Covenant Protestant Reformed Church
83 Clarence Street, Ballymena BT43 5DR
Rev. Angus Stewart
Lord’s Day, 30 December, 2018
“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved,
bowels of mercies,
kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering ...”
(Col. 3:12)
Morning Service - 11:00 AM
Administration of the Lord’s Supper
This Is My Body
[download]
[youtube]
Scripture Reading: I Corinthians 11:17-34
Text: I Corinthians 11:24
I. The Clear Meaning
II. The Sacrificial Breaking
III. The Spiritual Eating
Psalms: 33:12-20; 92:12-15; 34:14-20; 63:1-8
Evening Service - 6:00 PM
Gospel Living (11)
The Christian’s Work
[download]
[youtube]
Scripture Reading: Romans 12
Text: Romans 12:11
I. Not Slothful in Diligence
II. Fervent in Spirit
III. Serving the Lord
Psalms: 103:1-7; 93:1-5; 119:33-40; 116:9-19
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.cprf.co.uk/live.html
CPRC YouTube: www.youtube.com/cprcni
CPRC Facebook: www.facebook.com/CovenantPRC
Announcements (subject to God’s will)
After a week of self-examination, CPRC confessing members in good standing are called to partake of the Lord’s Supper. Your participation in the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood is in part a witness that you repent of your sins, believe in Jesus Christ as your only righteousness, and desire to live a new and godly life. As this heavenly food can be taken to one’s judgment (I Cor. 11:28-30) and as the common reception of the Lord’s Supper is a confession of doctrinal unity (Acts 2:42), the elders supervise the partaking of the sacrament. Visitors who are members of other denominations must already have presented to the Council an attestation from their church that they are confessing members in good standing and have received permission from the Council to partake of the Lord’s Supper.
The December Covenant Reformed News and Rev. Stewart’s latest letter to the PRC are on the back table. Bible reading programmes for 2019 are also available.
There will be no catechism classes tomorrow evening. They will resume on Monday, 7 January, when we will have our mid-year tests.
All are invited to the manse tomorrow night for fellowship and games at 7:30 PM or any time thereafter. Please let the Stewarts know, if you plan to come.
Belgic Confession Class meets this Wednesday, 2 January, at 7:45 PM to discuss the Anabaptist view of the Lord’s Supper in connection with Article 35.
The Reformed Witness Hour broadcast next Lord’s Day (Gospel 846 MW at 8:30 AM) by Rev. Bruinsma is entitled “God’s Faithfulness” (I Thess. 5:24).
The Council meets on Monday, 7 January, at 8 PM.
Tuesday Bible Study at 11 AM meets on 8 January to study the drink offering, etc.
The congregational dinner is on Friday, 11 January, at Ross Park Hotel, with arrival from 7 PM on and dinner at 7:30 PM. A sign-up sheet is on the back table. The hotel wants bookings in good time so please sign up today.
There will be tea after the evening service on 13 January (Tea Rota: Group B).
CPRC Lecture: Rev. Koole will be speaking on “The Reformation and Family Worship” on Wednesday, 16 January, at 7:30 PM.
The CPRC is planning a mini-conference on Saturday, 13 April, 2019, on the theme “The Original Five Points of Calvinism: The 400th Anniversary of the Canons of Dordt” with Prof. Engelsma as our speaker. Prof. will also give two other lectures relating to the Synod of Dordt in the weeks following the conference.
Offerings: General Fund: £554.70.
Translations: 1 Hungarian and 1 Russian.
PRC News: Rev. Bill Langerak declined the call to Immanuel PRC (Lacombe, AB). so their new trio is Revs. Barnhill, Huizinga, and J. Laning. The new trio for minister on loan to the CERC (Singapore) is Revs. J. Engelsma, Eriks and Guichelaar.
Still the Spirit of Truth (1)
by Prof. David Engelsma (Standard Bearer, vol. 65, issue 16)
A strange “Spirit” is abroad in the churches today. It is acclaimed as the Holy Spirit of God, indeed as the Holy Spirit in a fulness of power, a treasury of gifts and a glory of operations such as have not been experienced by the church since the day of Pentecost. But this “Spirit” is strange. It behaves oddly.
The strangeness is not its mysterious character. Like the wind, the Holy Spirit is mysterious, as Jesus pointed out in John 3:8: “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell whence it comes, and whither it goes: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” But this “Spirit” has a strange “sound” or voice. It is not only that it talks in tongues, although one who has learned from II Corinthians 12:12 and Hebrews 2:3-4 that the miraculous works and extraordinary gifts of the Spirit were apostolic—attached to the apostolic office and intended to attest apostolic doctrine—will be suspicious of a “Spirit” that suddenly reintroduces miracles after 1,800 years. But the voice of this “Spirit” is radically different from that of the Holy Spirit who is made known to us in the Bible and with whom we have become familiar by virtue of His dwelling in the church for almost 2,000 years.
The peculiar “Spirit” of our day is a critic of Scripture. It exposes Genesis 1-11, with the doctrines of creation, the fall, the original gospel-promise and the flood, as unhistorical, unreliable and false. With a kind of hissing sound, it asks church members, “Yea, has God said?”
It adds to the Bible. Sometimes it does this by giving people special revelations directly from heaven. At other times, it leads learned scholars to reveal to the church truths that are not found in Scripture, usually at the expense of truths that are found there, e.g., the truth of the headship of the husband in marriage and the family. In this way, this “Spirit” judges Scripture to be insufficient.
The strange “Spirit” displays an indifference towards, if not a disdain for, doctrine. The confession of sound doctrine is by no means the main mark of the churches in which this “Spirit” is mightily at work. Pure preaching of the truths of Scripture is not primary in the worship services where this “Spirit” presides. Rather, it encourages its people to regard doctrine as cold, loveless, divisive and dead. It brushes the church’s creeds aside as irrelevant to the church’s present situation. It is either unwilling or unable to teach people to distinguish between truth and error, much less to love truth so that they embrace it at any cost and to hate the lie so that they repudiate it. Men and women filled with this “Spirit” are either happily ignorant of doctrine or sharply antagonistic to it.
One striking feature of this “Spirit’s” unconcern with doctrine is its perfect willingness to dwell richly and work powerfully in churches that preach the lie and in persons who receive and confess the lie. This seems to bother the “Spirit,” or hinder its work, not at all. Explaining the apostle’s teaching in I John 2:20ff., that the believer has an anointing of the Holy Spirit so that he knows the truth and so that he detects the liar who denies that Jesus is the Christ, Calvin insists, correctly, that this liar is not only the one who outrightly denies the Godhead of Jesus, but also the one who denies that Jesus is a complete Saviour by sovereign grace alone:
Then broke out Pelagius, who, indeed, raised no dispute respecting Christ’s essence, but allowed Him to be true man and God; yet he transferred to us almost all the honour that belongs to Him. It is, indeed, to reduce Christ to nothing, when His grace and power are set aside. So the Papists, at this day, setting up free-will in opposition to the grace of the Holy Spirit, ascribing a part of their righteousness and salvation to the merits of works ... have a sort of fictitious Christ .... We now see that Christ is denied, whenever those things which peculiarly belong to Him, are taken away from Him (Comm. on I John 2:22).
But the strange “Spirit” of our time is not at all displeased with Pelagius’ son, Arminius; indeed, this “Spirit” seems to delight in the doctrine that the honour of Christ in saving sinners is shared by the sinner himself who cooperates with Christ by making the decision for Christ by freewill, upon which his salvation hangs.
By means both of ignorance of and contempt for doctrine, our modern “Spirit” is accomplishing a most astonishing union of people and churches. Protestants of the widest and sharpest doctrinal differences are now able to come together in the unity of this “Spirit” in worship and in the fellowship of the Lord’s Supper. It even unites professing Protestants and Roman Catholics who remain in the Roman Catholic Church.
Feeling is the main thing to this “Spirit,” if indeed feeling is not all. Worship is emotional excitement before God. Joy in Christ is feeling good. Love for the neighbour is a warm, accepting, tolerant feeling. The peace of the church is the member’s feeling for the other members, especially his or her deep feeling for the others.
A strange “Spirit,” this!
For it is not the Spirit of truth. By its own cheerful admission, it is not the Spirit of truth. ... to be continued