Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

We’re going through the confessional statement and covenant document of Reformation Covenant Church. We began that series last week and the considerations of what is a covenant. Why do we have a church covenant? We went from there into some of the distinctives in terms of the doctrinal positions of Reformation Covenant Church. We want to speak primarily in this series, which will probably last some four to six months, on the covenanting aspect of that document.

However, we thought that it was good to go into that with a basic understanding of some of the differences of Reformation Covenant Church and the other churches around us. So we have spent a couple of weeks talking about some of the distinctives of what we believe in this church. We began with a discussion of the sovereignty of God in salvation, which is known as election or Calvinism. We talked last week about the sovereignty of God in ethics or theonomy—the abiding validity of God’s law.

And we’ll talk today about the sovereignty of God in history, dealing with what we can expect about the future for the church and for the world as we look down through the ages as God has instructed us to do.

Now, really, none of this is new and novel. It’s important to stress that, I suppose, because to some of us, these things do sound new and different for the church, at least for the churches that we’ve been involved with. However, it is not at all true that this is some kind of new movement in the history of the world. Over the last 2,000 years, the Christian church has been fairly united over that period of time over these particular truths that we’re talking about.

Next week we will probably continue on talking about another difference, a doctrinal difference with Reformation Covenant Church dealing with the sacraments. And again, infant baptism, though you may not adhere to that position at this point in time, should not be discarded out of hand without some careful evaluation. For the historic church has held to that position.

And really, what’s new and novel in the history of the church is not the application of God’s law to every area of life. It’s not Calvinism, or it’s not understanding the sovereignty of God in ethics, in salvation, in history. What’s new and novel in the history of the church is what we’ve seen in our country in the last 50 or 100 years—a growing irrelevance of the church to the society around us and a retreat from that society and a belief in the ultimate determination of man and his power to affect change.

It’s interesting as we get into today’s topic that there are relationships between, as we’ve tried to point out, between the sovereignty of God and its application in these various spheres. People that reject the sovereignty of God in salvation will also tend to reject the sovereignty of God in terms of ethics and in terms of history as well. I think it is a truth that where you place your sovereignty, where you understand the source of action, the determining source of all things that occur—that’s the source of your law also, and that will also be the source of your eschatology.

So really, in a sense, I was thinking about that: the pagans, who reject the sovereignty of God and who affirm the sovereignty of man in history, can have a positive eschatology because they believe that man is evolving and can become godlike in his ability to control all things. And you really can’t understand the modern-day state apart from that perspective. So the pagan who rejects the sovereignty of God and affirms the sovereignty of man—his law issues forth from man, and his eschatology does as well.

It is the Arminian Christian, or the one who rejects the sovereignty of God in terms of election, who ends up with an ethical system that is a hodgepodge or a mixture—trying to take some of the commandments that God has given us and adding some common sense of our own and adding some things of the philosophers of the world, and then through that mechanism coming up with some sort of synthesis in terms of ethics. It’s that system which also usually espouses a pessimistic view of history. And if you believe that man is ultimately the determiner of his own fate, the fate of the world, I’d be pessimistic too, particularly when you see the law systems that man would throw up.

But in any event, we want to continue today talking about the sovereignty of God and its relationship to history. And really, if you remember last week, we didn’t really get to this point in last week’s message. And really, I suppose it should be covered separately.

Last week we talked about 1 John 5:1-5. And we talked about basically four points—we didn’t get really to the fourth point, but the first three points were that love for God is the keeping of the commandments. And we talked about how we’re dealing with an epistle written by the apostle of love. And we talked about how people say that John’s epistles are characterized by love, light, and life. And a person that doesn’t love—he probably isn’t walking in the light and he probably doesn’t have any light.

And if you look at the definition that John puts on what love is, that definition is the keeping of the commandments very clearly. But he also said that the keeping and love for our brothers also is commanded by God and is equated with the commandments—the second tablet. And so when we talked about these verses last week, we talked about the fact that love for God is equated with keeping of God’s commandments. Love for man is equated with the keeping of God’s law as it relates to those people around us.

The second point we made is that the law of God is not grievous. The commandments are not burdensome. They should be a delight to us. And we concluded by saying that Jesus Christ is, after all, our great example of how we’re to live our lives. We’re Christians. We call ourselves by the name of Christ. And so we should look at his relationship to God and what would determine that relationship. He said that he came to do the will of the Father, to walk in obedience to everything the Father had commanded him to do, and we should want to follow that example ourselves.

He said that he came to love people and to demonstrate that love through the keeping of the law, and we should follow that example ourselves. And he said that he delighted to do the will of the Father. He didn’t find it burdensome. And so when we look at the law of God, we should not see it as a burdensome thing upon us. We should delight to do it.

And remember the responsive reading we read last week with Psalm 19. Now the commandment is seen as sweet to us, as a source of life, restores life to us. That’s the way we should look at the commandments of God—not grievously or burdensome. We began to talk a little bit about the relationship, not just of love to the keeping of the commandments, but also of victory and faith to the keeping of the commandments as well. So today we’ll talk more about that.

We have three very simple points. First of all, the first point will be that the believer’s life is characterized by victory. The second point will be that that victory is founded or based upon Jesus Christ—a very simple point. And the last point will be that victory is a working victory, even as our faith is a working faith. Those are the three points we’ll discuss today.

First, the believer’s life is characterized by victory. In verse 4 of this passage, we read that “for whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” Very clear statement here: whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. So we have to say that if we’re born-again Christians, we would meet this qualification of being born of God, and we would be overcoming the world.

Now, it’s important to recognize, as we tried to emphasize last week, that it doesn’t say that whatsoever is born of God will escape from the world or will get away from the world before it collapses or that it’ll be somehow spirited out of the world so that nothing bad will happen to it. No, it doesn’t say that. It says that whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world.

And we said last week that the word “overcomes” in this verse is from the Greek word nike, which we all should be familiar with. We have, after all, Nicole Hansen, whose name is founded upon that Greek word. It means victory. And we also have a great shoe company here in the Pacific Northwest, Nike. And that’s how you would spell the Greek word: N-I-K-E. It isn’t really pronounced “Nike.” It’s pronounced “nikay” in the Greek, rather. But anyway, the point is they name their shoe that because they think their shoes will guide them to victory. And so they equate the shoe with victory. And when we read “overcome” in the scripture, we should do that same thing. We should think about Nike tennis shoes, perhaps, as a way to help us remember that the word here means victory. It doesn’t mean escape. It means to be overcoming, to be victorious.

An example of that is in Revelation 6:2. The same word is used. It says, “I saw, and behold, a white horse. He that sat on him had a bow, and a crown was given unto him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer.” And the words there—”conquering and to conquer”—are the same word. Now, we don’t want to take some time and develop who it is on the white horse. But the important thing about that verse is to show you that’s the meaning of the word “overcome.” When it says the believer overcomes the world, it means the believer conquers over the world—conquers and keeps on conquering.

It’s important to recognize what the believer does overcome. Now, this verse clearly tells us that the world is overcome by the believer, and we’ll talk about that in a few minutes. But there are some other passages again from John’s pen. And by the way, it’s interesting that a lot of these passages we’ll be dealing with this morning are from the Apostle John—he whose gospel and epistles were characterized by light, life, and love. Those same documents are characterized by commandments, obedience, and also by victory and overcoming. Those things are all of a piece, as we tried to point out last week.

In 1 John 2:13, earlier in this same epistle, John says, “I write to you fathers because you have known him that is from the beginning. I write to you young men because ye have overcome the wicked one.” And the wicked one, of course, is a reference to Satan. And so we see that the people that John writes his letter to—believers, those that are born of God—have overcome the wicked one. Past tense: have overcome Satan.

Additionally, in 1 John 4:4, he writes this: “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” Well, who are the “them” there? What he’s talking about is the antichrist. He said, “There are many antichrists that have already come out from the church into the world.” And he said that this is the way to test the spirits. And then he goes on to say, “You have already overcome them”—how? “Because greater is he that is in you than he that’s in the world.”

So believers’ lives are also characterized, not just by victory or overcoming or conquering the world, but by conquering and having victory over Satan and by conquering and having victory over the antichrist or antichrists that come out into the world.

This is a really important point. I mean, it’s clear as clear can be here. And yet we find ourselves in a time in the history of the church that denies these truths. I always think of a conversation I had with a woman—it’s probably been three or four years ago now—who is another homeschooler. And we talked on the phone for about an hour. She had been reading a lot of books by David Hunt and Constantine on the New Age, and we were talking about how much time we had left and this kind of thing.

You know, it’s just so typical. Most people wouldn’t admit this necessarily, but she said, “You know, I talked about how to me the book of Daniel clearly teaches that God brings forth enemies for himself to conquer through Jesus Christ. You have the vision of Daniel—the four kingdoms—and the stone that’s cut without hands crumbles those kingdoms to dust before him. And that stone, as we know, is Jesus Christ. And I said that God raises up enemies such as the New Age just to demonstrate the power of Jesus Christ over those enemies.”

And she said, “Yeah, well, you know, it’s just this time though, historically, this time—boy, it’s just so pervasive and so overpowering. How can we possibly hope to conquer it?” She had in her mind that the great enemy of the New Age and the proliferation of it in various governments and everything was so powerful that we couldn’t possibly overcome it.

And yet John tells the people in the first century—the church—that you have overcome the spirit of antichrist and the antichrists that have gone forth into the world. Certainly the New Age is an antichrist. It attempts to replace Christ with its own subversion of salvation. But we’re told explicitly here that we, as born-again believers, have overcome antichrists. We have no reason to fear them. We have no reason to stop having children because we’re afraid of what’s going to happen to the world. We have every reason to have children and look forward optimistically.

So believers have overcome Satan. They’ve overcome antichrist, the spirit of antichrist. They’ve overcome the world. Now, before we go on to talk about that victory being characterized by Jesus Christ, it might be good just for a second here to talk about the necessity of that perspective and that activity of victory in Revelation in the letters to the seven churches. The term “overcoming” is used continually. And it’s important to understand what’s being said there by our Lord through the pen of John.

He says in Revelation 2:7, “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life.” Now, this is an obvious reference to, among other things, communion. Who receives communion? Who to whom is to receive fruit from the tree of life, which characterizes Jesus Christ, of course, eating his true food and true drink? The one that overcomes—the one who is victorious, the one who is conquering and who has on, as it were, Nike tennis shoes and runs to victory on them through the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s the one who has true communion with Jesus Christ.

In Revelation 2:11, he that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. You don’t want to be hurt of the second death, right? You don’t want to suffer eternal death or the second death. You want to overcome that. You want to have new spiritual life that’ll never end. Well, it says here that life—the one that isn’t hurt by the second death—is him that overcomes, him that has victory.

Overcoming is essential to have communion with Jesus Christ. If our lives aren’t characterized by that, we have good reason to wonder what’s going on with our lives. If we have a pessimistic eschatology and we think that we can’t overcome the problems that God puts in front of us and we can’t have victory over the world and over the enemies of Jesus Christ who abound in the world, then really John says here that we don’t really have the right to eat of the tree of life, and we won’t have victory over the second death.

To have a victorious lifestyle—well, that’s a bad way to put it, I suppose, means a lot of things these days—but to understand that the gospel of Jesus Christ is a conquering thing and not an impotent thing—that’s necessary to understand our new life in Jesus Christ, our salvation, and our communion with him.

Many other things are said in the letters to the seven churches here in Revelation 2:26. “He that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations.” We’ll come back to that in a few minutes, but it’s important to recognize again that power over the nations is contingent upon him overcoming and having a life of victory.

The believer’s life is characterized by that victory. And these seven letters, among other things, talk about the necessity of victory, but also spell forth the blessings of that victory. Overcoming results in blessing—true communion, eat of the tree of life, power over the nations, victory over the second death, a new name that Christ gives us, a part of the temple in Revelation 3:12, part of the building, the edifice that is God’s church. All these things are seen as great blessings for us.

In Revelation 3:21, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.” Great blessings and necessity of our understanding of victory to characterize the believer’s lifestyle.

But that victory is not seen autonomously, even here. It’s related to—now, we’ve always talked about how Scripture is primarily a revelation of God himself. When we sing that song that we sing every week after the sermon is read, we ask for God to reveal himself to us—not ultimately ourselves, but first and foremost who he is and what he requires of us. And so if we understand that our lifestyles be characterized by victory, we know that is analogous to Christ and to God, to the covenant keeper. And that’s the second point: our victory is based upon Jesus Christ’s victory.

Now, Jesus Christ’s victory is seen as over the same entities—or rather, the same entities—that we saw the life of the believer characterized by. Jesus Christ also has overcome the world. In John 16:33, he says, “You know you’ll have tribulations, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” He said that just before he went into the garden of Gethsemane and sweat blood, as it were, and then prepared for his ordeal on the cross. But he said, “I have overcome the world here and now.” And he was talking, of course, in reference to what he was going to accomplish as well.

I rather flippantly and irreverently in the last couple of days mentioned to a couple of you how I struggle over what I’m going to say up here, and I said, you know, I really sweat drops of blood. That’s probably not a good thing for me to say. It’s irreverent. It’s Jesus Christ who came and who suffered that once-for-all death on the cross and who prepared for it by sweating actual drops of blood. And yet even in that agony that he foresaw, he said, “Have faith. I’ve overcome the world.”

Jesus Christ has overcome Satan. In Luke 11:22, he says that his release of demons is evidence that he has overcome the prince of this world, Satan. “When a stronger than he shall come upon him and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armor wherein he trusted and divided his spoils.” Jesus Christ says that the release that you’ve seen over these demons is evidence that I’ve overcome the strongest one who holds them in his power.

Jesus Christ has conquered over Satan. And Jesus Christ is also characterized in Revelation 17:14 as overcoming the beast and the antichrist that come into the world. “These make war with the Lamb,” it says, “and the Lamb shall overcome them, have victory over them.” So Jesus has victory over the same entities—the world, Satan, and Antichrist—that the believer has victory over. And so we see there that our victory is a result of his victory.

We also see that our victory is a result of his victory in the whole flow of this passage before us in 1 John 5:1. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Everyone that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.” The point he’s making here is that the things he’s going to talk about in terms of believers, our characteristics of believers—why? Because they’re begotten of Jesus Christ. They’re begotten of God. Okay? The primary reference to the one that’s begotten are the believers themselves. And they have the characteristics of the one who beggets them, God himself in Jesus Christ.

So our characteristics of faith—working faith—of love, obedience to God’s commandments, and of victory are characteristics because we share the characteristics of our Father. And that’s the third thing: our victory is based upon Jesus Christ. We know that ultimately because of our union with Jesus Christ.

In verse 5, “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God.” To believe on Jesus Christ results in our union with Jesus Christ. And if we have union with Christ in his sufferings, we also have union with Christ in his victory and what he’s accomplished.

Next week we’ll be, as I said, talking about the sacraments of our Lord. And those sacraments are primarily characterized by demonstrating to us, showing to us, and reinforcing the idea that we have union with Jesus Christ. It’s because of that union with Christ that we have victory as well.

In Revelation 21:7, “He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.” Now, it’s important to recognize there—remember we talked about John talking about the overcoming of the church in the letters to the churches in the first part of the book of Revelation. And at the end of the book of Revelation, toward the end in chapter 21:7, he says, “He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he’ll be my son.”

What he’s saying in the first part of Revelation is these are the characteristics of the church to overcome. These are the necessity of that. This is the blessing of that. And finally, all that is summed up toward the end of the book when he demonstrates the way in which he’ll overcome in Jesus Christ, saying that “he that overcometh shall inherit all things. I’ll be his God and he’ll be my son.” That is the basis of our victory. That’s the basis of all the blessings we have—that we have union with Jesus Christ, that he is in covenant relationship to us, or we’re in covenant relationship to God rather through Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2:13 tells us that while we were once cut off from the covenants of promise, but now we’ve been brought nigh by the blood of Jesus Christ. The covenants of promise are what we now have entrance into through the blood of Jesus Christ. And those covenants guarantee victory. Those covenants guarantee the fruits of that victory and life because we have life in Jesus Christ through our Mediator. So our victory is based on Jesus Christ’s victory—through the evidence that he is victorious over the same entities, through the fact that we are begotten of Jesus Christ, and finally through the fact that we have union with Jesus Christ—and so we have victory.

The third point we want to make is that our victory is working victory, as our faith is working faith. Now, last week we went through some verses such as Romans 3:31. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid. Yea, we establish the law.” We went through other verses as well, but those verses all taught us that when the Scriptures talk about faith, it’s not throwing up a dichotomy between faith and the keeping of God’s commandments.

It’s saying that just as love is the keeping of God’s commandments, so faith is demonstrated through obedience to those commandments, through love for our Savior, and through obeying what he told us to do. There’s a relationship between faith then and commandments. Faith is working faith. And of course, you know, we read in James that faith without works is dead. So faith issues forth in works. Christian faith is faith that works.

And so we see in this context also the same thing is true. We read a quote from Man last week—I’ll just read it again. I think it’s a really good quote to sum up what’s being talked about in terms of the relationship of faith to the commandments. Man said, “It’s quite inconceivable that a man should be given this faith in Christ, that should accept this gift which Christ offers, and still go on contentedly in sin. For the very thing which Christ offers us is salvation from sin—not only salvation from the guilt of sin, but also salvation from the power of sin. The very first thing that the Christian does, therefore, is to keep the law of God. He keeps it joyously as a central part of salvation itself.”

Faith in Jesus Christ issues forth in working faith, which is the keeping of God’s commandments.

We, many of us, have been listening over the last year or so to Reverend Rushdoony as he was preaching through the book of Romans. Thought maybe we could call it “rushing through Romans.” You know the way. But in any event, he stressed throughout that series, as most people would, the key verse to Romans is that “the just shall live by faith.” But he stressed that it’s frequently misunderstood. We’re reading it as if it says “the just shall be saved by faith.” And certainly the just are saved through faith. But it’s important to recognize that what Romans is teaching, as a corollary to that or as a central part of the book of Romans, is that the just shall live by that faith.

He isn’t saved and then he just waits around until things, until he’s raptured out of the world. He is saved with the end that he will live by faith. And so Romans tells us that our life is to be characterized by faith in Jesus Christ and by the keeping of his commandments. Faith is working faith throughout our lives. And it’s the same thing about victory. That’s what he’s saying here in these verses.

He’s saying that the one that overcomes, the victory that overcomes the world, is our faith. And so if faith is a working faith, then victory has to be a working victory as well. And we see that real clearly in what the Scriptures teach us. In Revelation 2:26, we read, “And he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations.”

We just read that verse, but it’s important to recognize there that he says two things are required for that blessing. And he’s not saying two separate things, but he’s telling us more about the overcoming by the second portion of that text. “He that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end.” That is victory. Keeping the commandments of God unto the end. Those things are equated by God. Victory is victory that works.

In Revelation 12:11, we are told the true remnant—the true remnant that will have this victory—are those that keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus. No false dichotomy between those two positions. The true remnant that overcomes are those that keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus.

Now, it’s important, as we’re talking in this context specifically about the victory that believers have over the world because of their union with Jesus Christ and his victory over the world, that we discuss the world just for a minute here to see what it is that we have victory over.

If you look at the various references in the New Testament to the world, you’ll find some interesting references. For instance, in John 12:19, we read the following. The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, “Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? Behold, the world is gone after him.” They’re saying that Jesus Christ is the one who’s getting victory here. The world is going after Christ.

Well, we know that not every last person went after him in that context, correct? So when we say “the world” here is going after him, it doesn’t mean every last person. Additionally, in Romans 1:8, “First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.” Well, it doesn’t mean there that every last person in the world had heard about the faith of the church at Rome. That’s not what “the world” means here in these contexts.

So the first thing we know about the world and the victory we have over the world is that it doesn’t mean necessarily every last person in the world.

Now the second thing that’s interesting about the world, and particularly again in the writings of John, is that the world is continually being talked about by the Apostle John as being saved by Jesus Christ. For instance, in John 1:29, Jesus came to take away the sins of the world. In John 3:16, “God so loved the world.” In John 3:17, “the world might be saved through Jesus Christ.” Okay.

In John 6, “For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world. Jesus said, ‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of the bread, he shall live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh, and I will give it for the life of the world.’ ” John says continually that the world will be saved through Jesus Christ.

What does he mean by this? Now, if we’re going to hold a universalistic position, we have to throw out the majority of the Scriptures. In other words, if he means by this that every last person in the world will become Christians, we might as well, you know, cut the Bible into many pieces, because there’s so much in Scripture that teaches the certainty of everlasting damnation for those that do not believe on Jesus Christ. That’s not what he’s saying here.

What is he saying here? It’s important to understand this. I think that what’s going on here—and this is—let’s first of all look at John 12:31. He says this, another reference to the world and Christ’s action toward the world. “Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” There’s a transition in place through Jesus’s ministry on earth. He’s saying that the prince of this world, now, not in the future, but now, is being cast out through the ministry of Jesus Christ.

What’s going on here is that Christ is saying this world is passing away in the sense of the world that’s dominated by Satan. And the prince of that world is now being cast out, and I’m in control. I’m ruling this world.

Now, we understand these things to mean that Jesus Christ, when he talks about the salvation of the world, is talking about the world to come. He’s talking about what he will affect in the entire world. He’s not talking about a different physical location. He’s talking about a difference in time. He’s saying that as time progresses, this world will become Christianized. This world, as an entity—and as a covenantal entity now—will become faithful to Jesus Christ.

The world is a covenant unit the same way that we’ve talked about families, for instance, and nations. So the world is, and Jesus Christ now is in the process—through his ministry, which was then, that is 2,000 years ago—of reconciling the world unto himself.