salvation without the Holy Spirit, no salvation because we cannot see Christ unless the Spirit work faith in us. So we do well to 1isten humbly tonight and accept what the Lord tells us about the origin of faith. And its consequences.

That brings us to our second point: how does the Holy Spirit work faith.

All the world is God’s handiwork, and so displays His glory. The rocks and trees, the birds and seas once did not exist; God spoke, and there they were – and so they all join in declaring the glory of God. So the Bible can also say that all men everywhere are responsible to acknowledge God: "what can be known about God is plain to [men], because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse" (Rom 1:19f).

But we are to recall, beloved, that what reconciles the sinner to God is not knowledge of God or faith in some Creator. The Scriptures are emphatic, and we echo it in LD 23: a sinner can be reconciled to God only by faith in Jesus Christ. And from what one sees in creation one cannot learn anything about Jesus Christ or about the cross of Calvary. Yes, the Holy Spirit works faith in Christ. But He does not do that by means of creation.

How does the Holy Spirit work the faith needed for salvation? It has pleased God, brothers and sisters, that the Holy Spirit moves people in such a way that they would speak the words of God to other people. So writes Peter: "no prophecy every came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (II Pet 1:21). And why was it that the Spirit caused men to speak to others the words of God? The reason for that was because the Spirit wished to direct the attention of the hearers to God and specifically to His saving work in Jesus Christ. He caused men of old to speak His words to others either so that these others would be forced to make up their minds about whether to believe in Jesus Christ or not, or to comfort and encourage those who already embraced the Savior in faith. In a word: the Spirit caused men to speak the words of God long ago in order that those addressed by their preaching might be moved to faith in Jesus Christ.

But it wasn’t just that the Spirit caused men long ago to speak the words of God so that long ago faith might be worked. It is also so that He caused a written record of God’s Word and works to be prepared and preserved. For we all know that the spoken word changes in the process of being passed on from mouth to mouth. So, in order to give stability, in order to preserve a true record of what men had to hear in any given generation, the Spirit used human writers as Moses, David, and Jeremiah, to put on paper what God said to Israel 3000 years ago. Similarly, what Jesus Christ said in the course of His earthly sojourn the Spirit recorded by the hand of evangelists as Matthew. For the sake of the church of all ages, the Spirit caused Paul to think through the implications of Christ’s sacrifice and then write a letter to the Romans, a letter preserved for the church till today. In the words of the Belgic Confession: "God commanded His servants, the prophets and apostles, to commit His revealed Word to writing" (Art 3). The reason? It was –continues the Belgic Confession- because of "His special care for us and our salvation." The Spirit caused the Word of God to be written and to be preserved so that God’s people may have that Word, and so have their attention directed to Jesus Christ.

Yet it is not so that it is simply through having and reading the Bible that the Spirit is pleased to work faith. For the Bible is given to the church (cf I Tim 3:15). And to the church the Lord has given gifts. "His gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers" (Eph 4). What was the task of these apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers? Their task was to teach, to preach. For the Spirit is pleased to work faith specifically through the preaching. That’s what Paul writes to the Romans: "faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ" (10:17). In the words of the Cat: the Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts "by the preaching of the gospel."

The truth that the Holy Spirit works faith through the preaching is abundantly illustrated by what we read about the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. On Pentecost day He was poured out, but did not work faith in the hearts of any just like that; no, the Spirit moved Peter to preach. And once Peter began to preach, then things happened. For what was the result of his preaching? "When they heard this they were cut to the heart." And further: "those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about 3000 souls" (Acts 2:37ff). That faith is worked through the preaching is pointed up further by the example of Lydia. Paul and Luke came to Philippi and there spoke to certain women. Then we read this: "one who heard us was a woman named Lydia…. The Lord opened her heart to give heed to what was said by Paul" (Act 16:13f). It is that same truth –the Spirit works faith through the preaching- that prompted Peter to write to the Christians of the Dispersion: "You have been born anew … through the living and abiding word of God," a word that was "preached to you" (I Pet l:23ff).

So it is, beloved, that the Spirit has been pleased to bind Himself to one particular means for working faith. Just as the Lord is pleased to keep our bodies alive day by day by means of physical food (God gives us bread, drink, etc), so God is pleased to use a specific means to work and strengthen faith. That means is the preaching of the gospel (cf C of D, III/IV.17). God does not plant faith in the heart just like that, does not cause one to believe in Christ in some mysterious, hocus-pocus, fashion; no, God the Holy Spirit is sovereignly pleased to work faith, and repeatedly strengthen that faith, by the preaching of the Gospel.

And it’s not just the audible preaching God is pleased to use. Our LD makes reference also to sacraments. And what are sacraments? Sacraments are simply pictures that illustrate the content of the spoken word. So, the content of the sacraments is identical to the contents of the preaching; both draw attention to Jesus Christ. The audible preaching as it comes to us Sunday by Sunday from the pulpit shows us Jesus Christ, shows us how He shed His blood to pay for the sins of many; the visible preaching in the sacraments spells out the same thing. From time to time we witness the sacrament of baptism; in the sight of all water was poured over the infants head, in order to make clear to all of us that sins are washed away by the blood of Christ in the same way as dirt is washed away by water: baptism is preaching. From time to time we witness the sacrament of Lord’s Supper; the bread is broken and given to each individual in order to illustrate how Christ’s body is broken for each: Lord’s Supper is preaching. LD 25: "both the Word and the sacraments are intended to focus our faith on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as the only ground of our salvation; the content of the spoken and of the visible preaching is identical. And the purpose of both is the same too; both the audible preaching and the visible preaching are spiritual food needed to nurture and sustain a life of faith in Jesus Christ, a life that looks to Christ for reconciliation with God.

We come to our last point:

We understand that certain implications necessarily follow from this truth – third point. In our day of visual entertainment, the sermon is considered to be the duller part of the worship service – and one hears sounds arguing that churches should move to more modern means of communication to bring across the gospel.

Throughout the ages, Biblically faithful churches have been characterized by their heavy emphasis on preaching, characterized even by the fact that the pulpit is the central attraction in the church building. And why is this so? This is so simply and only because Scriptures tell us that it pleases the Lord to work and strengthen faith specifically through the preaching. Remove the emphasis in church from the preaching, and you’ve weakened the means used by the Spirit to work faith in those chosen to life. The preaching is not just "one of those things"; the preaching is very much a "spiritual event" (Wells, 60), an event in which the Holy Spirit is at work. In the preaching, it pleases the Spirit to take hold of certain men, and use their tongues to re-speak to the congregations in 2004 the words of God given originally some 20 centuries ago and more. In the preaching of the word, it is the Holy Spirit who is very much at work. That fact implies that we cannot make light of the preaching; the preaching is the means used by the Spirit to open the kingdom of heaven.

So: would you wish to be saved? LD 23 says you can be justified before God only by faith in Jesus Christ. Ld 25 adds that faith is worked by the Holy Spirit alone, and the means the Spirit is pleased to use is the preaching, a preaching that’s heard in church. You would wish to be saved? According to LD 25, it is to church that you must come, to church, for outside of it there is no salvation; it is in church that salvation is available (cf Belgic Confession, Art 28).

The preaching of the gospel in church is at bottom, then, a miracle. In the words of Calvin: God is pleased to make His voice heard through the stammering tongue of the preacher. Or as Luther said it: God lives in the preacher’s mouth (Wells, 61). That is a marvel indeed; God takes men, sinners, mortals, and is pleased to use men who have their own strengths and weaknesses to re-speak in today’s setting the words He recorded so long ago (cf pg 60).

Yes, it’s a marvel. And because God is pleased to use men to bring His Word to His people today is it the responsibility of preachers to study that Scripture well, and apply that Scripture in an urgent, decisive and contemporary manner. Because of the nature of the preaching may the preacher never cease studying the Word of God, and never become out of touch with the society in which both he and his hearers 1ive.

But the fact that the Spirit is pleased to work and strengthen faith through the preaching means also that the congregation is to make a point of being in church. That’s where salvation is available; very well, then it is the obligation of one and all to join the church, join it not just in the sense that one’s name is included in the membership register, but also in the sense that one faithfully attend and so make use of the means the Spirit is pleased to use. To miss out on church, to absent oneself without a reason justifiable before God, is acting in a fashion inconsistent with LD 25. Because of what the Spirit is pleased to do in church, it is for every one to be here as often as is humanly possible.

Yet it’s not just being physically present in church that is required in LD 25. The Spirit does not pour faith into those who sit in church; He works faith in those who soak in the preaching, who digest it, work with it. That implies that in church one is to be awake, is to be alert. Which in turn means that we do well to get ourselves a good night’s rest before the Sunday; that’s common sense.

Given that it is through the preaching that the Holy Spirit is pleased to speak to those who are to be saved, it follows that it ought not to be of great importance to the congregation who the preacher is. It is true that the one preacher is easier to listen to than another. But if it pleases the Spirit to take one particular preacher and place that preacher on some pulpit for any given Sunday, it is for the congregation not to respond with: "It’s only him", or "him again"; it is for the congregation to accept the person whom the Lord directs to the congregation for their instruction and edification. As Paul writes to the Romans: "how beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news" (10:15). We do well to be careful that we do not become too critical of those whom God sends to us to preach His Word of salvation. And if it be that a given preacher is difficult to listen to, it is for us to work all the harder in church; the Spirit speaks through the mouth of sinful, finite men. Let us beware that we do not become lazy, expecting the Word of salvation and the strength that comes from it to be poured into us with no effort on our part. After all, it is quite possible to starve oneself spiritually,

Another consequence flows out of LD 25. If it is true that one can be saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone, and if it is also true that faith comes only from the Holy Spirit who in turn is pleased to work it through the preaching of the gospel, then the consequence surely follows that there must be preachers of the gospel. We know that today there is a shortage of preachers, in our own bond as well as overseas. Preachers are needed, today and in the future, and so it becomes a matter of consistency with the truth of LD 25 that we look around in our midst for young men who have the gifts needed to be preachers of the gospel, and then encourage these brothers to prepare themselves for the ministry.

Similarly, there are in this world countless thousands who do not know Christ, who have never heard of Christ. They shall not come to faith either unless the gospel be preached to them. That’s why missionaries are so necessary, why we in Australia ought to do all we can to send out more missionaries. For God, we’ll not forget, desires all men to be saved.

There is but one way to be saved, and that is by faith in Jesus Christ. We know now where faith comes from: the Holy Spirit works it by means of the preaching. So what do we do? We make a point of submitting to the means the Spirit is pleased to do. More, we do our utmost to ensure that the Gospel be preached to those who don’t know Christ.  Amen.